Inquisitor Read online

  She ran a process through her implants, accessing the open case file. There, logged into evidence three minutes ago, a head, neatly sliced and cauterized. She would have liked to have seen its position before it was removed, but the virtual scan of the crime scene would have to do.

  She touched her hand-cannon for reassurance and scratched behind her ear. Something wasn’t quite right. Pressure built behind her eyes, familiar yet unwelcome.

  The gun attracted attention when she was out in public, but not enough to make her change to a shoulder holster like the other Inquisitors. They thought looking as innocuous as possible helped them with their work, while she was of the minority opinion that actually being good at your job was more of an advantage. Let them have their theories; they all knew who had the best record.

  She looked out over the green water as Viktor squelched his way across the mud toward her. He bounded up the slope, breathing lightly.

  “What are we going to call this one, Angel?” he asked. “The Case of the Armless Man?” He laughed softly at his own wit as Angel grimaced and shook her head.

  “He has arms,” she said. “At least above the wrists.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out. Could come in handy.”

  She ignored him. “The case hasn’t been assigned a code yet.” Angel shook her head and brushed a stray strand of hair out of her face as a particularly strong gust blew around them. “What does… er…”

  “Andrews?” offered Viktor.

  “Yes, what does Andrews say? Can he give us anything yet?”

  “All this time working with him, and you still can’t remember his name.”

  “Not enough room to remember everything. I’ve got to save space for the important stuff.”

  “Can’t argue with that, though names are kind of important.”

  “Well, if he turns up as a murder victim, I promise you I’ll remember his name.”

  Viktor avoided her eyes, busying himself with his notes.

  Angel waited patiently, saying nothing. He still wasn’t used to her. It would be a shame if that became a problem. The man had the makings of a good Inquisitor. Not great, but good. First in his class, excellent scores in all aptitude tests, but especially with conceptual reasoning, which she considered worth all the others put together. He’d graduated fresh out of the academy and straight into murders, not unheard of but certainly uncommon. She would have bet someone had pulled strings for him. Maybe in another year or two he would settle down.

  “Ah, not much,” began Viktor after realizing she wasn’t going to speak. “Body dumped here at around 3:00 a.m. Killed between 2:00 and 2:30 a.m. Hands and feet removed prior to death. Looks like another corporate killing. He was a scientist of some sort, according to planetary records.”

  Corporate murders were usually to blame for the bodies that turned up, and usually espionage related. It was a cutthroat universe—as more than one turncoat had found out. Literally.

  “Of what sort?”

  “The sort that works in a lab.” He paused as he took in her expression, then rolled his eyes. “I’ll get right on it.” He shifted his feet. “Anything else we need to do here? I don’t suppose you want to examine the body?” He looked at the muddy footprints he had left on the grass.

  “Not particularly. Meet you back at the office. And when I get there, I want to know everything about him. Everything. Have it ready, please.”

  With a nod, Viktor turned and waved at Andrews, who was showing his assistant something to do with a bruise on one of the handless arms. Andrews waved back and started gathering his equipment.

  “I can’t wait to close this case so we can get the hell off this planet,” Viktor said.

  Angel looked around at the new homes, suburbs, and gardens carved from the scrub. Hopeful families, immigrant entrepreneurs, criminals, all looking for a fresh start. Rows of saplings lined the road behind them, then across the river to the opposite bank. On the other side, sparkling apartment buildings followed the water’s edge, no doubt filled with employees of the corporation that owned most of this world, and filled with the many luxuries civilization had to offer.

  She knew what Viktor saw when he looked around: corporate influence. While she saw opportunity.

  “Some people would like it here,” Angel replied curtly. Her, for one. The conditions in the city were a far cry from her childhood, for the better. Once, many years ago, she’d had plans to settle down in a city not unlike this one. Her thoughts turned to all she’d lost, all she’d left behind. And the memory of Mikal’s voice sliced through her: We can’t always get what we want.

  I wanted children and couldn’t ha—Angel clamped down hard on this thought.

  “They can have it, then.” Viktor sniffed the clean air and made a show of wrinkling his nose at an imaginary bad odor. “Too sterile for me. How come you didn’t settle down somewhere nice like this, then, with all your connections and your social status? You’ve recovered from your injuries now. You could retire on a pension—”

  “I’m an idiot,” Angel replied. And she’d severed her House connections in all but name.

  Viktor snorted with amusement. “Far from it. Anyway, nothing happens on planets like these.”

  “Five murders in six weeks is nothing happening?”

  Viktor shrugged. “You know what I mean. Corporate murders. Bribery. Greed. Corruption. Killing people for a few credits so they can imagine they’re ahead of others on the corporate ladder.” He snorted his contempt.

  They had arrived four weeks ago, knowing nothing about Persephone except what their implants pulled on the trip. Good information, but still… not the same as being there, feeling the planet, the people, the hum.

  “People murder for more than credits, especially the corporates. Anyway…” She pulled her gaze away from the apartments across the river and met his eye. “We’ll be here as long as it takes, and then somewhere else as long as it takes. They should have called us in earlier, amateurs.”

  “Yeah, well.” He cleared his throat. “This guy’s much the same as the others. No useful evidence found so far.”

  “Apart from the hands and feet.”

  “Er, yeah. Very organized. Methodical. Neither the man’s clothes nor his body showed signs of a struggle. The bruise is days old. Again, there really isn’t much to go on.” He looked at Angel expectantly.

  “Not much we can do until everything’s analyzed, then. Get to the office and collate information on the victim. Though it does look like another corporate retirement.”

  Viktor strode briskly away toward the nearest metro station, shoes trailing globs of mud.

  Angel had her implants bring up details of the other death in their system today. Another corporate type: a man. Harry Smith, electrocuted in his kitchen by his food dispenser, by all the evidence. The death tugged at her awareness. She could sense it was different—something was off with it. Of course, the dispenser’s circuits had been tampered with—there was no other explanation. But her superiors already had it tagged as a domestic accident. The file was marked as closed, barely hours after the man’s body had been discovered by his wife.

  Someone wanted it out of the way as quickly as possible. A neat little accidental death, wrapped up nice and tidy. Nothing to see here.

  And that worried her.

  Angel waited until the forensics investigator had packed his kit and left, also heading toward the metro, before she walked up and down the grass along the bank. The assistant was still standing next to the body. Apparently, the punishment for being lowest in the hierarchy was waiting with the corpse until the second evidence team came to pick it up.

  The other four murders had all occurred at least ten klicks from here. She called up a map and plotted their locations. Four red dots blinked rapidly, loosely congregated in a circle two klicks across. This murder, though it appeared similar, was definitely outside the pattern. And that could mean any number of things.

  She walked fifty meters either
side of the body and back again. Shading her eyes from the rising sun, she peered into the water. It was shallow ten meters out into the river, and she could still see the bottom. The mud under the water was smooth: no footprints, no drag marks.

  The corpse had been dropped from the air.

  She tasked her implants to catalogue air traffic over the entire night, and in moments she had a list. Not a single vehicle had flown over the corpse’s location. She’d wager the records had been tampered with. Which meant someone inside law enforcement was involved.

  “Damn it,” she exclaimed under her breath. Not more bloody corruption, as if there wasn’t enough trouble to deal with…

  Chapter 2

  Angel sat at her low desk, sipping on something that was supposed to be tea but definitely wasn’t. Still, it was hot and sweet and good. A half-eaten purple nut-filled pastry sat on a plate, a locally grown delicacy. She took another bite and licked her fingers.

  The walls of her office were covered in screens. They all displayed information related to the case Viktor still referred to as “The Handyman Case”, much to her annoyance. It had only been a few hours since he’d coined the name, but it grated on her.

  She reviewed the files on the past four murders, three men and one woman, each with their hands removed. She sat back in her chair, booted feet on the desk, relaying directives to her implants, which displayed the information she was after on the screens in front of her. In the background, she had subroutines searching for patterns, as well as anything out of the ordinary. But this looked to be another corporate murder, one Viktor could take the lead on.

  She suspected it had been done to divert attention from the electrocution case. A grizzly murder, body dumped in a public place. Who wouldn’t follow that trail instead of a dull domestic accident?

  She wouldn’t.

  Taking another sip of not-tea, Angel rubbed her eyes. A headache had begun to form, no doubt from too many hours without sleep.

  She turned her thoughts back to Harry Smith, a name so ordinary and common she had almost laughed when reading it. He’d been a resident on the planet for almost fifteen years, married, one daughter. Harry worked for Mercurial Logic Incorporated, the corporation that owned most of the planet. He was a neural net researcher on what looked like the cutting edge of developing Advanced Intelligence. No surprises there; at least a few million others on Persephone worked for Mercurial, too.

  She queried when the wife would be available for questioning, and almost immediately received an automated reply. This evening. Good. Though not at her home, but at an expensive café, which was out of the ordinary.

  Angel frowned and delved deeper into the wife’s file. Nothing unusual stood out. A solid career in the food-processing industry as an accountant. Jessica, maiden name of Williams, almost as common as her husband’s name. She was also an immigrant to Persephone, fifteen years ago. Huh.

  She brought up both Harry’s and Jessica’s files, comparing their landing date. Interesting. They had arrived on the same day, though both headed to different districts in the city, then years later moved to the same district within weeks of each other. Then they no doubt met, and their similar stories drew them closer together.

  Angel gave a sigh, then abruptly closed the files and stood. She glanced at the screens then rubbed the back of her neck, massaging away the tension that had formed gradually throughout the morning. She squirted a message to Viktor and grabbed her leather jacket from the back of her chair. Shoveling the remaining pastry into her mouth, she left her temporary office behind.

  •

  Viktor met her outside a building owned by Mercurial Logic Incorporated, one surprisingly squat and unadorned. It was located in the main industrial district, which wasn’t a usual posting for a neural net researcher, unless, of course, he oversaw production of one of their products. But research was a long way from actual production. The building had vacant lots to either side and butted onto a park. In fact, when she stepped back and looked at the location, the building was rather forlorn. There wasn’t another structure within a hundred meters.

  The file they had on Harry Smith identified this as his workplace. A small logo above the glass entrance doors was the only sign the corporation owned the building, and she noted two Law Enforcement Proxies to either side of the entryway, along with four more spread around the foyer inside.

  Noticing her noticing the LEPs, Viktor sniffed at the machines, screwed his mouth up, and looked around as if for somewhere to spit. Luckily he didn’t, or she would have had to arrest him.

  “They’re getting smarter,” he said flatly.

  She kept her eyes surveying the building. “They serve a useful purpose,” she pointed out.

  “Yeah? Next time I need a game of chess, I’ll give one a call. Do you think it’ll bring over some beers?”

  “Not likely. Do you play chess?”

  Viktor gave her an exasperated look. “That wasn’t my point. They will never be human. Processing power is no substitute for real sentience. What are these ones? 0.6s?”

  Angel shrugged and checked her weapon for the third time. “Probably a little higher. We can check their IDs when we get closer.” Recent rumors told of one of the corporations developing an intellect quotient of up to 0.83 of standard human sentience, but she thought that unlikely. All the corporations seemed to be stuck at the 0.79 mark.

  With a snort, Viktor fished around the inside of his coat for a few moments before bringing out his own gun. It was half again as big as hers. He checked its readout then re-holstered it.

  “There may come a time when you need to get to it quicker than that,” Angel said dryly.

  “Not these days. Nothing happens to us. And besides, backup is pretty much instantaneous.” He grinned at her.

  Yeah, right… “Backup wasn’t fast enough to save Travis.” An image of her previous partner bubbled to the surface of her mind, eyes blank and staring, the back half of his head missing. Angel rubbed her arms and swallowed with difficulty.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Paperwork’s just been approved, though only covers his office.”

  “It figures. The building is too low key. Must be a research center.”

  Angel nodded her agreement before striding toward the glass doors.

  “How did you like the pastry?” Viktor asked.

  “It was surprisingly good, thank you.”

  “Purple nuts… Must be something in the soil.”

  “Flavonoids.”

  “Tastes okay, though.”

  “Have you had lunch?”

  Viktor shook his head. “Too busy following up the medical team’s report. Not in the mood for flavonoids anyway.”

  They entered the foyer, a remarkably empty space. A few potted native plants lined the room, subtly guiding any visitors to the desk ahead of them, behind which sat a singularly attractive woman. Bob-cut platinum hair and a tight green dress accentuated her pixie-like face.

  Angel felt the heads of the LEPs follow their path toward the desk, and could sense Viktor’s anticipation at meeting the receptionist as he drew ahead of her.

  Without a word, he stepped in front of Angel, drawing back his coat to show the woman his none-too-subtle weapon.

  “Oh my!” the pixie exclaimed, half standing. She glanced at the LEPs, and seeing no response, she settled back into her chair and gave them both a hesitant smile.

  So, not quite as brainless as she’s pretending to be.

  “Citizen,” Viktor said too loudly, “I am Deputy Field Inquisitor Lukin. And my fellow Inquisitor is Dr. Xia, of the House of Liwei.”

  Angel tensed at his mention of her House.

  “Oh!” exclaimed the woman for the second time. She was quite good at her act, really.

  Viktor turned to Angel. “Though it’s a bit of a mouthful. Which do you prefer, Privileged or doctor?”

  “Neither is fine.” Her partner never usually referred to her other official titles unless he wanted to impress or in
timidate someone.

  “Ah. Well, then.” He turned back to the pixie woman. “We have your corporation’s permission to examine the office of Harry Smith.”

  Angel squirted copies of the paperwork to the corporation’s network and, anticipating the next demand, sent the pixie one as well.

  The woman looked sideways at her around Viktor, addressing her as the senior of the two. It was likely she had never seen a Privileged in the flesh before. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask to see the paperwork and your credentials,” she said in a steady voice.

  No, far from stupid, this one was. “Of course,” Angel replied, drawing her ID from her inside jacket pocket. She stepped forward and held it out to the woman, while Viktor did the same.

  With immaculately manicured green-lacquered nails, the woman took both and ran them under a desktop scanner.

  “All seems to be in order,” she said, eyes losing focus for a moment as she consulted her implants. “Ah, and I’ve received confirmation from the corporation, along with your copy of the paperwork.” She tilted her head in Angel’s direction. “If I may ask, what are you a doctor of?”

  “Fairy tales,” replied Angel in a deadpan voice. “You know, Rapunzel, that sort of thing.” She waited for the usual surprised reaction, but instead of a puzzled frown, the pixie woman’s eyes lit up with sharp interest.

  “Ah, that’s… fascinating. I’d imagine you wouldn’t have much time for study, being an Inquisitor.”

  Angel smiled thinly. “It was a long time ago. When I dreamed of a better life.” When she and Mikal were still together, him busy with his software engineering company.

  “Oh… well.” The pixie woman looked down at her desk, embarrassed, a slight flush on her cheeks. “You now have access to the office. It’s on one of the lower levels, I’m afraid: negative 6B.” The pixie gestured to her left. “The elevators are over there.”

  “Thank you,” Viktor said gruffly, no doubt upset he hadn’t been able to work himself into the conversation.