The detectives, Brutus and Porter, didn’t believe it was an accident. They were charging the block operator on duty with murder. Runstom knew they didn’t have much in the way of evidence. But even so, maybe they were right. As a rule, you look for the simplest explanation and you’ll find your suspect. The only person who could have opened the venting doors was the operator.
So why was Runstom unable to accept such a simple conclusion? He sighed as he sat in the fabricated grove of trees and shrubs. He’d been spending too much time in the outpost library. Poring over old cases with complexities that were just plain absent here.
They did have one key piece of evidence: the operator’s console logs. What they didn’t have was motive. Runstom wished he could be a fly on the wall in the interrogation room at that moment, where they were currently questioning the operator. Would they get a confession out of him? Would they discover the man’s motive for killing thirty-one mostly unrelated people in one fell swoop?
Runstom rolled his head around, stretching his neck. He caught a glimpse of the curved sky above. Maybe the guy just snapped. Dome sickness. It’d been known to happen, although supposedly not very often. Some people just couldn’t take it, living in the confined spaces, never being able to set foot onto the surface of the planet that binds them gravitationally. Runstom had never heard of anyone becoming violent from dome sickness though, at least nothing more than a brief outburst. Malaise, mood swings, depression, even suicide, but never such a calculated act of violence against so many people.
He stood up, but he didn’t go anywhere. He just continued to stare at the trees confined to their perfect little steel planters. He knew the reason he couldn’t accept the simple explanation. He wanted there to be more to the case than there was; he wanted a chance to do something. He wanted a chance to prove himself. McManus’ comment had troubled him more than he was willing to admit. Not the skin-slang – he’d learned to live with that stuff – but the detective comment. Runstom had been working with McManus, Horowitz, Halsey, and others at ModPol for several years now. So many that were officers at ModPol were probably always going to be officers; especially the likes of those three unambitious clock-punchers. They all knew Runstom was determined to make detective. He was getting a little old for an officer, and he’d been passed over for promotion more than once. The others rarely missed a chance to remind him that despite his efforts, he was as stuck as the rest of them.
Of course, he knew that by making waves in an open-and-shut case like this one, he wasn’t going to win any medals. Brutus and Porter already had a less-than-glowing opinion of Runstom. If he opened his big mouth to the detectives, he might never get called for crime-scene duty again. The biggest case he would ever participate in, and all he had to show for it was the cataloging of a handful of bloated corpses.
“Look, Jackson. We don’t need anything from you. We’ve got a murder weapon with your fingerprints on it. We have evidence that places you at the scene of the crime at the time it was committed. We’ve even got motive. This is your last chance to make things a little easier on yourself.”
Jax was quiet. Detective Brutus of Modern Policing and Peacekeeping sat across from him, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, elbows on the table. Detective Porter, also of ModPol, leaned against the wall, quietly watching him. Their strange skin, a hue somewhere between brown and pink, reminded Jax that he was in the company of off-worlders. He liked to think of himself as open-minded and free from prejudice, but these two brown-pink-skinned men made him extremely nervous.
Jax’s lawyer, a man by the name of Frank Foster and a B-fourean like himself, sat by his side. Foster leaned over to whisper something to him, but Jax raised a hand to bat away the advice.
“Maybe you should listen to your counsel, Jackson.”
All he could think was that it had to be a set-up. There was no other explanation. He didn’t say it out loud. There was no point, and he didn’t want to sound – or feel – like a cliché. He folded his arms across his chest and stared pointedly at nothing.
“Murder weapon,” Brutus said, pulling a printout from a folder and slapping it onto the table. “The murder weapon in this case is the Life Support system. The trigger on this weapon is an active console. These official logs show that only one active console was connected to block 23-D’s LifSup system at 2602.03.23.02.03, the time at which the incident occurred.” He pointed at the printout with short fingers that sprouted blond hairs the same color as the stubble on his head. “The consoles use biometric authentication to verify operators. This log says the voice of you, Jack J. Jackson, Barnard-4 resident ID 721841695, and the fingerprint, of you, Jack J. Jackson, Barnard-4 resident ID 721841695, were used to activate this console at 2602.03.22.10.06.” He turned the printout around so that Jax and his lawyer could read it. “It remained active until the forced reset at 2602.03.23.02.14.”
The operator continued to stare into space while his lawyer leaned over to look at the printout. After a minute he leaned back. “Mr. Jackson,” he started.
Jax threw up his hands, finally meeting the detectives’ eyes, each in turn. “Why would I hurt so many people?” He felt like he was watching a scene in a holo-vid, unable to believe it was really happening, that he was under arrest, suspected of murder.
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Brutus said evenly. “Why would you kill an entire blockful of people?”
“This is ridiculous,” Jax said, more to himself than anyone else. Visions of crime dramas were filling his head. How many times had he been entertained as the actor cops went on about evidence, profiles, and motives, all while the suspect squirmed in their little metal chair. “You guys must have done a psyche profile on me,” he tried. “This can’t be something that fits my pro—”
“Profile?” Porter laughed from the back of the room. He was tall for his kind, lean, muscular, and had darker skin than Brutus, a color some might describe as bronze. The man looked more like a politician – or a used hover-car salesman – than a detective, and Jax couldn’t wait to get away from him. “Look, Jackson. No one cares about your profile when there’s this much evidence against you.”
“And we have motive,” Brutus added. “You knew two of the victims.”
The detective paused, as if to let Jax try to read him. He seemed to open his face up, letting Jax know he wasn’t lying. The LifSup operator didn’t know who lived in block 23-D. He wasn’t allowed to know. He had access to minimal vital readouts on all the residents in his block, but no names. Just resident IDs. He wasn’t a resident there himself, so he wasn’t allowed in. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that real people lived in there, or in any other block he worked on. Or rather, real in the sense that he might know them personally. The operators rotated around from block to block every week. His only concern while on the clock was the Life Support system, not the list of resident IDs that came with the rest of the block data readout.
Detective Brutus pulled another printout from his folder. “Brandon Milton.” Attached to the printout was a file photo. On top of that, he slapped down a more current photo of the expired resident. “His wife, Priscilla Jonnes.” Again a printout and file photo. Again a postmortem photo taken by a med tech two nights ago. The bodies in the photos looked inhuman, twisted into unnatural angles, skin splotched, bruised, and cut all over. He couldn’t even see their faces, but somehow he knew that the names matched the deceased.
Jax couldn’t breathe. Milton. His supervisor. Priscilla. An ex-girlfriend. He didn’t know she was married. He hadn’t spoken to her in a couple of years. He knew Milton was married, but of course, he didn’t know his supervisor was married to one of his ex-girlfriends. He didn’t like the guy enough to want to know anything about his personal life.
He was frozen, and probably looked like he was going to be sick.