"Excuse me." I pretended to see someone I knew but he kept following me.
"Hey, wait up. I'm headed the same way." He caught up to me, beads of sweat forming on his broad forehead.
"We were on the same flight. What brings you here, you in sales? I'm in sales myself." He leaned in close to me, muttering under his breath, as if he were imparting some illicit piece of information.
"Actually exports, if you know what I mean." I nodded knowingly, feigning interest. It seems like the only ones who ever attempted to return to earth were traffickers in black market goods, mostly vat grown organs and designer implants, products whose use was either discouraged or banned outright. Hoping to get rid of him, I told him I wasn't a salesman, and had no interest in purchasing anything he had to sell.
"So what are you doing here then?, he asked nonplussed by my myriad attempts to avoid him.
" Vacation." I said. Finally he fell silent, obviously finding my explanation as evasive and ridiculous as admitting that I liked rolling around naked in broken glass.
"Well, what line are you in?"
"I teach criminal science in New L.A."
"What, the police academy? You know ,I could never figure out why they keep all those cops in the colonies, where there's no crime to speak of, and here--" I cut him off before he could finish.
"Why do you think there's no crime in the colonies." As I spoke we reached the north gate, and I began to look for a shuttle taxi in the surrounding murk. The port was practically deserted, as most people who could afford to leave, had left years ago.
The fat man offered me his hand. When I clasped it,he handed me a sweat drenched business card.
"Bob Lewis. And you are?"
I almost gave him a false name, but I figured he wouldn't make the connection anyway.
" A. Cavendish 2." As soon as I said it,I knew I had made a mistake.
"You know I thought you looked familiar. I must have seen you in the vids a million times. You were the investigating officer in that... What was it again?"
I didn't assist him. From behind him, I spotted an available shuttle pulling up. I mumbled a half hearted goodbye, but he was completely oblivious to my departure, his attentions completely absorbed in the task of remembering. As I started through the double doors, his voice followed after me.
"Hey! I thought you were dead?" I turned around and yelled back as I entered the shuttle.
"I am." Leaving him alone with his confusion.
******************
"You come highly recommended, Mr. Cavendish."
Kenneth Carlisle, like my friend back at the airport, also specialized in exports, of the pharmaceutical variety. He was in his mid fifties, his features ill proportioned and lopsided from excessive recourse to rejuvenation drugs and bargain basement plastic surgery. Despite this he was portly, almost borderline obese, almost comical in a silent movie. Villain fashion, with a dyed black, Fu Man Chu mustache that draped over his mouth in an upside down "U." He also appeared to have a pretty hefty habit from his manner, a fact that any good dealer will tell you, is bad for business.
"You can dispense with the Misters Carlisle. As you are well aware of, my kind aren't protected under earth law. As far as they are concerned, we might as well be inanimate objects. Still." I picked up one of his Havanas, paring off the end and lighting it with a solid gold lighter designed to resemble the earth.
"You must have a lot of pull to get me past customs." I exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke directly into his face.
"What makes you think I'd be willing to help a low life like you?"
He smiled at that like I had bestowed on him the highest of honor he could have ever received .
"Now, now. There's no need to degenerate into name calling. As for why I you would be willing to help me, well. it is obvious to me that a man of your skills would need to exercise his abilities once and awhile. What is that saying. Those that cannot do, teach. This case represents a challenge. A challenge that, if I haven't underestimated you, I believe you will not be able to resist. Apart from that, there is some material of a personal nature which, given the circumstances of your birth, you might find, well,how should I say it, enlightening."
This last statement threw me off, but I didn't let him see it. Instead I nodded as he continued on in that edifying tone that I was beginning to find quite irritating.
"But all this is academic. You would not be standing here if you had not already decided to take the case. After all, the modus operandi of our little criminal happens to be identical to your Historian, who supposedly perished with your genetic counterpart in that warehouse fire 15 years ago."
When he mentioned the fire, an involuntary shudder traveled through me, despite the fact that I had no recollection of the event. Nor should I have, as the sample I was generated from was taken several months previous to my forebear's death. That more than anything else had prompted me to consider his offer. The troubled circumstances of my birth which he had alluded to probably had to do with my faulty memory. The theoreticians which had given me life had stated unequivocally, that genetic memory was a reality. According to them My memories up until the moment of the sample should have been available to me. In the end, the anomalous gaps I was experiencing were written off as a consequence of the experimental nature of the 'process' at the time of my birthing. A fact that consigned me to a lowly teaching position, while my successors ended up with the lucrative field positions. At the very least, his offer enabled me to revisit earth. Whether this in itself would be enough to reawaken my memories was another question. I wasn't in the least bit interested in pursuing some copycat killer through the streets of some rotting metropolis, especially if it would somehow benefit this degenerate pusher.
Still, he seemed a little too confident that I would accept. It made me feel faintly uneasy.
"Why are you so concerned with the activity of some serial killer. His actions are by their very nature random. Why would he single you out?"
He patted his brow with an ornate looking handkerchief, his eyes darting nervously across the room as if searching for his next words.
"My reasons are my own Mr. Cavendish . The fact is that my stature in the community has forced me to seek outside help. As you are probably well aware of, the police are doing little to stem the flow of blood. I am simply providing a public service."
"Look, if you wish me to help you, you have to give it to me straight. Stop feeding me this upstanding citizen bullshit."
Apparently whatever substances he had ingested to calm his nerves were beginning to wear off, as his face lit up with undisguised panic. He got up and crossed the room to the window, noisily chewing on his finger nails. "The fact is that it wasn't my idea to seek you out. The killer you see--he's told me to extend his invitation to you. He wishes to play chess, so to speak."
He kept playing with his black silk tie, adjusting it's length as if he expected it to strangle him.
"I will give you anything you want, anything. I am a man of considerable wealth and influence. I--"
"What did he tell you he would do if you didn't bring me"
He didn't hear me at first, trembling as he filled the immeasurable city night with the phantoms of his paranoia. I repeated the question, which he answered in a whisper.
Apparently, the killer had suggested to him that he might be found one morning, crucified upsidedown, in a mound of his own excrement.
****************
I pored over the files on the murders for the next three days, under the watchful eye of Carlisle. I found his presence so distracting that I was forced to seek out some hidden corner, of which his palatial estate afforded many, in the few moments when he was able to sleep, surrounded of course by a legion of bodyguards. My review of the murders suggested to me that the killer indeed resembled my earlier opponent, though I did not for for one minute believe, as Carlisle had hinted, that they were the same individual. On the third day, I told him that I had to consult some of my former contacts, a suggestion which sent him into a fit of hysterics. After devoting nearly an hour to reassuring him, I headed toward the one man who would be of any assistance to me. I knew of course, as Carlisle knew, that the police would be of no assistance to me. They had paid little attention to the murders aside from the customary press release. For all anyone knew, they could have been the murderers. Most of them were on the payroll of the criminal organizations that passed for local government. The few good cops were hopelessly overworked and unfortunately of little effect against the endless tide of violence. Comparing the refuse drowned streets that passed below us to the ones of my memory, I secretly gave thanks that my counterpart had the insight to immigrate.
As our limousine floated down toward the curb, the swarming mass of humanity dispersed as if we were about to open fire at them, an action that my chauffeur had, no doubt entertained. I shot out of the car, toward the tenement, barely evading the the mass of beggars who instantly began tearing at my clothing. They did not pursue me into the building, and I proceeded through the rat infested corridors at a casual pace.
He had gotten there before me. When I passed through the open door, I found Jonathan's body in a crumpled heap against the back of the living room, his face twisted in mute agony. I checked his pulse, scanning the room for any signs of the attacker, but he had left no evidence of his passing. I searched the body for the wound that had killed him finding, curiously enough that he was untouched. He had aged a lot from my university days, but aside from that, his form betrayed no evidence of foul play. To the left of the body was a long wooden cane, terminating in a short metal blade, tinged at the end with with blood. Returning again to the body, I discovered a small wound at the base of his left foot. He had either died of heart failure from the shock of the attack (which seemed unlikely) or the end of the cane had been dipped in a quick acting poison. I made a cursory examination of the murder weapon, discovering to my amazement, the initials J.B.L, engraved in the ivory handle. I was not naïve enough to think that he would leave me his name engraved on the murder weapon, but I knew too much about him to think it was without significance. I pulled my lap top from my travel bag. Despite Jonathan's lack of a vidphone ( He was a Luddite from birth ) his apartment still had a functional outlet encrusted with ancient green paint. Within moments, I was in the Library of Congress database. Knowing his penchant for historical quotations, it was logical that the crime had some precedent.
A half an hour later, I had reached a dead end (no pun intended). On a whim I decided to cross reference the initials with the author listing. Five names down the list I stopped. Jean Baptiste Lully. A french composer of the late baroque period, whose pioneering theoretical texts on harmony had just received a new translation in english. It was a bad joke. At the time, the conductor of an orchestra did not keep time by waving a baton through the air, but by beating a long wooden staff against the ground. The unfortunate Lully had accidentally jammed his foot while engaged in the activity. The foot became infected and he died shortly after of gangrene. I got up and began to pace nervously around the room, turning on every light in the small apartment as I did so. There must be something else. Something I was overlooking.
I began to carefully dissect every piece of furniture and appliance, being especially cautious around the body and the murder weapon. Afterwards the place was a ruin and I had found nothing of use. Actually, the next part of the puzzle was staring me in the face the whole time, but I hadn't even noticed it. On the wall between two of Jonathan's book shelves was a framed fragment of music manuscript bearing the autograph of the aforementioned Lully. A gavotte if I remember correctly. It was about five bars long, and from the numerous tempi and dynamic markings, I could tell it was an obvious fake. Such indications had not become common practice until after Mozart's time, and while there were earlier examples, it was doubtful that this was one of them. As I turned it about in my gloved hands, I recalled Bach's practice of incorporating his last name (B.A.C and B flat for the German H) into his compositions, a practice repeated by Shostakovitch, three centuries later. Was he leaving his signature at the crime scene, right on the wall for anyone who cared to figure it out? It was exactly the kind of arrogance that characterized his previous crimes. While we had never captured him, or even figured out who he was, he had exhibited a tendency to gloat over his pursuers, leaving tons of potentially incriminating evidence lying around like an invitation. Someone attempting to follow in his footsteps would naturally have to emulate this important aspect of his style.
I consulted the lap top, attempting to find a conversion for the pitches in the manuscript. In ten minutes, I had begun to decode it, finding to my surprise that the opening bar was not his name, but my own. The intervening bars however appeared to be Gibberish, with the occasional burst of lucidity. I stared into the letters until they began to bleed into each other, until it came to me. Not letters. Numbers. An address, and a time. 78 east 12th street, 6th ave.
Having decoded the message, I began to examine the manuscript in earnest. The back gave way rather easily and I was astonished at what I discovered behind the panel. The killer had left, imprinted on the back of the parchment in india ink, his fingerprints. Below them he had drawn a smiley face, in what was presumably human blood.
***************
When I returned to the street, the limo driver was gone, leaving me to fend my way through the city streets alone. I had run the fingerprints through the fed's database and what I had found had left me dumbfounded. The smiley face however, disturbed me a great deal more. There were a number things that were used as a criterion for evaluating the many calls we received from psychos who tried to claim responsibility for the killings. One of them had been the slightly anomalous smiley face. It had never been released to the media, so there was no way a copycat killer could know about it, unless he was the original killer, or one of the investigating officers. Contemplating a confrontation with such an individual would be dangerous under any circumstances. Doing it alone without any kind of back up or even a weapon was a suicidal gesture. Yet I found myself at the address; a dilapidated tenement that appeared on the verge of crumbling. I entered the dark corridor, squinting to make out the interior.
All the doors had arrows (red crayon on cardboard) directing me up the fire warped steps to a small apartment on the second floor. I stood before the door for an impossibly long time before I turned the knob and entered. By this time, my eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness, and I could pick out the figure in the left corner, amongst the broken furniture that was crumbling silently to dust.
"I knew you would come."
I nearly fainted when I heard his voice, and I knew that my worst suspicions were a reality. I heard my own voice answering.
"It wasn't your usual style."
"I wasn't planning to kill Jonathan, but you forced me to. I knew you would go to him."
"He knew didn't he."
"I think he had suspicions. I'm sure he followed the case. In any event, we'll never know, will we?"
I ignored the obvious attempt to provoke me.
"What does Carlisle have to do with this?"
"He paid me to commit the original murders, before deciding I was a liability he couldn't afford."
"I don't understand. Why?"
"At first, he thought that his business would be destroyed by the massive offworld colonization, that was before the government loosened it's trade restrictions and he established his lucrative drug smuggling operation. The whole reason people were immigrating in the first place was crime. That was the big selling point. The colonies were completely free of undesirables and crime. But what if they weren't safe? What if it was just as bad? Who would want to endure all the hardships when things were just as bad as on Earth. Besides, Carlisle bought up all this earth real estate at dirt cheap prices. If for some reason, the mass exodus was halted."
"Then he would be a very rich man..Why you? You were one of the most decorated cops in New York?"
"I was always on the payroll. Hell we all were. Nothing that heavy. I never murdered for him or anything. When they transferred me off world, it was different. I felt useless for the first time in my life. So when he contacted me--"
"You jumped at the chance. It must have been pretty bizarre, committing these elaborate crimes, then investigating them afterward."
"It made me even more famous then I already was."
He lit a cigarette, lighting a small kerosene lamp on the windowsill with the same match. It was then that I saw his face for the first time. The left side of it it was severely disfigured, most likely from the fire that was thought to have killed him. For all that, it was still my face, framed by graying streaks of brown hair.
"So how does it feel to meet yourself and find out that he is not as you supposed him to be?"
I shook my head.
"You're not me. You're not even a human being."
My remark made him laugh.
"What are you to say that to me. You are the one who is a forgery. Whatever you might think of me, I'm still the original, I am Abel Cavendish. Your body was generated from my cells. I am your father."
"You're nothing."
He sneered at me through the darkness."
"You know, when I heard that they had revived me, I couldn't resist the opportunity to engage myself in battle. But now you have exhausted your entertainment value."
He lifted the lamp up and slammed it to the ground, causing the entire room to erupt into flame. We struggled, like a man wrestling with the image of himself in a funhouse mirror, the flames licking about as if we were submerged in the fires of hell.
I pulled one of my arms free, groping along the ground for something I could use as a weapon; my hand closing around a brick or a rock. Blindly, I brought it down on my adversary's head. Immediately, his grip on my throat relaxed, and I rose up room the ground, bringing my coat over my face to shield me from the flames. Without looking back, I raced from the building, losing consciousness as I reached the street."
*********************
"And that is where you were when the police found you?"
Dr. Burroughs tapped his pen against the counter in arrhythmic patterns,his blue grey eyes squinting behind the thick lenses of his bifocals.
"Yes.. I think. I can't remember too much after that."
"And Kenneth Carlisle was found the next day."
"With what appeared to be my fingerprints. That's why I was so confused when he left them on the otherside of the parchment."
Burroughs ran his hand through his beard, a look of bewilderment on his face. "You are aware that they searched the building, and they didn't find a body."
"That's what confuses me the most. There is no way he could have survived that blow. The only explanation I can think of is that it was destroyed in the fire."
Burroughs got up from is seat, straightening his notes as he did so. He leaned over microphone which had been recording the session. "End of interview. Well I guess that is all for today."
"I know you think I am crazy."
"We don't use that word here Mr. Cavendish. We like to think of our clients as having a deficient reality orientation."
He smiled as he started down the corridor to his office.
Bio:I am at work on a second novel (while revising the first) Any comments or criticisms would be appreciated.
E-mail: Pennaddict@aol.com
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