Opus X Series Boxed Set Two

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

May 4, 2229, Neo Southern California Metroplex, Police Enforcement Zone 122 Station, Office of Captain Alexander Ragnar

Erik yawned as he stepped into Captain Ragnar’s office, Jia right behind him.

They had been going over some old reports when the captain summoned them. Maybe another reporter needed to ask about his underwear color. He almost grinned at Jia. The way she’d reacted had made it worthwhile.

I should have said something crazy, he thought. That would have been fun.

He’d have to take the next opportunity that presented itself. Unless he was about to receive a gift. “What’s up, Captain?”

“Something you’ll find interesting.” Captain Ragnar tapped his PNIU. Erik’s and Jia’s both chimed. “New case.” He scratched at his beard. “Unless you want to spend the rest of the week going over those old reports?”

Erik made a face. “Nah, I’m good. The most annoying thing cops share with soldiers besides people shooting at you is all the reports.”

“Bureaucracy is the blood of the UTC.” Captain Ragnar summoned a data window depicting a smiling dark-haired Asian woman in a bright green dress. “This is Chau Nguyen. Thirty-two years old, she’s a personal assistant. She worked for Euterpe Corporation until yesterday.”

“Euterpe? The big music company, right?” Jia asked.

“If by big,” he turned to Jia, “you mean the largest music-focused conglomerate in the UTC, then sure. They’re headquartered in the Hexagon.”

“Ok.” Erik whistled. “Never been much of a music guy, but I’ve heard the name bounced around.”

Jia stared at the image. “Wait, worked? Not works? Was she fired after looking into fraud? More embezzlement?”

Captain Ragnar shook his head, his faint smile disappearing. “I only wish it were that simple.” He swiped his hand through the window. A new image appeared of a pale, rigid Chau slumped over the control yoke of a flitter.

Jia wrinkled her nose. “I see what you mean.”

Unless Chau was a secret gangster, they were dealing with an innocent person killed Uptown. Erik had shed his illusions about Earth’s perfection decades ago, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t bothered by innocent lives being cut short.

Captain Ragnar nodded. “She was found dead yesterday on a parking platform connected to her residential tower. There were no immediate signs of foul play. Officers on the scene said it looked like an OD. Her PNIU is unaccounted for, and they haven’t been able to track it. I’ve already got Digital Forensics looking into it.” He swiped again. “She scratched a message into her dashboard, maybe because she didn’t have her PNIU.” He tapped his PNIU, and the text of Chau’s last message appeared in a new data window.

Jia narrowed her eyes and read aloud. “I can’t take it anymore. It’s just too much stress. I’m ashamed. I’ve been using drugs. If I end it now by my own hand, at least you all won’t be blamed for me being so antisocial. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Jia snorted.

Erik blinked at his partner in surprise. Whatever Jia’s faults, she had always shown great compassion toward victims. Even when she was having trouble in prior months, it manifested as anger toward criminals, not a lack of respect for their victims.

“Jia?” he probed quietly.

“Please.” She pointed. “This isn’t a suicide.” She leaned forward. “Some monster killed this woman, and has inflicted even more suffering on her family with a fake suicide note.”

Captain Ragnar nodded slowly. “Forensics didn’t get anything useful other than her DNA on the scene, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a suicide. The body was flagged by a surveillance drone, and a nearby patrol unit went to do a check. They contacted the listed emergency next-of-kin, her sister, who swears up and down that Chau would never take her own life. She was a little emotional in her statement, but she implied Chau had been being secretive and might have some sort of trouble at work.”

“A lot of family members don’t want to accept the truth in this kind of situation,” Erik rubbed his chin. “We sure this isn’t that? People do kill themselves.”

“They do.” Jia frowned. “But this doesn’t smell right.”

“Is that your gut talking?” he pushed.

“It’s rational analysis talking. If she was going to kill herself, where’s her PNIU? Why didn’t she send a message instead of scratching her last thoughts into her dashboard? There’s no reason for a suicidal woman to destroy or throw out her PNIU, but there’s all the reason in the world for her murderer to do it, especially if she managed to record them. Someone thought they could get away with murder, and we won’t let them. I’m outraged for the victim, and I’m angry that they thought that a weak coverup would be enough.”

Captain Ragnar smiled.

Erik stared at the message, considering the evidence gathered so far. Everything Jia said made sense, but his time as a detective had proved people could fall into their own darkness too easily. Conspiracies choked the universe, but those conspiracies didn’t cause every bad event.

That didn’t matter, though. If his partner wanted to investigate, they would investigate. She would never need to worry; he would always have her back.

“We can’t be sure until we investigate,” Captain Ragnar commented. “And if the sister’s right about Chau being secretive, that means she might have stumbled upon something, especially given who she was working for.”

Erik snorted. “Let me guess, Euterpe is a Ceres subsidiary?”

Captain Ragnar smiled but shook his head. “No, but she worked as a personal assistant for Rena Winston,” he explained as if that was all the data anyone needed.

“Rena Winston?” Erik wrinkled his forehead in confusion as he turned to Jia. “Who the hell is that?”

“A superstar singer,” Jia explained. “She’s from Remus, but she’s popular all over the UTC, especially on Earth.”

“A singer?” He turned back to the captain. “That’s a big deal?”

“How many non-Earthers can you think of who have hit it big on Earth?” Jia challenged.

“I don’t pay much attention to that kind of thing, other than sphere ball,” Erik answered.

“The upshot is that she’s a big deal, and she’s not even twenty. She is starting a world tour soon. Even some talk of her doing a core worlds tour in a couple of years. She was discovered by a talent scout when she was a young kid and moved to Earth.”

Erik eyed her, a smirk playing on his lips. “Since when are you into superstar singers?”

Jia rolled her eyes. “She’s been everywhere in the news, Erik. She’s hard to miss.”

“If you say so.”

Jia opened her mouth to retort but snapped it shut before offering, “I’m not into her kind of music, but she’s supposed to be the next Aline Bisset.”

Erik stared at Jia like she was speaking Zitark. Another superstar singer from a core world colony? “Aline Bisset?”

Jia gasped. This time she looked stunned. “You don’t know Aline Bisset?”

He shook his head. “She also from Remus?”

Captain Ragnar chuckled. “What did you do for entertainment on the frontier?”

He looked at his boss. “Played a lot of darts?”

Jia shook her head and sighed. “Aline Bisset. You know, the Angel of Marseille? She had that song Hyperspace Love? I mean, she’s retired now, but she’s not that old. Her career was starting around the time you joined the Army.”

“I didn’t pay a lot of attention to music on the frontier, and not much even before.” Erik gestured at the window. “But that doesn’t matter. I get the point. This Chau Nguyen was a personal assistant to some big music star, and she started acting sketchy and ended up dead under suspicious circumstances. This smells like maybe this Rena Winston has something to hide, something that might hurt her career.” He looked at the captain. “Is Euterpe cooperating, or are we getting a standard-issue corporate see/hear/speak no evil?”

Captain Ragnar chuckled. “Kind of. They’re not happy to have cops sniffing around, but they’ve agreed to let you two come in and talk to people without a warrant. In exchange, we’ve agreed to keep this low key.”

“We’re letting them dictate things?” Erik asked.

“If this is a homicide, time is of the essence. We don’t have enough evidence to kick down their doors, and they can make life tough for us. If this is nothing more than an unfortunate suicide, there’s no reason to mess with Rena’s career.”

Jia folded her arms. “At least they aren’t blocking us from the beginning. That might mean they care a little.”

Erik nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure they’re torn up.”

Captain Ragnar managed a sheepish smile. “My daughter would never forgive me if she found out I messed with her favorite singer’s tour without a good reason, but for now,” he pointed to them, “I want you two to proceed on the assumption we have a crime to uncover. First step, go check with the coroner. She did a full workup last night.”

“Don’t worry, Captain.” Jia spun on her heel. “If there’s nothing there, we’ll clear this right up. If there’s more, we’ll find whoever is responsible.”

The door clicked behind them. “I don’t doubt it for a second,” he replied to his now-empty office.

The detectives stepped into the medical examination room.

A tall, pale woman in a white uniform sat at a desk, her long dark hair up and a bored expression on her face. Several data windows floated in front of her. Some contained pictures from different angles of Chau Nguyen on an examination table. Dense text and numbers packed the others. The woman muttered under her breath and shook her head.

Erik hadn’t talked to the woman other than briefly in a call, but he recognized her—Camila Serrano, the new head coroner at the 1-2-2. She’d only been working there for a couple of weeks, and Erik and Jia hadn’t encountered any cases that needed her help. He’d had no problems with the man she replaced, but there had been a lot of turnover in Forensics following the arrest of Head Coroner Hannigan. Several people worried that he’d tainted them professionally, and they needed a new start.

Camila tilted her head and frowned. A few quick swipes brought up new data windows.

“Can I help you?” she asked, not turning away from the windows. “I’m in the middle of something. I don’t have time for chitchat.”

“We’ve been assigned the Chau Nguyen case,” Erik explained. “Not exactly chitchat. The captain said to stop by, and from the looks of things, you’ve already examined the body.”

“Oh. That. That makes sense. Sorry.” Camila turned in her chair. “Sure. I examined the body last night. I was just going over the results from some of the tests. I was going to send the information in a report later, but this works, too.”

“Can you confirm the cause of death?” Jia asked.

“Definitely Dragon Tear overdose.” Camila returned her attention to her data windows. “Very high levels in her system. Even Detective Big Guy over there would have died. At least she didn’t suffer.” She sighed. “But there are some irregularities.”

Jia nodded. “Our working theory is a murder made to look like suicide.”

Erik frowned. He walked toward the data windows, but he couldn’t make any sense of the dense information from a quick skim. “What kind of irregularities?”

Camila inclined her head toward a data window showing Chau’s body on an examination table. “I checked her from all angles. No bruising, no abrasions, no signs of a struggle. Almost perfect health from an external perspective.”

“Like my partner said, working theory. We don’t know she was murdered. Right now, all we have to go off is a note and her family’s suspicions.”

Camila shrugged. “When you spend your life processing dead bodies, you get used to things. Even though Dragon Tear ODs are more of a stop-breathing-and-die situation than thrashing, it’s weird not to find any sign of injury, even just from her hitting her head or something in the car. But that’s not the really strange thing.” She pointed at a data window filled with several rows of numbers.

Jia leaned forward to read the window, her eyes following the numbers. “Nanite concentrations in blood and lymph?”

Camila nodded. “Exactly. Notice anything about them?”

“I’m not sure.” Jia shrugged. “I have to admit I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“After they do their thing, medical nanites should diffuse into the bloodstream and leave the body via urinary excretion. It takes a while, depending on the initial concentration and that kind of thing.” Camila jabbed at the data window. “I also examined some of the nanite samples with help from Digital Forensics. I’ll give you the short version, Detectives.” She turned around in her chair to better see them both. “The concentration, type, and condition of the nanites in Miss Nguyen’s blood and lymph indicate she likely received extensive nanite-based treatment on the day of her death. There are some other things off as well, such as her cytokine counts and other results that support that interpretation.”

Erik frowned as evidence crystallized a mere possibility into something solid. “You’re saying someone could have beat the crap out of her and covered it up? Injected her with a bunch of medical nanites, or slapped a bunch of med patches on her?”

Camila shook her finger at him once. “Exactly. I’m the coroner, not a detective, but who plans to kill themselves then goes through the trouble of healing, only to OD later? It seems like a lot of work.”

Jia nodded. “Who, indeed? Thank you. If you find anything else, let us know.”

Camila gave a little salute. “Will do, Detectives.”

Erik looked at the image of the body for a few more seconds before turning to leave. The detectives stepped into the hallway, and he closed the door behind them. Malcolm stood a few meters away from the door in that day’s fashion atrocity, a bright pink Hawaiian shirt covered with giraffes.

The technician blinked a few times and licked his lips. “Oh, hey, Detectives. You were talking to Camila about the Nguyen case?”

“Yeah,” Erik replied. “You the one who helped her do the nanite analysis?”

“Yes. That’s pretty messed up if you ask me, but I’m sure you two will track things down.” Malcolm stepped toward the door. “Say, um, this might be a weird question, but when you were in there, did Camila only talk about the case?”

Jia nodded. “What else would she talk about?”

“Oh, I was just curious. She’s new, and you know, we have to work together on occasion, so it’s better to learn more about her.” Malcolm averted his eyes. Scarlet touched his cheeks.

“Learn what?” Erik asked, trying not to grin.

“You know, what kinds of snacks she likes, that kind of thing.”

“If she has someone?” Erik suggested.

Malcolm turned into a statue for a few seconds. “It’s good to know about people’s backgrounds. Don’t you think?” He ran his tongue inside his cheek. “Oh, I just remembered I have to go check on something.”

Erik cleared his throat. “Mind if we go with you? We’ve got a few things we need you to do.”

“Oh, yeah. The case?” He waved for them to follow. “Totally. Let’s go chat in my office.”