Red Shadows (7 page)

It was just another night. A night alone in her apartment, her only companions a selection of diet drinks and no-fat snacks laid out on the table beside her.

Sighing, she continued to flick through the channels. Cookery shows. Makeover shows. Home improvement shows. Reality shows covering everything from the daily life of the city's heaviest fatty, to a wealthy businessman setting a series of demeaning challenges to a group of eager contestants desperate to win his favour. "Is Bryan really going to be willing to clean the toilets in the executive washroom with his tongue in order to get the job at Trumble Construction MegaCorp?" She decided she did not particularly care to find out the answer. Through habit as much as inclination, her finger pressed the channel selector switch again, her eyes barely registering the titles of the programmes as they flickered past her:
When Priests Attack!
,
Mega-City One's Dumbest Perps
, '
Simp My Ride
, '
Juve Box Jury.'
, '
Celebrity Autopsy.'
; a thousand different channels and not a single thing to watch.

It was just another night; a night with no one there to love her; a night for her to be lonely.

Dispirited, she finally settled for the romantic drama playing on Channel 706. It did not have too many surprises. It felt like she had seen the same story a million times before. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. The only problem is he's from Leonardo Di Caprio Block while she's from Clare Danes - two blocks with a bitter history of rivalry. Their parents disapprove of their romance. A Block War looms on the horizon. Inevitably, the boy and the girl find themselves on different sides of the conflict. Matters reach a climax as the Di Caprio blockers launch a sneak attack. One of the girl's brothers is killed. Crying over his body, she vows vengeance. Joining her fellow Danes blockers in an all-out assault on the enemy stronghold, she is transformed from the shy young girl at the start of the drama to an avenging fury. Suddenly, in the midst of the battle, she finds herself fighting hand-to-hand with a Di Caprio blocker wearing a riot helmet. Using a judo throw she learned in self-defence class, she throws her opponent to the ground and closes in to finish him with her knife. But just as she is about to bury the blade in his chest, his helmet falls away to reveal a familiar face.

It is the boy.

Shocked, they stare into each other's eyes for long moments while the music on the soundtrack segues to a love theme. Abruptly, the girl throws away her knife and helps the boy to his feet. Her decision is made. The theme music swells to a crescendo. They kiss - two star-crossed lovers, reunited in a passionate embrace as the war rages on around them. The message? In the end, love conquers all.

As she watched the end credits roll, her mood darkened. Intentionally or not, the drama's subtext seemed to mock her. She was forty years of age, single, and it had been three years since her last serious relationship. In her experience, love was a myth. And romance? In real life, there was no such thing as romance.

The doorbell rang.

Surprised that someone would come to her apartment unannounced, never mind so late at night, she threw off the blanket and went to answer it. Afraid the visitor might leave before she could get there, she called out as she crossed the floor towards the door.

"Who is it?"

"Synthi-Flora delivery," a male voice called back from the other side of the door. "I got a delivery. Flowers and candy for Ms Brenda Maddens in Apartment 56-C."

"A delivery for me?" Looking through the spyhole in the door, she saw a man in a Synthi-Flora uniform standing in the hallway outside, a large bouquet of synthi-flowers in one hand and a box of mock chocs in the other. All the same, the habits of city life were ingrained deeply enough that she was still suspicious to see a man she had never met, bearing gifts on her doorstep. "Who's it from?"

"There's no name on the card," the delivery man said. "It must be from a secret admirer. You'll have to open the door. I need you to sign for it."

For a moment, she paused uncertainly. Then, the thought of some stranger being moved from afar to make a grand romantic gesture proved too deliciously intriguing. Sliding the security chain into its slot, she opened the door.

"Pass it through to me," she said. But even as the delivery man told her the gap was too small and she would have to open the door wider, she knew she would accede to his request. Her cynicism of earlier was forgotten. Someone had sent her a token of their affection. She wanted it now!

"You said there were flowers?" As she removed the chain and opened the door to him, she saw the delivery man was looking at her strangely. She felt a vague sense of misgiving, a troubling and undefined unease. It was as though, deep inside her, there was a note of warning. As though, despite a sense of excitement that almost made her feel giddy, something was wrong. "Flowers and candy, you said, from a secret admirer?"

Smiling, he held up the flowers and candy for her to see them. The mock chocs were in a pink, heart-shaped box. The flowers were a bouquet of all her favourite blooms; a dazzling arrangement in delicate shades of red, light blue and purple. While she looked entranced at the gifts before her, she heard him say something about synthi-caf. Abruptly, she realised she was unbearably thirsty. Synthi-caf. That was just what she wanted. Synthi-caf would be nice, delicious. Hardly listening to the delivery man, she looked over her shoulder at the interior of her apartment. For a moment she felt torn. She was standing talking to a delivery man when she could be putting the kettle on in the kitchen. Synthi-caf. She wanted some synthi-caf. Then, the answer to her dilemma occurred to her.

"Would you like to come in for a cup of synthi-caf?" she asked.

With the delivery man following close behind, she turned to head towards the kitchen. She heard him close the apartment door behind her. Quietly, she heard him call her name. He told her there was something he wanted her to do. Puzzled, she turned back towards him and saw a strange and frightening expression come over his face. The unease she had felt earlier returned to her. Something was wrong. The feeling grew stronger, becoming a nameless presentiment of danger.

"Look at me," he said, a previously unnoticed edge of harshness entering his tone. She was frightened. But there was something in his voice, something compelling. Something that made her obey him.

"Good," he said, smiling as he moved closer to her. "Now, lift your chin. That's it, Brenda." The bouquet of flowers and box of candy in his hands were gone, replaced by something that glinted coldly with the metallic gleam of reflected light. She wanted to run, to cry out. But even as the panic grew wild inside her chest, she found she could not resist him.

"Higher, Brenda," he told her. "Higher. There's a good girl. Just a little bit higher and soon it will all be over."

From the corner of her eye she saw the blade lash out. Seeing a spray of blood - her blood - hit the wall, she opened her mouth and tried to scream. But, no matter how hard she tried, the scream would not come...

A scream, she heard a scream...

Opening her eyes, Anderson found herself standing by the kitchen table with her hands laid on Brenda Maddens's head. Breaking the contact, she searched for the source of the scream. Standing in the kitchen around her, she saw a group of Judges staring at her with startled expressions. Noland, the Med-Judge, was the closest. His face registering alarm, he hurried towards her as she realised, to her embarrassment, exactly who had just screamed.

"Anderson? Are you all right?" Noland asked. "You were in the middle of your psi-scan when you suddenly started-"

"Screaming," she said. "I screamed." The sensations of Brenda Maddens's death still clung to her like a shroud: memories of fear and panic, the pain as the knife parted her throat, the horror as the world went black and she realised she was dying. "Believe me, if you were inside somebody's head when they died, you'd-" Finding an uncharacteristically bitter note in her voice, she cut herself off. "I'll be fine. Just give me a minute. Okay?"

Closing her eyes, Anderson took a deep breath as she tried to regain her equilibrium. Reading the last moments of a murder victim's life was one of the hardest things a Psi-Judge ever had to go through. It could be a gruelling experience: the immediacy of the victim's suffering, their terror, the despair, the sense of loss when one was face to face with the utter inescapable finality of death. Was it any wonder Psi-Judges sometimes found it hard to keep a handle on their emotions? What was it Noland had said to her earlier? "When you spend as much time as I do delving around inside dead people's guts, it gets so you don't notice the blood any more." Psi-Judges lacked the luxury of such detachment. They experienced death as a visceral process. Up close and personal. Close enough to see the glint of Death's pearly whites as he claimed his victims. It could be a heavy burden.

In her experience, it was pointless even trying to talk about such things to non-psychics, more so when the non-psychics in question were other Judges. Teks, Med-Judges, Street Judges: the members of the other divisions of Justice Department were simply too well grounded in everyday reality. The Academy of Law trained them to be that way. Their worlds were different. So different, at times it felt to Anderson like there was an unbridgeable gulf between her and the Judges around her.

Not that she fooled herself that her fellow Judges cared much about that divide. In the end, all most Judges expected of a Psi-Judge was for them to show up, do their psychic mumbo-jumbo, and leave - preferably without causing too much trouble in the meantime. Sometimes it seemed to her that other Judges looked at Psi Division in the same way as a wealthy citizen might regard a badly house-trained pet. Sure, they can do some cute tricks, but do you really want them let loose in the house where they might soil themselves on the living room rug? Either way, most Psi-Judges learned early on that at some level there was a wall of mutual incomprehension between psychics and non-psychics. Whatever burdens came with the job of being a Psi-Judge, the psychic had to bear them alone.

Whew, you sure you're wallowing in enough self-pity there, Cass?

The thought helped Anderson to restore her balance. Having overcome the emotions she had brought back with her after scanning the dead woman's lingering psychic traces, she now felt centred once more.

I mean, what's all this stuff about "gulfs" and "burdens"? Sounds like you're allowing a small thing like experiencing a murder from the victim's perspective to let you get a little bit maudlin.

Opening her eyes again as she returned her attention to the matter at hand, Anderson saw that she and Noland had been joined in the kitchen by the Tek-Judge she had met earlier, as well as a Street Judge she didn't recognise. They were all watching her intently.

Probably waiting to see if the mad psychic woman is going to do something crazy, she thought, amused despite herself. After all, I've already started screaming for no apparent reason. Now, they're probably expecting a big finale like you see from the psychics in the Tri-D movies: my head doing a complete three hundred and sixty degree turn, maybe, or my mouth suddenly vomiting up ectoplasm like synthi-pea soup.

"It's all right, boys," she said, smiling. "No need to worry. You're safe. The soup's off."

Confused, they stared at her in silence.
Well, that one went down like a lead balloon
, she thought.
Talk about losing your audience. I'd better get back to business before they decide I must be speaking in tongues.

"Never mind." She sighed and shook her head. "The scream you heard was me channelling the victim's pain. She tried to scream after her attacker cut her throat. I didn't realise I was doing it." She shrugged. "It's just something that occasionally happens when you read the psychic traces of a murder. Sometimes, the whole experience can be a little too vivid."

"You're sure you're all right, then?" Beside her, Noland seemed concerned for her welfare, while the Tek and the Street Judge stood quietly looking at her askance, as though they were still expecting another strange or unruly outburst. Nice job, Cass, she told herself. Now you've gone and frightened the locals. At times like these I get to wondering whether I should put more work into my people skills. Then again, we're talking about a Street Judge and a Tek. They probably don't like other people to begin with.

"I'm fine, Noland," she said. Turning to the Street Judge, she addressed him directly. "I take it you must be the primary on the investigation - first Judge on the scene and all that?"

"That's right," he said. He was tall and thin-faced, but with big shoulders and a lean and athletic build. It was hard to guess his age underneath the helmet, but she would have put him at pushing forty: a twenty-year veteran, at least. His manner was terse and brusque, his mind cold and hard. A man shaped by his years on the streets. The name on his badge read "Weller". "I'm the one who called you in." His lips pursed in disapproval, as though what he had seen from her so far was enough to cause him to regret the decision. His tone was business-like, but there was something concealed behind it. Disdain, she thought. We've known each other for all of one minute, and already the guy doesn't like me. "All right, so you've done your psi-scan. What have you got for me?"

"The killer was wearing a Synthi-Flora uniform," Anderson said. "He was carrying a bouquet of synthi-flowers and a heart-shaped box of mock chocs. A delivery from a secret admirer, that's what he told her. That's how he persuaded the victim to open her door to him. Male. White. Medium build. Average height. Brown hair and blue eyes. Age-wise, maybe in his mid-twenties. And I can confirm the doc's theory." She nodded towards Noland. "The weapon was a Bowie knife." She paused. "In some ways, the info I got from the scan was limited. The victim didn't know her killer, and I didn't pick up any psychic traces from the perp himself." She shrugged. "So I guess if you were hoping for his name and address, I'm going to have to disappoint you. I can only tell you what Brenda Maddens saw. That's all I've got. Except..."