city blues 01 - dome city blues (4 page)

The holo-deck was a fat lozenge of matte black plastic; its streamlined profile played sharp counterpoint to the inlaid ivory and dark wood of Maggie’s table.

I hadn’t used the deck in so long that I wasn’t even sure if it would work.  I plugged in the data chip, punched the power button, and walked back to my chair.  The air above the unit snowed video static until I found the remote and punched the
play
button.

A seedy hotel room coalesced out of the snow.  The walls were painted hot pink and the paint was peeling badly.  One entire wall and—from the looks of it—most of the ceiling, were covered with cheap plastic mirrors.  Bolted to the wall just inside the door was a blood-scanner, the kind that used to be standard fixtures in hotel rooms before over-the-counter AIDS III tests hit the market.

The camera had one of those circuits that superimposed the time and date of the recording over the image.  It appeared in the lower right hand corner of the picture in electric blue alphanumerics.  The very first time code read
11:42 p.m./14APR2063
.

The scene wobbled, as though something had jarred the camera, and then someone walked directly in front of the lens.  The image was blurry for a second as the camera’s microprocessor compensated for the change in depth of field.  When it focused, a man was sitting on the bed.  The image was poorly framed, the man well to the left of center, as though he had miscalculated the camera’s field of view.

He was young, perhaps twenty-five.  His face was familiar.  I knew I’d never seen it before, but I had seen another like it: Sonja Winter.  Their features shared that too-perfect quality that people like to describe as ‘aristocratic.’  I revised my opinion of Sonja; maybe her beauty hadn’t come from surgical boutiques after all.

The image made it hard to judge scale, but he seemed to be about medium height, well built.  His clothes looked European: khaki slacks, too-white shirt, dark blue yachting jacket, black leather shoes, and a matching shoestring belt with silver buckle.

He turned toward the camera, his eyes a familiar shade of blue-green.  “I am Michael Winter,” he said.  “This video chip is my last will and testament.  It is my legacy.”

He brushed at a stray lock of hair.  It was a coppery shade, lighter than his sister’s.

“You probably don’t know me.  It doesn’t matter.”  He smiled, his teeth white and even.  “I’m certain that you know my work.”

He leaned forward, the image of his face growing larger in the hologram.  His features contorted, leered, as if some malevolent creature hiding behind his eyes had decided to reveal itself.

He pulled something out of the right pocket of his jacket: one of those Japanese kitchen knives like they advertise on the vid, the kind that cut polycarbon and still slice tomatoes.

Tilting the knife back and forth, he watched the light run up and down the blade.  Narrow bands of reflected silver strobed across his face.

“I cut Kathy Armstrong’s heart out with this,” he whispered.  “Her soul made the most beautiful sound when I set it free.”

I heard a squeak behind me.  Ms. Winter’s face was pale, sickly.  Her eyes glistened as tears welled up.  But she never cried.  Her brother’s ghastly recital was tearing her apart, but she never quite let herself cry.

Obviously, she had seen the recording before, so the contents weren’t a surprise, but that couldn’t have done much to deaden the pain.

I took a last drag off the cigarette and stubbed the butt out in an ashtray.

Kathy Armstrong wasn’t the only name that Michael mentioned.  Miko Otosaki...  Felicia Stevens...  Annette Yvonne Laughlin...  Charlene Velis...  Amy Lynn Crawford...  Linda Joan Brazawski...  The list continued.  All teenage girls, thirteen to fifteen years old.  All dead.  All butchered by a maniac who carved open the chests of his adolescent victims and ripped out their hearts.

Virginia Mayland...  Carmen Rodrigez...  Paula Chapel...  Jennifer Beth Whitney...  Marlene Bayer...  Christine Clark...  Tracy Lee...

Fourteen girls.  Michael Winter described the death of each in grisly detail, complete with dates and addresses.  If half his claims were true, he was a one-man slaughterhouse.

When his recitation wound to a close, he sat in front of the camera.  His breathing was ragged, his face flushed.  “I am finished now,” he whispered.  “Not because I fear capture; I do not.  You could never catch me.  I have
seen
the bridge.  I have
crossed
the bridge.  I have touched the face of God.”

His hand slid into the left pocket of his jacket.  “He is calling me now.  I can hear him.  He is close...”

The left hand reappeared, wrapped around the butt of a large-caliber automatic pistol; it looked like a Glock.

“He is touching me now...  I can feel his angels dancing in the spaces between my atoms.”  The left hand brought the gun up level with his head, the muzzle touching his scalp just forward of his left temple.  “My work is done...”  His finger tightened visibly on the trigger.  “I am finished...”

The slug slammed his head to the side.  A large chunk of the right side of his skull blew off in a cloud of pink mist.

I swallowed a rush of bile as I watched his head come apart.  His body fell to the bed, a marionette with its strings cut.  The gathering pool of blood showed hardly at all on the dark red sheets.  A gobbet of flesh clung to the mirrored wall for a second and then began a leisurely slide toward the floor, trailing a red smear.

The scene remained unchanged for about four more minutes before the chip ran out.  The last time code read
12:12 a.m./15APR2063
.

I pointed the remote at the holo-deck and pressed the
off
button.  The image above the unit vanished as the deck powered down.

I lit another cigarette and drew the smoke deep into my lungs.  “Let’s cover the obvious first.  Are you certain that the man in the recording is...
was
your brother?”

A nod.  “The police compared DNA structure, dental work, and retinal patterns.  The body in that hotel room was definitely Michael.”

“Okay.  Do the times, dates and circumstances of his confession agree with the police files?”

Another nod.

I swirled the last of my cold coffee around the bottom of my cup.  “Is there any physical evidence, other than the recorded confession, to link your brother to any of the murders?”

“I don’t know,” she said.  “When the police found Michael’s body and saw the recording, they closed the case.  The files are sealed; I don’t know why.”

“Did Michael have an alibi for
any
of the crimes?”

“Nothing that would stand up in court.”

I sighed.  “Okay, Ms. Winter, I’m confused here.  Just what is it that you want me to do?”

Her gaze locked with mine.  “Find out the truth.  Prove that my brother was innocent.  Find the real killer.”

I suddenly understood why all the PI’s thought she was crazy.  But, I had promised to hear her out.

“You said you were going to explain,” I said.  “I assume that you have some reason for thinking that your brother was innocent.”

“Michael was with me on the eighth of February.”

I searched my memory.  “Christine Clark?”  Michael Winter had confessed to killing Christine on the afternoon of February eighth.

“Maybe he got the dates mixed up,” I said.  “Maybe he did Christine Clark on February ninth, or seventh.”

“Uh-uh, I checked the news sites.  They all quote the police as saying that Christine Clark died on the eighth at about 3 p.m.  Michael had breakfast in my apartment at about 9 o’clock in the morning, and we spent the day together.  He didn’t leave until just before six that evening, when I had an appointment with a client.”

The look in her eye dared me to react to her use of the word
client
.

I tried to blow a smoke ring.  The modified air currents pulled it apart and snatched it into a vent on the ceiling.  “Are you sure about
your
dates?  The day you spent with Michael could have been the eighteenth, or the twenty-eighth.  Remember, we’re talking six months ago.”

“It was a Saturday,” she said.  “I do a lot of business on Saturdays.  Mike usually worked Saturdays too.  When he called and asked me to spend the day with him, I had to reschedule several appointments.  There are notations in my date book.  It was most definitely the eighth of February.  Harmony remembers it as the eighth too.”

“Harmony?”

“The Artificial Intelligence that runs my apartment.”

“Is Harmony tapped into DataNet?  If she is, there should be a time signature stamped over any footage shot by your apartment’s security cameras.  Your brother may have an airtight alibi locked up in your AI’s data core.  For one of the murders, at least.”

“No good,” she said.

“You’re not on the net?”

“I’m on the net all right, but my apartment doesn’t have any video cameras.  My clients tend to be rather jealous of their privacy.  All of Harmony’s interior sensors are either infrared or Doppler sonar.  Good enough to chase burglars or keep house by, but not good enough for an ID that would stand up in court.”

I sucked a lung full of smoke and put out the cigarette.  A crumb of tobacco stuck to the tip of my tongue.  I bit the crumb in half with my front teeth and blotted the pieces off the end of my tongue with a finger.  “Let’s say you’re right.  Let’s say that your brother was at your apartment during Christine Clark’s murder.  He still could have killed one of the others.  Or
all
of them.”

“You’re looking at it from the wrong angle, Mr. Stalin.  If my brother confessed, in vivid detail, to
one
murder that he didn’t commit—maybe he didn’t commit
any
of them.”

My stomach rumbled.  It was starting to forgive me for exposing it to Michael Winter’s suicide.  It was starting to think about breakfast.

I stood up and wandered over to one of my favorite pieces, a tall, asymmetrical piece of twisted black grating that I called
Broken Concrete by Moonlight
.  “Why is it so important to clear your brother’s name?  Is there an inheritance, or are you just interested in justice with a capitol
J
?”

She answered from the couch.  “I admit that I have an ulterior motive.”

I waited.  My stomach growled again.

“Michael was a software engineer,” she said, “a good one.  He specialized in high-speed data compression and retrieval.  Several of the big companies tried to seduce him into a contract, but he wanted to stay independent.  He wasn’t getting rich, but he was living pretty well.

“About four years ago, he started having these fainting spells.  I finally convinced him to see a doctor.  It turned out to be a brain tumor, and the tests showed that it was malignant.  He needed a major operation and he didn’t have nearly enough money.  I had a few marks stashed away, but nothing like the kind of cash he needed.  A big Eurocorp called Gebhardt-Wulkan Informatik ended up fronting Mike the money.  He had to indenture himself to them for ten years.  He was pretty screwed up physically, and I guess the company execs were afraid that he would die before they got their investment out of him.  I had to co-sign his indenture.  If Michael died or skipped out, I’d have to work off the remainder of his contract.

That’s the bottom line.  If I can prove that Michael was murdered, his life insurance will pay off his indenture.  If the official cause of death remains suicide, I end up working off the indenture in GWI’s Leisure Department.  Since their girls get paid bottom-scale, it will probably take me about fifteen years.”

I scratched my jaw and thought about trying to crack my neck.  “So all I have to do is prove that your brother didn’t commit the fourteen murders that he confessed to, find out who
did
commit the murders, and figure out how someone murdered Michael while making it look like a suicide.  Sounds simple enough.”

I walked toward the kitchen.  “You want some breakfast?”

She got up to follow me.  “Breakfast?  It’s after one o’clock.”

“I had a late night.”

She pulled a small stack of pictures out of her purse and handed it to me.

Most of them were trids, but a few were old two-dimensional photographs.  I thumbed through them quickly.  “What are these?” I asked.

“Just some pictures of Mike.”

“I already know what your brother looked like, Ms. Winter; I saw the vid.”

“That video is a fake.  I don’t know how it was done, or who did it, but my brother did not do those things.”  She pointed to the stack of pics.  “The real Michael Winter is in
there
, Mr. Stalin.  I just wanted you to know a little bit about him.”

She stood with her arms crossed.  The look on her face said she expected me to disagree.

“Okay,” I said.  “I’ll look at your pictures.”

She exhaled and uncrossed her arms.  “Will you take the case?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You will?”

I started rummaging through the kitchen cabinets, looking for my favorite skillet.  House knew where it was, but I wasn’t about to ask him.

“I’m retired, Ms. Winter.  Your story intrigues me, but I really
am
out of the business.  I promise to give your request honest consideration, but if I decide against taking the case, you’ll have to accept my decision.  Agreed?”

She extended her hand.  I shook it.  Her grip was firm.  Her hand was warm, fingers long, nails unpainted.  “Agreed.”

CHAPTER 3