The twenty-nine found dead were all scanned and recorded. Many had died from blunt-force trauma and lacerations or suffocation. Many had suffered from various other disturbing ailments, the medical names of which Runstom did not care to remember, mostly related to decompression and lack of oxygen. The remains were removed and the ModPol officers were given one more day to comb the desolate block. This time they were without the CamCaps and weighty jackets. They found no other remains and the clean-up crews moved in to go to work the next day.
“Seems like we should be in there for a couple more days,” Runstom said, sitting at a table in a break room in the depths of the Blue Haven Police Department Precinct One. “It’s a crime scene, and they’re already cleaning up all the evidence.”
“Evidence?” McManus snorted, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “What the hell are you talking about, Stanley? Only one guy could have done this and he did it from outside the block.”
“It’s Stanf—”
“Mac is right, Stanley,” Horowitz said. “It’s a pretty open-and-shut case. The dicks like the operator. The sooner they get a confession out of him, the sooner we can go back to base.”
Runstom looked at each of them, frowning. Horowitz wasn’t even looking at him. She was idly flipping through a mag-viewer in front of her on the table, most of her long, straight, black hair pulled into a ponytail, leaving a clump of bangs to fall to one side, obscuring her face. McManus stood rigidly near the counter and peered suspiciously into his coffee cup. Halsey was half-dozing in his chair, startling awake with a snort when he began to tip over. There were three pale-faced Blue Haven officers looming on one side of the room, smiling mildly, thin hands clasped together at their mid-sections. Runstom thought that if he were to try to read their faces, he’d be looking at a blank page.
“Hey, Whitey,” McManus said. “This fucking coffee is cold.”
“Ah, thank you, officer,” the middle one said. “We’re glad you enjoy it.”
McManus looked into his blank, gray eyes and then shrugged as he took a slug from the cup, then grimaced before taking another. Runstom frowned at the other ModPol officer, unnerved by the skin-slang. The residents of Barnard-4 were all extremely pale skinned thanks to low-grade filtration mechanisms and the distance from the center of the solar system. People growing up on B-3 – like the other three ModPol officers in the room – were closer to the star, and by necessity benefited from more expensive filters. They all had skin colors that ranged from pinkish yellow to light brown, closer to the hues of many Earthlings.
“Anyway. I don’t know what you’re complaining about, Runstom,” McManus continued, starting a slow pace around the room. “Are you saying you had a good time combing through a giant trash heap, hoping to find the bloated remains of a B-fourean?”
“They weren’t all B-foureans,” Runstom said, quick to make his argument. “One guy was—”
Halsey interrupted him with a giggle. “Yeah, Stanley wants to go play dick. He wants to in-vess-ti-gate. Maybe go un-der-cov-er. Just like his dear ol’ mum.”
“You got a problem, Halsey?” Runstom stood up.
McManus moved in front of him. “Is that it, Runstom?” he said quietly. “You think you’re better than us? Detective Runstom, is it now?”
Runstom imagined slugging the other man across the jaw, sending him sprawling to the floor, but he was determined not to be baited. “Officer McManus,” he said in a low voice, matching it with an even stare. “Are you attempting to instigate me?”
McManus gave a huffy snort. “No, Officer Runstom.” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m not trying to instigate you.” He took a sip from his cup, bringing it close to Runstom’s nose. “I’m just really, really bitten off about how terrible this fucking coffee is.” He slapped the empty mug down on the table and walked out of the room.
Halsey gave half a laugh and then leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Horowitz continued flipping through her mag-viewer. The Blue Haven officers maintained their indifferent smiles. Runstom stood in silence for a moment, focusing on suppressing his anger. After he’d given himself enough time to calm down, he announced that he was going for a walk. No one responded, so he left the room quietly.
The local precinct was set up like a maze of hallways and rooms, but everything was arranged in a way that made it impossible to get lost. Domes were all designed on paper by engineers, and everything turned out to have an unnatural symmetry that Runstom could never get used to. Even if you tried to get lost, you couldn’t wander long before somehow ending up where you were supposed to be.
There wasn’t much to do in the Blue Haven precinct – they didn’t even have a library – so Runstom stopped when he came upon a door that led to an inner courtyard. It wasn’t very large, but it had some plant life. Even though the trees and bushes were laid out in perfect position, nature still had chaotic reign over the formation of branches, leaves, and bark.
Runstom sat on a bench and tried to breathe deeply. Despite the presence of naturally generated oxygen in the space, the sweet sting of manufactured air was still detectable. He tried to ignore it and think about the case. He was still reeling from the fact that the investigation on the ground was more or less over already. Thirty-one people had died, seven others were injured in the ordeal. How could the investigation of the crime scene be over so quickly?
The detectives, Brutus and Porter, didn’t believe it was an accident. They were charging the block operator on duty with murder. Runstom knew they didn’t have much in the way of evidence. But even so, maybe they were right. As a rule, you look for the simplest explanation and you’ll find your suspect. The only person who could have opened the venting doors was the operator.
So why was Runstom unable to accept such a simple conclusion? He sighed as he sat in the fabricated grove of trees and shrubs. He’d been spending too much time in the outpost library. Poring over old cases with complexities that were just plain absent here.
They did have one key piece of evidence: the operator’s console logs. What they didn’t have was motive. Runstom wished he could be a fly on the wall in the interrogation room at that moment, where they were currently questioning the operator. Would they get a confession out of him? Would they discover the man’s motive for killing thirty-one mostly unrelated people in one fell swoop?
Runstom rolled his head around, stretching his neck. He caught a glimpse of the curved sky above. Maybe the guy just snapped. Dome sickness. It’d been known to happen, although supposedly not very often. Some people just couldn’t take it, living in the confined spaces, never being able to set foot onto the surface of the planet that binds them gravitationally. Runstom had never heard of anyone becoming violent from dome sickness though, at least nothing more than a brief outburst. Malaise, mood swings, depression, even suicide, but never such a calculated act of violence against so many people.
He stood up, but he didn’t go anywhere. He just continued to stare at the trees confined to their perfect little steel planters. He knew the reason he couldn’t accept the simple explanation. He wanted there to be more to the case than there was; he wanted a chance to do something. He wanted a chance to prove himself. McManus’ comment had troubled him more than he was willing to admit. Not the skin-slang – he’d learned to live with that stuff – but the detective comment. Runstom had been working with McManus, Horowitz, Halsey, and others at ModPol for several years now. So many that were officers at ModPol were probably always going to be officers; especially the likes of those three unambitious clock-punchers. They all knew Runstom was determined to make detective. He was getting a little old for an officer, and he’d been passed over for promotion more than once. The others rarely missed a chance to remind him that despite his efforts, he was as stuck as the rest of them.