Red Shadows (12 page)

She was a Red. She had hurt him.

Of course, he had
punished
her...

"I... I only wanted to borrow a pickling jar," the woman said. Her hands were shaking. Her face was white with shock and grief. "The block has a Pickling Competition every year and Velma... she got first prize last year... She's really good at it... She said she'd help me with my entry but when I knocked at her apartment... the door was unlocked and then... when I went inside... I saw... oh grud... I saw..."

Her face dissolving into tears, the woman became incoherent. Leaving Weller to continue trying to question the witness without her, Anderson pushed past them both and headed for the crime scene. Apartment 15-A, the number said on the door. Courtesy of an update from Control as she and the other Judges had made their way to Mary Kelly Block, Anderson knew the apartment was registered to one Velma Miriam Sharn. The Justice Department database had supplied the other details. DOB: Twelfth January, 2084 - making her forty years of age, and born in the same year as the other victims. One previous criminal conviction for two counts of Custodial Interference resulting in a two month suspended sentence. Twice married. Twice divorced. Two children from the second marriage, a girl of twelve and a boy of nine. Thankfully they had been visiting their father when their mother was murdered. Briefly, Anderson wondered what the perp would have done if the kids had been staying with the mother. Would he have chosen another victim, or murdered Velma Sharn and her two children together? Either way, she did not want to risk learning the answer to that question somewhere further down the line. She wanted to catch this monster now, before he killed again.

Ahead of her, the apartment door was open. While she and Weller had paused to interview the witness, Noland and Yoakim had gone in to inspect the scene. It was better that way. By gaining entry to the crime scene before anyone else could inadvertently contaminate it, the chances were higher that the Tek-Judge and Med-Judge might find some crucial evidence that could otherwise be missed. Such was the theory anyway, and right now Anderson needed every bit of help she could get. With five people dead, it was becoming increasingly clear that the perp would keep on killing until they stopped him.

As she moved to the door to gaze into the apartment, she saw Yoakim standing beside the kitchen doorway further inside. He looked pale his features almost as white and drawn as those of the witness in the corridor.

"Be careful what you tread on," he snapped angrily as he saw her in the doorway. He seemed to regret his outburst immediately. Shaking his head, he sighed. "Sorry. I've done a preliminary search of the floor between the front door and the kitchen so you can walk on it without disturbing any evidence. The body is in there." He nodded towards the kitchen. "It's bad, really bad. He..." For an instant it was as though the words failed him. He shook his head again, more sadly. "There's just no describing it. You have to see it for yourself."

Disturbed by the sudden change in the Tek-Judge's manner, Anderson advanced towards the kitchen. Noticing blood stains and drag marks on the polished synth-wood floor leading to the kitchen, she realised the killer had followed the same pattern as in the Maddens' murder - killing his victim in the hallway, and then dragging her body to the kitchen to begin the mutilations. Then, as she stepped inside the kitchen, she saw what the Tek-Judge had been unable to put into words. It was appalling, disgusting, monstrous...

The woman's body was lying on its back, spread-eagled on the kitchen table. Again, as in the Maddens' case, the killer had cut a long vertical incision across the victim's torso to open her up from the neck to the groin. This time though, he had not restricted himself to simply removing her liver and small intestine. Instead, gazing around her in silent horror, Anderson saw that the killer had removed more than half a dozen of the victim's internal organs and placed them in pickling jars arranged at intervals throughout the kitchen. It was a grisly sight. Spread out on counter tops already awash with gore, they looked like exhibits at some blood-stained and red museum.

"Heart, lungs, spleen, liver." Standing beside the body, Med-Judge Noland pointed at each of the pickling jars in turn as though they were in the midst of some perverse anatomy lesson. "Large intestine, small intestine, kidneys, her uterus. He used a screwdriver and meat hammer to crack open her ribs, then he removed every organ in her body. The incisions he used to remove the organs are pretty slapdash. He's no expert. He's a butcher, rather than a surgeon. All the same, he must have been working on her for an hour at least." He looked at Anderson significantly. "I don't know about you, but I'd say his rage just peaked."

"Tell me something..." Anderson said. Given the many gruesome sights she had seen in her years as a Psi-Judge, she had thought herself inured long ago to any trace of squeamishness. Now, she felt her gorge rising. Doing her best to ignore the sickly-sweet stench of blood, she gulped in deep draughts of air and tried to fight the urge to vomit. "Anything about the perp. The weapons he used... Anything... Anything that might help me when I have to psi-scan this... atrocity."

"He was more methodical this time," Noland said. Well-versed in what the insides of a human body looked like, he seemed detached from the horrors around him. "As I say, he's a butcher, not a surgeon, but when he mutilated the other victims there were always additional wounds accompanying the major mutilations. He gouged out Vincent Henk's eyes, and beat his face in. He cut off Eunice Bibbs' arms, and stamped on her body. With Brenda Maddens there were stab wounds to the torso as well as the central incision. This time, he was more precise... More ordered in his work. There were no extraneous or unnecessary wounds. He performed the incisions needed to remove the organs, and that was that. It's almost as if the more enraged he becomes, the colder he becomes with it."

"What about the weapons?" Anderson asked. Overcoming her initial revulsion at the hellish scene before her, she took a step into the room. "You said he used a meat hammer and a screwdriver? I take it he left them behind, then? If they belonged to the perp, I might be able to lift some of his direct psychic impressions from them."

"They're in the sink," Noland told her. "Bad news on that front though. The hammer and screwdriver both have tags reading 'property of Apartment 15-A'. It looks like they belonged to the victim. I guess it was the same with the pickle jars. The killer must have seen them lying around and felt a sudden burst of inspiration."

"Some kind of inspiration," Anderson said. "I wonder if-" She heard movement behind her, and then a man's voice quietly exhaling in shock and disbelief.

"Holy drokking Mother of Grud..."

It was Weller. Standing in the doorway, he seemed as appalled at the treatment meted out on the victim as Anderson had been. His face recoiled in horror, and the stony façade of the archetypal Street Judge gave way to a reaction that was entirely more human and unguarded. Standing next to him, Anderson saw a sudden image in her mind's eye of a ruined and shadow-haunted street piled high with violated corpses. In that moment, she realised she had inadvertently caught a glimpse into Weller's mind. The shock of seeing Velma Sharn's mutilated body had caused a remembered image deep inside him to drift to the surface. A fragment of memory perhaps, or something he had seen in his nightmares. Given the bloody history of Mega-City One, it was hard to be sure.

"I checked out the witness," Weller said. Regaining control of his emotions, his flint-faced demeanour returned. The image in his mind faded. His tone became businesslike. "She didn't see anyone entering or leaving the apartment or anything else that could help us. I sent her to the block doc for counselling and told her we might want to speak to her again later. After that, I did a quick canvass of the other neighbours either side of the apartment to find out whether anybody saw or heard anything suspicious. One guy heard a scream two hours ago, but didn't do anything about it. Claims he thought somebody must have been playing their Tri-D too loud. I gave him six months for Failing to Report a Crime in Progress and called the Catch Wagon to pick him up. I also checked with the block super and found out that the block doesn't have surveillance cameras inside it. Called PSU and asked them to run the exterior surveillance footage and look for any delivery men entering the block in the last twelve hours. I'm still waiting for them to get back to me on that."

"You did all that in ten minutes?" Anderson lifted an eyebrow.

"Don't like to let the spike-grass grow under my feet," Weller replied. He gestured towards the body of Velma Sharn. "Looks like our boy is getting worse. Either that, or the Sharn woman found a way to really piss him off."

"Could be both," Noland said. Bending forward over the body, he lifted one of Velma Sharn's hands and inspected the fingers. "I can see blood under the fingernails. It looks like she fought her attacker. I'll take swabs and test it for DNA." Taking a small flashlight from his belt, he pulled upon the victim's mouth and shone the light inside it. "Also there's more blood inside the mouth. No sign of any wounds or tears to the mouth itself. I'd say she bit him. If we take a cast of her mouth, we should be able to match it to the wound on the killer if we can find him."

"
When
we find him," Anderson reminded the Med-Judge. She turned towards Weller. "We'll have to get the Justice Department to issue a city-wide advisory to all hospitals and medical facilities ordering them to forward records on any patient who shows up looking for treatment for a bite wound."

"I'll handle it," Weller told her. Whatever recollections had been triggered inside him by the sight of Velma Sharn's body had passed. He was cold and hard again, his manner brusque and businesslike. "I'll also chase up PSU about the surveillance footage and extend the door-to-door canvass to the rest of the apartments on this floor. There's no telling what some block busybody might have seen that could help us." He paused as he pointed unflinchingly at the mutilated body lying ruined on the table before them.

"In the meantime, I'd say you've got a psi-scan to complete."

SIX

DIVERSIONS, THEORIES & AGENDAS

"There." The doctor's soulshadow was a serene and self-satisfied shade of golden yellow, daubed with occasional patches of calm, unruffled blue. "That should just about do it," he said as he applied a final piece of adhesive tape to hold the dressing in place. "You know, that really is a rather nasty wound. You say you bit yourself?"

"That's right," William said. "I was eating a munce burger at a foodstand and I must not have been concentrating on what I was doing. You know how slippery those burgers can get when they put all the sauces on them. My hand must have just slipped, and I ended up biting it instead of the burger. It was a freak accident."

"A freak accident," the doctor nodded in agreement. His eyes lingered for a moment on the small scratch marks on William's neck. "Your hand slipped. Yes, I can see how that could happen." Pulling a sani-wipe from a nearby dispenser to clean his hands, the doctor turned to the comp-terminal beside his treatment table. "Now, I notice you didn't give your name or medical number to my nurse. If you could just give me a few details so I can update my files..."

"No," William told him. "You don't need my name, or my number. And I want you to delete every record of me and my injury from your files."

"Delete the records?" Turning back to face him, the doctor stared at him blankly, "But if I do that, the Medical Services Department won't pay me for treating you."

"The money doesn't matter," William told him, more forcefully this time. "You became a doctor to help people. You will help me now. You will delete my records and forget I was ever here. If anyone asks, you never treated a bite wound tonight. Do you understand me?"

"Of course." The doctor's eyes glazed over briefly. "I became a doctor to help people. The money doesn't matter." Shaking his head as though to clear it, he returned his attention to the comp-terminal and pressed a button, and the printer beside it came to life and printed out a prescription. The doctor typed something into the keyboard and pressed another button. "There. I've erased your case from the files." Ripping the completed prescription from the printer, he handed it to William. "The sutures I used to close the wound will dissolve in a couple of weeks or so once the wound has healed. I've prescribed a course of gene-modified viral anti-bacterials to help deal with any lingering infection. There's a pharmacy around the corner. You will be able to fill this there."

"Thank you, doctor," William said, retrieving his overcoat as he stood up. "You've been a great deal of help."

"Think nothing of it," the doctor smiled more broadly. "I'm a doctor. That's what I'm here for." As William opened the door to step from the treatment room into the corridor outside, he heard the doctor call past him to the line of patients waiting tiredly in plasteen chairs all along the hallway.

"Next!"

"You were right," Anderson said afterwards, as she stood alone with Noland in the kitchen, once she had completed the psi-scan on the body of Velma Sharn. "She bit him, and scratched him. He used the same method to gain entrance to the apartment as before. He claimed to be a delivery man. Again, his appearance was different: average height, dirty brown hair, and a face you'd forget about three seconds after seeing it. If Weller is right and the victims are just remembering scenes from movies they've seen, there was no way this guy was the romantic lead. And he had the same hint of an accent. I couldn't swear to it, but I'd almost say it had a transatlantic twang to it, Brit-Cit, maybe? And another thing, earlier, you said it was unusual that he had managed to kill two of the victims with a single slash wound to the throat while they were facing him. It was as though he had immobilised them in some way?"

"It was a theory," the Med-Judge said. "But there's no direct physical evidence to support it. The tox-screens on both Bibbs and Maddens came up clean. Nor were there any ligature marks on the victims to suggest their bodies had been bound in any way."