| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <Shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Dead Men Tell No Tales |
| Date: | Thu, 31 Dec 1998 13:03:54 +0000 |
>>>>>[For the record... hell of a way to fill the gap between Christmas
and New Year, ain't it?
+++++begin video
Marlowe walks up to the patrolman, shows his ID. "I'm expected?"
The young Lone Star cop inspects the badge, nods. "Go on up, sir. It's
5D. Just follow your nose."
Indeed, as the elevator doors open, Marlowe coughs and brings a
handkerchief to his nose: whatever's in there must smell pretty bad.
Going through the open door, he tries not to notice the puddle of fresh
vomit in the hallway: it must smell _really_ bad.
"What we got, Juli?" he asks.
His wife - Detective Sergeant Hart-Kryzdanovich - hands him a jar of
some sort of balm, which Marlowe smears on the handkerchief with relief
before donning a pair of surgical gloves. "Dead guy. Been dead a while,
as if you couldn't tell. Didn't get out much, not sociable, so it was
the smell that alerted the neighbours. He's through here... Lieutenant?"
Lieutenant Chu greets Marlowe with a nod. "Hiyas, Andy. Here, usual
deal." He hands the PI a datareader, which Marlowe taps with his
credstick and thumbprints: a confidentiality agreement or some other
legalese. "Dead guy's a John Doe for now. Take a look."
The dead guy is very dead indeed, bloated and decayed, soaking the chair
he sits with seeping fluids. It's a genuinely repulsive sight.
"Male, caucasian, human, brown hair, brown cybereyes, datajack." Marlowe
recites, looking the rotting body over. "Found seated, unidentified chip
inserted in datajack. Been dead at least a month, probably more like
two."
"I thought that, too, but one of the neighbours remembered seeing him go
into his apartment with a load of groceries before Christmas, that's
what, two or three weeks?" Chu replies.
"No way, he's too far gone..." Marlowe draws his coat tighter around
himself, looks at the open windows. "They open when we got here?"
"No, the patrolman who called it in opened them, it would be just
unbearable in here otherwise. He's the kid downstairs. Lost his
breakfast, but didn't lose his cool..." Chu pauses, glances around at
Julianne, who's already moving to the wall and carefully tapping keys on
the terminal.
"Environmental controls have been disabled. The heating's jammed on
full. No wonder he was decomposing so fast." she reports after a moment.
"Okay, we need a forensic decker. This definitely makes it suspicious."
"Right. You guys need me, call me." Chu heads for the door with evident
relief. Marlowe studies the dead man closely, still breathing through
the handkerchief.
"Any thoughts, Andy?"
"Not yet. No signs of a struggle, but the body's pretty far gone, there
could be a spur wound to the back of the neck or something subtle and we
wouldn't see it until the autopsy. Kill him while he's jacked into a
simsense and dead to the world. Could be poison, could be all sorts of
things. Definitely suspicious, though. What's the background?"
Hart checks her pocket secretary. "John Doe through and through. Paid on
time, always certified funds, no ID. Landlord just gouged him for double
the damage deposit and three months' rent up front, the guy paid, no
problem, they only met like three times. Landlord knew him as 'Jack
Free', but there's no SIN lodged under that name and registered here.
He'd been here since August 18th. My guess is a 'runner."
"Mine, too. Okay, what shall we do? One of us cover tossing the place,
the other go to the autopsy?"
"Sure. Heads I get the search." Julianne produces an old quarter, flips
it, shows it to Marlowe with a grin. "You go see Mr Stinky getting cut
up."
"Oh, joy."
+++++sequence deleted for brevity
Marlowe stands in a tiled room, filled with bright lights and stainless
steel, watching a wizened white-haired gnome of a man lay out wicked
instruments on a tray. A white-draped form lies on the table, fluids
staining the disposable cover. "So, who was the stiff?" asks the
pathologist.
"Beats me, Jerry. That's what we're hoping to find out."
"Fair enough. You here privately or on business?"
"Helping Juli." the PI replies. "Seems to be a regular line of work
these days."
"Heh. They'll haul you in, make you a cop again, just watch'em. Not
enough good detectives on the force." Jerry chuckles. "Okay, let's
see... we put all the usual ID markers in the system, retinal, dental,
genetic, you might get something there. The guy lived pretty good: nice
teeth, good cybereyes, jack's a Wiremasters and it's top-of-the-line."
"What was on his chip?"
"Coming to that. Overweight, signs of minor substance abuse, nothing
major. Slight abrasion of the nasal linings, depressed serotonin levels,
I figure he liked the odd snort of zappers. No real way to prove it by
now, of course. Basically a fairly well-to-do couch potato. The chip was
porno simsense. Seven Troll guys and one Elf girl in a gang bang. She
did a decent job of pretending she was having fun, but it just made me
wince. I skimmed it through, it's just half an hour of bumping and
grinding, no viral routines, no black beetle, I was going to kick it up
to Matrix for a full analysis when I had a bright idea."
"Don't you always?" Marlowe asks.
"Yeah, wiseass. I noticed it had a weird sheen to it, thought I'd better
check the chip itself over, and guess what? It's coated with
microcapsules. Touch it and they rupture."
"And what's in them?"
"A nice tasty mix of DMSO and Fugu-5." Jerry replies cheerfully. "Which
this guy got all over his fingertips, and then he pressed them to his
forehead around here, and then who knows where he touched himself?
There's enough neurotoxin on that chip to kill a couple of horses, and
he was rubbing it into his forehead. Oopsie."
"So, definitely homicide." Marlowe nods. "I'll get back to you,
Jerry."
+++++sequence edited
Julianne's office, as she hands her husband a report and accepts one in
return. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Probably not, unless it involves tying you up with your stockings and-"
"Yeah, sure, I have to marry a man whose mind is like an Aztlan
railroad. Small, slow, one-track and filthy... interesting cyber. John
Doe had some good stuff in his head, as well as in his house. A desktop
computer with some interesting IC-cutter routines, a chip cooker, all
the paraphernalia of a console cowboy. Middle league at least, according
to the Matrix boys, the guy would be decent decker with what he had
there." Hart skims the autopsy report with interest.
"No deck?"
"No. There's, literally, a deck-shaped gap on the workbench where it
should have been." Detective Hart-Kryzdanovich leafs through the autopsy
report. "My guess is, he was murdered by a customer who didn't want to
pay him. Slip him a California Hot of 'Sally Seven-Up' coated in poison
as a bonus for whatever he's done, then go send a heavy to retrieve your
money and steal the deck once the chip's killed him."
"Or he got snuffed just to keep him quiet." Marlowe suggests. "Or for
pissing someone off."
"Yeah, well, it's a theory not a conclusion. Any leads your end that
aren't in the files yet?"
The PI nods. "The porno chip. Filmed in Las Vegas, from the credits. I
called the production company, they only recorded it last month. The
signal levels are too high for a UCAS chip, but it's legal for sale in
Aztlan and CalFree, and available in Vegas provided you don't get caught
with one outside city limits. With me so far?"
"Should have guessed you'd fixate on the pornography." His wife smiles
wickedly. "So, it was bought in one of those places?"
"Oh, no, better than that, it was run off in Vegas, and sold there too,
from a smut shop whose address I happen to have here." Marlowe sounds
smugly triumphant.
"Neat trick. Like to tell me how?"
"Yeah, Blue Empire Productions number all their high-signal chips sold
in Vegas as a courtesy to law enforcement. Quid pro quo for selling
California Hots in Vegas, it lets the authorities track smugglers, all
that good stuff, helps the Ute cops keep the trade under control. They
were very proud of their honest businesslike attitude. Honest meaning
'co-operating with Vegas cops and sharing the proceeds', of course."
Julianne reaches for the report. "And did we check the smut shop yet?"
"Absolutely. That chip was sold with four others, on the twenty-second
of December. Buyer paid certified cred, of course. The others were...
'Sir Humpalot and the Nights of the Round Bed', 'Locker Room Education',
'XXXTreme Pleasures' and 'Trolling for Fun'. All high-signal, thirty-
minute hardcore simsense chips."
His wife snorts. "Guess what? We found all four in John Doe's apartment.
Didn't know they were Hots, though. Forensics are going over them. They
were all rigged the same way, though, coated with encapsulated
neurotoxin and DMSO. Any more from the shop?"
The PI shakes his head. "Nope. They don't keep security footage for more
than a few days, unless something obviously weird happens, something
about knowing they're being filmed browsing the skinsofts tends to deter
customers. The manager said he'd ask the clerk who made the sale for a
description, but he sounded dubious. Unless the buyer did something
memorable, he or she's just one more customer in the crowds."
"Any similarities between the chip contents?"
"Well, beyond the fact that they probably all contain simsense
recordings of people screwing..." Marlowe shrugs. "I have no idea. Jokes
aside, I don't watch that crap, I'd rather be doing for myself."
"Still, there might be something..." Julianne clears printout off her
terminal, starts scanning the Matrix. "Here we are... okay. Titles,
producers... three different production companies..." She quickly
browses the catalogues, reading the sales blurbs for all five movies.
"John Doe's a Sally Gold fan. She's headlined in all five chips. Seems
to be about the only link."
"Try the fan sites, she's bound to have some."
"I can hear IAD coming down the stairs already, wanting to know why I'm
browsing porn grids on police time." Julianne mutters. "Okay, Sally
Gold, real name Betsy Ruiz, Latino Elf, made a fair number of trideo and
simsense appearances, site's got some clips... ouch. That's got to hurt.
There has to be an easier way to make money, sweetie."
Marlowe skims the text and the uncomfortably graphic images quickly: it
seems Sally Gold specialises in interracial congress, usually with one
or more Trolls. "She's a Seattle girl, originally, that's where she
started 'acting and modelling'. Think there's a connection?"
"Could be. But what?"
"Beats me. Maybe she's John Doe's kid sister, or an ex-girlfriend, or he
got her into the business. Think she's worth talking to?"
Julianne laughs out loud. "How would a customer react if you put 'trip
to Vegas to interview porn starlet' on the expense form?"
"They'd better pay up, or I'll hire Easy to collect." Marlowe chuckles
too. "Seriously, we got any other leads? It's a damn sight cheaper for
me to go and report than to send a cop, it's just my per diem and
airfare. Two-day job, unless I hit paydirt."
"I'll bounce it by Chu, see if he likes it." Julianne agrees. "Oh, yeah,
we have extra confirmation on time of death, it was before ten-thirty-
two on Saturday the nineteenth, that's when someone hacked that
apartment's internal environment to turn the heat up and the ventilation
off. Lobby cameras aren't archived that long, so no pictures. Any ideas
as to why you'd do that? I'd have turned the heat off and the air
conditioning to full, myself, _stopped_ him stinking and given myself
longer before he was found."
"Delay identification and screw up any forensics. Seems odd, though, the
heat makes it suspicious. Unless... go back later and turn it back
down." Marlowe muses.
"So, John Doe was a decker. Did something sensitive, for someone. Got
paid off in money and a couple of hot chips of his favourite Elf babe
for that realer-than-real feeling, but got a headful of Fugu from them
and died while he was enjoying the show. The killer turns the heat up to
make him go mouldy faster, goes away for a couple of weeks. Then what?
Maybe he planned to come back, turn the room back to normal, and wait.
So we assume that John Doe died back in October or November sometime,
and we might even miss the poisoned chips."
"Jerry's report said the microcapsules were breaking up, that's why he
noticed the funny sheen." Marlowe offers.
"So another couple of weeks and it's just some John Doe who died of some
unknown cause, but he's too decomposed to do much with, and we might
assume the California Hot stuck in his head gave him a stroke or an
embolism or a coronary, and being a solitary type nobody noticed until
the smell got too bad. Not too much attention, it slips by." Hart tosses
her stylus in the air, fumbles catching it and has to pick it off the
floor.
"Especially if you want to do some matrix work. Decks are distinctive."
Marlowe sits up. "Use a dead man's deck and you leave his signatures on
anything you do. You're covered."
"More to the point, this guy was maybe doing his work in November,
December, right? We're meant to write him off as having been dead by
then. _What_ a way to bury your trail!" Julianne whistles. "Whoever did
this is smart. It's a good plan."
"Would have been perfect if it had worked."
"Yeah, well, who the hell checks porno chips for serial numbers? It's
the little things that get you every time. Let's go see Chu, tell him
what we got, see what he wants to do next."
+++++end video]<<<<<
-- Marlowe <13:02:36/12-31-59>
