Red Shadows (20 page)

Look at Marj Kulack,
she suddenly heard a voice that sounded suspiciously like Mitzi's talking in her head.
Barely nine o'clock at night and she's drunk already. Guess she's been hitting the bottle hard ever since Herv finally saw sense and left her.

"Why don't you shut the drokk up!"

Before she even knew what she was doing, Marjorie was screaming those words at Mitzi. She felt the pain inside her head ease by the smallest of fractions. It was as though by unleashing the pent-up frustrations inside her she had accidentally discovered a valve to relieve some of the pressure building in her head. It felt good. For the first time in weeks, Marjorie Kulack had finally found some relief.

Then, she looked down at her neighbour and saw what she had done.

Mitzi was lying like a broken rag doll at her feet. Her eyes were open and vacant and her slack mouth was drooling spittle. Spotting a wet and spreading puddle on the floor underneath Mitzi's body, Majorie realised that her neighbour had lost control of her bladder. Staring into Mitzi's eyes, she could see nothing of the spiteful and judgemental woman who had been her neighbour for close to twenty years. It was as though Mitzi was gone, replaced by a slobbering imbecile wearing her body like a suit of clothes.

I did this, Marjorie thought. I did this to her. For a moment she was caught up in the whirling maelstrom of her own emotions. She felt astonishment, fear, disbelief. Then, as quickly as they had come to her, the emotions passed. She looked down at Mitzi and realised that she felt no pity for this piss-stinking idiot bag of meat and bone that lay before her. She felt no remorse. She felt no regret. Mitzi Coltrane had always been an evil, sharp-tongued shrew of a woman. In the end, Marjorie had done nothing more than given her exactly what she deserved.

"You shouldn't have called me a drunk, Mitzi," Marjorie said, though it was plain enough that her neighbour could no longer hear her. "And you shouldn't have said those things about Herv."

It suddenly occurred to her that Mitzi had not actually said anything. Yet Marjorie had heard her voice clearly, albeit inside her head. With that thought came a revelation. Marjorie realised she had been wrong before. It looked like she was psychic, after all. The voices she heard in her head were the thoughts of her neighbours, the thoughts of all the people who lived in the block around her. For weeks now, she had been hearing other people's thoughts. Now, it seemed she had been granted a second psychic power. Now, as well as hearing what people were thinking, it seemed she could wipe their minds. Otherwise, how else was she to explain the fact that Mitzi was currently lying drooling in a pool of her own urine?

I did this, the thought flashed through her mind again. Where she had at first experienced astonishment, now she felt the growing smugness that comes with the sure knowledge of absolute power. I did this to her. I made Mitzi into a moron. Hell, the stupid bitch was already one to begin with. All I did was shut her up once and for all.

For a moment she paused to listen to the voices. Inside her head it was the same old, same old. She heard people thinking about their weight, or their love lives, or the love lives of the characters on the programmes they were watching on Tri-D. She heard people complaining inwardly about their vid-phone bills, moaning about the block super, and whining about the weather. In their heads, the residents of Sissy Spacek Block lusted and gossiped about their neighbours, passed judgements and made hateful comments. She heard their secret and private thoughts, their perversions and desires, all the things they kept in their own heads where they were sure that no one else could hear them. But Marjorie could hear them. She could hear them and she decided she had had enough. Turning to look at Mitzi Mittlelmeyer once more, she tried to tune into her thoughts and encountered only blessed silence. Whatever thoughts Mitzi had once harboured, they were now well and truly wiped clean.

Silence is golden, Marjorie thought to herself. Really, when you think about it, it would be so much better if the entire block was like Mitzi. Then, things would be quiet. Yeah. Silence is golden. I should wipe all of their minds: every person's in the block. Then, at last, I can get some rest.

Silence is golden. As she set off down the hallway to visit each of her neighbours in turn, the words had become a comforting mantra in Marjorie's mind. Silence is golden. Silence is golden. Silence is golden.

By the time anyone thought to call the Judges, Marjorie had brought silence to a dozen people, and she had barely even started.

Nightfall. For Cass Anderson, it felt like time was her enemy.

It had been a frustrating day. With Weller alongside her, she had visited four different blocks to perform a deep telepathic probe on the block supers in the hope that one of them might still maintain some shred of a memory of the killer. The results had been disappointing. If her theory was right and the killer had used his powers to persuade each super to take the cameras in their blocks offline, he had subsequently covered his tracks so well that Anderson had been unable to pick up his trail. Similarly, Weller's attempts to re-canvass the blocks in search of additional witnesses had turned up nothing.

Tek Division's trawl through the HelixHealth database had as yet failed to produce anything to help them. In their continuing analysis of the physical evidence left at the crime scene and on the victims' bodies, Yoakim and Noland had not managed to find any new leads. Earlier, Anderson had said the investigation was batting zero on every front. Now, it seemed they were at less than zero. If the case grew any colder, she would have to start wearing thicker gloves.

Grud, I feel like warmed-over three-day-old munce, she thought. Damn sleep machines. I don't care what the Teks say. Ten minutes in a machine is no replacement for a proper night's rest.

She was sitting on her Lawmaster outside the imposing entrance of Sector House 34, waiting for Weller. A short while ago, both she and the Street Judge had returned to the Sector House to undergo treatment in a Total Relaxation Inducer, or "sleep machine" as it was known to most Judges. Through some miracle of modern technology that Anderson did not even pretend to understand, ten minutes' rest in the machine was supposed to be the equivalent of eight hours' sleep. Generally, sleep machines were only used as an emergency measure when some crisis blew up and Judges had to work triple shifts to cope with it. Tonight, the knowledge that the killer was still out there and probably about to strike at any moment had caused Anderson and Weller to book a session each on the machine, in the hope of being able to continue their investigation on into the night.

Hearing the sound of an engine approaching, Anderson turned to see Weller emerge up the ramp from the Sector House's underground parking bay. As he pulled alongside her, one look at his face told her that he felt as tired and ill-rested as she did. They were both running on empty, in more ways than one.

"Just finished talking to Control," Weller said. "Asked them to contact all the HelixHealth policy holders and tell them not to open their doors to any delivery men. Control said with forty-five thousand policy holders it would take too much manpower to contact them individually. They're sending them all automated vid-phone messages instead. Have to hope the next potential victim is somebody who checks their messages regularly."

"It probably won't work anyway," Anderson told him. "The killer's a teledominant. It doesn't matter what we tell people. If he tells them to open their doors, they'll do it."

"Had to try something," Weller grimaced. "I don't like thinking that creep's out there about to snuff some citizen and we can't do anything about it."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Right now it feels like we can't do much else but sit around and wait for the next victim. But the more I think about it, the more I think there has to be something we're missing. Something that could lead us right-"

"Control to Anderson." Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden blare of her Lawmaster radio, Anderson took the call, expecting to be told that they were too late and the killer had already struck again.

"Anderson here, Control. Receiving. Over."

"Psychic incident at Sissy Spacek Block. Judges on the scene request urgent Psi Division backup. Sounds like they've got a rogue psychic on the loose. You're the closest, Anderson. Can you respond? Over."

For an instant she hesitated. Then, she noticed Weller looking at her.

"Take the call, Anderson," he said. "I'll continue the investigation alone until you can catch up. You said it yourself, right now we aren't doing much more than sitting around twiddling our thumbs."

"Confirmed on that, Control." With a quick nod to Weller, she called up a route map to Sissy Spacek on the screen of her Lawmaster computer and hit the accelerator to roar off into the night. "Judge Anderson responding. Current location is outside the Sector House. ETA to Sissy Spacek: ten minutes. "Tell the Judges on the scene I'm on my way."

THIRTEEN

BAD NIGHT AT SISSY SPACEK

Something was wrong at Sissy Spacek Block. Approaching the block forecourt along the De Palma pedway, William saw a scene of utter pandemonium happening in front of his eyes. There were Judges everywhere, busily shepherding confused and frightened residents away from the block, holding the gathering crowds of gawkers back; Med-Judges tending to apparently comatose victims and rushing them to waiting ambulances. The whole area around the block was crawling with Judges. Watching the unfolding drama from a safe distance, William felt a sudden seething annoyance build silently within him.

With so many Judges surrounding Sissy Spacek, there was no way he could go inside the block and start his work. He had promised himself he would begin the night with Marjorie Kulack. He had promised himself she would be his seventh victim. Now, courtesy of some previously unforeseen disaster, his plans lay in ruins. Admittedly, he could put Marjorie aside for the moment, go on to the next name on the list, and come back later after things had quietened down. Still, that was hardly the issue.

The Grey Man had been adamant that William should work through the names on the list in the precise order in which they appeared. It was part of their bargain. Besides which, what was the point of having a list full of people to kill if you just chose the names at random? The very idea of it offended William's own concept of order.

He felt stymied, frustrated, aggravated almost beyond his endurance.

Then, he saw her.

Sounding her siren as the crowd parted before her, a female Psi-Judge drove her Lawmaster towards the block and parked it on the forecourt. She was beautiful. Her flowing hair was long and blonde, her body lean and attractive beneath the intimidating exterior of her Judge's uniform. To William, though, it was the colour of her soul that was most compelling.

It was red, so very, very red.

In all the years of his life, he had never seen its like. The Psi-Judge's aura was a burning corona pulsating with resonant and dynamic shades of crimson and scarlet. It was so bright, so vibrant. It hurt his eyes to look at it. It was like staring at the sun. Even as he closed his eyes it seemed to burn through his eyelids, transfixing him with its glare, its imprint scorched onto his retinas. He felt humbled, in awe. It was like a moment of religious awakening. In all the world, he had never known a human being could be so red. He felt a stabbing pain behind his eyes. He felt a terrible desire rising within him. He was like a moth to the flame. He wanted to draw nearer. He wanted to touch her, to kill her. He had to have her.

"Hey, you know, I think that's Judge Anderson," he heard a voice say among the crowd of bystanders standing nearby. "The Psi-Judge? I saw her on the Channel 109 news report this morning. You know, the one with that guy... What's-his-name?"

"Whatsisname?" another voice answered. "You mean the thin guy? Ralph something? Or is it Matt?"

"Yeah, anyway, they said she was working a serial killer case, right here in this very sector. I wonder if this whole commotion has got something to do with it?"

The conversation continued, but, already, William had stopped listening. In place of the idiot murmurings of the crowd, a single word whispered itself endlessly in his mind with a frenetic rhythm born of dawning obsession.
Anderson.
He liked the sound of it.
Anderson
. He had seen her.
Anderson.
He had her name now.
Anderson.

Soon, he would have so much more.

"Vital signs are slow but normal," the Med-Judge said, as they stood beside a young woman drooling on a stretcher. "Pupils are unfocused but reactive. No sign of physical trauma or for that matter any physical symptom beyond the complete loss of bowel and bladder control. Patient is unresponsive. You ask her name or if she knows where she is, she just keeps staring into space. It's the same with the rest of them." He indicated the victims being loaded onto ambulances by other Med-Judges nearby. "It's like they don't even know we're here."

It had taken Anderson exactly ten minutes to reach Sissy Spacek Block after receiving the call from Control. Ten minutes, in which the situation had apparently grown worse. Arriving on the scene, Anderson had been instantly greeted with all the usual things she expected to see at a crisis in progress: Street Judges working crowd control in the block forecourt outside to give their fellow Judges inside the block the time and space they needed to try and contain the threat, Med-Judges tending to the victims, Tri-D news crews jostling with their rivals from other stations as they attempted to find the perfect angle from which to shoot footage, and a growing crowd of gawkers as citizens unaffected by the crisis gathered to see what was going on.

Depending on how long the whole thing took to reach some kind of resolution, it was only a matter of time before the first of the licensed street hawkers arrived to sell newly printed "I Was At Sissy Spacek" T-shirts. As a Psi-Judge in Mega-City One, Anderson had seen the same drama play itself out more times than she cared to count.