She lifted one of the fragments up to her eye, cradling it gently on the tip of a gloved finger. She used her cerebral computer to zoom in a little, increasing the fragment’s size on her internal retina display.
“It looks like some sort of decorative clay. A vase, most likely. Maybe a lamp or something.”
“Then it looks like the murderer took the weapon with him, or he got rid of it pretty well,” Marcus said.
“I wouldn’t count on it. Have your people search the block. Check every dumpster. I’d say something simpler than intuition tells me a perp wouldn’t be taking a broken, bloody lamp out onto the street with him.”
Marcus looked back at a couple of the other officers in the room and pointed to the door. They indicated their understanding and started their sweep.
“Is there any chance we have footage of the murder?” Beth wanted to know.
Marcus shook his head, puffing up his cheeks. “That was the first thing I checked. Seems Miss Fontane was a bit of a technophobe and took special measures to make sure there was no surveillance in her apartment. We don’t even know if she has an implant. In fact, all her books are in print. You know, like with paper?”
“I dig her style,” Beth said, rising back up to her full height. She looked back and forth, as if gauging how far apart the walls were.
“What are you looking for?” Marcus asked.
“A little beam of light. Sometimes, perverts will drill in their own optic cables through their neighbors’ walls. They wouldn’t be on any security record, of course, but they might see things we’d otherwise not be able to see.”
“And do you see anything?” Marcus said.
“No,” Beth said with an air of defeat. “I guess the neighbor doesn’t have a granny fetish. Too bad. It would help us capture the bastard.”
She stepped over the ruined coffee table and looked out the window. It peered out over the street where she had entered the bar. There was a bit of slush starting to form down below while large droplets of frozen rain dropped to the earth. She watched a pedicab pull away, the driver turning on a quiet motor to ease his efforts.
“So it seems we have no video evidence, no witnesses, and no real lead here,” Beth started. “And among all that, the thing I’m wondering the most is ‘why did you call me here?’ With the Simon Mendez case, it seems like you’d call someone else to look over a dead-end burglary-turned-homicide. What aren’t you telling me?”
Marcus took in a deep breath. The look on his face showed that he knew this question would come up in one way or another.
“Because,” he said, “Simon Mendez, Jr. was detected on the bar’s network not even thirty minutes before Vicky’s murder.”
Vicky
“How could Simon have killed her?” Beth asked as she accepted her drink from the bartender.
“I’m not sure yet, that’s why we called you,” Marcus replied. A bit of the foam from his beer clung to his red mustache.
They were downstairs in the bar while the cops cleaned up the mess upstairs. Beyond taking a few photos, taking samples, and capturing the scene, there was nothing more the detectives could do. They had to wait to hear back from the coroner, and there was no telling how long that would take. Peter So often got results fast, but never at the suffering of quality. He was thorough, no matter what. That served only to make Beth more anxious.
She was still annoyed with Marcus. He could have explained the connection between the two cases before she looked over the dead woman’s body. Hell, he could have dropped that info on her while they were on the phone, and she was still enjoying her warm cup of coffee.
Mmm, coffee, Beth thought fondly, wishing she was still back in the cafe. Instead, she peered down listlessly at her gin and tonic.
“So, you don’t even have any ideas?” Beth nagged. “You called me down here without even a musing of your own?”
“Well, no, not necessarily, but I need a second head to knock them against,” Marcus said.
“Shoot.”
“Well, the first thing I thought was ‘what if he possessed Vicky and killed her the way he did his folks?’ I mean, if he’s able to just hop into someone’s mind like that, it’s possible anywhere.”
“We don’t even know if she’s implanted yet, and I think you’re forgetting something,” Beth explained. “How would he have disposed of the murder weapon without a body to do so. He smashes her head in with a lamp and, what? Possesses a vacuum to clean it all up?”
“Fair enough,” Marcus said, rubbing his chin and taking another gulp.
“I guess he’d have to have done the murder ‘in person,’ so to speak,” Beth suggested.
” ‘In person’?” he echoed.
“You know, while possessing someone else,” Beth said. “Maybe even using a bodyshell of his own or something. He must have been physically there to cause that kind of blunt trauma.”
“I dunno,” Marcus replied in a dubious tone. “The bar was packed last night. We talked to a lot of people. No one says they saw anything out of the ordinary or heard any kind of struggle. You’d imagine that kind of assault would raise some suspicions in a place this crowded. Someone would have noticed something.”
“That’s assumptive,” Beth replied. “We’re talking about a bunch of drunks and college kids out for a good time. I’m surprised they notice anything beyond the six feet surrounding them.”
“I’m still not convinced. I think it’s much more likely that there was some sort of sabotage at play here,” Marcus said. “Maybe a booby trap of some sort. Someone who knows her routine and found a way to cave her skull in and try to make it look like a burglary.”
“Sir!” a voice called from the bar’s entrance.
It was one of the patrol officers Marcus had sent to search the block. He seemed to be carrying something
