Dead Man on the Moon (30 page)

Linus came up behind her. She was pointing with gloved fingers at the sensor node.

"What is it?" he asked.

In answer, she touched a spot just below the node. Her finger encountered faint resistance when she tried to pull her hand away.

"It's sticky," she clarified. "Some sort of adhesive. There's a ring of it all the way around the sensor node."

Now that Linus knew what to look for, he could see it— a faint circle about twenty-five or thirty centimeters in diameter all the way around the node. He stared at it for a long time while Karen swabbed a sample. Linus snapped his fingers, not an easy trick in crime scene gloves.

"Got it. Come on."

While a puzzled Karen followed, Linus ducked into the hallway just outside the airlock and opened one of the lockers that stood there. Just as in Luna City, the lockers contained vacuum suits. Linus pulled out a helmet, returned to the airlock, and fitted it over the sensor node. The ring of the helmet's base had exactly the same diameter as the ring of adhesive. Karen made an
ahhhh
noise.

"That's how the killer kept the alarms from going off," she said. "Sealing the helmet around the sensor node fooled the computer into thinking the lock was still full of air, even after the lock had been evacuated."

Linus set the helmet on the floor and ran a gloved finger around the inside. No stickiness on this one, but they'd have to check the others. "It doesn't explain why the computer didn't record the airlock being opened, though. And it—"

Behind them, the airlock door rolled shut with a heavy
clunk.

The sun rose on the vid-screen ocean, filling the living room with gentle orange light. Noah Skyler quietly awakened and rolled over on the couch to stare at the ceiling. It was amazing he had gotten any sleep to begin with, considering the well-deserved berating he had been giving himself for most of the might. Stupid, stupid, stupid! What had he been thinking, making a crack like that? On the other hand, everyone knew that people who said "I'll call you" mentally added "after hell gets over that warm spell." Who did she think she was, putting him in this position?

His position. Maybe that was what the problem had been from the beginning. No matter how attractive she was, no matter how kind she had been, he had automatically assumed she thought she was better than him because of her money And of course
he
had been the real snob all along. An insecure jerk, whose masculinity was threatened by a little—OK, a lot of money

Noah tried to call her for the seventh time since he had returned to his apartment the previous night. For the seventh
time, she didn't pick up, and for the seventh time he felt he felt a mixture of disappointment and relief.

After all, he didn't really know what he would say if and when she ever spoke to him again. "Sorry I stepped over a line I didn't know existed"?

He put his head his hands for a moment, then forced himself to get up and moving. Best to stay busy. He took a hot shower, dressed, and was debating whether or not to skip breakfast when the bedroom door opened and Jake emerged, dark hair tousled, eyes still heavy with sleep. He wore only a pair of old shorts, and his body was well-contoured with defined muscle.

"You
did
sleep out here," he said, running a hand over his face. "Why didn't you use the other bed?"

"I got in late and assumed Wade was in there."

"Nope. I think he's crashing with some friends." Jake yawned. "You scared the shit out of him. I'm betting he doesn't come back."

Noah groaned. "He's not dead, is he?"

"Doubt it." Jake trudged toward the bathroom. "But we better enjoy having the apartment to ourselves while we can. We'll have a new roommate before the week's out, promise you that."

While Jake busied himself in the bathroom, Noah left the apartment and took the train down to the security offices. His stomach hardened with tension when he saw Gary Newberg sitting behind the duty desk. Behind him sat more desks, and it occurred to Noah that one of them was probably his. At the moment all of them were empty, and Noah's footsteps echoed slightly in the large room. Gary gave Noah an even stare.

"What's up?" Gary demanded.

Noah leaned his fingertips on the duty desk and kept his voice steady as a leveled pistol. "You want to explain what the hell you were doing?"

"You want to explain what the hell you're talking about?"

"We both know I didn't screw up at the crime scene. We both know that
I
didn't lie to Linus. We both know that—"

"I don't know any such thing," Gary replied hotly.

"What did I ever do to you?" Noah said, abruptly changing tactics. "Why the hostility?"

"Fuck you."

Noah reined in his temper. "Fine. At least tell me if those two perps I marked yesterday afternoon have been apprehended."

"I'm pleased to say they haven't." Gary smirked. "No collar for you."

"And unless you get off your fat ass, you won't have one, either," Noah snapped.

Gary bolted to his feet, face red, fists clenched.

Noah jutted out his chin. "You gonna hit me, Gare? I don't think you have the balls."

Gary drew back his fist and Noah tensed. The pain would only last until he got to an autodoc, but it would be worth it. Hitting a fellow deputy might be enough to get Gary Newburg tossed from the force. At minimum he'd be temporarily suspended. But Gary paused and dropped his hand.

"Get the fuck out," he said.

"Make me."

"Then stay. I don't give a shit anymore." Gary swiveled his chair so his back was to Noah. Feeling a bit confused, Noah left the office, got a crime scene kit from the storage area, and headed down to the fish farm.

What the hell was up with Gary? The guy's reactions made no sense. Noah hadn't done a single thing to him, and then, out of nowhere, he had lied to Linus about Noah's ineptitude. It couldn't be an attempt to cover Gary's own mistakes—Noah hadn't reported anything. The scene they'd played out in the office also made little sense. Sure, Gary would deny lying in case Noah was recording the conversation, but the abrupt change from angry aggression to weary acceptance struck Noah as very odd.

The fish farm crime scene was still sectioned off with holographic tape. The holographic generators reported that no one had crossed the lines since Noah had last visited the scene. Around him, filter motors hummed in concrete tanks, fish splashed beneath the screens, and the smell of scales and algae permeated the air. Employees dressed in blue coveralls wandered among the square tanks. One of them worked a control, and the screen covering one tank winched up to the ceiling. He worked another control, and another screen, this one perpendicular to the tank, scraped downward to line one wall. Machinery hummed as the screen slid forward, herding the fish ahead of it until they were a squirming silver mass pressed up between the screen and the far wall of the tank. Two other employees armed with hand nets swiftly ladled the wriggling fish into the back of a cart. Harvest time.

Noah glanced warily around the chamber to see if Irene was lurking anywhere. He didn't see her, so he turned his attention to the crime scene. The air down here was extremely damp, and it had taken two days for the floor to dry completely. Setting up heat lamps would have changed the water temperature in the tanks and had an adverse affect on the fish, and fans would have moved the water around, destroying footprint patterns. So Noah had been forced to wait for natural evaporation to do the job. Not that he'd had time to come back any earlier than this, in any case.

From his scene kit, Noah extracted a large spray bottle filled with a clear liquid and approached one end of the crime scene. He sprayed the liquid over a section of floor, then got the light bar for the kit's scanner. Noah changed the frequency of the bar so it would emit a healthy dose of ultraviolet radiation and switched it on.

Although the workers did their best, the water in the fish tanks was far from sterile. Various forms of bacteria easily survived the filtration, as did a certain amount of fish scales and lots of microscopic algae. The chemical marker Noah had sprayed down latched onto the cytosine component of
the organic material's DNA and RNA. When Noah ran his ultraviolet light over the area, the marker reacted with it and made everything glow. Noah nodded in satisfaction as several sets of purple footprints appeared beneath the light bar. Working carefully, he sprayed the rest of the crime scene and ran the light bar over the area, moving slowly toward the fish tank Viktor Riza had died in.

Some of the footprints were blurry or smeared, and none of them contained tread marks, though Noah would be able to check shoe sizes with them. Taking images as he went, Noah meticulously examined the entire area. Two sets looked like boot prints to Noah and probably belonged to the paramedics. A big splotchy area near the concrete tank marked the spot where the killer had pushed Viktor's face into the water above the screen and where the paramedics had let Viktor's body slide to the floor.

Noah also found three sets of footprints that didn't seem to belong to the paramedics. One of them obviously belonged to Viktor. Another, the smallest set, probably belonged to Bredda, and Noah was willing to bet the third set belonged to Indigo. He pulled his monocle around and told his obie to seek out contact information for shoe stores in Luna City. There were only two. Noah used his authority as a deputy to access the sales records. Bredda had bought a pair of shoes there five months ago, and her size was on record. It matched one of the sets Noah had found. Another set of prints matched Viktor's size. That left one more set— Indigo's. But since Noah had no way to know yet who Indigo was, the shoe size wasn't much of a clue. Any number of people might wear the same one. He made a record of it, in case another lead turned up.

Next Noah started trying to piece together what had happened by following the pattern of prints. Three sets— non-paramedic ones—headed toward a different fish tank, not the one Viktor had drowned in. There was an area of splashing around this tank, and the third set of prints— presumably Indigo's—left.
 
The remaining two
 
sets
 
of
prints wandered toward the tank where Viktor had met his death. The prints got smeared as they neared the tank. Further away from the tank, the third set of prints reappeared without drawing near. Bredda's small footprints went toward them, and both sets headed away. The paramedics came in from another direction, and their prints mingled in the smeared section near the drowning tank.

Noah stared at the glowing purple footprints, inhaling damp air laced with smells of fish and algae. He had to figure this out. It would show Linus that Noah knew what he was doing, that he was an experienced investigator who didn't make stupid mistakes. It would also be a fine thing to hand Linus a solved case and thereby get the Mayor-President off Linus's back. He could already see the smiling, grateful look on Linus's face.

Noah set his jaw. He was faced with a puzzle, one that he knew he could solve if he went over it step by step. Or footprint by footprint. Noah cursed the fact that he had never gone hunting. This was a job for a tracker. Maybe he should call over to Security and see if anyone with that skill could come down. Then he remembered that Gary was on desk duty and all such requests would go through him. Noah would rather have gnawed his own leg off in a vac suit.

So. The prints were there, and so was their story. All he had to do was think logically. Noah furrowed his brow. It looked like Bredda, Indigo, and Viktor had all three come to the fish tanks together. Something had happened and Indigo had left—or he had pretended to. Bredda and Viktor had wandered toward one of the tanks. Viktor was high and horny thanks to a massive dose of Blue. There had been a brief struggle—the source of the smearing—and Bredda had shoved Viktor's face into the water that topped the screens and held him there until he had drowned while Indigo cold-bloodedly watched.

The only question was
why.
Why kill Viktor? Indigo and Bredda's goal was to addict new customers to Blue, not kill
them off. Killing new customers accomplished nothing— dead people didn't buy Blue.

Maybe Viktor had tried to force himself on Bredda, and Bredda had killed him in self-defense. No, that didn't work. Viktor's blood work had shown enough Blue to stun a horse. There was no way he would have been able to force anything on anyone. And if Bredda could claim self-defense, it was unlikely she would have run away from the police. Maybe Viktor had realized what Bredda and Indigo were trying to do and had threatened to report them. But why, then, had Indigo left?

The final pieces of the puzzle lay with Bredda and Indigo. Someone should have seen the orange dye on them and called Security by now. They should have been arrested within hours, even minutes. So why hadn't they shown up anywhere?