CisLuna_Hard-boiled Police Procedural_Murder Mystery Read online

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The headline was straight out of the pulps, “Killer Cop Gets Gas.” There was a ghoulish video of me in my ‘death throes.’ Pretty cool. My face was recognizable in spite of the plastic mask—that was important. Still more important was that I looked dead when it was over. And I did, including pissing myself—you could see that dripping from my crotch in the vid. Nice touch.

  We were on SLS John Marmie, named for the deputy project manager of the LCROSS, or Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, a NASA mission from way back in 2009, according to the plaque on the bulkhead. I was an expert space passenger now, so I got up and floated around after we entered the cruise phase of the trip. Marmie’s color portrait was next to the plaque. Dapper fellow. Wore a necktie that gave him a real retro look. And to think my leather flight jacket was considered a throwback. Anyway, LCROSS found water at the lunar polar caps. I guess that was a big deal back then. You’d think that much water would have been obvious.

  We were in a race to beat the killer back to Borucki, and Marmie, being a LEO shuttle, was our best shot. I knew Borucki was where that bastard was headed, but what it boiled down to was still just a hunch.

  “So how did I die?” I asked Ciccolella.

  “Admirably. An example for us all.”

  “No, I mean how did you ‘kill’ me?”

  “Oh, that. We used a general anesthesia… sevoflurane or something. The mask was hooked up to a standard anesthesia machine. Had to drill a hole through the wall of the gas chamber to bring the tubing in. Warden was really pissed about that. You should send him a sympathy card when you get back.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll have to find something in bureaucrat green.”

  I killed the rest of the commute time by catching up on the news on my communicator. SpaceCorp had given me a new model that was quantum encrypted. ‘100% uncrackable!’ they said. Yeah, right. I still gave myself an alias and made sure that I kept my message traffic as limited as possible.

  Ciccolella, Larson, and I had hatched this evil plan that would snare our killer if I was right that he was heading back up to CisLuna. Once we had it down—about an afternoon’s worth of work—we sent the details to Rogers, Sam, and Monica via encrypted MLS, or modulated laser signal. That technology was ‘100% uncrackable’ as well, provided the message clerk on the other end was competent and did not forward the contents via regular mail.

  We even had a deception plan to go with the real one. We guessed that the killer might assume we were headed up here to catch him. We hoped he would not be wise to our redirecting all the incoming flights to Borucki. We also hoped he would buy Ciccolella’s press conference announcement that he was lofting a whole army of cops to do a ‘room-to-room’ search of the stations, and that he would also buy that the search would logically start at the next in line from his last kill—that would be SSS David Koch, named for a project scientist on the Kepler mission. Koch was a research vessel that served as a platform for a giant telescope to analyze the Alpha Centauri triple star system.

  So, we had Ciccolella plus the captain and security chief of Koch exchange a bunch of dummy messages about how they were going to fly a huge team up to Koch with the advance crew arriving by month’s end. We had them use a pseudo encryption that would look like what you’d expect from amateurs. A problem evil geniuses often have is that they think everyone else is stupid. They are correct in that assumption, but their downfall was that everyone else is not as stupid as they think. The key to all successful deception plans is to start with what the mark expects and then build on that expectation.

  The real plan, not the deception, was simple. All CisLuna traffic starting from two days before my execution was held up, not indefinitely, just enough so we could guarantee beating him there using a LEO shuttle—a six-hour flight from takeoff at Earth’s surface to docking at Borucki. The usual transit time was about three days, sometimes five what with transfers needed to go from Earth to LEO, then LEO to Borucki, and finally from Borucki to whatever station you were bound for, be it one of the CisLuna stations or the Lunar Surface Stations. For added safety we rerouted all CisLuna traffic through Borucki, even if they were ultimately scheduled to dock with one of the other stations. We kept that part secret. Passengers didn’t get to find that out until they got off their shuttles. Then we’d feed them some bullshit story about technical difficulties at their planned rendezvous station. Chick’s fictional army of cops would play into this traffic disruption ruse.

  While the incoming passengers were our captive audience in the passenger lounge, we planned to identify each of them with DNA scans. That was the only thing we had to go on in terms of a positive ID of the killer—that blood sample I got when I knifed him coming out of my room. Everything else about the perp was an unknown. His physical appearance changed whenever he felt like it using 3D printer technology. He never left prints at the crime scene, so there is no way to ID him from prints. He changed his electronic signature at will. Sometimes we’d catch him in a duplication—the same two people don’t usually eat at the same time in different cafeterias. But those minor faux pas never lasted long enough to do us any good.

  Assuming we ID’d the killer in the passenger area, and assuming he had not managed to smuggle in some kind of laser zap gun in his duffel bag, and assuming Rogers’ goons were quick enough and goony enough, and assuming—ah, fuck it. This was starting to feel like more of a crap shoot than a plan.

  I felt the familiar shapes of my blade and sap underneath my space suit. SpaceCorp bureaucracy forced us to arrive naked of firearms once again. My original 28-cm blade and thumb sap were still in the evidence locker down at Vandenberg PD. They confiscated them when they arrested me. I was packing spares, a 33-cm spring-assisted blade and a 28-cm 4-ply sap filled with a solid lead slug instead of lead shot.

  The spring-assisted blade was something I had been experimenting with. Technically, switchblades are illegal in Sierra. Spring-assisted knives are legal. They open fast enough, but you have to be careful that you hold them right-side up in your hand or your finger would be on the wrong lever. For some reason, I never had that problem with my switchblade—must have been the feel of my thumb on the button. Getting your index finger on the lever is easy enough when you’re practicing, but not so easy when it’s a real fight. You needed the muscle-memory that came from drawing and opening a knife thousands of times—something I had not had time for while I was getting ready for this mission. Who knew what might come of a longer blade and a longer sap if this case did come down to hand-to-hand combat? Another three cm on my blade when I stabbed him the last time and Emily might still be alive. Part of me hoped it would come down to hand-to-hand.

  The flight technician pulled on my space suit sleeve. “Sir, we’re on final for Borucki. Better check your straps.”

  * * *

  Monica had the DNA ID procedures set up in the passenger area as we pulled into the hangar bay. When you take off from Earth in a LEO shuttle you are seated in an upright position. When you dock with the outer rim of a station you are suddenly pulled upward out of your seat by centrifugal force. The landing maneuver is somewhat like landing a toy airplane on a tire that’s rolling down a driveway. The airplane has to match velocity with the edge of the tire so that on touchdown the tail, belly, and nose hooks catch the arrestor cables and keep the shuttle from bouncing off into space. It’s similar to a carrier landing but more exacting. Apart from Patty’s one-time miracle, they’ve never come up with a manual way to pull it off. Either the computer gets it right or you do a go-around. After docking, your straps hold you in place upside-down. You have to be careful getting out of them or you’ll land on your head. A fall could be fatal if you bust a face plate since the hangar bay is evacuated.

  You exit a shuttle docked at a station through a hatch in the shuttle belly. A ladder extends up into the passenger area and the passengers descend to the hangar deck. I didn’t like it that it was so easy to step out of line once yo
u got to the deck above. You could go scurrying off into the darkness of the hangar bay and nobody would find you.

  A LEO shuttle can hold up to thirty passengers but the airlock leading into the passenger area is only big enough for ten, so it can get congested around the outer airlock door. That worried me too. Sneaky people use congestion to disappear.

  I decided to check out the hangar area before entering the passenger area to make sure Rogers had a couple of his more muscular men on hand in case the killer smelled a rat while riding in on his shuttle. Two of Rogers’ more muscular goons jumped me, wrestled me to the deck, and cuffed my hands behind my back with nano-ties before hustling me into the airlock. Once through the airlock, they pulled my helmet off. Their surprise told me Rogers had followed my other instructions—don’t tell anyone I’m still alive unless they absolutely need to know. Then they fucked up.

  Monica walked toward me all smiles, “Roy! Welcome back from the dead!”

  She was about to give me a big hug when I yelled, “Stop!” My angry tone jerked her up short.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “How do you know I’m Roy Stone?” I pinched at my cheek, “How do you know this is the real me and not some 3D likeness of me glued on for effect?”

  Monica looked like somebody whacked her across the face with a dead mackerel.

  “Oh, god, he’s right! Hold him while I get a swab.”

  I opened my mouth while she rubbed a cotton swab against the inside of my cheek. She stuck it in her DNA machine and waited a minute.

  “He’s clean.” Then she called Chick and the flight technician over and gave them the same treatment.

  Rogers came over, “Sorry, boss.”

  “That’s okay. It was a good lesson. Meanwhile, there’s not enough guards in the hangar area. You have two. You need at least eight. There were only three passengers on this flight, not counting the crew. What happens when you have thirty?”

  Rogers looked glum.

  “Buck up. That’s why we drill—so we don’t fuck up when it’s show time.”

  I winked and slapped him on the shoulder. “Okay, let’s look at contingencies. What happens when you have a crowd of people and they’re bunched up at the airlock and somebody starts screaming that they ran out of oxygen?”

  “We hook them up to an umbilical.”

  “Who hooks them up? You or a technician?”

  “Well, I guess if they’re turning blue, whoever’s closest.”

  “Wrong answer. Technicians deal with passenger problems. Guards guard. Do not let yourselves be played for suckers. This guy is scary smart and ruthless as a crocodile. He won’t hesitate to bash your faceplate in if he thinks you’re on to him.” I hesitated to let that sink in.

  “Another policy we need to implement is nobody gets to carry their baggage into the passenger terminal with them. It’s too easy to hide a pry bar or something worse inside one. This guy will not hesitate to pull out a blade and open up your suit.”

  “Next question—how do the passengers get their carry-on baggage off the shuttle?”

  Nobody answered.

  “They don’t,” I said. “Use the flight technicians as baggage handlers. Just make sure whomever you pick is trustworthy. And make sure all the passengers are off the shuttle before you send flight technicians back on to retrieve baggage.”

  A few nodded. Everybody tried to look cooperative in the aura of my intense paranoia.

  “Okay, where are Lijuan and Mak?”

  “Right here, boss!”

  By then I was out of my outer suit and down to my inner liner. I’d soiled it on the flight and it smelled from urine. “I need to clean myself up a bit. How soon is the next incoming flight?”

  “That would be SpaceCorp LEO Shuttle SLS Butler Hine, about four hours from now, boss.”

  Back in the day, Butler Hine was a top project manager on LADEE or Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, another Tony Colaprete mission that provided us so much of our early knowledge of the rich water resources on the moon.

  “Okay, let’s meet in the war room in thirty minutes. What have we got on the incoming passengers? I want to cross-reference their pics and names from the passenger manifest with any other databases in SpaceCorp. What we’re looking for is a name with mismatched pictures.”

  The War Room

  “Where’s Rogers?” I asked.

  “He’s busy finding more people to guard the passenger and hangar areas,” Lijuan said.

  “Good, let’s get started. What have you got, Mak?”

  “Does it have to be a man, boss?” Mak asked.

  I thought a moment. “No it does not.”

  Mak projected a pair of pictures of a woman named Marla Savage. She was an attractive blond in one picture and brunette in the other. Facial features were similar but not identical, like you might expect from ID pics taken five years apart.

  “Is it possible this individual just colored her hair?” Lijuan asked. “You know, it’s not safe to be a blond up here these days.”

  Ciccolella asked, “Is it public knowledge that the killer prefers blonds?”

  “Not officially,” Monica said. “Victims’ names have been published and their identities may have been known around the crew. It’s possible some folks are putting two and two together.”

  “Okay, set Ms. Savage aside. Next?”

  Mak put up the ID photo of a middle-aged white male named Barnaby Brown.’ The first picture was a middle-aged male with a bald head. Nobody recognized the second picture. Except me.

  “That’s Jonathan Teach aka Simon Crowne.”

  * * *

  I watched Butler Hine’s approach on the big wall monitor inside Borucki’s Passenger Area. She lacked the graceful lifting surfaces of John Marmie. She had no need of them since she would never enter Earth atmosphere. Her sole function was to make a continuous loop between LEO and CisLuna. She used the same hook retention system as John Marie—a tail hook, two belly hooks, and a nose hook—but she had ‘pogo sticks’ in lieu of wheels. They were heavily damped with shock absorbers to cushion the impact and provide stability afterwards. They did not need to slide like wheels because she would never land on a runway.

  We intended to apprehend Passenger Barnaby Brown as he waited for his turn at the airlock. All space suits have name tags fastened over the left breast with hook-and-loop tape. Once his wrists were secured behind his back, we would escort him through the airlock and into the terminal where we would remove his helmet and collect his DNA sample.

  By now Rogers had eight goons inside the hangar bay—two at the belly hatch, two on the hangar deck, and four checking IDs at the airlock outer hatch. I was observing the airlock outer hatch from a monitor inside the passenger area. That was where we would apprehend Mr. Barnaby Brown aka Jonathan Teach aka Simon Crowne.

  As Butler Hine descended into the lower hangar bay, it looked funny upside down. The shuttle’s belly hatch opened and a ladder extended inside from the deck. A few minutes later passengers began descending the ladder onto the deck pausing to have their nametags checked. About eight passengers went by this way before Brown took his place at the top of the ladder. Two guards looked him over and let him pass to the airlock. It was hoped that would give him a false sense of confidence. He would not know that the guards on the deck sent a heads-up to the guards at the airlock.

  At the airlock, two guards on the ID team grabbed him and secured his hands behind his back. Before they escorted him into the airlock, another team moved the passengers already waiting inside back outside the airlock. Based on their arm waving, some of them appeared not to like that, but they became cooperative when they saw Brown with his hands secured. The ID team escorted Brown through the airlock inner hatch and turned him over to another pair of guards not wearing space suits.

  I moved closer to Brown. The guards pulled his helmet off and immediately I saw that it was not Teach. Worse it was not Brown. I walked up to him thinking he would betray himself w
ith the shock of seeing me still alive. He did not. Instead he just looked like a guy who was confused at why he was being treated this way.

  “Keep him cuffed and get his DNA sample.”

  Monica stuck a cotton swab in his mouth and then into her machine. A minute later she said, “It’s not him.”

  I walked up and said, “What’s your name, sir?”

  He looked at me funny but didn’t answer.

  “What’s your fucking name?” I shouted.

  That startled him out of his stupor. “Dinsmore. Martin Dinsmore.”

  I ripped his nametag off his suit. “What does this say?”

  Now he looked really confused.

  “What does it say?” I shouted.

  “Barney Brown.”

  “Read it again!”

  “Barn… Barnaby Brown,” he said.

  Ciccolella came over saying, “Okay, keep him in his suit with his hands cuffed and stick him in the tank until we sort this out.”

  Two guards escorted Mr. Brown/Dinsmore out of the passenger area into the holding cell we had rigged up for persons of interest.

  The airlock door opened and the next group of passengers came out to begin looking for lockers to stow their suits in. I moved to the far side of the room. As the passengers entered the room, they removed their helmets and gloves. That was when I saw him, Jonathan Teach. I signaled Chick and Rogers by squelching my communicator. They followed my gaze toward Teach and nodded. I was looking forward to pulling that mask off to see who he really was.

  Teach looked over at the table where Monica was working. It took less than a second for comprehension to color his expression. I cursed myself for not having Monica’s work area partitioned off from the rest of the passenger area.

  At that moment Teach turned toward the airlock and attempted to make his way past the guards. I couldn’t make out his exact words, but it sounded like he wanted back on the shuttle. Something about ID paperwork in his carry-on bag. The guards wouldn’t let him through. Teach turned and looked around the passenger area. I hid my face by tilting my hat brim down and lifting my tablet to look like I was reading it. Teach hurried back over to his locker and begin scrambling out of his suit. He was wearing a standard coverall underneath instead of the usual layers of spacesuit undergarments. He had one of those new condom catheters sticking out the fly of his coverall. After running his fingers through his hair, he stoically walked over to the line at Monica’s table. His right hand was in the pocket of his coverall.