Out of the Black (4 page)

Finally, one of the techs at the car waved Ping over. As Ping approached him, the tech held up a pair of clear plastic evidence bags the size of dinner plates. "We're done with the car- touch what you like."

The tech held out the first bag. "It's been through the scanner, so it's all yours." The tech continued, "His Uni says the guy in the front was Peter Sieberg, field tests agree, but I won't have a DNA match until the judge signs off on the test." Ping took the bag and gave the contents a quick glance: the smallest piece of equipment was the card-sized flexible plastic Universal ID. The Uni was nestled against a sleek looking glasses case or flashlight and a tablet. These objects were surrounded by some simple jewelry.

"Who was the passenger?" Ping asked, glancing at the other bag.

The tech handed it over, "Dr. Ivo Lutine... professor over at Rosemont."

"Professor of what?" Ping looked up from his examination of the professor's personal effects.

"Yeah, I know," the tech said leaning in slightly, "I was expecting some kind of foreign dictator or organized crime boss with a hit like this."

"What makes you think it was a hit?" Ping asked with a perfectly straight face.

"Oh, you mean like the high velocity shell through the driver's ear, or the fourteen holes and two slashes in the professor there? And I've got three things to say about those slashes..." He held up his hand and counted off on three fingers, "what...the...hell?" He waved the three extended fingers for emphasis as he continued. "From cross sections, we know the weapon's blade was at least twenty-five centimeters long, but my guess is it was probably closer to a meter. And sharp! It sliced the bones... didn't crack them- actually left them smooth. One of those hacks cut through the clavicle, the scapula, four ribs in back, five in front and bisected the heart!"

"So you think we're looking for ninja hit men?" Ping held desperately to his straight face- he thought it was still working.

"Ninja hit..." The tech broke off, exasperated, "At this point I can't rule out psychotic cartoons, imaginary friends, or little green men. Am I not impressing you with this stuff?"

Yep, the straight face had held. Ping let it go and laughed, "Sorry, it's just been a very 'impressive' day."

"Now
that
I understand." The tech turned back toward his partner.

"One more thing." Ping called after him.

"Yeah?" the tech said over his shoulder.

"What's the likely origin on the shot that hit the driver?"

"That one's hard. He was definitely hit while the car was still moving, but I can't be sure where the car was, so I can't trace the shot back- not until we finish the area scan anyway. My best guess says you've got the uniforms looking in the right area."

"Thanks." he turned away to check on the uniformed officers' progress.

Half an hour later, Ping climbed the hill and approached his car. He'd left the forensics team to finish their tedious work- now he had his own tedious work to do. His tablet was full of data to slog through. He had the raw reports from Malloy and Rodriguez, as well as the area scans. Then there was his raw report, and the data held in the tablets of the victims.

None of the bodies outside the car had a Uni or other easily recognizable equipment, though it would take the lab some time to assemble the list of their possessions from the remaining bits f metal, ceramic and plastic mixed in with all the meat.

Without a working Uni or DNA tests, the bodies would not be identifiable. He had the forensics team's incident key, which he used to program his tablet to notify him when the test results became available.

He swiped his finger over the lock plate on the driver's side door and heard the click as the lock disengaged. He pulled the door open and dropped into the seat. He closed the door and was dropped like a smooth stone into a pool of absolute silence. Outside, the nighttime city hadn't been noisy, even with the nearby hiss of highway's traffic, but the difference between that quiet and the car's insulated silence was still striking. He paused to let it soak into him. As the seconds passed, new sounds emerged from the quiet: first his regular and slowing breathing, then the calm beating of his heart. Of all the things that Ping had learned from his father, by far the most frequently used was effective meditation.

He leaned forward, reached behind him and unholstered his tablet. He extended it to full size and propped it against the steering wheel. Where to start? Sometimes there were too many questions to approach systematically. He had poked at mysteries long enough to know that it mattered where he started poking. Each line of inquiry had its own set of built-in assumptions that could color the investigation. At times like this, he liked to start purely from inspiration- let fate, chance, intuition, or God guide his first steps. If evidence (or further inspiration) led him in another direction later, it would be easier to let go of his initial assumptions since he hadn't invested heavily in them.

Eyes closed, he let his mind wander back through his experiences at the underpass, hoping something would jump out at him. He saw the Otu weeds, Malloy's strained face, the leech-flesh arm, blood and glass. He remembered scanning into the bridge wall to get holos of the shells buried inside, the plastic bags filled with the victims' possessions, almost going down when he slipped on a small patch of eviscerata near the car- not a proud moment.

Concentration broken by the memory of his brush with blood and gravity, he resolved to start with the victims' personal effects. He grabbed his tablet's stylus and brought the machine out of standby. With a few taps, he forged the data-link to the professor's tablet that still lay in the unopened evidence bag on the passenger seat. The data in its solid-state drive was encrypted of course. He'd have to request a warrant key from a judge to gain access. He quickly opened the roster of on-duty judges and winced as he saw 'Hatch, Jenna' highlighted. Jenna 'the hatchet' Hatch had an unhealthy love of her own voice, and a general intolerance for the voice of others. A call to her yielded a warrant sometimes, but without fail, it yielded a little soapbox speech on something she termed 'freedom to privacy'- like no one else understood the delicate balance between the public and private good. Sheesh.

He steeled himself for the patronizing he was about to take and touched the messaging link with his stylus. Nearly a minute passed and he became impatient. He opened the tablet's calculator and started to enter numbers with the stylus: 5 + 5, 10 + 10... after another 15 seconds, a window opened on his screen bearing the Hatchet's sleep-puffy countenance. She didn't say a word, preferring to stare at him, radiating sleepy annoyance.

He could play this game. He continued to poke away at the calculator with a gravely determined look on his face. He was working on multiplying the powers of ten now.

Fifteen more seconds passed... twent. Wing had plenty of numbers left.

"What is it, detective?" she finally gave up.

Victory! "Oh! Hi!" Ping said with real enthusiasm. Counter-annoyance was a blast. "I didn't hear you pick up! I was just preparing a report on a particularly grim case."

She grunted.

He continued, "I've got ten to thirteen corpses and only two working tablets between the lot of them..."

"Ten to thirteen?" the judge interrupted.

"How many potatoes in a bowl of stew?" Ping asked with a conspiratorial look.

"What does that mean, detective?" Her voice was a drone encumbered with scorn.

"Lots of pieces. Not sure how many they add up to yet- forensics will be able to give a more accurate number after DNA-typing the remains. I need warrant keys for the two tablets so I can continue..."

"And you think these tablets' owners are dead? I wouldn't want to inadvertently violate his or her freedom to..."

"Definitely." he attempted to knock her from the soapbox before she got settled in.

"Are you really so sure?" she looked more annoyed. She was quicker in her next attempt. "Without evidence of death or compelling public interest, I can't authorize such an invasion of their fundamental freedom to privacy..." there it was. "I mean, you don't even have a clear account of who's dead yet."

"Sure we do... all of them." He attached a photo of the corpse in the back seat to the outbound data stream and saw her flinch. He used his stylus to indicate the area of the corpse where the tablet was found. "It was here." He said, tapping on the image and transmitting the marker.

The judge's eyes moved to her tablet with its replica of the image and annotations, then retreated back toward the camera.

"What if it's not his tablet?" she said, voice weary.

He pretended to think about that carefully while he reinforced his outer appearance of calm helpfulness. Pretending to carefully check, as if he hadn't already, he tried multiplying a few numbers on the calculator application. "Hmm... The tablet's registry says the owner is a Dr. Ivo Lutine. The Uni found on the body was Dr. Lutine's..." dramatic pause while he multiplied some more numbers, then he put on a face of excited discovery. "Yep, the Uni's vascular scan matches the hand on the seat over there- ", he touched the image again, indicating a spot on the seat maybe 40 centimeters from the rest of the body. "...it was Dr. Lutine's! And since the hand looks like it fits on the arm over here..." He cut an image of the arm and used his stylus to try to fit it together with the picture of the hand, sharing the process through the link.

"And
now
you need a warrant key." She interrupted, as satisfied as the petulant ever get.

Ping nodded. "I think time is of the essence here."

"And why is that?" she said in the attitude of infinite patience.

"We've got a cross between a mob hit, a military operation, and ritual killing," he said in the attitude of infinite helpfulness. "Two risks: these guys are crazy enough to strike again quickly, or they are professional enough to vanish into the ether. Either way, we need to move quickly."

"And the warrant key is crucial to this 'quick' movement?" She said with a thoughtful finger on her chin.

One, two, three, four, slow inhale, five, six, seven, keep smiling, eight, nine, ten. Exhale and... "Yes, absolutely crucial."

She paused again. He thought it was more an assertion of conversational control than time for her to weigh facts. Finally, she spoke. "Okay, I'll authorize one key for Mr. Lushion's tablet..."

"Two keys, Judge." he cut in ever so reasonably- he would definitely need to hit the gym for a good long while before he would be able to sleep tonight. "We've got two bodies in the same car." He attached an image of the driver's remains to the data stream. Again, her eyes flinched away from her tablet. He continued, "This was Mr. Peter Sieberg. There is the same tablet-Universal ID-vascular scan-corpse chain of identification evidence. I think it's safe to say that the tablet's owner is dead.

"I'll be the judge of that." She snapped.

Wow. It was like trying to tread water in a pool of stupid. Stupid, of course, has the consistency of hot tar. This wasn't a Labrea tar-pit kind of naturally occurring stupid either, this was a swimming pool of smoking hot stupid purposefully created to service the swimming needs of the judge's ego. Maybe he could try another tactic.

"Oh, hold on! I forgot to mention these guys- " he said in mock inspiration as he sent high-resolution images of the piles and pieces of the other bodies over the connection. "At least we don't need any warrant keys for these folks- if they had tablets, we weren't able to tell which pieces might have come from them." He continued in the attitude of someone excited by the challenges of his work: "I mean, even if we could find all the pieces and get them together, the blood and other...fluids... would be enough to mess up the electronics. Here, look at this one," he marked a nearly indistinguishable piece of smooth metal protruding from an unidentifiable piece of ravaged flesh, "what do you think that stain on the metal is? My guess is gastro-intestinal, but the forensics guy, well he was pretty sure..."

"Two warrant keys for Mr. Lootan and Mr. Sieger." She said with a drawn face and eyes that never approached her tablet's screen.

Ping sent the globally unique IDs of the two tablets over the connection, and seconds later, received the two warrant keys tuned for them. "Thanks again judge Hatch!" Ping said to the broken connection.

Deep, hazy waters seemed to surround Anne and the child in her arms. At some level she knew this wasn't exactly real- probably because the cute little guy she clung to so desperately had told her no less than ten times that she was dreaming- but somehow that didn't make the situation any less tragic in her mind. The little boy was perhaps eight years old, his legs were somehow malformed and she remembered seeing him with crutches earlier. He looked up at her though cracked coke-bottle glasses with intensity and intelligence that was beyond his years and should have been beyond his ability. Despite her best efforts, he was slipping away from her.

"Let go!" he shouted again, still clinging to her waist, "You've got to wake up and get away!" His voice was urgent, but his grip on her was desperate. They hung in a dark void, clinging to each other as the depths tugged at him and the shimmering light above beckoned to her.

"You aren't listening to me!" he shouted, exasperated. But she could see the darkness below and she wasn't letting go. Somehow, if she could hold on long enough, they might both reach the surface together. If she could just hold on, she could save him- she could make a difference. The unfamiliar warmth of purpose tugged at her heart and tightened her grip.

"Neither are you!" she yelled back, already reflecting on her confusing retort.

"Right!" he laughed, "Well, I guess it's time." Then, with a smile twisted by the war between courage and fear, he let go.

"No!" she shrieked as his small body slipped from her embrace.

His fall was slower than she'd expected, as if through thick water. A few meters away, he shouted again, "Run, Anne! Run!" Despite his frail body, his voice held a deep power. It was the pressure of deep water, pressing inward, forcing her upward like a bubble.