Chapter Six
--- Tuesday, early afternoon
Matt Walker finished the power consumption check Major Vukovich had asked him to run. He’d broken it down by individual quarters as accurately as he could, but he didn’t think it would help all that much. The maintenance section couldn’t give him accurate power use numbers on a person-by-person basis, and they’d never needed a reason to monitor people that closely before.
He pulled up his pay schedule and nodded to himself. His sergeant’s salary wouldn’t have stretched to cover the cost of living on the station, but his assignment bonus and generous per diem were enough to allow him to save a good chunk of money. His time on the station was coming to an end in two months, and he hoped his replacement would get along with the Major half as well as he had. She was tough, demanding, but fair and compassionate, a combination rarely found anywhere, much less in a commanding officer assigned to a post where nothing was expected to happen and nothing surprising was expected to show up on the monthly reports to their superiors.
In the final analysis, he liked working with and working for Major Katrina Vukovich. She did her job well and didn’t ask anything of her subordinates that she wasn’t willing to do herself. It had been a smooth operation all the way.
But the murder had changed all that. Not only was the security staff being asked to do something none of them were trained to do, the Major was thinking out of the box and had brought in a civilian assistant. Matt approved, because it showed that Katrina Vukovich cared more about solving the crime than about making herself look good, another trait not necessarily shared by many officers who might have gotten this assignment.
He sat back and wondered anew why she’d been assigned here in the first place. This post certainly wasn’t a career builder, and what he’d learned about the Major and her history didn’t suggest this was a punishment assignment, so he was puzzled. He was also puzzled about the make up of the security team. Major Vukovich had Captain Michael Kincaid, Lieutenant Howard Ronalds, Lieutenant David Lee, and eight sergeants beside himself in her command. All of them were male. Their CO was the only woman in the unit, and that also puzzled him, along with the fact that she hadn’t had a boyfriend during the time that he’d been aboard, at least not as far as he was aware.
He knew why he’d taken this posting: the money and the chance to get out into space. Placing this job on his resume would boost his earning potential and employability by a factor of at least two once he got out of the service in another three years. And most of his fellow sergeants had similar reasons. The United States Air Force was a wonderful organization to work for, but even though the Air Force provided many of the necessities of life to its members at very low cost or for free, they didn’t give you many United States dollars to play with. Space Station Prometheus had signed a long-term contract for the Air Force to provide security at a premium price, but with that price the station managers purchased assurance that there was someone for the security force to answer to, over and above the station management. If that meant the managers could influence, cajole, request, and urge the Chief of Security, but could never fire him – or, in this case, her – they had considered it a small price to pay.
The door whooshed open and the Major derailed Matt’s train of thought. “Matt!” she almost shouted. “I need you to route a copy of the latest shuttle passenger manifest to my workstation. And I want a check run on every name on that list. Get Captain Kincaid to organize interviews of everyone on that list. Find out if any of them had any prior relationship to the late Mr. Guilliot.”
“Yes, Major. Shall I have Captain Kincaid focus on female passengers?”
She shook her head. “No. Check everybody on the list. If Claude nailed a woman back on Earth, her boyfriend or husband or brother or father might’ve decided that killing him warranted the expense of a trip up here.” She frowned in thought. “On second thought, have the captain check the tourists first, then anyone else who’s booked passage on the next shuttle out. But check on everyone.”
“Yes, ma’am. Anything else?”
She frowned. “I’m sure there will be.” Then she led Inspector Lane into her office and closed the door.
Matt made a quick list of what he’d been told, then called Captain Kincaid at the other security office and repeated his orders.
His nice, peaceful, routine posting had suddenly gotten a lot more exciting.
--- Tuesday, mid-afternoon
Lois sat down at Karen’s desk and opened the e-mail application. She clicked on the one from Clark and read it.
--- Lois, we’ve brought a couple of experts into the case on our end. EPRAD has a guest physicist, Dr. Billie Jo Parker, and she’s helped Dr. Maynard, the Metropolis city medical examiner, look over the post-mortem report. They agree with Dr. Watson’s findings about cause of death, approximate time of death, and how long it took for death to occur.
--- They also thought that the lack of bruising was very odd. Dr. Maynard expected some kind of sedative or relaxant to show up in the blood work, and he was very surprised when it didn’t. Dr. Parker says that the low gravity Claude was exposed to would not have caused his body to process any drugs more quickly than normal, so we’re still left with a puzzle as to why Claude didn’t fight his killer.
--- Claude’s agent is threatening to sue EPRAD, the US Air Force, the city of Metropolis, the computer company who makes the computers Claude was supposedly working on, and maybe the mayor’s pet dog. I hope you’ve interviewed Claude’s boss about his job performance. It might tell us if Claude went up there with the intent to write this tell-all book or if he was running from someone or something and got this brainstorm while he was up there.
--- We’re working in shifts now, waiting for your reply. Send it back to me, and one of us will pick it up as soon as we can. We miss you.
Karen nodded. “Reply and send the passenger manifest. Ask him to do background checks on those folks – “
“ – to see who might have some connection to Claude. I know.”
Karen sighed. “Sorry. I’m nervous because I dropped the ball on this one.”
Lois typed as she spoke. “So did I, Karen, so don’t beat yourself up over it. I should have thought of this right away.”
“If you were guilty, you probably would have.”
“So you’re convinced I’m innocent now?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” Karen peeked over Lois’s shoulder and read Lois’s reply message from the screen. “What do you mean, you’re going to send your files?”
“I’m going to bring the files I’ve typed up to the office and send them to Clark in my next message. It’s mostly information for the newspaper story, but some of it pertains to the investigation and not to the reporting of the murder.”
Karen frowned. “You are going to let me read them first, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am. I’m not trying to slip anything past you.” She lifted the necklace from her chest, the one which prevented her exit from the station. “I want this case solved, too, remember?”
Karen nodded. “Right.” She hesitated as if making a decision, then opened the door to the outer office. “Matt, is Captain Kincaid on his assignment yet?”
“Yes, ma’am. I just finished briefing him. I also copied all of our files to his workstation.”
“Good. Let me know the moment he has some results.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lois hit the ‘send’ hot key and leaned back. “You want to check out Claude’s boss now or get a late lunch?”
Karen frowned. “I’ve screwed this up enough. We go see Claude’s boss now.” She opened a file cabinet and pulled out two sets of Velcro-heeled overshoes. “The computer lab is right under the Hub. You’ll need these to keep your feet on the floor.”
--- Tuesday, late afternoon
The computer lab manager turned out to be a fussy young Asian woman in her mid-thirties named Pauline Yu, whose hairdresser was surely the ‘trained chimp’ Andre had bemoaned just a few days before. Yu was the thinnest person Lois had ever seen who just looked flabby. It was apparent that the short, slender woman would rather write computer code than talk to a human being eight days out of the week, twenty-six hours a day. She treated Claude’s death as a personal affront.
“You do realize how much extra work the loss of Claude’s services has placed on me and my staff, don’t you, Major? I don’t have time for idle chit-chat.”
Karen’s patience was short. “Right now I don’t care what your priorities are. Mine supercede yours at this point.”
“Really?” Yu turned and settled herself on the hook-and-loop ‘flooring’ under their feet. “These computers control everything from air flow to station temperature to waste recycling, Major. If they aren’t tended twenty-four hours a day, something might break and kill someone. Is that what you want to happen?”
Lois interceded. “Ms. Yu, surely you understand that we’re trying to catch a murderer, one who might kill again. Our job is just as important as yours is, but we’re working against a deadline we can’t see. If you have a problem, you also have some idea how much time you have to fix it before something vital goes ka-blooey. We have no way of knowing when the killer will strike again, or if the killer will make it off the station before we catch him or her. In either case, how safe do you think anyone on the station will be?”
Yu huffed. “Surely I haven’t made anyone angry enough to kill me!”
“Probably not, but we don’t know for certain that Claude had, either.”
Yu processed that statement and her mouth fell open. “You mean – you’re saying the murder might have been a random act?”
“We don’t know. That’s why we need to ask you these questions.”
Wide-eyed, she nodded enthusiastically. “Sure. I understand now. Ask away.”
Lois lifted her notepad and readied her pencil. “What kind of worker was Claude Guilliot?”
“Guilliot?” Yu repeated. “I don’t have anyone by that name in my department.”
She doesn’t watch the news channels either, Lois thought. “He called himself DuBois.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Oh. Him.”
Lois nodded. “I take it you weren’t all that fond of him.”
“Surely you jest. The man’s top priorities were in his pants. If there was a female within his reach, he’d try to seduce her, even when he was on duty. I can't tell you how many times I heard or overheard how good low-gee sex was supposed to be, especially with him.”
“Did he ever make a run at you?”
“Make a run – oh, you mean try to seduce me?” Lois nodded and Yu shook her head with disgust. “He never stopped. If I handed him a work order he’d treat it like an invitation to my quarters. If I passed him in the cafeteria he’d invite me to share dinner and a very tasty dessert with him. He even waited for me outside the women’s showers once, just to invite me to share one with him the next time.” She shuddered. “He claimed it would save water.”
“So, you’re saying that you did not succumb to his blandishments?”
“Did I do what?”
“Succumb to his blandishments.” At Yu’s blank expression, Lois explained, “Did you accept his objectionable invitation?”
Yu tilted her head at Lois. “You talk funny, you know that?” Lois waited with a Dragnet-like ‘just the facts’ non-expression on her face. Yu exhaled sharply. The force of it made her lean back, but she rocked forward again and didn’t seem to notice. “No, I refused to join his not-very-exclusive club of female sex partners, and I never did anything to him except threaten to report him to station management.”
“Did you report his unwelcome advances to station security?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Major Vukovich could have brought legal pressure to bear on the situation.”
Yu frowned. “I didn’t want legal pressure brought to bear! We had a job to do, and we were forced to work closely together. There was no way to put a restraining order on him. This area isn’t that big, and I couldn’t very well get an order that would make him stop talking to me. He’d never have gotten anything done that way.”
“I see.” Lois scribbled some notes. “What kind of worker was he?”
“The kind I wouldn’t have hired if I’d known that over half of his work history was falsified.”
Karen blurted out, “You knew? Then why didn’t you report that? We could’ve sent him back down and gotten a competent replacement for him!”
Yu put her hands on her hips and snarled, “Have you any idea how long that would have taken? And how much extra work it would have made for the rest of my people? And how much it would have cost us to terminate his contract without going to court back down? Besides, he was just competent enough and willing enough to do the little jobs, the dirty and uncomfortable jobs, the ones no one else wanted to do. I tolerated him, but I didn’t like him or like to be around him and I certainly wasn’t going to renew his contract.”
Lois asked, “How much more time did he have on that contract?”
“Almost ten months. I’d already begun a search for his replacement. I didn’t trust him not to shirk his duties as his termination date approached.” Yu sighed. “Now I’ll have to move up my timetable. Most inconvenient.”
Inconvenient for Claude, too, thought Lois. “Thank you, Ms. Yu. We’ll get out of your way now.”
“Good. I still have to finish the environmental control upgrade. Those idiots back down actually sent us reel-to-reel tapes instead of tape cartridges! Have you any idea how hard it is to run a reel-to-reel tape drive at point-zero-four gee? The tape floats everywhere! It refuses to follow the drive path unless you baby-sit it the whole time it’s loading! And the drives attract every particle of dust in the air and have to be cleaned more often than a baby needs to be changed!” She drifted from side to side as she gestured. “This is also extremely inconvenient.”
Lois nodded. “Thank you again for your time. We won’t keep you any longer.”
Yu nodded back and jumped. Her Velcro overshoes ripped away from the flooring and she soared expertly over the banks of computers to the other side of the room.
Lois tried the same jump, but she didn’t completely disengage her heels from the floor and only unbalanced herself. She had to take an awkward step forward to keep her hands off the floor. Before she could embarrass herself further, Karen put one hand under Lois’s elbow to steady her and said, “Don’t worry about it. Just walk slowly to the access door. I’ll wait for you there.”
“Thanks. I’m not sure I could keep from damaging Ms. Yu’s computers if I did jump.”
“It’s an acquired skill, Lois. Everybody has trouble the first few times. In a few weeks, you’ll be flying around like the other long-timers here.”
Lois grinned and turned to mention that she wouldn’t be here that long, but Karen had already sailed away to the door. Oh, well, Lois thought, it wasn’t that important.
--- Tuesday, early evening
They were almost down to level twenty before Lois asked, “So, you think Pauline Yu might be our prime suspect?”
Karen shook her head. “No. I think if Claude had been messing with her computers she might have killed him, but I also believe that her next move would’ve been to call maintenance to get the body out of her way. I’d have to drop her to the bottom of the list.”
“Me, too. The only problem is that we’re left with either too few suspects or too many.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Don’t stop, Karen. I’m liable to step on your hands.”
“That’s no fun, either.” She affected a bad Cuban accent and said, “So, Lucy, you got some esplainin’ to do.”
Lois laughed and Karen scowled. “Come on, it wasn’t that funny.”
“Actually, it was. My younger sister’s name is Lucy.”
“Oh. Hey, here’s the access door to the salt mine.”
“Go ahead, I’ll follow quite sedately.”
“You, sedate?”
“Sergeant Walker lectured me about how unhealthy it would be to fall down one of these access tubes.”
“He’s right, Lois. The station’s first official fatality happened in one of these tubes, back when they first put spin on the station here at the L5 point. One of the guys who’d been working in zero-gee missed a jump across the tube on level one, and by the time he hit the bottom of the tube at level twenty-eight he was moving over eighty miles an hour. His coworkers said that they all laughed until he bounced off the ladder at about level twenty and they saw his brains spray all – “
“Okay, Karen, I get it already! You don’t have to gross me out to make the point.”
Karen stopped just inside the door. “I’m sorry, Lois. I thought I was just making conversation. I wasn’t trying to upset you, honest.”
Lois waved her off. “Never mind, it wasn’t your fault. I’m just sensitive right now, that’s all.”
Karen nodded. “Dreaming about Claude?”
Lois paused and shut the access door. “Once. Didn’t dream about him last night, though. I’d rather not dream about corpses embracing me.”
Lois caught the major’s momentary shudder. “Right. Anyway, what was that about too many suspects?”
“The passenger manifest. Right now, we can’t eliminate anyone who came in on the shuttle with me. We don’t have enough information yet.”
“So let’s see what your man Kent has been able to find out.”
--- Tuesday evening
--- It’s good to hear from you, Lois. We’re about halfway through the passenger list, and we don’t have anything yet. But Jimmy said this isn’t a deep search, and that he’ll go back over the whole list in more detail as soon as he finishes the first run-through.
--- Dr. Maynard has had an idea. He has suggested that Claude’s hands and feet were taped for some kind of kinky sex game that went very bad. It would account for the lack of defensive wounds on the body, and it’s consistent with what we’ve been able to learn about Claude’s very public private life. If that’s the case, it may expand your list of suspects, and if so, I’m truly sorry. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if not for the fact that your previous messages didn’t bring up this scenario.
--- Perry is talking to our legal department and to the chief of police to figure out what we can print from what you’ve sent so far. Please assure Major Vukovich that until she tells us she’s arrested someone, we won’t print any names of any of the suspects or any of the people you’re questioning.
--- Belated congratulations on your new job, Lois. I’m sure the Major is pleased with your investigative skills and your focus on teamwork.
--- Dr. Parker has also had an idea. She thinks that it’s barely possible, from a scientific viewpoint, that this was an assisted suicide. She also says she doesn’t like the idea, but it’s the only non-murder scenario she can come up with that doesn’t involve really disgusting and dangerous sexual practices.
--- We’re looking forward to getting your other files. I’m sure they’ll be quite informative and entertaining. And I think that’s all we have at the moment. Someone will send back any information we find on the passenger manifest, even if it’s nothing incriminating. Bye for now.
This time Lois read over Karen’s shoulder. “Eww,” she murmured, “I don’t like the sex game idea either. It’s only slightly more likely in my mind than assisted suicide.”
“I don’t know. Apparently Claude was a pretty kinky guy.”
“Yeah, but I doubt he would have allowed himself to be tied up like that. He liked to be in charge.”
Karen leaned back and pursed her lips in thought. “Maybe he found a new way to have fun.”
Lois took a breath to argue, but then she realized that she hadn’t seen Claude for several years, and that she had no idea what kinds of activities he had recently preferred. Besides, Maria Gomez had said that they’d met for sex in some pretty public places. Apparently Claude had broadened his horizons since she’d known him.
“Maybe he did. Why don’t we ask Carrie Hillman and Lana O’Meara about it?”
“Good idea. We can do that right after lunch, or are you not hungry now?”
Lois gave her a lopsided grin. “I’ll eat almost anything as long as it’s not recycled.”
--- Tuesday, evening meal
Lois finished the last of her dark green lunch goop and wiped her hands clean with her antibacterial napkin. “So what’s the plan for the rest of this afternoon?”
Karen sat back. “I think maybe we should split up and go back over our suspect list. Walker’s report on power consumption doesn’t help much, except it validates that Carrie Hillman was busy in Claude’s quarters and not her own the night before the body was discovered.”
“How about the newlyweds, Ben and Maria?”
“Inconclusive for them, although the consumption curve indicates they probably generated a lot more heat that night than one person would have. Besides, can you see Ben calmly facing down a questioner, knowing that he’d participated in a murder less than two days ago? He’d probably wet his coveralls and drop to the floor in a dead faint.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right. And I can’t see Lana O’Meara killing Claude without snapping him like a rotten stick.”
“Matt also reported that unless Mark Wayne planned it to the microsecond, there’s very little chance that he sneaked away from the astronomy lab to kill Claude. His co-workers and boss say he was in the lab the whole time he was supposed to be there.”
“Maybe he slipped out instead of going to lunch. Or to the bathroom – I mean, the emptying station.”
“Yeah,” she muttered. “Maybe. It just doesn’t feel like him, though.” Then she frowned. “Hmm.” Karen put her elbows on the table and frowned more deeply.
“What?”
“Shh. I’m thinking.”
Lois complied and sat still, at least until she ran out of patience, which didn’t take all that long. She made her way to the drink counter and charged two carbonated drinks against her station account, reasoning that they probably had less recycled water in them than anything else in the cafeteria.
As she walked back to their table, Karen’s expression brightened. “Listen to this and tell me if I’m crazy.”
Lois sat down and handed her a glass. “Okay, shoot.”
“What if we’ve been going about this in the wrong way?”
“How’s that?”
“We haven’t considered the psychological aspects of the crime. The way Claude was killed indicates – what?”
“Well, he was either killed by a woman he’d just had sex with or killed by someone who waited until just after his girlfriend left.”
“True, but what about the precise manner of his death? Doesn’t that mean something?”
“Means he’s not just mostly dead, he’s completely dead.”
Karen gave her a ‘no joking zone’ look. “Get real, Lois. What I mean is, should the way he was killed tell us what to look at, who to look for? Is it a signpost to the killer?”
Lois straightened also. “I don’t know. But I know who can find out.”
“Kent?”
“He can get in touch with a qualified psychiatrist in Metropolis.” They stood. “I’ll grab my laptop and you go back to your office and ask him to look into it. While we’re waiting for him to reply, I’ll let you look over my files and make sure they’re okay to send.”
“Sounds like a plan to me. I’ll see as soon as you get there.”
--- Tuesday, late evening
By the time Lois got to Karen’s office with her laptop, Clark had already responded. “Kent anticipated us,” Karen said. “He’s already talked to a shrink about this.”
“What did the doctor say?”
She tilted the monitor. “Read it yourself. It’s most instructive.”
Lois leaned onto the desk and complied.
--- Lois, Major Vukovich, be very careful! Dr. Friskin tells us that the manner of Claude’s death indicates a desire for revenge, one that was planned out carefully and well in advance of the event. You’re not dealing with a crime of momentary passion here. She also believes, because Claude was killed in an area of the station where people don’t often go, that the body was discovered sooner than the killer anticipated it would be, so whoever that person is will likely be a little spooked. This will also probably make the killer sensitive to any questioning and might push him or her into doing something drastic if he or she feels threatened.
--- Dr. Friskin said that if I held her feet to the fire, she’d have to say the killer is probably a woman, but she can’t be certain and she absolutely won’t commit to it. Unless you can figure out how a woman might have physically controlled Claude up to the point where he knew he was about to be killed, she says it’s almost as likely to have been a man, simply because few women would have the strength for that job. Add in what Bobbie Jo said about how weightlessness and/or low gravity living reduces a person’s overall body muscle tone and content, and you’re left with the same problems. Why didn’t Claude struggle more, and how did the killer control him before hanging him?
--- The aspect of this case which keeps Dr. Friskin from saying ‘female perpetrator’ more forcefully is the fact that a jealous woman would probably be more likely to kill her rival than her lover, assuming her airlock is completely sealed. If the killer is a woman, however, she would feel totally rejected and betrayed, and if this woman did murder Claude right after having sex with him, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone else who gets too close to learning the truth.
--- Be extremely careful on this one, Lois. We want you to come back as a passenger on the shuttle, not in a plastic bag in the cargo hold.
Lois nodded. “Well, that is most instructive. If the killer is a woman, she’s more dangerous than we thought. If it’s a man, he’s more dangerous than we thought.” She stood and crossed her arms. “Not sure how much that helps, though.”
Karen stood and moved past Lois. “Go ahead and send your files. I’ve got some checking to do.”
Lois watched Karen leave, then sat at the desk and put her laptop in the docking station. She transferred her files to Karen’s workstation, attached them to an e-mail, and sent it to Clark.
Then she sat back and thought. When Karen had left, she’d walked past Lois, even though the path around the other side of the desk was clear. She’d put her hands on Lois’s shoulders almost gently, and left them there a little longer than necessary. Guess the Iron Major really needs a friend, Lois mused.
As she waited, she went over the suspect list again in her mind. Lana O’Meara was physically capable of murdering Claude. She was strong enough and agile enough, and she’d had the opportunity.
But she didn’t strike Lois as the type to lure a man to his death. She’d more likely pick a fight with him in public and beat the life out of him with lots of witnesses and a strong sense of self-justification. Nor did she seem to be the type of person to plan something so complex.
She considered Carrie Hillman. She was certainly volatile and intense, and she claimed to have been destroyed by Claude’s death, but her reactions during their interview were not completely consistent with that claim. On the other hand, she wasn’t physically strong enough to control Claude. Lois believed there was more to Carrie Hillman than she’d already learned, but she didn’t quite fit the psychological profile Dr. Friskin had given to Clark.
Mark Wayne, the bereaved ex-lover of the late Trixie Witherspoon, the woman Claude had so cruelly jilted, didn’t fit the profile either. Lois considered the angry young man, and decided that he probably would have used his hands or a club to beat Claude into cherry paste, and then called Karen to turn himself in. Even so, he was still a suspect in Lois’s mind.
Ben and Maria fit the profile best. Ben was excitable and passionate enough to have gleefully killed Claude any way his blushing bride might have asked him to. And Maria was intelligent enough and clinical enough to plan an intricate murder, and she had the determination to carry it out.
But that would mean that their marriage was purely a cover for Claude’s murder, at least as far as Maria was concerned, and Lois didn’t get the impression that Maria thought of Ben as only a tool. The woman seemed to genuinely care about her new husband, and even if they were a decade or more apart in age, Lois didn’t believe this was a sham marriage. She might be wrong, but she didn’t think so.
Ben might take it upon himself to avenge Maria’s besmirched honor, but once again, Lois believed that Ben, if acting alone, would be far less subtle in his methods. He’d probably have walked up to Claude during a meal and clubbed him with a pipe or a crowbar. The murder was too intricate to have been done by an angry young man with hot vengeance flowing through his veins. And Ben didn’t seem to be the type to taste his vengeance cold.
Pauline Yu was barely a suspect, and she was on the list only because there weren’t any more obvious choices. The woman might have been lying about her relationship with Claude, but neither Lois nor Karen thought so. Even if Claude had been the worst computer service person in the history of the digital world, Yu’s most likely course of action would have been to suspend him without pay and file a complaint with the personnel director. Lois was more likely to have killed Claude, and she knew she hadn’t done it.
That left the possibility of another shuttle passenger having come to the station with death in his or her carry-on luggage. Lois stood and opened the door to the outer office. “Matt?” she called.
Sergeant Walker looked up from his workstation. “Yes, ma’am?”
“How are you coming on the background checks on the shuttle passengers? Any likely suspects among them?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, no. I haven’t found any link between Claude and anyone on the shuttle except you, and we already knew about you. Mr. Kent has been very helpful with this aspect of the investigation, too, and he came up with the same negative results that we did.”
She sighed. “Thanks anyway. I was just hoping something would pop out to somebody.” She almost turned away, then stopped. Something Clark had written about the body being found early nagged at her.
“Matt, how and when was Claude’s body found?”
“Let me see.” He hit a few keys on his workstation and nodded. “Here it is. Maintenance got a report of a foul smell in or near the bottom of that tube about oh-nine-thirty that morning. A maintenance worker eventually followed the odor to the passage where Claude was hanging and called this office. The log records the time as twelve-nineteen that afternoon.”
“Who took the call?”
“Sergeant McClaren. He was the non-com on duty. Major Vukovich was the officer of the day, so he contacted her.”
“McClaren called the Major in her quarters?”
“Yes, ma’am. She had lunch in her quarters that day. She was about come back to the office but went directly to the crime scene instead.”
“And she sent you to find and fetch me?”
“She and I did as much preliminary work at the scene as we could, then I went hunting for you. You know the rest.”
“Yes. Oh, by the way, what was causing the foul smell?”
Walker’s face smoothed out. Lois knew him well enough to know it was because he didn’t like what he was about to say. “When a person is hung, ma’am, that person usually evacuates his or her bladder and bowels, especially if the victim doesn’t die right away. The smell they reported was from Mr. Guilliot’s – uh, reaction to dying.”
“Yes, I remember that. Thanks.”
They needed some help. She tapped a few keys on Karen’s workstation and found that the account was still open. So she gathered all the data in the station’s computer and sent it to Clark with a request to do an in-depth analysis of all their suspects. She hoped he could tell them something that would give them some angle, some way to wedge into the case and pry it open.
Lois leaned back in the chair. Maybe if she let her mind wander, it would connect the dots and show her who the killer was.
She closed her eyes and tried it. She flickered briefly over a number of famous murders, some of which she herself had reported. Not finding any similarities in her memory of those cases, she thought about fictional detectives and grinned to herself as she wondered how Sherlock Holmes would handle this case. Hey, there was already a Dr. Watson around to record the proceedings for posterity.
Or maybe some other fictional detective could solve this in a snap. Ellery Queen would have wrapped this up already. Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s Belgian sleuth, would have gathered all the suspects in a room and –
And the finale to the story ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ suddenly flashed into her mind. The victim was a rich old man who’d run roughshod over everyone he’d ever dealt with, including Poirot. When he’d been discovered in his bed, dead of multiple stab wounds, the fictional detective had reasoned out that any of the twelve suspects might have killed him, and in fact (at least in the story) each of them had taken the murder weapon in hand and thrust it into the man’s chest in turn.
Poirot had then done something that Lois couldn’t accept. He’d concocted a story about a random thief and killer who’d boarded the train when it had slowed down to climb a hill, killed the old man, and jumped off before the train could pick up speed. The police forces of the area would make an unenthusiastic search for the non-existent killer, and the dozen who’d actually conspired to drug and then kill the ruthless old man would get off scot-free. She’d never liked that ending, but maybe the gang killing plot made sense here.
Lois considered that scenario for a moment. Claude had certainly made enough people mad at him in just the time he’d been aboard the station, not to mention back on Earth, to be murdered several times over. Could all of their suspects have been involved in the murder? Was it possible that all the suspects had cooperated in such a crime as this? Could this be murder by committee?
After a little more thought, Lois shook her head. No way. They were all too different in temperament. There was no way she could envision all six of them planning this murder in this way, committing it, and then sitting back without one of them tipping his or her hand. They would never have agreed on the method, much less agreed not to brag about it, not even a little. And she couldn’t imagine Claude going with that group and not fighting every step of the way.
Then what about a smaller conspiracy? Something involving two or three of them? Maybe –
No. The same problems existed. They were still all different enough not to agree on how to braid the fishing line, much less where to hang the body and what to use to keep him quiet.
That still bothered her. Someone had done something to keep Claude from suspecting that he was about to die until it was too late. The fact that he’d had sex so recently indicated that a woman had either done the deed or set him up for death. But there was no evidence that he was drugged, and no evidence that he was physically restrained except for the tape around his wrists and ankles.
The autopsy report had showed trace amounts of alcohol in his blood, but that didn’t even prove that the murderer was the source of the alcohol. Claude might have acquired it himself.
That was something. Lois made a mental note to ask if there had been any booze found in Claude’s quarters.
But that was all she could come up with. There just wasn’t enough evidence to point to anyone in particular.
This wasn’t working. There was something else that needed to happen, some other piece of information that she was missing.
She decided to try to jog her memory, so she pulled up the reports on the crime scene and the autopsy results. She scanned through the files again, hoping something would catch her attention.
Nothing.
She sat back, frustrated, and shook her head. They’d have to talk to the suspects again. There was no way around it. They needed more information and they needed it fast, and the only sources of that information were all still here.
Murder, she thought, should never go unpunished.
--- Wednesday morning, seven-oh-three AM
Lois abruptly lurched up out of a dreamless sleep, and for a moment she didn’t know where she was. Then she remembered: she was on the Space Station Prometheus and she’d let herself be cajoled into working the police side of a murder investigation. Swell.
Karen hadn’t come back to the office by the time Matt Walker was ready to leave, so Lois had left a sticky note on her keyboard and returned to her quarters. She’d also taken the liberty of sending a personal message to Clark letting him know how much she missed him and what a super-help he’d be if he were up there with her. Then she’d erased the copy of the message from Karen’s ‘sent mail’ folder.
She turned on the video monitor just for the noise value. A news update on Claude’s murder was playing. Finally, she thought, somebody in the media is doing their job. She listened to the report and decided that even though the murder itself was news, the talking heads on the station knew less than she and Karen did, despite the amount of theorizing they did. She also noted with a grin that Dr. Watson had consented to be interviewed on camera and spent the entire time entertaining his questioner with medical anecdotes while telling him nothing new about the murder.
As she dressed for the morning’s grind, she thought about how much good Superman would be on the station, and she decided not much. It wasn’t like there were underground shelters for the bad guys to hide in, or innumerable routes to take away from a crime, so she doubted he’d find much to do up here. Besides, it would pretty much give away his identity, unless he was willing to either take the two-day shuttle ride as Superman or fly up under his own power.
She smiled to herself as she envisioned Superman holding his breath and knocking on a window of the station and signaling whoever was inside to open the airlock. It was almost funny.
Lois grabbed yet another can of liquid breakfast from her refrigerator. She paused to inventory the contents. Two more cans of breakfast, a trio of frozen dinners, a smattering of sealed snacks, and two plastic containers of orange juice. Not unlike her refrigerator at home, she thought, except this one was so clean it was almost surgically sterile.
She palmed the door opener and headed for the security office.
--- Wednesday morning
“Morning, Matt. The Major here?”
“Yes, ma’am. She’s expecting you. Please go right in.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, Inspector Lane? We got the final results from the Planet’s check on the shuttle passengers. There’s no link between any of those names to Claude Guilliot.”
She hid the smile triggered by the way he’d addressed her. “Thanks, Matt. I assume Major Vukovich knows already?”
“Yes, ma’am, since the message came in about ten minutes ago.”
“Good. I’ll see you later.”
She pushed the door to the inner office open and found Karen pacing the floor. “Lois! Good! I’m glad you’re here. We may have caught a break.”
“It’s about time. What is it?”
“Ben Zimmerman caught me in the cafeteria last night. That’s why I didn’t come back here. He said he wants to talk to us about the murder.”
“What else did he tell you?”
Karen shook her head. “Except that he wants to see us by nine this morning, that’s it. You ready to go? We’ll catch him at his quarters. He works Beta shift.”
“I’m ready. Will his wife be there?”
“He said she’d be at work. That’s why I want to see him as soon as possible this morning.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I would’ve set my alarm earlier.”
“No need. He said Maria didn’t know he was planning to talk to us, and he didn’t want her to know.”
Lois frowned. “That doesn’t sound promising for the newlyweds.”
“No, it doesn’t. That’s why I want to get over there quick. Have you had breakfast yet?”
“Drank it on the way over.”
Karen smiled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that sounds like someone with a serious problem. Let’s go find out what young Ben so desperately needs to tell us without also telling his wife.”
Lois lifted one finger. “Can we check first to see if Clark has sent me anything back?”
“Didn’t Matt tell you? They cleared all the shuttle passengers.” Karen looked away. “Except you, of course.”
“Of course. And I know I didn’t do it.”
“I’m glad you’re so certain.”
Lois frowned. “You should be as certain of my innocence as I am of yours by now.”
Karen met Lois’s gaze again. They locked eyes for a long moment, then Karen nodded shortly. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m as sure of you as you are of me.”
“Good. And I was referring to the other e-mail I sent last night.”
Karen’s eyebrows rose dramatically. “Ah. The other e-mail.”
“I asked Clark have Jimmy run down our list of suspects. I’m hoping he uncovered something.”
Karen half-smiled. “That would be nice. I’ll check.”
She did, and the return e-mail had just hit her in-box. “Well, well, well, it looks like your fella Clark did get something for us.”
Lois crowded Karen’s shoulder. For a moment, she felt as if being close to Clark’s words would help her feel closer to him. “What’s he say?”
“Hmm. Looks like most of our suspects have a little something to hide, after all.”
“Yeah. Pauline Yu is a truly interesting person.”
Karen made a face. “Only if you’re a computer and you speak in a digital monotone. Your little buddy Jimmy says that reading about her past is only slightly more interesting than watching rainwater evaporate.”
Lois chuckled. “That’s Jimmy for you. He also wrote – can you page down and display the rest of it?”
They read it together and smiled at each other. “That’s our Ms. Yu, all right,” grinned Karen. “All the people skills of a paramecium.”
Lois read further. “Whoa. Looks like Lana O’Meara is pretty handy with her fists.”
“Yeah. This was at a bachelor party?”
“She looks like a stripper to me.”
“Oh? You have that much experience with strippers, Lois?”
“Only the ones who break their clients’ arms. She claimed he was trying to rape her in the mud wrestling pit.”
“And he claims she was the aggressor.”
“At least she didn’t hurt the groom. Don’t you think this makes her a better suspect?”
Karen frowned in thought. “Maybe, but this was four years ago. She was arrested but the charges were dropped. Besides, she’s still got fourteen months to go on her second two-year hitch and there aren’t any indications that she’s planning to break her contract and leave early. I’m not sure this is all that incriminating.”
Lois shrugged. “Maybe not. What about Mark Wayne? Anything on him?”
Karen paged down again. “Yep, here it is. Hmm. Very interesting. I didn’t know he was a fourth-degree black belt in aikido.”
Lois’s eyes widened. “Me neither. You know, a martial artist knows lots of joint pressures and holds that would convince someone to do something the victim didn’t want to do and not leave much of a bruise.”
Karen nodded. “Yeah. We’ll have to keep it in mind.”
“And he spends a lot of time in the gym.”
“How do you know that?”
Lois quirked her eyebrows. “How else could he maintain that physique? I’ve only known a few of people who could look that good in coveralls, and all but one of them spent a boatload of time working out.”
“How about the other one?”
“The other – oh.” Lois smiled, remembering how Clark looked without a shirt. “With him, it’s – genetic.”
“Lucky guy. Anyway, we’ll have to keep an eye on Mark.”
“How much longer will he be up here?”
“Not long. He’s not renewing his contract, remember?”
Lois chewed on a thumbnail. “Right, right, I forgot. Hey, what’s that about the creditors?”
“Where?”
“Right there. Says he’s still in debt because of some bad investments. And his aikido studio in Las Vegas went belly-up. His students were turned off by his poor teaching manner.”
“Looks like Mark isn’t a warm and fuzzy guy. You think that makes him a better suspect?”
Lois lifted an eyebrow. “You shot down Lana, I’m shooting down Mark. Except for the aikido, nothing in here is new. We already knew he isn’t a people person. And it’s not like he beat up anybody in Vegas.”
“Hmm. Got a bio on Carrie, too. Wow. Hey, how’d Jimmy find out about those two abortions? I thought that was privileged information back down!”
“It is unless it’s part of a court case.” Lois read further. “She was sued by two different guys for terminating pregnancies without notifying them. Looks like Carrie has a hard time with long-term relationships.”
“What happened to the lawsuits?”
Lois frowned. “Jimmy doesn’t say, but I’d bet they were dismissed. The law is pretty vague on stuff like that right now. It might be different in ten years or so, but I doubt these guys had sufficient legal standing to win those suits.” She pointed to the bottom of the screen. “Huh. This guy calls her ‘extremely needy’ and this other one says she’s ‘just plain nuts.’ Hey, she was in therapy, too!”
“Lots of people have therapy. It’s hardly proof of murder.”
Lois straightened. “No, but it does indicate some kind of mental instability.”
Karen turned to face her. “You know any homicide cops in Metropolis?”
“Yes, I do. Bill Henderson’s a pretty good – “
“Would he arrest Carrie on the evidence we have now?”
Lois opened her mouth to say ‘yes’ but changed her mind. “No,” she admitted, “he probably wouldn’t.”
“Then let’s keep looking, okay?”
“Fine. Who’s next?”
“How about young Bennie Zimmerman?”
“Bennie? Who calls him that?”
“His college classmates, apparently. He graduated at the top of his class at age twenty, he was president of the chess club and astronomy club and the math club and he was treasurer of the local Mensa chapter and – “
“Okay, he’s dazzlingly brilliant on his bad days. What kind of an athlete was he?”
Karen smiled. “Apparently the kind who’s a complete klutz. He was voted ‘most likely to trip over his own feet’ as a junior in high school.”
Lois dropped into a chair beside Karen’s desk. “Huh. I guess he’s pretty close to the bottom of the list, then.”
“Wait, here’s something interesting.”
“About Ben?”
“About his not-very-blushing bride. Seems Maria Gomez was being harassed in college by some high-priced sorority girl whose brains were in her makeup bag. Somehow, Maria got some candid nude pictures of the girl and posted them around the school.”
Lois frowned. “Ouch. Sounds like over-reaction to me.”
“Wait, it gets better. Seems she also printed the girl’s name, phone number, dorm room, and an invitation to have a good time at the bottom of the photos. The girl tried to bring criminal charges and also tried to have Maria kicked out of school, but Maria’s daddy waved a fistful of money in front of everybody involved and the whole thing went away.”
Lois nodded. “Very revealing. What Maria wants, Maria gets.”
“Only partly. Maria also changed schools in the middle of her junior year. Looks like that was part of the deal.”
“What happened to the other girl?”
Karen scanned the rest of the message. “Her name is Courtney Macmillan. She left school at the end of that semester and seems to have disappeared. Jimmy couldn’t find her anywhere.”
Lois leaned forward. “Now that’s very interesting.”
“Interesting, yes, but once again it’s not proof. Courtney might have simply moved back in with Mommy and Daddy and retreated into her bedroom. Or maybe she changed her name and started over somewhere else.”
“Maybe. But it’s an interesting insight into Maria’s character. Anything else in the e-mail?”
“No, that’s it.” Karen stood and stretched her back. “Well. We know more than we did before.”
Lois nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t think it’s enough. Although that thing with Maria and the naked pictures is interesting.”
“Old news. That happened about fifteen years ago, and it looks like Daddy pulled her back in line.”
“Maybe.” Lois chewed her finger in thought. “And maybe she’s jumped the traces again. Maybe this marriage is just part of her new life. Maybe getting rid of Claude was the end of the old.”
Karen shook her head. “Nice theory, but I still don’t see any proof here. You have something you haven’t told me?”
“No, but Ben Zimmerman does. Let’s go talk to him.”
--- Wednesday, eight twenty-four AM
No one answered the Zimmermans’ door buzzer. Karen frowned. “That’s odd. He assured me he’d be here.”
“Maybe he got cold feet.”
“Maybe.” Karen tried the voice announcer again. There was no response.
Lois grinned and shook her head. “Too bad you don’t have internal sensors like Mr. Spock did. You could detect the presence of one or more life forms in there.”
“Yeah, that’d be nice if we could – do – that – “ Karen stiffened. “Life forms? No!” She spun to the nearest wall comm unit.
“Matt!” she shouted. “This is Major Vukovich! Get me the override entry code for Ben Zimmerman’s quarters on Habitat Ring Two!”
A moment later, his voice blasted out of the speaker. “Two-three-Baker-Delta-niner-five-Xray.”
“Got it. And call legal, see if Maria Gomez is at work yet.”
“Roger.”
Karen spun back to Ben’s door and entered the combination. The door slid open to total darkness.
“Lights on full!” Karen called. Then she stopped in mid-stride.
Lois looked past her shoulder to the bed, still pulled out into the middle of the room. “Oh, no, no, no,” she breathed.
Ben and Maria Zimmerman, newlyweds and former murder suspects, lay side by side on the bed. They appeared quite peaceful in their repose.
They were also both quite dead.
