Red Shadows (15 page)

Nothing happened.

He was still falling. He was hurtling from the sky. The ground was coming closer. Deciding he must have got his angles wrong, Lenny moved his arms again. Still nothing. He moved them again. Still, the ground was rushing closer. Again, nothing he did made any difference. Desperately, Lenny began to flap his arms like a bird. His descent was not slowed one iota. Gazing around him in panic as the pavement rushed towards him, Lenny caught sight of his bare arms flailing uselessly against the air and looked at them in horrified surprise.

Where were his wings?

EIGHT

RED DAWN

Morning brought with it news of another killing. Summoned to the site of a new murder with Weller and the others by an urgent call from Control, Anderson guided her Lawmaster into a parking space on the forecourt of Elizabeth Short Block and eased slowly to a stop. The call had been brief and the details scant. The victim was in Apartment 26-C on the twenty-first floor, tentatively identified as the apartment's registered tenant, Melanie Virginia Arnwold: the third victim of the night.

Looks like that's the creep's pattern, Anderson thought bleakly. Three a night, which means that come tomorrow morning, there will be another three people dead unless we stop him.

She felt tired. Not just physically tired, but drained to the depths of her soul. In the course of her shift she had scanned five murder victims already, not to mention the whip she had found at the Voysich apartment earlier in the night. And, while that was not unusual in itself, given the rampant crime rate in the city where she worked, the nature of the killings meant that each scan had taken its toll on her. Even by the standards of Mega-City One, Brenda Maddens and the other victims had died ugly, brutal deaths. And now, like it or not, she was about to experience the same thing all over again.

What we need is someone to invent a psychic robot, she thought with grim humour. Sure, that would mean I'd be out of a job, but you wouldn't hear me complaining.

Even the sky seemed to have been touched by the killings. Her eyes straying to the sun as it rose over the block, Anderson saw that the spreading light of dawn had turned the sky to a lurid and foreboding shade of red. It seemed fitting somehow, as though the blood staining the gutters of Mega-City One had found some way of working an influence over the heavens.

"Red sky in the morning," she said to herself. Then, realising she had inadvertently uttered the words aloud, she turned to the Judges beside her and shrugged. "I seem to remember that's supposed to mean something."

"It means we've got a perp to catch," Weller said. The coming of the dawn had done little to lighten the Street Judge's mood. Every hour they had spent on the case together seemed to make Weller more antagonistic. As they made their way from the parking spaces to the block entrance, Weller's mouth tightened in displeasure as he noticed that half a dozen Tri-D news crews had gathered outside the block.

"Drokking vultures." As they approached the news crews Weller glowered at them, as though daring any of the assembled reporters to attempt an interview. Reading his expression correctly, and wary of Mega City One's strict laws against media interference in Judicial investigations, the gaggle of reporters silently parted to let the Judges pass. "You don't get this much media interest in a simple murder. Somebody must have told them it's a serial case. You ask me, we should make some arrests, and sweat them in interrogation until they give up their source, and we find out where the hell the leak came from."

"We haven't got time," Anderson reminded him. "You said it yourself, we've got a perp to catch."

Entering the block, they rode the elevator to the twenty-first floor in silence. Yoakim fidgeted, Noland checked his mediscanner and other equipment, and Weller stood with his eyes fixed on the elevator door in front of him in a thousand-yard-stare. No jokes, no muttered asides, no conversation. Anderson suddenly realised that her companions had been every bit as much affected by the investigation as she had. It did not matter that they were unable to phychically experience the last moments of each victim's pain. Yoakim, Noland, even Weller: they had each witnessed enough in the last few hours to give nightmares to even the most callous and hardened Judge. The horrors visited upon the body of Velma Sharn had seen to that.

Have to expect this next one to be worse than the last one, Anderson thought. It would be in keeping with the progression so far. Each time, the mutilations the killer inflicts on his victims have been worse than the time before. Though Grud only knows how he could top what he did to Velma Sharn.

As the elevator door opened at the twenty-first floor, Anderson saw a youthful Street Judge waiting for them in the block corridor. Underneath his helmet, the Judge's face was pale.

"Costigan," the Judge identified himself, nodding to Anderson and the others by way of greeting. "I was the first Judge on the scene. Told Control to hold off on the usual Teks and Med-Judges. Knew you'd want to get the scene fresh."

"How did you find the body?" Weller asked as Costigan led them towards the apartment. "Did one of the neighbours call it in?"

"No. I was responding to a routine suicide call. One of the block residents took a swan-dive off the roof. The block super told me the jumper's girlfriend lived in Apartment 26-C on the twenty-first, so I came up here to notify her about his death. The apartment door was ajar, and when I entered I found her body."

"You checked the surveillance recordings?" Weller asked him.

"Nothing to help you there," Costigan replied. "The surveillance cameras inside the block are off-line for maintenance." He noticed the other Judges exchanging significant looks between them. "What? What is it?"

"Our boy always seems to choose blocks without internal surveillance," Anderson told him. "It's part of his pattern."

"So he's not dumb, then," Costigan said. "Just crazy."

"Why do you say that?" Anderson asked, vaguely surprised that the Street Judge's opinion so closely echoed the discussion between her and Noland earlier.

"He has to be crazy," Costigan answered. As he approached Apartment 26-C, he pushed open the door and stood back to let the others enter before him. "Believe me, once you see what he did to his victim, you'll know exactly what I mean."

Yoakim went in first, a scanalyser in his hand as he indicated to the Judges behind him which path to take through the apartment to avoid trampling on the physical evidence. Following the Tek-Judge's lead, Anderson stepped carefully over the bloodstains and drag marks on the floor of the apartment hallway. At first sight, it seemed the killer had followed his usual MO: attacking his victim in the hallway, and then dragging her elsewhere to begin the mutilations. This time, instead of the kitchen, the trail led into the living room. She heard Yoakim's voice gasp out an oath in quiet horror as he advanced to the living room and saw what was waiting for them. Moving past him, Anderson gained her first glimpse of the killer's latest atrocity.

It was a woman, or it had been once. Her body lay on its back on the sofa in the middle of the living room, her blouse ripped away, her mouth still open as though frozen in a silent scream that had stayed with her past her death. As with the body of Velma Sharn, the killer had cut open the victim's torso and removed her inner organs.

With Velma the perp had carefully severed each organ from its blood vessels and associated viscera, and placed each organ it is own jar. With Melanie Arnworld he had left all of the organs still attached: the heart, lungs, liver, small intenstines. They were splayed out on the floor all around the victim, the unravelled spool of veins and arteries from each organ leading directly back to the hole in her ruined torso like the tentacles of some strange creature from the depths of the seas. Her foot narrowly avoiding stepping on one of the woman's kidneys as she moved towards the body, Anderson found herself once more fighting the urge to vomit. Guess the bastard managed to top himself after all, Anderson thought, swallowing hard to keep the contents of her stomach from rising. I thought the Sharn crime scene was bad, but this one is worse.

"Cause of death was a single slash wound to the throat, just like the others," Noland said. Picking his way cautiously through the carpet of blood and entrails surrounding the body, he bent forward to peer at the wound in the victim's neck. "From the angle of the cut, he was standing facing her when he struck the fatal blow. Lots of blood on the carpet, most of it fresh. I think he might have dragged her to the sofa while she was still dying, rather than waiting until she was dead like he did with the others. Maybe he was pushed for time. Hmm, I wonder..." Bending closer, he pulled a digi-thermometer from his belt and pressed it into the victim's ear. "The body's still pretty warm." Putting the thermometer away, he lifted one of the dead woman's arms. "Given that, and the lack of rigor mortis, I'd say she's been dead no more than an hour. Assuming it would have taken at least twenty to twenty-five minutes for the killer to perform these mutilations, he could still be in the vicinity. Maybe even still in the building."

"We could put out an APB," Yoakim said. "Alert all patrolling Judges to be on the lookout for a perp in a black overcoat, who may or not be wearing a delivery uniform underneath it."

"All right, do it," Anderson told him as she moved closer to the body. "Meanwhile, I'll see if there's any way for us to improve on that description. This is the freshest body we've had yet. Maybe if I scan it now, without waiting for Noland to do his prelim, I'll be able to put a definite face to this bastard once and for all." Without any further ritual or preparation, she pulled off her glove. Then, taking a deep breath as she looked down into the open and staring eyes of the corpse before her, she laid her palm across the dead woman's forehead.

Contact
.

He was killing her. She could not breathe. She could not scream. She could not cry out. She heard air hissing through the wound in her throat and knew it was her own death rattle. The delivery man was standing over her, the knife making a wet tearing sound as he slid it into her body: pain. His face was covered in blood: blood. He was smiling as he pushed his hands into her stomach: anguish. Even through the fear and terror, the helplessness and the horror, her mind was filled with desperate questions. Where was Lenny? Why had he left her? Why wasn't he here to save her? The world was darkening at the edges. Her vision was fading. Her last sight before her eyes succumbed to darkness was a final image of the delivery man, his hands slick with blood, holding something dripping in front of her face as he leered down at her in triumph. She could not be sure, but she thought it looked like one of her kidneys. Then, discarding it over his shoulder, the delivery man turned to plunge his hands into her body again as the darkness expanded to claim her...

Abruptly, the contact was broken. There was nothing left to see. The awfulness of the last passing moments of Melanie Arnwold's life had obliterated any further psychic impressions that might otherwise have remained with her body. Removing her palm from the woman's forehead, Anderson instinctively used her hand to close the dead woman's eyelids. As a Psi-Judge, it was as close as she would ever come to performing last rites. If she had been of a religious persuasion, she might have said a prayer. As it was, she paused in aid of a more secular promise.

I'll find him, she thought. It felt like a vow, although she knew that even if she had spoken the words aloud, Melanie Arnwold was past hearing them. I'll find the man who did this to you and bring him in. I don't care how long it takes, I won't let him get away with this.

"He was wearing a delivery uniform again," she said at last to the other Judges around her. She looked at Noland. "You were right. She was still alive when he began the mutilations. I couldn't get a look at his face, it was covered in blood." She turned to Judge Costigan. "When you entered the apartment, did you find any evidence that the perp cleaned himself up before he left?"

"Yeah, 'fraid so," Costigan nodded. "I heard a faucet running in the bathroom. When I checked, I found blood in the bathroom sink and on the towels. The perp must have washed his face."

"I don't hear any water running now," Weller said.

"No, you wouldn't," Costigan shrugged. "The sink was overflowing so I turned the faucet off."

"You did what?" There was a rising tone of anger in Weller's voice. "This is a crime scene. Didn't anybody ever tell you at the Academy about interfering with evidence? If the killer touched the faucet handle, Anderson could have scanned it. She might have picked up psychic impressions from our perp. Now, thanks to you, the only impressions there are probably yours!"

"I... I thought if I left it running the water might wash evidence away," Costigan's face blanched, becoming paler. "I didn't think..."

"I'll say you didn't think." Weller was almost shouting, the anger he had hidden inside him all night, spilling out at the nearest available target. "This is a drokking serial killer case. We need every bit of evidence we can get. When I get back to the Sector House, I'm filing a report with your Watch Commander and asking him to put you on a charge."

"Maybe we should all cool this down a bit." Holding her hands up as a peacemaker, Anderson stepped between Weller and Costigan to try and defuse the confrontation before it grew worse. "All right, so Costigan made a mistake. Chances are though, he didn't harm the investigation. The perp must have touched plenty of things in this apartment, and yet I don't get a sense of him anywhere. It was the same at all the other crime scenes. It's like he's the invisible man." She paused for an instant, the memory of something that had been in the thoughts of Melanie Arnwold returning to her. "Talking of which, while she was dying, Melanie Arnwold was wondering where someone called Lenny was, as though he should have been there to protect her, but had left the apartment."

"Lenny?" Costigan said. "Remember the victim's boyfriend? The jumper? His name was Leonard Kaspasian."