This was bad. Very bad. Not very bad like "wow, I spilled the milk" or "quick, in the closet, I think I hear my husband" or "I just came back from the doctor's, you need to get yourself tested." No, this was a different kind of level, like they-slipped-and-fell-on-the-knife-I-was-holding variety of bad.
There were two fundamental problems. The first was that now I had lost my main lead in a case that had the potential to resurrect my career from the toilet bowl it had become, land me a retainer with the department so I could still pick my own jobs, and maybe even afford a car whose rear doors weren't held closed with duct tape. A resurrection after a fall from grace does not come easily, and opportunities are rarer than a white elephant or an STD that Lindsay Lohan hasn't already acquired.
The second fundamental problem, I'll explain later.
When the Pennington lead went dead- kind of like Pennington himself had- I had a limited window to stay ahead of the cops, and Marty in particular. I needed to identify the connection between Pennington and the extant- and extinct- victim, Mark Stevens, so as to determine if the murders were linked or coincidental. I then had to deduce the identity of the woman in the black trench coat.
Pennington had to be the priority- there were few identifiers for the woman in black, and the lack of witnesses to the murder already meant I'd be chasing smoke if I went after her first. Marty offered me a ride in his car, and since by now it was raining and I wasn't confident the duct tape would hold on my own vehicle, I graciously accepted his offer.
He'd been shot in his apartment. The size of the wound suggested it was probably a .38 caliber round, but we wouldn't know for sure until the lab had retrieved the slug remains and provided its autopsy.
The apartment itself was nice enough. It was located in a reasonable neighbourhood, the building about 20 years old but well-maintained, the unit renovated to allow for the high power needs of those in their early 30's and inclined towards the nerdier things in life. Four computers with glowing cases sat underneath a huge workstation area that took up the allotment which would have been sold in Real Estate speak as the "large, open-plan dining area", with eight monitors taking up the entire area in a 180 degree curve. Meals had been consumed in the kitchen itself, on the bench, near the sink, and the dishes placed directly in.
The rest of the layout was expected. Figurines of Yoda, schematics for the Millennium Flacon, a phaser from the original Star Trek show, and Warhammer figures in various stages of being painted, all the assorted paraphernalia guaranteed to keep a man a virgin well into his 40's. A huge, 70-inch TV sat on one wall.
Looking around the apartment while Marty chatted with the photographers, I noticed a single toothbrush, a small tube of tooth paste, single-serve microwave meals in the freezer, a single bed in the bedroom, a single bed-side table, a single recliner in the front of the TV.
"I reckon the vic was single," I said to Marty.
"How do you figure?"
"'Cos he was ugly."
Hmmmmm. Two plates and two sets of cutlery in the sink, though.
I turned around just as Karen McGilvray stepped into the room. Karen Friggin' McGilvray. I guess I should put the phrase "Senior Lead Detective" in front of her name, but part of my just couldn't bring myself to do it, because "Backstabbing Horrid Knut-Hating Bitch" kept jumping up in front of it. Her eyes narrowed as she saw me, and strode across, her severe-looking black suit swishing with each vengeful stride.
"Knut, what are you doing here?" she demanded.
"I'm on retainer, Karen. I believe this is Marty's case," I replied, trying to appeal for help. She turned around and fixed Marty with a beady glare.
"Marty, what the hell?!" she snapped. "I thought we had made it clear we did not deal with Mr. Tortenheimel's... agency, any more."
"Whoa, whoa," I said, "what's with the pause before 'agency'? I'm a legitimate investigative business!"
"Well," she replied, "aside from the fact that I've seen a blind guide dog be of more use than you, you screwed us on three cases and sold your stories to the press instead, removed and then replaced evidence from a crime scene-"
"You can't prove that!"
"So that you could 'miraculously' re-discover it- and yes we can prove it- and finally, told a kidnap victim's family not to get the police involved."
"I got the kid back, didn't I?"
"Yeah, missing three fingers and an ear."
"You only have his parent's word for it that he wasn't missing those before he was kidnapped. Anyway, you arrested a clown- an actual clown- at a children's birthday party on suspicion of that kidnapping!"
"Based on information you gave me, Knut!"
"I didn't give it to you, you took it out of the pocket of my pants after we slept together, and you left me handcuffed to the bed. It's not my fault you can't be trusted and I like to leave a few... decoys around for precaution. You can't sleep your way to a case conclusion, Karen, although heavens knows you've tried."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Come on, you drop your pants so often the elastic in your underwear needs to be replaced on a weekly basis! If I put the people you hadn't slept with in a police line-up, it'd be one lonely guy saying 'she had me booked for next week'!"
I slowly regained consciousness. It appeared that after Karen had tasered me, I had hit my head on a bench whilst I was collapsing. The bruise on my rib suggested she'd kicked me on the ground, too. There was a note on my chest.
Hey, Knut, the photographers had to drag Karen away from you. An ambulance will be here in a bit, I have to go make a report about the incident. Try not to bleed too much on the crime scene. Your pal, Marty.
Perfect. I was now alone in the crime scene, unencumbered by pesky procedural business. Knut's Kunning Koncepts win the day again.
I hit a key on the computer, which buzzed from sleep into life across two of the monitors, and entered "Leia69" as the password. To my surprise, the password was accepted. The desktop flared into life and a dozen folders appeared. Research Files read one. eBay photos read another. General Accounts was the one I selected, since money tended to be the first place to look for motive- last deposit, or last withdrawal said a lot about a person's final movements too. Instead, however, it was a bunch of video files, from a CCTV camera that appeared to be hidden in the kitchen- from the angle, it must have been in the steam extractor above the stove. I turned around- there was nothing visible, but five slots standard halfway up the extraction chamber must have been where the camera was located, cos the rest was stainless steel.
I waved my hands. A miniature me appeared appeared on the screen as an application launched, waving at myself in the same room. A menu selector came up and I hit rewind. First, I could see me regaining consciousness, then lying back down, the Karen appeared to be dragged back in, then she kicked me repeatedly in the side while screaming incoherently, then I un-collapsed, got un-tasered, and wandered back out of the unit. I kept rewinding.
There was the victim. He un-bled, un-collapsed, stood back up, and looked terrified with his hands in the air.
The woman in black standing there, holding a gun at him. Blonde hair. No sunglasses this time. Same trenchcoat- guess she didn't want to risk getting blood on her. I rewound further and pressed "play". A dinner in the kitchen. Lots of gestures. The vic wanders to the fridge- just off-camera, but you could see the light from the door come on- and came back with a number of cheeses. Lots of gesturing, the blonde woman looking interested. Then the gun drawn, the shot fired, and the woman approaches the body, side-steps the expanding pool of blood, and ripped something off the lapel of the vic's jacket. I returned to the fridge- it was completely empty.
I loaded up the vic's photo application. Convention shots, cosplay, one of him wearing Leia's golden bikini that could not be un-seen; it was like Jabba the Hutt and Leia had had offspring and neither was happy about it. A number of photos of him at a lab wearing his jacket, with a silver hawk pin on the lapel. A pin that was now missing.
I logged out of the computer- the cops could try to figure a way past the password on their own. I went back to the kitchen again and looked around. The panel on the steam extractor was slightly ajar, so I took a knife from the knife block and tried to wedge it open.
There was the sound of footsteps behind me I had been unaware of. I turned, and a man I had never seen before walked through the door, then ran at me, slipped on part of the blood on the floor, and fell onto the knife I was holding.
This was bad. And was now my second fundamental problem.
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