I said, “I take it Alice kept her end of the bargain.”

  I saw a look of pain on his face.

  “She did, at least until she was dying. Before she passed, she told Samantha the truth. A week after she was buried, Samantha showed up at my door—no big deal, I've lived alone since my wife died eight years ago, we had no children...”

  He seemed to drift off, then shook his head and continued talking.

  “Anyway, Samantha told me she knew about me and her mother and demanded money for her silence. I took the easy way out just to keep the peace.”

  He stopped, lit a cigarette, took another sip of scotch.

  “Three weeks ago, she came to me, told me she was pregnant and who the father was. I told her that I would make sure she and the child were well taken care of if she moved to another state. I wanted my grandchild to have a chance to grow up white.”

  He paused to gulp down the rest of his scotch. He put out his cigarette, took a deep breath.

  “Last time I spoke to her, she said she was going to do as I asked, but first she had to say goodbye to Sarah Laumer. I asked her why and she told me Sarah was her closest friend—everyone in town knew Sarah leaned ‘lavender’, so I immediately understood the nature of the relationship. I told Samantha to call me when she was ready to leave—I was already making arrangements for her and the child to start a new life in Seattle. They found her body in a ditch two days later. I was furious. When I went to the station to volunteer to be Watkins' lawyer, I was just fishing to see if he was guilty. I knew he wasn't the killer after talking to him for fifteen minutes. That's when I went to see Sarah. She was drunk when she opened the door. She looked at me, and I saw the guilt in her eyes. She slammed the door shut. That's when I sent for you.”

  “You bastard,” I hissed. “You could have gotten me killed.”

  “Oh, I doubt it Mr. Dafoe. Over the years, I've come to the conclusion that people generally kill over one of three reasons. They kill because they are greedy, because they hate, or because they love too hard. Money wasn't an issue and Sarah Laumer neither hated nor loved you. I knew in my gut, she wouldn't kill a stranger. Me, maybe, but never you. Deep down, Sarah Laumer was a decent person who let her...her love for my daughter overwhelm her.”

  He looked at me for few seconds then pulled an envelope from his inner suit pocket.

  “This will make it more than worth your while and assure your silence.” He handed me the envelope.

  I took it and pulled out the check and read how much it was made out for.

  I shook my head and softly laughed, “Yeah. You read me right. That's for sure. Deal.”

  I put the envelope in my pocket.

  “You're the only man who knows about this, so tell me, do you think God will forgive me?”

  The question startled me. I wasn't expecting it.

  I looked at him sharply. I peered into his weary, yellowish eyes and realized why they didn't match the rest of him.

  “You're dying.”

  He nodded. “Got the news five weeks ago. That's why I was so upset over Samantha's death. I felt God had given me a chance to make things right before I go, only to have it stolen from me.”

  He stared at me—as if I could bestow absolution. I couldn't offer him anything. I just got up and left.

  I read his obituary in the paper four months later. He left no survivors.

  The End

  Caveman

  I woke up with my skin exploding.

  I shot up out of my bed and as soon as my feet hit the floor, the burning itch ceased.

  The alarm had already switched back to a simple audio beep instead of telling my in-link to spam my skin nerves. Thinking the time, I realized I had overslept fifteen minutes. No wonder my implants zapped me.

  Too much vodka last night. Stumbling to the bathroom to take a piss, I tasted my tongue and got nauseous from its rough texture. Leaning over the sink and slapping out a shot of water into a paper cup, I drank it and did it again…and again.

  Too much, too fast. I leaned over the crapper and gave it all back to the moon.

  Shaking from the effort, with my throat aflame with stomach bile, I got some more water and drank it…this time slowly.

  My head throbbed. Thrusting my hand into the med-slot next to the sink, I felt the prick of the needles on my palm, rapidly followed by the cool spray of heal-skin over the area where my blood had been sampled. The light went green above the slot, and I took out my hand. A few seconds later, a fix-it pad was spat out. I slapped it on my thigh and looked at myself in the mirror.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  Bloodshot eyes with bags, pasty skin, thinning mousy brown hair, cut short. A few centimeters shy of two meters in height and a body that had been missing regular workouts lately. Going soft.

  Like I said, it wasn’t pretty, but it was pretty much normal.

  I got in the shower cube, spread-eagled and thought it on. The cleanjuice hit me and as soon as it started it was over, and I was blown-dry.

  After slipping on my coveralls, I went into my kitchen nook, heated up a cup of tea and grabbed a food bar. In five minutes, I was done, and it was time to go to work.

  By the door hung my gun and holster. I strapped it on and started to open the door, but paused.

  The fix-it pad had helped me feel human, but something still wasn’t right. I looked over at my kitchen nook, gave in and went over and opened a drawer, took out the vodka container, flipped open the top and took a couple of swigs.

  Man had been abusing alcohol since the dawn of time, and he still hadn’t found a cure for a hangover. Time was the only remedy and the best you could do was to put it off until you had the time to deal with the uncomfortable healing process. Hair of the dog.

  That’s what I told myself…for about the fourth day in a row.

  I took the tube to work. Inside the cramped car was a mixture of all types. Some were obvious techies, miners, electricians and the like. A few were junior engineers or lower management, while the rest were non-descript worker bees. A smattering of kids was thrown in for good measure. All—men, women and children—wore coveralls. Most of the adults wore blue, green or regolith gray. Some of the kids had some stripes or colors woven into their jumpers.

  As the tube sped on, I hung onto a strap and just looked at my feet. Some of the kids were openly staring at my gun hanging underneath my armpit; others noticed the neon orange stripes that were on my sleeves. All left me alone.

  Caveman.

  The tube came to my stop, and I got out, went up the escalator and exited the station into Company Square.

  The Vegas sky had already taken on a bright blue, giving the illusion (or so we’ve been told) of a sunny day on Earth. A large pillar shot up from the center of the square, and pedestrians were walking or rolling to and fro. Buildings, reaching up near the roof of the cave, encircled the pillar.

  I walked into the one that had Lunar Mines chiseled above the entrance, took the lift up to the eighth floor and went into the office marked Cavern Security. I had only taken a few steps into the room when a voice called out to me.

  “Andropov! You’re late.”

  I looked over at the source of the voice, Captain Ling.

  “Shut up, Harvey. This isn’t my best morning, Ok?”

  He gave me the once over with eyes and shrugged his shoulders. He was my boss, but also a friend. I had known him for years. He was already a Sergeant when I joined the Cavemen.

  Cavemen…Cavern Security.

  When the first lunar colonies finally were established in the late 21 Century, it soon became apparent that domes on the surface weren't viable. While cheap, domes were too damn fragile. The famous collapse of 2098 was triggered by a small cluster of micrometeorites that riddled one of the main European Union’s colonies. Two-thirds of settlement (over a thousand people) perished before integrity was re-established.

  The Yanks didn’t wait for this to happen to them and took action. They moved their colony underground. The Europeans and the Chinese quickly followed suit.

  Then, as industry expanded, so did the tunneling. Mindful of the necessity to enforce safety standards in order not to suffer another catastrophic blowout like in ’98, all three major lunar powers started up their own tunnel inspection teams.

  After the Plague War of 2319, most of humanity was wiped out on Earth. It took the ruthless isolation and extermination of any infected (or possibly exposed) settlers to enable the three colonies able to avoid Earth’s fate.

  It’s been two hundred years since the war, and we are still waiting for the cure to the bio-plagues on Earth. Management says they’re working on it. I personally don’t give a damn—but in all honesty—I feel that way about most things.

  Humbled by the travesty that occurred on the mother world, the three colonies put aside most differences and administratively united in 2322. The three tunnel inspection teams merged, and Cavern Security was born. With a couple of years, it had evolved into the general public security system, and Cavern Security was now the de-facto police, for better or worse. The Americans started calling members of Cavern Security “Cavemen", and the name stuck.

  I’d joined the team at nineteen. I wasn’t all that hot academically, certainly not engineer material, much less management or scientist. It was going to be worker bee status for me. I had an ego back then, and couldn’t bear being a face in the crowd. Being young, strong and mean, I applied for and was accepted as an apprentice Caveman. My family was ashamed of me, my friends (the few I had, anyway) deserted me, but I didn’t care and within a year I had earned my first stripe, was wired with implants and armed.

  I never looked back. That had been seventeen years ago.

  ******

  I stopped by the water dispenser, swiped my pass card, got a packet of water and then made my way to my desk. I sat in my chair and shut my eyes and logged into my mail. Scanning and sorting to memory the messages, I was grateful most were just general announcements and requiring no effort on my part. I was looking forward to an easy morning, for time to clear my head, when Ling messaged me to come into his office. With a groan, I got up walked into his cube.

  Harvey eyed me for a second then got to business. That’s what I liked about Harvey; he kept his nose out of your off-hours life.

  “Ben, we’ve got a body in a flat in the Idaho Cave complex. Residential Unit Charlie, flat 1598. Female. You’re next on the roster. Two foots are keeping the scene intact till you get there. Go clean it up.”

  I just nodded, spun around on my heel and left. By the time I got to the lift, I had already linked into Comms, got a case frequency and contacted dispatch to tell the two rookies guarding the crime scene what it was and to join me on it. I also confirmed that lab services were en-route the crime scene.

  I left the building and commandeered a cab and told the driver where to go. He didn’t like losing work time to cart me around, but he had no choice in the matter. Within ten minutes of me getting in the cab, the two patrolmen on guard at the flat had checked in and had given me a quick rundown. I wrote the info to memory.

  The victim was female, age twenty-two. Name: Jean McSwain. Status: Worker. Currently, on the dole. The building manager had found the body in her flat.

  I arrived shortly at the residential unit and went in. Exiting out of the lift at the fifteenth floor, the smell hit me. Sweet, rotten. This must have been what tipped the building manager to go in the apartment. The two patrolmen were in front of the dead girl’s apartment. Their names were Chang and Wurst.

  “Lab team here yet?”

  “No, sir," snapped Chang.

  “Ok, I’ll go on in and look, send in the lab squad when they get here.” I didn’t wait for a reply, but palmed open the door and went in the flat.

  She had been dead quite a few days. She lay crumpled, face up on the floor. Her belly was bloated with the gas of her guts rotting, and her face was mottled and swollen. She was wearing only a robe that mercifully covered most of her body. A brownish, tarry substance leaked out from underneath her. The bladder and bowels had let loose when death came.

  The smell must have been terrible, but I had blocked my olfactory nerves just before I opened the door.

  A rookie I’m not.

  I began to toss the room. Typical single worker flat. Windowless, small room with sanitary cube and food nook in the rear. Folding bed/table/drawers by the wall. A couple of chairs and government issued info center. She had some items on a few shelves; pictures of her with what appears to be friends and family, entertainment cubes and other mundane stuff.

  I started to go through her drawers. Underwear, overalls, hygiene supplies. I found a debit card and put it aside for later investigation. Near the bottom of one drawer, I pushed aside some t-shirts and found three joy holes.

  Joy holes. Vaginal sheaths. Thin, polymer skins that have millions of nanocircuits coated on it. Women can insert them and become instant courtesans, able to send spasms of pleasure to their lover and themselves. Most couples have them (even if they don't admit it).

  I examined one of the sheaths for a few minutes. Just as I suspected. It was a one-way street, only the male side was coated for play. The female side was dead-zoned. Any woman who used this would feel nothing but pressure from the act itself. That made our victim a pro, a hooker.

  I took the debit card to the info center and gave it a scan. Over 2000 credits. Way too much for an unemployed worker to have lying around. Yeah, she was a working girl all right. Management frowned on freelancers, but it wasn't a high priority for us. Sooner or later Management would have stepped in and taken their cut of her funds.

  The door to the apartment slid open, Wurst stuck his head in.

  “Sergeant, the lab team is here, do you want them to come in yet?”

  I nodded and a few seconds later the lab rats entered the room. I recognized the lead lad tech, Doris Pascal, a frumpy blond who was already well past her authorized breeding years.

  “I wanna know what killed her and a complete DNA sweep—start with the body and work your way around the room. She was a hooker, and I want to ID her customers. There are a few joy holes in her drawer—swab those closely.”

  Doris gave me a quick nod and went to work.

  I stepped out into the passageway and told Chang and Wurst to keep the curious away and to bag, tag and seal the room after the lab team was done. I made my way back to the office.

  While awaiting the lab results, I sat at my desk and accessed Central Data and looked into the life of the late Jean McSwain. There wasn’t much. Born: 2504, Beijing Cavern Hospital. A result of an in-vitro match by the Eugenics Board. Father: Richard Woo, lab tech third class, Mother: Brenda McSwain, tube sanitation worker. Never met her dad. Mother died two years ago—suicide. Jean made it through tenth level academics, where she placed in the lower thirty-percentile—worker bee all the way. First and only job was as a food prep tech for Idaho Caverns administration and according to Central Data records, wasn’t too good at it. Was relieved of duties two years ago and went on the dole. No arrest record. She hadn’t applied to do her mandatory breeding, but she was young and had until she was thirty-five.

  From the way she was living her life, about her only positive contribution to society would’ve been her genes. Now even that was lost.

  I sat around the office for a while; sorted through a few more files and messages and then went to the cafeteria for a bite. Halfway through lunch, a notification alert came into my comm link and said the lab results were ready. I wolfed down the rest of a food wedge and went back to my desk to access Central Data.

  She had been dead a little over eight days. Cause of death was a single puncture through the heart by a slender, stiletto type object. Entry was from front to back, clean and sharp.

  No surprise there. Almost all murderers use knives, blunt objects or fists. The occasional poison crops up every now and then. With the draconian penalties on possession of firearms by non-security personnel, most killings are done with whatever’s handy. This one was just neater than usual.

  DNA results gave us ten names, nine male and one female. The female was a neighbor. I linked into Wurst to see if he was still on the scene. He was. I told him about the neighbor and told him to bring her in for examination and let me know the results. That left nine guys to bring in and examine.

  I flashed up the nine names and breathed a sigh of relief when I confirmed none were engineers or higher. Fewer hassles that way. Should be able to go out and just grab'em, drag’em and plug’em into the machine and figure out if any of them was the guilty party. There was a chance none of them was our man, but I doubted it. This one had “John” written all over it.

  I got up and walked into the Captain’s cube. He was inside there, sitting behind his desk with his eyes closed. I could tell by his jaw twitching that he was sorting through some admin stuff, so I just sat in the extra chair and waited for him to finish. After a minute or two he opened his eyes and looked at me.

  “Well?”

  “I got the initial results from the Lab on the dead broad at Idaho. Looks like she was a hooker. Stabbed to death. Lab says we got DNA from ten citizens in the room, one female who was a neighbor and nine males. All workers or low level techs.”

  I saw the look of relief cross Ling’s brow with the mention of that last fact.

  “Let me guess, you want some bodies to help you go out and escort the citizens in for examination, right?”

  “Yeah. The two foots who secured the scene are bringing in the woman neighbor for exam, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for it to be her. I’m banking on one of her customers or a boyfriend. We’ll know more when we get’em in. It should be fairly cut and dried.”

  Ling shrugged and shut his eyes. I waited. After a few moments, he opened them and said, “Espinoza is yours for two days, that should be enough.”

  “How about also letting me keep the two rookies from the scene. It’d be good for them.”

 

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