The Iron Swamp (7 page)

Just like my mother.

I was lucky, though I didn't realize it at the time. She left me everything in her will, but the government seized it all, just as she knew they would. I wasn't even allowed to keep the worthless stuff to remember her by. Not even my stuff. The law didn't recognize a minor's right to ownership until he had 18 cycles, so they carted me out of my dead mother's apartment with the clothes on my body and whatever I could fit in my pockets. But had they counted me an adult then I would have died as well.

Not that I could explain any of this to Rake. He wouldn't listen even if he believed me, and I knew better than to bring up my traitorous parents to the Commissioner's son.

His eyes narrowed. "I can't talk to you anymore. I'll see you tomorrow." As his slider pulled up, he was gone without further word.

I put Lola down again, and the two of us made our way back to Elvedeer. Part of me wanted to jack-in and become Dae Daniel for the rest of the evening. The ether was a way to forget problems, be someone other than Simon Nidess, and not think about the risks of reality. But I couldn't. For the first time in five cycles I had a reason to be in Cos, awake and alert. I had hours of security footage to go over and a partner acting irrationally.

I hoped Rake wasn't going to do anything stupid. The man who went away in that slider seemed so utterly different from the man who ripped my Pida Whey action figure in the morning. He was a man I could respect – even like – but if there was something in his past about to make him self-destruct, then there was little I could do but stand aside.

Chapter 5

18/08/2256 FC

Somehow I'd managed to wash a pile of laundry that did not contain a single sock. I sniffed several candidates from the dirty pile before selecting a blue one and a black one that didn't reek of stale sweat.

On CKN, it was all about Kenrey. People on the streets offered their opinions on what a tragedy it was. Figuel stood behind a podium claiming that we were already following several leads, which was news to me. Most worrying were the interviews of Clazran and the Grand Archbishon who took it in turns to furiously condemn the killer, and Clazran went so far as to say that Kenrey would be avenged.

Watching the ferocious characters at the center of the media storm, I was certain of one thing. Vins had lied to me. His self-confessed candor was no more honest than a vine scorpion hiding its sting. I wasn't selected because I was a good detective, not even to carry Philip Rake out of the basement. The SP would solve the case as they said they would. They had more resources, more connections, more everything, and when they did my failure would be questioned, my loyalties suspect.

I was selected because when I failed they would have to bury me, and it was less wasteful to quash me than someone with a promising career. Figuel must have summoned Cythuria when he found out Kenrey died in his jurisdiction, his problem.

I wouldn't let them destroy me though. I wasn't a pawn to be moved around by the monsters on the hill. Neither did I share my parents' belief in fairness and honesty. I would lie, cheat, and steal to prevent myself from enduring their fate.

Behind my network screen was a shelf full of figures; people like Captain Cos and The Living Flame. Creatures like my parents to the last of them, but they weren't real people, and their situations were not real situations. It was easy to always to do the right thing if the authors could just write that at terminus it all worked out fine. Episode 113 of The Living Flame, Purple Heart series would have been a different story if The Living Flame's attempt to save both Helena Kay
and
the bus full of school children, despite repeated warnings that it wasn't possible, had resulted in everybody dying.

That was the world my parents belonged in. Both of them would have made great sidekicks for The Living Flame, maybe they could even have had comics of their own, but in The Kaerosh, run by men like Clazran, they were just fodder for his blades, and their failures spoke louder than their words.

Tired of watching the same people discuss Kenrey over and over, I placed a treat on Lola's nose and took the elevator down to the lobby. The security guard wasn't there this morning, which, if I wasn't so tired, might have concerned me. I walked round the corner from my building to where I called my slider. Most occupants of Elvedeer didn't have their own slider, so I did my best not to draw attention to it.

*

In the station, watching the elevator go up to floor 3 rather than down to -1 gave me a small buzz. For the first time in as long as I could remember I held my gaze in the mirror, even smiled at myself. I was nothing to look at, and the night spent at my network screen examining footage of Kenrey's compound had not lessened the dark yellow smears under my eyes, but it couldn't lessen the feeling that I wasn't garbage anymore. I was part of something again and not even Rake's moralizing could detract from that.

"You're late." Rake stood up from one of the chairs in the lobby. "They won't allow us to do a tox-screen on Kenrey or the guard."

My worries that Rake might do something foolhardy were temporarily assuaged. I didn't need to ask why. As a Guardian and the Archbishon, Kenrey could not be found to have illegal drugs in his system. "Fine, who's in charge of lab division now?"

Rake shrugged. "I've been in the basement with you."

The top of my head barely reached above the reception desk, so I stood back a bit. Leaning over it, I said, "Excuse me, could you tell us who's in charge of the lab division now?"

The receptionist's blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail emphasizing a stern face, and my question appeared to impress her as much as a fart at a dinner party. "Lodale."

"We're here about the Kenrey case, number 059561."

"What number?" She looked over at the other two ladies whose conversation she clearly found more stimulating.

"059561."

"05..." Her neck flicked between her screen and the other two girls.

Rake slammed his hand down on the counter so that all three of them jumped. "Do I have to come back there and do it for you, or are you about to start concentrating on what we're saying?"

The woman swallowed, her eyes wide, but she made no apology. "If you don't calm down, sir, I'll have you escorted from the building." The two security guards either side of the elevator took a step forward, halted only by a wave of the secretary's hand.

Rake snorted, his features relaxing as he remembered his old arrogance. Gesturing for the woman to lean in, he said, "Do that and you'll be jobless by tomorrow morning." Then he whispered, "My father is Commissioner Figuel."

The secretary looked at the security guards, and then back into Rake's deep blue eyes. "05..."

"0-5-9-5-6-1," I said, for hopefully the last time. "It's the case all over the news."

She typed away for a few clicks, occasionally glancing at Rake. "Ok, press your thumbs to your tablets please."

We did.

"If you would like to take a seat, Dr. Dollews will be out to see you."

I nodded, neither of us thanked her, and we sat down.

Rake looked at his tablet. "If they're gonna stick a dozy bitch like that at the reception they might as well just use an automated system."

"Did you find anything on the security footage?"

He shook his head. "It was like watching an injured animal bleed out. You?"

"No sign of anyone entering Kenrey's bedroom. I sent it to some surveillance guys to see what they can turn up, but I don't think we are going to see any evidence of the killer. He planned it too well for that. What I did find was the footage the guards deleted."

Rake played the words over in his mind. "What?"

"After the explosion, the guards flooded out into the grounds, and I watched them scramble around like they'd all had ten beers and couldn't find the toilet. At two points after that, the camera footage has been deleted."

"I didn't see that."

"The footage shows the cameras in sequence for each five minute period. I wondered why the guards gave us the footage like that instead of giving us each camera separately, so I separated all the clips out for each individual camera." It had taken longer than I cared to admit. "In one case a five minute block from one camera has been deleted from the sequence, and in the second case there are ten clicks missing from one block."

"Perhaps it's a glitch in the way the files were copied?"

I picked a piece of fluff off my trousers as if I was considering this. "I was thinking back to yesterday when the guards were messing us around. We thought they were just being rude, but what if they were using that time to delete the necessary footage?"

Rake didn't hide his surprise. "You think the guards did it? Why not the killer?"

"The killer is a possibility, but I don't think so. The deleted footage is from after the murder was committed. If the killer removed it then we have already caught him, because it was one of the guards in charge of surveillance."

"Could be," Rake said.

I shook my head. "I watched the areas around the missing footage over and over, and I'm convinced that the guards deleted the footage to stop themselves looking foolish. In the sequence before the long deletion, two guards, including the one that was shot, are running in opposite directions into the area with the missing footage. One of them must have shot the other one. The same is true for the two wounded guards and the missing ten clicks. Stupid as it sounds, I think they ran into each other."

Rake hesitated. "You mean the killer didn't do any of it?"

I nodded. "I think they were scared that Clazran might think they bungled their chance to catch the killer if he found out what actually happened."

Rake sat up as if he smelled fire. "What about the dead guard?"

"That was still the killer. Throat cut, same as Kenrey."

"Still," Rake said, "the one in the corridor might have been a rapist as well."

I said nothing. Rake wanted to believe that we were searching for a vigilante come to save The Kaerosh from the monsters on the hill. At terminus, he would realize his mistake, but by then it might be too late. I would drink myself to death before returning to the basement, and if he tried to obstruct me solving the case, I would crush him. The bully who ripped up my mint condition Pida Whey action figure I could have beaten to death with a shovel and slept easier than Lola in a patch of sun, but not the new Rake who defended little girls from being raped, that would be harder.

Dr. Dollews approached us with an outstretched hand and a grin wide enough to stretch his cheeks. He was a fat man with several marked patches in his stubble where hair failed to grow. Our hands had barely touched before he let go again from a handshake so limp his arm might have been made of rubber. Then Rake had to pull his hand out of a two hander that seemed to extend cycle upon time while Dollews smiled at him.

I concluded he was aware of Rake's relationship to the Commissioner.

Career scientists were the worst. They had a tendency to give you the data you wanted rather than portray what the evidence actually showed. If I wasn't careful, I would be chasing some fictitious serial killer around The Kaerosh by the end of tomorrow.

He led us down a corridor full of people in lab suits carrying various items that were nameless and functionless to the majority of society. Racks with tiny tubes full of air, or glass containers warped into unnatural shapes for purposes beyond reckoning.

Dollews looked back as he led us towards his office. "We've been working day and night to get these results ready for you, Mr. Rake."

Despite him saying the words right over my head, I resisted reminding him that it hadn't been a whole day and night since they got the data. "And what did you find?"

"If you'll just wait until we get to my office, I'll explain everything."

We arrived at a white door with a picture of a baby on it. Whether it was Dollews, his child, or just a random baby there was no indication. Maybe once it grew a beard I would know better.

Inside, the narrow office was almost bare. Shelves ran down either side with nothing but a mug and a few pens scattered across them, though the higher ones were above my visual range. The place looked more like it had been looted than lived in.

"Take a seat gentlemen," Dollews said, walking behind the desk.

I helped myself to the wheeled one and Rake sat in the white plastic one that looked like a large children's chair. If Dollews ignored me, as I was pretty sure he intended to, I could regain his attention by rolling around his office and picking things up.

"Our scan for genetic material revealed a few possible suspects," he said, turning one of the two screens towards us. "Normally, we could tell you which of these people were in the room within a few hours of the crime by the amount of degradation. However, with the extended contamination from outside, we can only narrow it down to who was there over the last couple of days." His eyes darted between me and Rake assessing our reactions, but if he were covering for some mistake made by his lab, I was too ignorant to know what it was. "Most of them," he continued, "are just cleaning staff or guards, but there is one I think you will agree is a promising suspect."

The screen showed a quilla by the name of Vos Peti. A three met long legless reptile with teeth longer than my fingers. His yellow eyes were almost invisible against the backdrop of his skin, evolved to camouflage him in the endless savanna of Vas Bes.

The quilla were the most common native race in Cos. Only humanity outnumbered them, so Peti was not as surprising a suspect as a myuki might have been, but The Kaerosh was amongst the few places the quilla didn't thrive. So totally different to the yellow grasses and stone dry air of the lands they evolved to inhabit, the humid rot that infested the Kaeroshi swamps and cities obstructed their breathing and irritated their skin. Admittedly, if there was one quilla daring to inhabit Clazran's moldy nation, Peti's profile suggested it was him. Freedom fighter or terrorist, he was implacable even by the standards of his species.