Sins of the Father (16 page)

Assuming one of the boxes stacked throughout the apartment had simply shifted and fallen to the floor, he calmly placed his toothbrush back in the cup beside the sink and went to investigate. Checking the hallway and finding no sign of disturbance, he turned towards the living room, his mind filled with thoughts of tomorrows.

All through the morning, as he prepared his breakfast and saw to his ablutions, the same words had repeated endlessly in his head in a relentless mantra. Tomorrow, he told himself, he would clear the apartment and clean away all the detritus that cluttered his life. Tomorrow, he would not allow his resolve to waver. Tomorrow, he would be feeling stronger. Tomorrow, he would begin his life anew.

Like most people he took his tomorrows for granted, believing they extended in front of him endlessly, reducing the moment of his death to a small and distant prospect. Occasionally he was troubled by thoughts of his own mortality, but for the most part he relegated such considerations to a dim corner of his mind in much the same manner as he had sequestered the leavings of his past in the thousands of boxes stacked all around his apartment. Inside them lay every object that had passed through his hands over the last thirty-odd years. He would have found it hard to give voice to the idea, but in many ways the contents of the crates and boxes that choked his apartment were like dusty memories stored in darkness and shadow to keep them far from prying eyes. His past had been set aside and locked away, pending redemption. A redemption that came, never today, but always tomorrow.

If there was one thing that gave Joseph Kapinski the strength to carry on with his life it was this: he believed in tomorrow. He believed in it fervently. Today, he always succumbed to weakness. Today, he was constrained by fear. Today, he was shackled by the past. But, tomorrow, things would be different. Tomorrow, he would finally find the strength to confront his fears and step forward into a bright new future. Tomorrow, he would begin his life anew.

Stepping into the living room and making his way through the tall stacks of crates that filled the room, he saw a box lying on its side on the floor. The lid of the box had fallen open, spilling its contents across the room in wild disarray. He felt his pulse quicken, and turned once more to the exercises his therapists had taught him to keep his anxieties at bay.

It is only a box, he told himself. He found his hands were shaking. You can't be hurt by what's inside it.

Going to the box, he began to retrieve its spilled contents to place them back within it. The objects were all shrink-wrapped and labelled: old 2-D photographs, used food wrappers, a stuffed teddy bear he had owned as a child. Working hurriedly, trying not to look at the objects, he put them back inside the box, eyes nervously scanning the floor to make sure he had not missed anything. Abruptly, he noticed the air-conditioning vent in the living room had been damaged. The front grille cover of the vent was lying on the floor, the metal housing of the vent itself expanded and pushed wide as though something large had squeezed its way out from inside it.

Confused, Joseph advanced to inspect the vent. The plasti-steel screws designed to hold the grille cover in place had been broken. Looking around him, it occurred to him that the box had not fallen on its own. Someone, or something, had entered the living room via the air-conditioning vent and pushed aside the stack of boxes in front of it, accidentally dislodging the box at the top of the stack and causing it to fall. There was an intruder inside his apartment.

Joseph felt his chest tighten as a spasm of anxiety shot through him. An intruder! Here, in the apartment with him. He should call the Judges. He should...

He saw a dark shape suddenly rear up from behind a nearby stack. Before he could call out, or even scream, Joseph felt powerful hands clamped around his throat. As the intruder lifted him from his feet and slammed him back against a stack of boxes behind him, from the corner of his eye Joseph saw more boxes fall. They seemed to tumble through the air in slow motion, the contents spraying in crazy cartwheels.

He could not breathe. His heart beat madly in his chest in terror. Looking at his killer, Joseph felt vague, dull surprise to see the face of a child staring back at him. The boy's eyes seemed to burn with fire. He saw the child's lips move, mouthing words, but the rush of blood pounding through Joseph's ears meant he could not hear them. The world began to go dark as, in a last moment of terrified reckoning, Joseph Kapinski realised he had been wrong.

There would be no more tomorrows.

TEN

LESS THAN NOWHERE

"This is some kind of mistake," the perp said. He looked at the two street Judges who were seated facing him across the table in the interrogation suite. "I mean, I was just going for a walk when suddenly all these Judges showed up. Next thing I know, they tell me I'm under arrest. I ain't ever committed a crime in my entire life. Ask anybody-"

"Thomas Errol Calhoun," one of the Judges said, producing a small hand-held comp-unit and gazing down at the display. "Three previous arrests for Possession Of An Illegal Substance With Intent To Use. You've served a total of five years' cube time for those offences, along with compulsory rehab to cure your sugar addiction." Laying the comp-unit down on the table, the Judge regarded the perp with a withering stare. "And here you are again, Calhoun. Picked up in a raid on the location of a known criminal enterprise." He sneered in derision. "Looks like the rehab didn't take."

"You think we didn't run your prints, genius?" the other Judge said. "We know all about you, Calhoun. Same as we know you work for Jimmy Nayles. Now, do you want to drop the 'I'm an innocent citizen' act? Or do we have to add Lying To A Judge to the list of charges?"

"Charges?" Panic flared briefly in the perp's eyes. "Listen, I'm telling you there's been a mistake. I don't know who this Jimmy Nayles guy is, or Thomas Calhoun for that matter. I don't care what the fingerprints say. There must have been a screw-up with the system. My name is Doug Wend. I'm a kneepad salesman, for drokk's sake!"

"How long do you think before he realises it ain't no use and decides to give up on that story?" the first Judge said, turning to the other Judge beside him. He jerked a thumb at the perp on the other side of the table. "You were right when you called this guy a 'genius' before. You know, I'm beginning to think we may be sharing a room with one of the greatest criminal masterminds the world has ever seen."

"'Cause he's acting so dumb, you mean?" the second Judge asked. They both ignored the perp, treating him as though he was invisible while the man listened to them with his eyes and mouth wide open. "He knows we got him bang to rights, but still he keeps sticking to same old story."

"But it ain't a story!" the perp said, suddenly breaking in to their conversation. "I'm telling you, it's the truth-"

"You hear anybody asking for your opinions about anything, genius?" the first Judge cut the perp off, silencing him with a glare. He turned back to the second Judge. "Yeah, you ask me, that takes a special kind of genius. It's like, he thinks if he just sticks to his story long enough, we'll fall for it. Like, if he keeps saying he's innocent, we'll decide he's so dumb he must be telling the truth."

"Yeah, he's good at it, too," the second Judge said, warming to the theme. "Acting dumb, I mean. You notice, he doesn't even seem to have asked himself how come we're not playing good cop/bad cop with him? Guy like this, you'd think he'd been through enough interrogations to know that's how these things go. You think he'd figure, hey, if the Judges ain't playing good cop/bad cop, it must be because they don't think they need to. Our boy here though, he's too cool for that. He just stays acting dumb, like the thought of it never occurred to him."

"It's like I said, he's a criminal mastermind," the first Judge offered in agreement. "You ever seen that show on Tri-D about the detective solving cases in old-time Brit-Cit? You know the one. The hero is this tall thin guy with a long nose. He wears a funny hat, and always uses a magnifying glass to examine the crime scene. 'It's elementary, my dear Watson.' That's his catchphrase. What's the name of the villain on that show?"

"Moriarty," the second Judge answered him. "Professor Moriarty."

"Yeah, that's right," the first Judge nodded. "That's what we've got here. Our very own Professor Moriarty." He turned to stare hard at the perp. "What about it, Moriarty? You decided it's time to change your story yet?"

"You have to believe me," the perp said, shifting uneasily in his chair. "This is all a mistake. My name is Doug Wend and I sell kneepads. I've never taken a grain of sugar in my life!"

"Listen to him." The first Judge shook his head and whistled through his teeth. "No matter what happens, he sticks to his story. The guy's a genius. I mean, it ain't just the good cop/bad cop thing. By now, he has to have started wondering how come we haven't used a lie detector or taken a DNA sample to disprove his story. He must have asked himself why we're so calm about things. He must have considered the idea that it means we got an ace up our sleeves: something that's going to blow him out of the water, and we're just biding our time before we bring it out."

"Oh, sure, he's thought of that." The second Judge yawned and began to stretch his shoulders as though he was growing weary of the game. "But Moriarty here knows he can beat anything. He's a criminal mastermind, and we're just a couple of dumb schmuck street Judges. This whole time we've been sitting here, doing our comedy double act like Hooty and Gleev, he's probably been looking down his nose at us. Probably thinks we're a pair of ignorant mouth-breathers." Finishing his stretching, the Judge joined his partner in staring hard at the perp. "Course, what he doesn't know, is the joke's on him. That the only reason we're sitting here is because we're waiting for someone else to join us."

The door to the interrogation suite opened and a slim, attractive woman in a Judge's uniform entered the room. With a nod to the two street Judges, she advanced towards the perp.

"Calhoun, this is Anderson," the first Judge said. "In case you didn't spot what it says on her badge, she's a Psi-Judge. A telepath. In accordance with Judicial Order three-oh-three, Sub-section eight, Paragraph two, I am required to inform you that you are about to undergo a compulsory deep telepathic probe. You might want to take a few deep breaths there and do your best to attempt to relax, citizen.

"I hear it only hurts if you try to resist."

"He's just a low-level sugar dealer," Anderson said as she returned to the observation room adjoining the interrogation suite and saw that Lang was waiting for her. "Strictly a small-timer. He was on his way to a stash house for a re-up when he got caught in the sweep. He knew Jimmy Nayles was the boss of the mob he worked for, but that was about it. He had never actually met Gruschenko, or seen him. He didn't even know the Organizatsiya were running things."

"So he gets us nowhere, then?" Lang said.

She was standing beside the large two-way mirror that looked into the Interrogation Suite. Through it, two street Judges could be seen dragging the struggling perp away to the iso-cubes while he complained at the violation of his mind. With a grimace, Lang switched off the intercom on the wall beside her, cutting off the perp's complaints in mid-sentence.

"Pretty much," Anderson agreed with her. "What about you? Did you get anything useful from the perps captured in the other raids?"

"Not much," Lang shook her head. "There was some minor info on gambling dens and organ legging that might be of interest to the Organised Crime Units but so far, as regards our murder, I've performed deep telepathic scans on half-a-dozen perps without finding a single new lead. It's like you say: the perps have all heard of Jimmy Nayles, but they don't know him and they haven't met him. From what I hear, Operation Lazarus was a complete failure. All the raids turned up were some empty warehouses and a few small-fry perps. The entire operation turned out to be a waste of time."

"Yeah, that's what I hear, too," Anderson said. "From the sound of it, the Organizatsiya must have got word that Gruschenko was dead and cleaned everything out." She shrugged. "Still, I wouldn't go shouting that opinion out too loudly hereabouts unless you want to make enemies of the Sector House hierarchy. After putting so many resources into these raids, no one is going to admit the operation was a wash-out. No doubt, they'll give out news releases to the media in an hour or so, trumpeting Lazarus as a great success. 'A telling blow against organised crime in this city.' That kind of thing. It's politics. Nobody wants to admit that Judges are just as human and prone to mistakes as everybody else."

"Where does that leave us, then?" Lang asked. "We were hoping the Lazarus raids would scare up some new leads on the Gruschenko killing. Right now, they look to have got us nowhere."

"Agreed," Anderson said. "Frankly, at this precise moment in time I'd say we're at somewhere less than nowhere. You remember the calls we put in to MAC and PSU, asking for info on earlier sightings of the perps, and so on? I've had some calls back and it seems like we're batting zero on every front. The only area that's produced any new information is when I asked the Organised Crime Unit for the low-down on Gruschenko's potential enemies. They came back with a list as long as my arm. Not surprisingly, given he was a mob boss, Konrad Gruschenko was a man with a lot of enemies. Honestly though, I'd be surprised if any of Gruschenko's business rivals were behind the murder. When you want to kill a mob boss, you hire someone to shoot him or put a bomb in his car. Everything about this killing - the strangulation, the message carved into the victim's body - suggests a more personal motive. I don't think we---"

"Control to Anderson!" Abruptly, Anderson's radio blared into life. Her hand going automatically to the radio unit on her belt, she pressed the transmit button and responded to the call.

"Anderson receiving, Control. Over."

"Just had an update from MAC," the dispatcher told her, his voice terse over the airwaves. "I understand you requested notification earlier this morning of any homicides matching the MO of the murder of Konrad Gruschenko, AKA James Nales."