by C M Dancha
"Did she wear the pearls to your dinner at the Schwarzenbach?"
Rollie had to stop and think back to their dinner date. "I don't remember if she had them on or not."
"What color hair did she have? Actually, let me ask it in this manner. What color was her pubic hair?"
What an odd question. Why would Milkweed want to know that? Was it part of the investigation, or was he some type of weird pervert? "That's personal, Milkweed"
"Nothing is personal when there's been a murder, Mr. Sweats."
Rollie chose not to argue with him. "She had deep brown, almost black hair."
"Do you know of anyone who wanted to kill her?"
"I… I don't. As far as I knew she was well liked by everyone." This was a lie, but he wasn't going to make Milkweed's job easy by telling the truth.
"Do you know of anyone who wanted to kill Calderon Weeks?"
"Inspector, I already answered that…" Rollie caught himself and started over. "I'm sorry, I was still thinking about Sophia. You want to know about Callie, right?"
Milkweed nodded.
"No, I have no idea who would want to kill Callie." That was another lie. He had a couple of ideas of who would want her dead, but they were only suspicions, not based on any hard-core facts or motives.
"Mr. Sweats, what was your feelings regarding Klaus Ekstrom being injured in the blast at Sophia Groetschow's apartment?"
Rollie wanted to tell Milkweed that Klaus deserved to be torn apart in the blast but chose to lie again. "I'm sorry for him. I hate to see anyone get hurt."
"That's it, Mr. Sweats. Didn't hurt a bit, did it?"
"Milkweed, are you making any progress on solving these murders?"
As Milkweed left the apartment, he responded. "Mr. Sweats, I make progress even when I'm sleeping." Milkweed chuckled, left the door open and disappeared down the hallway.
Rollie shut the door as he spoke out loud, "See ya, asshole." He hoped Milkweed was still close enough to hear his send-off.
Milkweed did hear Rollie's rude remark and laughed to himself. Once again, he had conducted a near perfect interrogation which netted some new clues. Years on the job had taught him the most productive interviews came when interviewees were upset or irritated with him. There was no question that Rollie, the mulatto, hated his guts.
Sweats was not a good liar. It was easy for Milkweed to read his physical reactions and then separate the truth from fiction. When Sweats lied, he either stumbled over his words, moved his body away from Milkweed or he put his hand over his mouth. Usually, it was all three plus the carotid artery in his neck pulsated uncontrollably when he tried to lie.
Milkweed estimated that Rollie was about eighty percent truthful with his answers. Sweats was still withholding information about who he thought might have wanted to kill Sophia and Callie. He also had a deep hatred for his boss, Klaus Ekstrom, which was understandable considering how few people at Phoenvartis liked the man. Most of the associates at Phoenvartis disliked Klaus because of his demeaning attitude. But, in Rollie's case, Milkweed suspected there was something more. It was definitely more pronounced and personal than mere humiliation.
Otherwise, Sweats' truthful answers confirmed some things which were still question marks in the two murder investigations. The waitress at the Schwarzenbach tavern told Milkweed that Sophia and Rollie left with a thermal food shell containing the bulk of their dinner. Sweats claimed that Sophia took it to her apartment. The arson investigators didn't find any remains of the thermal shell or its contents. If it wasn't at the bomb scene, where was it?
Sweats couldn't remember if Sophia had worn the black pearls to their dinner date. Yet, the charred corpse found in the destroyed apartment was wearing them. Everything else which Sophia supposedly wore that night was incinerated or disappeared. This pointed to the body being Sophia Groetschow except for one minor detail. Mr. Sweats claimed that Sophia had deep brown or black pubic hairs. When the autopsy was done, Milkweed requested that samples of the pubic hair growing beneath the skin be removed and analyzed. That hair analysis came back within the color classification of red, not any shade of brunette.
Milkweed was ninety-nine percent convinced that Sophia Groetschow was still alive. She was either in hiding near Zurich or had taken-off, knowing someone was out to kill her. Milkweed wasn't sure which it was, but further investigation should produce her exact location. In the meantime, he had a bigger question to solve. Who was the woman in the bombed apartment and how did the black pearls get around her neck?
As Milkweed walked out into Zurich's night air, he couldn't help thinking about the expression on Sweats' face when he’d let it slip that other men were seeing Groetschow. That one really hit a raw nerve with Sweats; enough for Sweats to ask for the names of the other men.
Milkweed loved concocting and using throw-away questions like the one about Groetschow's other lovers. There were no other men. It was a huge lie to see what effect it had on the interviewee. Sweats had fallen into the trap, he would be upset for days, if not weeks. Milkweed would relish his irritation for about the same amount of time and hoped that Sweats would make a mistake because of it.
The investigation of Ms. Week's murder was moving ahead very slowly. He was hoping to get a lead or clue from Sweats, but it hadn't happened. For some reason, Sweats chose to withhold his ideas and suspicions about the Week's murder.
About the only certainty Milkweed had about the Weeks' murder was that the ape didn't kill her. The blow to Weeks' temple would be near impossible for an ape who was slightly taller than Weeks. A local zookeeper told Milkweed that apes hit down instead of side to side when they are aggressive. The temple injury was done by someone who could swing a blunt object horizontally. The only way Maxine could deliver such a blow was if Callie was already laying on the lab floor. Milkweed found that theory ludicrous. Callie had to be standing up at the time the crushing blow to the temple was delivered by a human killer.
The only other step forward made in the Weeks' murder was the review of the primate lab recordings. When Milkweed reviewed them, he found the time leading up to and after the murder erased. The most likely explanation was a faulty recorder, but Milkweed thought it was too coincidental that the recorder went down at the same time Weeks was killed. His gut screamed intentional sabotage as opposed to faulty equipment. There were only a select few people who knew how to erase recordings and make it look like an innocent act of God. He needed to identify those people and see if they had foolproof alibis.
"Boy, you sure don't like that guy, do you?"
Rollie was in the kitchen drinking a glass of sweet water when Gretchen came out in a nightie which barely covered her.
"You picked up on that, did you? I can't stand him. He's a sneaky son-of-a-bitch who would turn in his mother if he thought he could get away with it." As he shared the sweet water and put his arm around her, he said, "Do me a favor. Don't ever let him in this apartment again. If I were you, I'd stay away from him. He tries to come off as your friend but it's all a facade. He uses that to get you to open up and talk about things you normally wouldn't talk about."
"No problem, my dear." Gretchen playfully started licking his ear, knowing how much he hated it.
"Stop that." When she didn’t, Rollie started pinching her ass and tickling her until she struggled to get away. After horsing around for a few minutes, they embraced each other and went into the bedroom.
Rollie couldn't believe how beautiful Gretchen was on the inside as well as the outside. All her outer beauty was matched with the personality of a saint. She was caring, loving, kind and a pleasure to be with for any length of time. He kept thinking her real personality would eventually be revealed. But after dating for some time, he couldn’t point to one change in the way she acted privately versus in public.
As they started kissing, she stopped him and said, "Can I ask you one question about Milkweed?"
He wasn't particularly pleased by the request but wanted to get it over with, so t
hey could get to serious lovemaking. "Sure, go ahead."
"Is he a guy or a woman?"
Rollie studied Gretchen to make sure she was asking a serious question and not screwing around. He wanted to answer right away that Milkweed was a man but couldn't bring himself to make the statement. The longer he laid there thinking about her question the more doubt gathered in his head about Milkweed's sexuality.
"Gretchen, I think he's a man but now that you bring it up, I'm not sure. What do you think?"
"I think he's a woman. Some of the things he does are typically female traits. Like the way he twists his hair around his fingers occasionally. And his facial skin is flawless. In fact, I couldn't see any evidence of a beard. Every man and woman on this planet has some facial hair but I couldn't see any stubble on his face. I'm voting that he's a woman with a well-developed male physique."
"Dear, you might be right. Regardless of what he is, I'd like to put my fist in his or her face."
"Now, now, you need to calm down. Come over here and let me show you how a real woman can make you feel."
Two hours later, Rollie woke up. After making sure he could hear Gretchen breathing evenly he laid in bed thinking about her belief that Milkweed was a woman. He was beginning to agree with her, but there was still one very good reason to believe the inspector was a man. He had never met a woman in his entire life who could get him so irritated that he wanted to throw a punch. Plenty of men had gotten him to that state, but never a woman. If Milkweed was a female, she would be the first to raise his temper to the point of boiling over.
Rollie started thinking about the odd questions Milkweed asked him. Did he know about the other lovers in Sophia's life? Did they leave the tavern with food? Did Sophia wear the black pearls to dinner? And what color was her pubic hair? That was the oddest question of all.
Milkweed was up to something. There had to be a reason for so many strange questions about Sophia and the night of the blast. Rollie racked his brain trying to think of a hypothesis which fit all Milkweed's questions. After an hour of twisting and turning the clues and questions into a plausible theory, Rollie gave up. Nothing seemed to fit together in a neat, little package. Maybe if he gave Raul a replay of his interview with Milkweed, his friend might see the obvious and tell Rollie what it all meant.
Before he fell back to sleep, a thought crawled into his mind which was both disturbing and soothing. There was a damn good chance that Sedgewick Slice would get rid of Milkweed and his prying. Of course, that meant one thorn in the ass would be replaced by another.
4
THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
"Mr. Todd?"
"Yes, this is Todd. Good to hear from you again, Mr. Hakala.
“How are things in Zurich?"
"Everything is fine. Well, just about everything."
"You sound troubled, Mr. Hakala. What's on your mind?"
"Are you on a secure transponder wave, Mr. Todd?"
"Yes, and I assume you are likewise?"
"That's correct." Once Raul knew their conversation was unassailable from listening or decoding by eavesdroppers, he felt comfortable speaking freely about the failed murder attempt. "The problem, Mr. Todd, is that you missed your mark. She somehow survived the blast and has disappeared. My guess is that she has gone underground."
There was a momentary pause at Todd's end. It wasn't often he was accused of mishandling a hit.
"My contacts tell me there was a female body found in the apartment. Are you telling me it wasn't the mark?"
"That's correct. The Medical Investigator's office hasn't identified the victim yet, but they do know it wasn’t the mark. As you know, the mark has black hair. What remained of the corpse had red hair."
There was no reason for Todd to ask how the medical investigator determined the victim's hair color. He was very familiar with sub-epidermal tissue and hair coloration testing.
"Is that the only evidence you have?"
"There's more. Two days ago, the medical investigator interviewed Rollie Sweats about the attempted murder of the mark and the blast in her apartment. Mr. Sweats walked me through every question Inspector Milkweed asked him. There were three or four questions which didn't make any sense to Sweats. After hearing them, it's obvious that the only logical conclusion points to the mark still being alive. For now, Mr. Sweats hasn't figured this out and I have no intention of telling him."
"Ah, yes. Mr. Jason Milkweed, also known as The Thing. Very good investigator. He'll keep digging until he figures out what happened. I doubt he'll trace it back to you and me, but he'll figure out who the victim is and find the mark for us. Might as well let him do the dirty work of tracking her down."
"Why did you call Milkweed The Thing?"
"Mr. Milkweed is a hermaphrodite or some such odd creature. Tell me, Mr. Hakala, have you checked with your contact in the Medical Examiner's office to confirm the mark being alive?"
Raul had no idea what hermaphrodite meant but wasn't going to show his ignorance by asking Todd. He could look it up later. "Yes. He talks with Milkweed regularly about the investigation. Apparently, Milkweed is convinced the mark is still alive."
"Interesting. Tell me, Mr. Hakala, were there any other casualties from the blast?"
"Funny you should ask. It seems that Klaus Ekstrom happened to be at the mark's apartment when the blast went off and damn near got killed. He's lying in a hospital bed now and rumor has it, he won't be returning to Phoenvartis. You remember Klaus, don't you?"
"Oh, yes. How could I forget the egotistic, perverted CEO of Phoenvartis? It seems like Mr. Ekstrom didn't learn his lesson about staying away from that woman. Oh well, some people have to learn the hard way."
"Mr. Todd, I've been thinking that we should leave the mark alone for a while. She no longer works at Phoenvartis and I think she has left Zurich. Unless I'm misreading the situation, I'd say she is running as fast and far from here as she can. Plus, she's smart enough not to contact her former lover, Mr. Sweats, or anyone else from Phoenvartis. There's a good chance we've seen the last of her."
"So, what are you saying, Mr. Hakala?"
"I want to call off the hit on her."
"I'll be happy to do so, Mr. Hakala, but my experience is that people like her always resurface and cause problems in the future."
"What if we delay the hit until I give you a definite go or no-go?"
"That's acceptable, but I have to put a two-year time limit on your decision. Is that acceptable, Mr. Hakala?"
"Very fair, Mr. Todd. I will go ahead and pay you for this hit and we'll see what happens in the future."
"Excellent. I'll be looking for a deposit of World Credits in the account numbers I gave you. Oh, and I have a bit of information for you."
"What's that, Mr. Todd?"
"Sedgewick Slice is under a lot of pressure to get things straightened out at Phoenvartis. The human cloning didn’t go as planned. I'm not sure what that means but something is wrong, and Slice is on the warpath. Oh, one last thing. Don't be surprised when you meet Slice this time. He's going to look very different than the first time you met him. Goodbye, Mr. Hakala."
The connection went dead, and Raul stood up to pace around his office, thinking about the last couple of things Todd said. There was nothing new from Todd other than Slice would look different, whatever in hell that meant. He already knew Slice and the World Council were pissed off because of the host sample being switch by Rollie. He wished he’d asked Todd when Slice would arrive at Phoenvartis to start his reign of terror.
After disconnecting from Raul, Todd called over the waiter and ordered his favorite dinner, known as Myka. The dish was a delicacy served in only one restaurant in the world, the Parisian Eatery Le Frotette. Todd marveled at how few people enjoyed the eating pleasure derived from consuming this small African bird in one mouthful. The taste was sheer ecstasy, better than any other food he had ever eaten. He believed hiding under a large piece of linen to catch the bird's entrails as t
hey squirted out from between a diner's lips was the probable reason for the dish's lack of popularity. Some people were so squeamish. They were revolted by the thought of eating a lightly fried, plucked bird with its innards intact.
Todd hoped the rejection of Myka as a dining pleasure continued for many years. It guaranteed the availability of this rare bird and kept the price reasonable. Of course, the cost was the least of Todd's concerns. Le Frotette could double the price and Todd would still stop in to enjoy Myka whenever he was in Paris.
This was a distinct advantage of being one of the few people in the world who could fix messy situations for the wealthy. Todd realized during his tenure with the World Council that important people would do virtually anything to avoid embarrassing or compromising situations. After leaving the World Council, he became a freelance fixer. As his notoriety grew, so did his fee. In a short ten years, he’d amassed a small fortune. It afforded him the luxury of living in the best accommodations, eating the best foods and sleeping with the most attractive people.
Missing his mark in Zurich was a black mark on his reputation. He needed to avoid any similar mistakes in the future. As he waited for the Myka to be served he revisited each step of this contract, so he could find and learn from the mistakes he made.
His first assignment from Raul was to find the mark, Sophia Groetschow. He’d located her apartment through Klaus Ekstrom's World Credit records in less than two days. Then, Raul gave him the contract to eliminate her. Getting into her apartment to plan how and when to kill her wasn't easy considering she was bedridden, recuperating from a make-believe ski accident. On the third night of surveillance, she’d finally left her apartment and gone to a grocery store. The next night, Todd followed her to Phoenvartis where she spent four hours before returning home. When she made the same trip a day later, Todd entered the apartment and made a comprehensive survey, taking dozens of images and measurements. With the apartment blueprint, he laid out a kill zone which would obliterate anyone within its boundaries.
