Chapter 1

There should be a rule that a person shouldn't have to visit the scene of a murder first thing in the morning. I shouldn't complain. Sure, I might have stayed up late studying ribosome distributions in Euzebian biology, but I didn't have to be the one worrying about whether or not my daughter was still alive. Unlike Howard Winston, I hadn't had to get a call that my daughter had been found dead in some downtown alley. Mr. Winston had a friend on the force. Someone thought he should be notified right away. No, I was just the guy that got called by Mr. Winston to find out what the hell had happened to Christina, or Chrissy as she preferred.

I sipped my white Torlian coffee and looked down
the alley. I didn't have to go any closer to see what was going on. My eyes aren't exactly human anymore. I've worked on them a bit. Under normal
circumstances I can see about twice as well as any human with an unaltered genome. In dim light or at night, however, I can see easily five times better than the standard human. From the mouth of the alley I could see the crowd. Small for this time of the morning, mostly composed of humans. Like most Olindan alleyways this one was well maintained. Not too narrow. The wetland plants in the drainage strip looked healthy enough. There were two police flitters blocking off the crime scene from the gawkers. Unfortunately, that included me. I couldn't see the body from this angle. Maybe I could go above and look down. I sipped the Torlian coffee. I could almost feel the boost running through my veins. Too much and I'd get jittery, but this was only my first cup. I didn't have to worry until I reached my third or fourth cup. Today I just might, too.

A man moved into view behind the pale blue of the flitter's canopy. I could see him easily enough, Captain Kynan Brice. We'd had dealings before, although he didn't much like me. He was a big man with raven black hair and deeply tanned skin. Captain Brice wasn't fat, there was too much muscle beneath his bulk. He stayed in pretty good shape. I knew from Subha that he still dived regularly. He turned my way, and I saw him squint. I doubted he could be sure it was me at this distance. I, on the other hand, could see the creases at the corners of his eyes. I decided to make it easy on him and started down the alley.

I saw the instant he recognized me for sure. His eyes widened slightly, and he swore under his breath. He said something to the cop beside him and then came out to the police line.

"Well look here." Brice crossed his arms. "It's our very own detective Moreau. What are you doing here Mr. Marsden?"

I shook my head. "Please, Brock is fine, Captain."

"I'm waiting."

I nodded in the direction of the flitter behind him. "There's a body over there, right? Chrissy Winston. Her father is a vice-president over at Galactic Bank, Howard Winston. He's hired me to find out what happened to his daughter."

Brice rubbed his jaw. "How the hell did you find out about this so quickly?"

"I just got the call from Mr. Winston this morning. He had talked to someone we've worked for before, who informed him about his daughter. Are you going to give me access to the scene?"

I didn't say anything about the fact that Howard Winston, reputable banker, is a large contributor to the police force. He's the sort of man that made it a point of having friends in the right places. I didn't say anything because Brice knew it as well as I did. I just waited politely, sipping my coffee, while he worked it out. I like Brice, I do. I think it's unfortunate that the feeling isn't returned. In fact, I think Brice would like nothing better than to lock me up somewhere. If he ever gets the chance, I'm sure he'll take it.

This morning, however, he realized that sometimes
practicality wins the day. Besides, whether he would admit it or not, he knew that there was a chance that I might be able to help them solve the case. A few times in the past we had managed to set aside our differences and work together on cases. He had to be thinking of that when he stepped to the side with a scowl.

"Fine, Brock. But you touch so much as a fiber and I'll throw you off the case for tampering with evidence – you understand me? Howard Winston be damned."

"I got it."

Brice leaned closer and frowned at my mug. "Are you drinking hot milk?"

"Torlian coffee," I said.

Brice frowned more. "What the hell are you drinking that stuff for?"

One of the things I like about Brice is that he is steadfast and dependable. Once he sets his mind against something there is no force in the universe that will change it for him. Not even the law. On some worlds with less legal emphasis on personal responsibility, Torlian coffee is considered to be an illegal stimulant. Olinda's legal system holds that an individual is responsible for their own decisions. For the most part that means that many substances and technologies that are illegal elsewhere are legal on Olinda. Brice doesn't always agree. It's one of the reasons that he doesn't like me.

I slipped past him before he could change his mind and walked around the flitter. I stopped just as soon as I cleared the nose. There was a drop of blood on the biocrete. There was another drop a few inches closer to the building. Then more. Many more. The blood had sprayed out from a doorway alcove in the building wall. The girl lay on the biocrete with what was left of her head tipped back, her empty eye sockets gazing right at me with the blank accusations of the dead. The top of her head lay nearby on the biocrete.

I eased around the spray pattern. I didn't need to get any closer to see details. Not with my eye-sight. Brice nearly stepped on the outer edge of the spray pattern. I reached out a hand to stop him.

"What –"

I pointed at the biocrete.

Brice bent over at the waist, squinted and then he straightened with a scowl. He looked over his shoulder at one of the officers. "Let's get some lights over here before we trample the evidence, okay?"

The officer went to the flitter and started looking
inside for the lights.

I didn't care about the lights. For me, the scene was illuminated well enough by the early morning light leaking across the city. There were different blood patterns here, layered over one another. They told part of the story of what had happened to Chrissy.

"She must have been coming down the alley last night." Her shoes, red, shiny, lay where they'd fallen.

"Why would she do that?" Brice asked. "We figured that her assailants must have dragged her back here from the sidewalk."

I shook my head. "Look at her shoes."

Brock squinted some more. "What?"

He probably couldn't see them clearly back in the alcove. It was still fairly dark there, at least to normal human senses. "Her shoes are polished to a shine. There's no sign of scuffing. If she had been snatched her feet would have dragged. She'd have been lucky to even keep the shoes on her feet. Much less keep them from being scuffed."

"Okay, so she came down the alley." Brice looked down towards the street. "Why would she come down here?"

I pointed up the alley towards the other end. "I think she came down from that end, cutting through the alley."

"Why?"

"Because she's facing that way."

"She could have been turned around."

"Maybe," I said. "But I don't think so. I think she came walking down the alley. When she got to this alcove, she was pulled in sideways, killed, and then dropped."

"Why would you think that?"

I gestured up the alley. "Because her footprints come down the alley towards the alcove."

Brice scowled. "That's biocrete. There aren't any prints."

"Biocrete is a living colonial organism, Captain. Like all living creatures, it sheds dead cells. This creates a fine layer of dust. The dust normally washes away into the reclamation strips, but it hasn't rained yet. Prints that match her shoes are there in that thin layer
of dust."

"You can see that?"

I nodded. Nice thing about better vision, and it didn't rely on technology. "If you get one of your officers to get a camera with a strong zoom I'm sure you can get some nice pictures of it."

Brice swore and turned to whisper urgently to one of the other officers.

I took a couple deep breaths and turned my attention back to the body. Men are supposed to be tough. We're always the ones that aren't supposed to be affected by this sort of thing. I consider myself as tough as the next guy, but I don't like seeing people like this. Dead is bad enough. Dead and mutilated is worse. There's a profound disrespect in mutilation. To top it off, Chrissy Winston wasn't someone dangerous. One quick blow with a blunt object to the right spot and she would have dropped dead in her tracks without knowing what had happened. But that isn't what they had done to her.

Her body was mostly in the alcove. Her right arm was extended out into the alley. Her hands were elegant. Soft but strong looking with bird-like bone structure. She had colored her nails a deep forest green. A deep purple bruise circled her wrist. The bones there looked odd as if someone had squeezed her wrist in a clamp of some sort until the bones splintered and broke. The bruising made it clear that this had happened to her while she was still alive. I let my eyes skip over her head. I wasn't ready to look closely at that yet.

There was another dark bruise around her neck. Her
shoulders were attractive as well. Small, firm with delicate bones. She was wearing a top with no shoulders. Like her nails, it was a deep forest green, but there were golden sparkles in the material. It ended just above her midriff. A long leather skirt, a darker green color, completed the outfit. The bright red shoes matched her red lipstick. Each of her ankles and her left wrist looked like the right. They had been squeezed until the bones shattered. Dark bruises banded each of her limbs. Chrissy reminded me of Calanthe, except fully human. Petite and pretty. But she had come down this alley on her own. Why?

I licked my lips and took a couple more deep breaths. The worst violation had happened to her head. Something had precisely cut around her head just above her meticulously formed eyebrows. The entire top of her head along with most of her short black hair had been popped off like the top of a can. It sat a foot or so away from the rest of the body. It looked like someone had sunk into the biocrete until only the top of their head was showing. But it was only the top of Chrissy's head. Her skull had tipped back over her outstretched right arm. The inside of the skull was empty except for a pool of blood that had leaked out onto the biocrete. Her empty eye sockets looking vacantly upwards.

My stomach is usually strong. Of course, I had been drinking Torlian coffee this morning too. That's probably why my stomach started to get uneasy looking at her scooped out skull. I turned away from the body and nearly ran into Brice. I'd been so focused on what I was doing that I hadn't noticed him approach. In other circumstances that lapse of awareness could have been enough to get me killed. It was enough to get my stomach to settle down. The last thing I wanted to do was vomit Torlian coffee on Brice's crime scene.

"Well? What do you see, detective Moreau?"

I gritted my teeth. Brice thought it was funny to call me that. I am a member of the Moreau Society, I don't deny that. I don't think it is a problem. Brice disagrees. I decided to let it slide. There were more important things going on here.

"She was alive when her brain was removed."

Brice looked a bit paler. I wasn't bothered by his name-calling. Really.

He swallowed. "Why do you think that?"

"The bruises, for one."

"She has bruising on her neck," Brice said. "She could have been choked to death before they ever cut into her skull."

"That would have taken too long. He didn't want to wait. She was violently restrained with enough force to break the bones in her wrists and ankles. But her neck isn't broken, just bruised. The blood spray indicates that her heart was still pumping when he cut into her skull. There are holes regularly spaced around the cut on her head. I think he put something on her that cut quickly through the skull. That was pulled off and discarded. There are blood tracks running down her face from the cut and her eyes, nose, and ears. But then something interesting happens. The tracks turn to the right and then actually go towards the top of her head."

Brice pushed his lips together. "What are you saying?"

"I think that after he removed the top of her skull, she was still alive. Then he tipped her over and poured her brain out into a container of some sort."

I turned and pointed at a spot near the body. There
was another fluid on the biocrete there that was paler than blood. "That is probably the fluid that was in the container. A bit splashed out when her brain fell into the container."

Captain Brice didn't look well. But he wasn't about to be weak in front of his officers or me. He took a couple deep breaths.

"Okay, so they took the brain. We knew that. Why?"

"How should I know?"

"Where were you last night?"

"What?"

Brice took a step closer, and his hand fell down to his gun. "I asked you where you were last night."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"You come down here claiming to have been hired by her father. You seem to know an awful lot about what went on in this alley."

"If you'd open your eyes you'd see the same things I've seen. I'm just telling you what I see here."

"So where were you last night?"

"I was at home," I said. "My landlady, Sonya Thornton, can confirm that. She brought me over something to
eat."

Brice eased down and took a step back. He rubbed
his jaw and nodded. "Fine. We'll check it out. I don't suppose you can tell us which way the perp went when he left the alley?"

I pointed at the door behind the body. "He went in there."

Brice shook his head. "It's locked. Place hasn't been used in years."

"Sorry. The lock is clean. There's no biocrete dust on it. If it hadn't been used in years, the door should be covered in the dust. Besides, I can see that the dust on the ground has been disturbed and the blood drips there along the wall lead towards the doorway, not away from it."

Brice waved to the officer that was taking pictures of Chrissy's footprints in the alley. "Officer Kelley, come here."

Officer Kelley came over. She was a sturdy-looking woman with a broad, friendly face. She flashed a warm smile at me. I liked her right away. She wasn't what some would consider beautiful, but I thought her warmth made her very attractive.

"Hi," I said. "Brock Marsden, private detective."

"Jillian Kelley." Kelley juggled the light and camera so that she could shake my hand. Her grip was like her smile, warm and strong. I wouldn't have minded holding on a bit longer, but she was about to drop the light. I let go and caught it before it could escape from her grasp.

"Thanks," she said.

"No problem."

"Officer, if you don't mind?" Brice gestured at the alcove. "I want to take a look at the doorway. Our dear detective Moreau here thinks that the perp went inside."

"You're a Moreau?" Kelley asked with frank interest.

"Yes."

"Maybe we could talk later? I have some–"

"Officer!"

Kelley snapped the light over to the alcove. "Sorry, sir."

Brice took the camera from Kelley and fiddled with the controls. Looking over his shoulder, I saw him enhance the contrast, and suddenly the dust on the ground was visible on the tiny screen. It was obvious that the door had swung out into the alley. There were even a few blood drops smeared when the door opened again and closed. Brice snapped off several shots and then handed the camera back to Kelley. He spoke into his comm.

"Listen up people. We now think that the perp entered this building. He might still be inside. We're going to go in and search as soon as backup gets here. I want teams surrounding this building and get someone up on the roof. We've got to lock it down now!"

Brice turned to me and jabbed a finger at my chest. "Marsden, you stay out of this."

"I can help."

"I'm not taking a civilian inside. If you get in the way and endanger my people, I'll bring you up on charges."

Brice turned to Kelley and told her to finish documenting the scene. They'd have to move the body to get inside through the door. It'd take a while.

I didn't plan on staying outside either. Brice could complain all he wanted, but I had to see what was inside there. Besides if he did try to lock me up he'd have to deal with Howard Winston. I didn't think he was ready to take that chance yet.