Dead Man on the Moon (15 page)

"What else is new?" Linus growled. "Let's hear it."

"I need to report we've got bad trouble with the new guy."

Water splished and sloshed as Noah surveyed the scene of Viktor's death. A strong fishy smell hung on the damp air. Waist-high concrete tanks filled with greenish water and separated by meter-wide pathways stretched in all directions like a giant checkerboard beneath harsh fluorescent lights. A square green hedge made a border all the way around the underground farm. The place was weirdly regular after the carefully planned chaos of the domes.

Viktor had died near a corner of the fish farm, on a path lined by hedges on one side and a tank on the other. The holographic stripe surrounding the area marked it as a crime scene. Noah had already taken several images with a long-distance lens, but there wasn't much else he could do right now. Several small puddles blobbed the floor in the crime scene, and Noah knew they were probably footprints, or even evidence of a scuffle. He itched to examine them close up, but he had to wait for the water to dry up first. Otherwise his own feet would mix the puddles around and ruin the evidence. It would be easier to analyze the debris
left behind once the liquid evaporated, though that could take days down here in this damp, fishy basement.

He leaned over a tank and peered into the water. Fish— trout, if he was any judge—swam among algae leaves and water plants, their mouths opening and shutting like busy gossips. He stood up and put his hand in the chilly water. Eight or nine centimeters down—more than enough water to drown in—a screen stopped his hand. Two trout, expecting to be fed, rushed up and bopped their noses against the barrier. The screen was there, Noah had learned, to keep the fish from jumping out. In the moon's microgravity, the average trout could leap three or four meters, and a serious jumper like a salmon could easily brain itself on the ceiling.

In the background, he was aware of workers moving about. They lifted screens, hauled out nets full of struggling fish, changed tank filters, and performed numerous other tasks Noah couldn't identify. All of them avoided the cordoned-off area, and none of them was Ilene.

Noah took the imager and forced himself to turn his back on the crime scene. He couldn't guard it twenty-four hours a day, or even one hour a day, and he couldn't process the place yet. Nothing for it except to wait.

Well, wait and check out other possibilities.

Upstairs, he checked the time. Later today he had a tech rehearsal for his show. This, he knew, would involve a great deal of boredom. He would stand on the stage while the technicians checked light and sound and asked him what cues he wanted. Since Noah did a one-man show, all these would be minimal, but it was dull work nonetheless. He hoped it would go quickly.

A short, crowded train ride took him back to the Dome station. The air in the car was stuffy. A man trod on Noah's foot as they exited the train and Noah winced in anticipation, but felt no pain. Oh yeah—light gravity. The man apologized and moved on, and Noah climbed the steps up into the Dome carrying his crime scene kit. The crowded, alien park spread out before him, and Noah was abruptly seized
with the desire to run all the way back to the familiar sights of Wisconsin, of Madison's brick downtown and the rolling hills farther upstate. Homesick already. That was pretty pathetic.

"Obie," he said, ''upload directions to the office of Melissa Rose."

Obediently, a small red arrow popped into being across his monocle. It was pointing left. Yellow text told him he was two hundred meters away from his goal. Noah turned left, and the arrow straightened out. He followed its directions, weaving through the lush greenery of the park, sometimes crunching on gravel pathways, other times passing down silent concrete. Other students swarmed around him, alone and in groups. Someone had chalked
Free the Substrata Seven!,
whatever that meant, on one of the sidewalks.

The arrow directed Noah to a building, up two flights of stairs, and down a corridor faced with doors. He knocked at the one labeled
Dr. Melissa Rose,
and received a cheery call to enter.

The large room beyond was crammed with greenery. Small trees stood in pots on the floor. Plants spread from baskets hanging below the ceiling. Ivy covered one entire wall and was making a run for it across the ceiling. A wide window looked out over the Dome, but Noah would need a machete and a native guide to make it across the sill. He didn't see anyone actually present.

"Hello?" he said. "Anyone home?"

One of the potted trees shuddered and tilted sideways. A woman's face peered out from behind it. "Hey," she grinned. "Just checking my sugar maple for pear thrips. You can't use pesticides on them unless you want nasty chemicals in your maple syrup, but I've genetically modified a hatching of painter beetles, and they seem to find the thrips pretty tasty now." She stuck a hand through the foliage. "You must be Noah Skyler."

He shook it. "That's me. Can you spare some time?"

"Just let me disentangle myself." More rustling, and Dr. Rose stepped from around the tree. Her hair, Noah noticed, was the color of oak bark, and she wore it in a straight pony-tail down her back. Her green-brown eyes sparkled with controlled energy, and she moved with the confidence of a woman who knew exactly where she was and what she was doing. A data pad peeked out of the pocket of her white lab coat. Noah's first thought was that she was near his own age, but her University bio put her in her late thirties.

"What can I do for you?" she asked.

"I'm hoping you can identify some organic material for me," he said.

"From a crime scene?"

"Yeah. Chief Pavlik said that's how it mostly works around here." Noah gave her what he hoped was his most earnest smile. "We don't have the facilities to process everything ourselves, so we depend on you professor types."

She gestured at him to follow her to the back of the room, where a cluttered table sat pushed against the wall. Plants grew in ice-cube trays, each neatly labeled with a small stake. Small bags of earth and plant fertilizer lay scattered everywhere, along with an assortment of gardening tools. Scanning and computer equipment took up one corner, and a bonsai tree sat dead center, like a miniature king on a tiny throne. Smells of peat moss mingled with the harsh scent of chemical fertilizer.

"Let's see what you have," Melissa said, drawing on a pair of gloves.

Noah handed her the clear envelopes with the scrapings he had taken from Viktor's fingernails. She carefully dabbed them onto a slide, dropped a cover on it, and pushed it into a scanner. It activated automatically, and an image bloomed just above the tabletop. It was a gray-green jumble to Noah, but Melissa gave it a quick, expert glance.

"Benthic algae here," she said, pointing, "and these are fish scales. Trout. So Fm guessing this sample came from one of the fish farms."

Noah waited for more, then realized that was all she was going to say. Disappointment washed over him. "Nothing else?"

"That's it. What were you hoping for?"

Human DNA,
he thought.
Evidence that Viktor fought his attacker.
But he kept this to himself. "Nothing in particular," he said aloud. "Just making sure."

"Well, if you need anything else ..." She made to turn back to her maple tree.

"Uh, thanks. Right." Noah scooped up the sample envelopes and headed out the door. Melissa Rose watched him go with a thoughtful expression.

"A really
big
spoon," she muttered, and went back to her thrips.

Noah's next stop was the medical center. An idea popped into his head along the way, and told his obie to run a quick search. As a result, he was able to enter the office of Dr. Karen Fang and ask, "Where does a vampire eat lunch?"

"At the casketeria," Dr. Fang replied without a moment's hesitation. "Nice try. What do you need?"

Noah sighed and held up more clear envelopes with swabs in them. "Viktor Riza had sex with two women not long before he died. I need to know who they are."

"Vaginal contributions?" Karen asked, taking the envelopes.

"Yeah." He left out the fact that he'd been hoping Melissa would have given him the attacker's DNA. "How long will it take you?"

"Less time than it'll take you to learn how to walk on Luna."

He felt the hot blush climb his face. "Linus told you about that?"

"No, it was just a guess. Everyone stumbles, love." Dr. Fang dropped the swabs into a tiny drawer set into the front of a scanner. The drawer slid shut, and the display
flickered like a dancing flame over the word
Working.
Dr. Fang didn't speak further, and Noah felt abruptly uncomfortable. He wondered if Dr. Fang was using the silence to entice him into talking—an ancient cop's trick—and he found it was working. He couldn't keep his mouth shut.

"How long have you been on Luna?" he asked inanely.

"Two and half years," she said, hands plunged into the pockets of her lab coat. "I'm thinking of staying on permanently, actually. I like it. What about you?"

He smiled self-consciously. "I've only been here a day. Hard to tell yet. My family's a long ways away."

"Married?"

"Yikes," Noah said. "And, no. You?"

"Touché," Dr. Fang replied. "Three times, actually. Twice on Earth and once on Luna. I'm always looking for ex-husband number four."

For some reason, that remark made Noah uneasy. Rather than let the silence fall again, he asked, "Where did you grow up? I can't place your accent."

"I don't have an accent, Yank," she growled. "You do."

"Australian," Noah said, as if thinking aloud, "and something else. Beijing? Or is that too obvious a guess?"

Dr. Fang seemed to give up. "I was born in Australia, but my parents got divorced when I was little and my father moved back to Hong Kong. I had dual citizenship, and I shuttled back and forth between both places most of my life. I'm here because I couldn't get into vet school."

"Allergic to cats?"

"I wasn't smart enough," Dr. Fang corrected. "You want to learn to carve up the family pet, it's bloody hard to qualify. You want to carve up the family, though, it's not that bad."

The DNA scanner pinged. Both Noah and Dr. Fang leaned in for a look, and the images of three people popped up. One was Viktor. The other two Noah recognized as the women he had thrown out the apartment with him. The first had a round face surrounded by curly
brown hair. The other's features were more pointed and her hair fell somewhere between brown and black. Both of them had blue eyes.

"Crysta Nell and Bredda Meese," Dr. Fang said. "You want to download their files to your obie?"

Noah did so, pulling their addresses and pictures from the computer. "They're both less than ten minutes away," he said. "Man. This is so different from Madison. Just getting out of the parking lot takes ten minutes down there. Up here, you get around in seconds."

"Good," Dr. Fang said. "Linus is getting some pressure from the higher-ups to clear these cases, you know."

"No," Noah replied slowly. "I didn't know."

"Not to put pressure on you or anything."

"Right."

"Because I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing."

"I see." Not sure how serious she was, Noah decided to sidestep the issue. He turned to go.

"And by the way—it wasn't your fault you broke that bloke's foot off."

Noah swung around to stare at her. An odd tension— hope?—gathered in his stomach. "What do you mean?"

"I ran the final tests today," she said. "The bone was already cracked when you picked him up, practically broken already. That foot would have come off no matter who was lifting him."

A weight Noah hadn't realized he was carrying suddenly vanished. "Really? You're not just saying that?"

"Vampire's honor," she said, holding up her right hand. "Now out! You have interviews to conduct."

Noah left the building feeling lighter than even the lunar gravity could account for. The air in the Dome smelled sweet and clear instead of alien, and the plants looked fresh and natural beneath the hard sun overhead. He checked his watch again. Plenty of time before his tech rehearsal for an interview or two. Noah bounded off with barely suppressed glee.

Ten minutes later, he was ringing the doorbell of the apartment Crysta Nell shared with a roommate. She opened the door herself. Her curly brown hair was mussed and dark circles lined her eyes. She was chewing something, and Noah caught the minty scent of caffeinated gum. He introduced himself. She didn't even blink when he introduced himself as a deputy.