The body lay in the center of the front room. It wasn’t the penthouse suite, but close enough at two floors down from the top. The view from the window looked out on the City of Jade Spires, a seemingly endless city built by the Centau on the moon Kota. I stared out at the afternoon light. I could see the gondolas of the Spireway filing between the buildings on an intricate cable system. It was the best way to travel through the city, especially if you were rich and lived in the spire-tops or ever got claustrophobic down in the slot canyons of the city, like me.
I took a deep breath and went to examine the body. I was sick of dead bodies. The idea is that a detective should get used to this shit, but I never have. Every victim got to me in some way, whether it was the frozen expression on their face, the signs of struggle under their fingernails or in their teeth, their age, or what I knew would nag at me about this one: that it was a Druiviin.
“Druiviin male, perhaps twenty-nine, thirty human-years old,” I said.
“Sounds right to me. That’s what I thought, too,” Miko said. “But it’s always hard to tell with the Druiviin.”
“It’s their violet skin. Ages better than mine and yours.”
The gray and red rug wasn’t soaked in blood, so we weren’t looking at that kind of injury. The body was facedown. I pushed the victim’s silken silver hair aside with my pen. Looked like he’d been hit in the back of the head. In that gruesome way of skull fractures, there was a depression where the hair and skin seemed to be caving in. Maybe not meant to be murder, but only time would confirm that. I inhaled, choking back my gag-reflex from seeing it.
I really, really hated this part of the job. I usually saw signs of some kind of struggle or movement that might have happened after the injury—blood on a hand from instinctively trying to protect the wound. Or an indication that the victim tried to crawl away. This death looked almost instantaneous.
I stood up. “Who found the body?”
“His ex-girlfriend—Trixie Black. Says she came by to ‘drop off some of his things.’ Though they’ve been broken up for a while, she was still able to get into the condo. She knew the code on his scanner lock.”
“You get to question her?”
Miko nodded. “She’s gone. I printed a photo already.”
She handed it to me. The photo was a headshot of a girl with tired eyes. Black hair and a light complexion. The corners of her lips were turned down. No one ever looked good after finding a body, especially when they were being photographed as a suspect in the investigation.
“I’ll want to see your notes.” I handed the photo back to Miko and walked around the room, dodging the forensic team as they moved into a different room to give me space. “He hasn’t been dead that long, so it could have been her. Get someone checking the time-stamps on the locks as soon as possible. I want to see your notes on your preliminary interview with this ex-girlfriend. If she was his ex, why would she insist on getting inside? These indentions in the carpet,” I said, crouching again and pointing with the pen. “Did you notice them?”
“Of course, sir. They’re older though. I can’t put a time frame on them, but the furniture’s been moved,” Miko said, stepping back. She bent down beside me, her long black hair falling forward till it covered the side of her face and shoulder, and tilted her head to judge the angles.
“Get that hair contained,” I said, bristling that it wasn’t. Miko usually didn’t forget shit like that. She was a professional and that’s what I liked about having her on my team. She was a no-nonsense investigator.
She pursed her lips, straightened, and fished a hair band out of her blazer pocket. After she put her hair up, she joined me again.
“The chairs. Moved to get more space. A month or more ago. This rug is stiff. Firm. High quality fibers,” I said, testing it with my gloved fingers. I raised an eyebrow. “Something like this could hold its shape for quite a long time. But for what? Right? Seems odd.”
She nodded and scribbled something into her notepad.
I straightened and moved gingerly around the body, scanning the carpets before I put my foot down. Miko followed. “And did the murderer do it, or the victim?”
“Never seen it before. Usually furniture gets moved to hide a bloodstain. But I can see under the chairs. There’s nothing there.”
“What would have been happening that prompted the victim to move his furniture?”
I bent to get a closer look at the head.
“Red marks around the eye sockets and on the cheekbones. Pre-death bruising, it looks like. We’ll need the medical examiner’s report to tell us more.” Whether this was an accident, or something else, something natural: a heart attack, an aneurysm, or whatever else people died from that wasn’t murder.
But usually a giant head wound meant it was murder.
“Got an idea yet?” Miko asked.
“No.”
If not premeditated murder, then manslaughter.
I glanced around the room from where the body was to gather the lay of the land. To the condo entrance from the body, it was a straight shot to the short corridor that led to the door. Off that corridor there was a coat closet and small bathroom. Another corridor led to the bedrooms. There was a fireplace and French doors to a balcony about eight feet from the victim’s head. A vast kitchen opened into the living room, giving the whole condo a spacious feeling. It was the armchairs that seemed to have been moved the most. They appeared to have been picked up and moved about two feet from their normal positions. From where I crouched, I spotted a few random-seeming holes in the wall.
Rising again, I dusted off my hands and pen and went to inspect this abnormality. When I got closer, I saw that the hole wasn’t a hole at all, but a small, empty nail. Glancing around the room, I spotted three more like it.
Using a black pen, I sketched into my notebook the layout of the place and the approximate locations of all the big items, including the dead body at the center. The empty nails in the wall. The decorative gas fireplace. The gray-fabric couch. A console table against the far wall, near the door, there for design. It held the display of an orrery. Ixion, what the humans called the gas giant that held our moon in orbit, was at the center. The Centau called it Muibaus, which they claimed meant “pale mother” But humans had decided at some point that they preferred a word that sounded more human and Ixion stuck.
I went to the console table and studied the orrery. There were six colonized moons, six shadows that fell on Ixion: Kota, Itzcap, Po, Joopa, Paradise, and Helo. The orrery moved like an old clock, featuring gears that softly ticked out approximations of the moons’ orbital paths around Ixion. The little machines were all the rage sixty years ago, when the Centau finished setting up the first trans-moon zeppelins and they began operation. The victim might have collected old oddities like that. There was an empty space on the table, delineated by a square outline of missing dust. “Something’s goes here,” I said loudly to get Miko’s attention.
Miko came to stand beside me as I bent to get a straight on view of the dust coating the table like a light fur. She copied me. “It looks square, the empty spot. Maybe slightly rectangular.”
“Any bets? Think that was the murder weapon?”
“Could have been. The wound doesn’t look like it was made with a traditional weapon. But what was here could also have been just a box. And he finally moved it.”
“This is a spot for art,” I pointed out.
Miko stared at me like I didn’t know art. Or have style. “You’re thinking of my desk at work.” I said, giving her a sidelong glance.
“It’s a mess, Gabe. I’ve never seen a more cluttered desk.”
“There’s a reason for that—the clutter. But I know what I would put here, next to this elaborate orrery. It’d be an important centerpiece of the room,” I said, indicating the un-dusted area with my hand, and the line where it ended, where an object had been. “The victim is showing off his wealth and success right here. What went here in this place of honor w
as something beautiful, like the orrery.”
She nodded.
The room suddenly got busy with forensic workers taking photos, measuring distances, and dusting for fingerprints. I felt my chest tighten with anxiety as the walls seemed to close in around me.
“It’s getting too crowded here. I’m going back to the precinct. You’ll stay to finish managing this?”
“Sure, Gabe. Was planning on it since you took the one this morning.”
“Bag it all. When they’re done,” I said, nodding at the forensic workers, “get the body to the medical examiner. We need her report. You talked to any other neighbors yet?”
Miko made a notation. “Yeah, I canvassed for a bit while the crime scene team set up. None of them heard anything, at least those who were home.”
I looked around. “It’s not the most expensive condo. But the furnishings . . . He was doing well. Maybe he worked from home? Ok, I’m heading out.” I stopped, feeling like we were missing something. Or someone. “Where’s Meg?”
“She said—”
“Oh right. I know what she said,” I smiled.
* * *
“Gabe?” Meg asked.
“Hmm? What?” My gaze was glued to the suspect chart, but I was lost in thought. We were in our homicide wing, which was tucked into the corner on the bottom of an Ice Jade spire—I’d been back at the precinct managing a hand-off of the dead witness on the Trippel investigation. Since that whole ant’s nest had been disturbed, bodies were showing up left and right and the homicide teams in the Ice Jade district were stretched thin, but I needed to focus on this new case
Meg waved her hand in a ‘let’s continue’ motion as I turned to look at her.
“The suspects?”
“Right. Just the one, so far,” I pointed at the single photo of a suspect, positioned around a photo of the Druiviin body in the condo. The suspect had black hair, blue eyes—I’d seen it before. “The girlfriend. Yes? She’s the one who supposedly still had the code to his lock. Miko already got a preliminary questioning session in.”
Meg folded her arms and leaned against her wooden desk. “Yes, but the girlfriend’s pregnant, Gabe.”
“So?”
“Just, it seems unlikely that a pregnant woman could commit murder.”
“Not if she was on drugs. Or jealous.”
Miko looked at Meg, then at me and said. “Pregnant women aren’t high on the list of violent crime perpetrators.”
“Suspects lie. That’s a cardinal rule. Like how pregnant? What, 4 months or something?” I prodded, trying to put my elbows on my desk, but it was covered in papers and old taco wrappers. I found a spot to settle them and kept talking. “Because at 4 months, that could just be a bit of a tummy, especially if it’s her first.”
Meg laughed, looking at Miko’s notes from the crime scene. “The girlfriend said she’s due in four weeks.”
“OK, so then very pregnant. Harder to fake that. Let’s make sure our next photo is a body-shot. For the board. I want to see that belly.” I leaned back, scrubbed my hands through my hair, and stared at the board, thinking. “So, that’s it. We have one suspect. None of the neighbors?”
Daxan, one of our typical team members and a Druiviin, walked into the area and handed Meg a printed sheet of paper. “Hey Meg, I just got this from forensics. Is that our suspect? She looks lonely up there.”
“We’re working on filling it out.” Meg glanced at the paper, then passed it off to Miko.
“Ah, the record of time-stamps of when the door was accessed and who accessed. This goes back three weeks.”
“Did a building super show on the logs or something?” Meg asked.
“No, I don’t see one, at least not today, except for the girlfriend this morning,” Miko flipped through the file. “It all looks like the victim with a few odd ones in the mix. Except for the girlfriend this morning.”
“Sounds like his life was rather dull. Boring.” Given, that was how mine was. The only people who came by my place were Lucy and Meg, when Meg dropped her off.
Meg paced in front of the board. “I agree. If his life was that empty on the surface, maybe his computer will turn up something. Maybe that’s where he did all his living. Daxan?”
“Yes?” He was at his desk now and spun in his chair to look at Meg.
“Grab the victim’s computer from forensics and get searching through the files.”
“Yes, sir,” Daxan said, standing up and heading out of the room. The young Druiviin was good at the desk stuff, not so much the beat. The natures of humans and Consties still baffled him, it seemed. If a person had never felt the urge to lie to protect themselves or experienced the passion of volcanic rage, then it was much harder to read suspects.
And I sensed that he was afraid to screw up.
Miko went to her desk, put her notes down, and began to work at her computer.
“And we need to check his bank accounts,” I said.
“Doing that now,” Miko said.
“Good. Because the rest of the team is still on the Trippel investigation. Waugh is taking over the case from this morning—that dead witness.” I sighed. “Right now, I need a break.”
Meg scoffed. “We’re not taking a break. We’re going over the suspects.”
“Suspect,” I corrected. “There’s just the one. We need to find more suspects, because you clearly don’t think it was the pregnant girlfriend. And I tend to lean that way myself.”
“Then this is hardly the time for a break, Gabe. We need to know what the hell the victim was doing when he died.”
“Right. But I need a break. Because I haven’t eaten anything except a couple chunks of leftover brie from that terrible party you forced me to attend a few days ago.”
“You loved it. And Lucy loved having you there,” Meg said.
“I can’t think when my blood sugar is this low. I’m not suggesting we stop working on the case. Someone needs to go knock on doors again—check the surrounding businesses to see if anyone saw anything. And one of us needs to go interview the ex again.” I bit my lip and wondered if Meg was going to fight me on this, and how hard I could push back before it turned ugly. My communicator buzzed. “Yep?” I answered.
“Gabe. Hey,” it was Cassandra Rossum, the medical examiner. “Cause of death is what you thought—blunt-force trauma. Base of the skull. But there are other things you should see. Come down to the morgue when you can and I’ll do the rest of the autopsy.”
“I can now,” I said, relieved to have an excuse to get out and grab some food on my way over. My mouth watered thinking about the Molten Taco nearby. Although, if I was going to be heading to the autopsy, maybe I didn’t want to eat anything.
“See you in a minute.” Cassandra hung up.
“Go then,” Meg said, pouting when I ended the call.
“I will,” I said. “I have to, though, you know. Don’t have a choice. It’s my job”
“Right. Can you stop at my condo and check on Lucy?” she asked. “So I can go knock doors like you want me too?”
“Yes. Go knock doors. I’ll check on our kid. Also, someone make sure Daxan’s scouring the web while you two canvas the area again.”
* * *
The ME’s office was located between the Ice Jade district and the Yellow Jade district, and served both areas. Meg’s apartment was in a fairly nice tower in the Ice Jade district, mid-level in a corner suite. I grabbed a couple tacos for myself and one for Lucy, and headed by her place to eat them with her before I went to watch the autopsy. At least the next fifteen minutes in my life were at peace while Lucy ate her taco and regaled me with stories from school. All too soon the real world pushed its way between my daughter and me. Sighing, I looked at my watch, kissed Lucy on the forehead and hurried over to try to make most of the procedure.
“These bruises here,” the medical examiner said once I’d arrived and dressed into a set of protective clothing.
It looked like, judging from the open c
hest cavity and organs out in containers for weighing, that she was at least halfway done already. Druiviin, Centau, and Consties had the same color of blood as humans—but organs and such all had slight variations. The stench in the room was one I’d never gotten used to, even though the body hadn’t been dead as long as some, a torso splayed open like that had a terrible scent. The doctor had told me before that even living bodies smelled bad open like that.
Cassandra brushed her gloved finger along the distinct marks, skirting the bottom bones of the ocular cavity. Beneath the bright lights, the bruises were clearer. They formed the faintest outline of . . . something. “They happened at the time of death—which was about 9:30 in the morning.”
“I’ll make a note of it. Yeah, the bruises, I’d noticed them earlier. Wanted to ask you about them. So I was right? They happened just before death?”
“Exactly. They look like, maybe, goggles?” Cassandra’s red hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she wore a lab-coat over medical scrubs and a mask. Only her forehead and blue eyes were visible, though she also wore safety glasses.
“So,” I looked up, and tried to picture why the victim ended up with weird goggle markings on his face when he died. I recalled the crime scene, placing myself back in it, seeing the room.
“Goggles,” I repeated. “Like swimming goggles?”
Cassandra frowned. “No, if they were swimming goggles, then they’d be a snorkeling mask. But this Druiviin didn’t die from drowning. Why would he have goggles on?”
“Right, right. That makes no sense. What’s the easiest explanation? He was wearing goggles. But they weren’t for swimming. What else is there?” I stared absently at the trough-like sink along the far wall of the facility. “Piloting goggles? Was the vic a transport pilot of some kind? Maybe on an airship between the moons?”
The Colossus Collection Page 87
