GW Fic: Freeport 13 (rewrite)
Another update on time! Maybe this will become a trend!
Link to all chapters
We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.
---Angela Davis
Freeport by Maldoror
Chapter Thirteen
The tension and the anxiety pervading the sector increased the closer Duo and Wufei got to their destination. It was obvious their summons had something to do with the murder. Wufei followed Duo in silence; the streets were too crowded to talk freely.
There was a loose ring of people around the door at the address Braun had sent them. Three Red Bands stood in front of the building.
Wufei expected Duo to walk up to them and identify himself, but his friend strolled on down the road with barely a glance. Wufei trailed after him, puzzled. Duo picked up the pace as soon as they reached a dark alley leading away from the street. They circled the block of buildings until they were one edifice away from the murder scene. There was nobody in the roads on this side, so Wufei leaned towards his informant.
"What are we doing?"
"We're going round back to get in. More discreet."
"Oh. Why did Braun call you?"
He thought he caught the slightest flicker of blue eyes, though Duo's expression stayed open and, to all appearances, honest. "Dunno. I suppose there's a reason. Maybe it's Mako who got recycked and Braun thinks I'm to blame."
In other words, I might know but I won't tell you. Fair enough. Wufei would figure it out soon enough.
"Why's everybody so upset?"
"Because they have a dead body on their hands." Duo looked a bit surprised at the question.
"From what I've seen, dead bodies aren't exactly in short supply in Freeport. We've produced one of those already and nobody in Zapata looked quite this disturbed. And they certainly would not have been this distressed if we'd been the ones to bleed out on the pavement." In fact the spectators in Zapata had been rather looking forward to it. By contrast, the worry in the streets of Kropotkin had been almost palpable.
"Ah, but there's a difference. In this case, it's murder."
"What the hell would it have been if Ericson had had his way?"
"Duel. Confrontation. Accidental death, if you want to get cute."
Wufei stared at him, but there was no indication that Duo was joking, not even a little bit.
"Of all the-"
"Murder's different."
It was, in fact, Duo's very seriousness that interrupted Wufei's tirade.
Duo stopped and glanced around carefully, then he put his hands in his pockets and stared straight ahead, face hard. "Look, we're a violent bunch. You've seen enough by now to realize that life is easier to lose than your house keys in Freeport. I got no excuse for that. It's the way we are. Conditions are brutal here, life is too. But at least we're open about it. If you hate a man's guts enough to want to ex him, you call him out on it, knowing and accepting the consequences. That's the way it works. Murder breaks the rules."
"Rules?! What rules-"
"Murder is when somebody finds a dead body somewhere, and there's nobody obviously responsible. Somebody died, and the reason wasn't one that his friends, or even the bystanders, would accept. And that's wrong. I told you that what motivates us desperate creeps is survival. We don't let anybody take that from us. Everybody's got to die, in Freeport we know that better than anyone, but we won't die for no good reason."
The smuggler looked up and pinned Wufei with an all-too-old gaze.
"I deserve to get crucified for some of the stuff I did during the war," Duo said, completely matter-of-fact. "Well when that day comes, I'll go down with a grin on my face, 'cause I'll know exactly how I got there. I'm the only master of my life, and the one who's responsible for it. I won't die as some statistic, I'll die because of what I did, I'll die as me. And I don't know any better way to go. Do you?"
Wufei was silent for a moment. Two sets of instincts, frequently in conflict, were arguing over what Duo was saying. The Preventer was more than appalled. The warrior, however, understood.
"That works for the individual," he finally said. "That worked for us five years ago because of circumstances. But a society-"
"-is made up of individuals, and our circumstances have always been a bit desperate here," Duo interrupted with a shark-like grin. "Which is why we don't need some kind of festering, secret war erupting under our noses in the shape of people dropping dead for unknown reasons. Especially in Kropotkin. There are places where things are hazier and bad shit happens. Gang wars and such. It's messy. But Kropotkin is one of our most orderly sectors, and for this to happen here...yeah, that'd get even the Elders worried. Something damn heavy must have gone down, and this is just the ripple on the surface, the first warning sign..."
Duo's eyes had narrowed and wandered over the blind windows, the empty streets. Wufei followed his gaze. What was it that Duo saw? To Wufei, the buildings were metal bars, the sector wall was a prison cell and one of the inmates had just murdered another while all the guards were gone. The chemical and metallic stink in the air seemed to reek of blood. And yet a small part of him was starting to see a thin thread of guiding logic through the chaos.
Anger at his own lapse of judgment fuelled his voice. "Duo, this place is a zoo! And I can't believe you-"
A finger was pressed against his lips; he'd barely saw Duo move. The leather of the glove was cold. Wufei, silenced, gaped at Duo, who was now examining the unlit windows staring down at them.
"I'd love to have this debate, but I don't think we should do this now. Or here. Come on, we can fight about all this later." Duo turned to Wufei with a smirk, his eyes shining roguishly once more. "I got to admit, you're more fun to argue with than Heero is. But now's the time to focus. We got a dead geezer in the next house over, and Braun seems to think I should know about it."
The braided man opened the door to the nearest building and walked in on cat's paws. Wufei followed, surprised and disturbed by his own passion a moment ago. He knew what Freeport was, he'd known before coming here, why was he getting so upset? He needed to focus. Duo was right. It was this bloody place, it was continuously throwing him off-balance...
The hallway they had entered was silent, and Wufei saw Duo's shoulders relax. They were in a five-story building with three numbered doors on each floor. Duo ghosted to the door at the end and glared at it.
"Damn, the yard door's in someone's house. We can't go through there."
Before Wufei could ask a question, Duo turned and walked silently towards the stairs. He climbed up four flights of steps, pausing at the window at the end of each hallway to stare out in the eternal night of Freeport, his face slashed by shining neon streetlights outside.
They reached the last floor and made their stealthy way up a short flight of iron stairs. Duo produced a couple of lockpicks from about his person like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and had the door to the roof open with two twists of the wrists. He moved out, looking around carefully.
The rows of buildings on each side of the block were not back to back; communal courtyards kept them separated by a few meters. Duo walked silently to the edge of the roof and glanced down. His eyes glinted in the light from the small yard five floors below. He examined the building opposite and the blind eyes of darkened windows around them. Then, with barely a murmur of leather, Duo swung himself up and over the parapet and down the rungs of an emergency ladder which ran down the back of the building, passing by each of the windows, a possible out in case of fire. Wufei followed, trying to mimic Duo's utter silence and cursing inwardly at every scuff of boot against metal. They could hear people talking and moving in the street on the other side of the silent building, echoes rising and bouncing around the sector streets. It made Wufei feel watched as he scuttled down the ladder like a roach fleeing a spotlight.
Duo was waiting for him at the bottom, his eyes on the back door to the building containing the crime scene. He rubbed his nose with a gloved thumb and squared his shoulders. "Let's do this."
The back door was locked, but Duo made short work of it. He cracked the door and peered inside cautiously. Wufei leaned over Duo's bowed head and applied his eye to the crack as well, fingers on the strap of his sword.
This door led to a hallway rather than someone's apartment. Two men were visible through the crack in the door. Wufei could barely make out the first; he was at the front door, blocking it. One of the Red Bands they'd seen earlier. His back was turned to them, he was facing the crowds of curious and concerned citizens outside. Another man was standing at the stairwell halfway down the corridor. He was scowling, his arms crossed and his eyes fixed on the front door.
Duo let the door swing open a bit more and hissed very quietly.
The man started and turned his head. Wufei got a better look at him; a man in his late fifties, his face deeply carved with lines like vertical ravines marking long, mournful cheeks. His cropped hair was grey, nearly white, and it looked like he hadn't shaved today. The bristles were dark grey and black against the pallor of papery skin.
The tension that had wound the thin shoulders tight loosened a bit as he saw Duo. The man made a wait-a-sec gesture and turned towards the front door. Duo silently shut the back entrance, though he left it open just a crack.
That must have been Braun. He hadn't looked as old as Wufei had expected. Then again, becoming an Elder was not dependant on your physical age but the number of years you'd lived in Freeport, the number of people you knew willing to put your name forward and a vote of approval by the other Elders. There were two Elders per sector. They weren't in charge of Freeport, Duo had mischievously hastened to reassure Wufei, but their full-time job was to make sure everything turned over alright. They were too old for the physical labor in the shipyards and factory floors, so they spent their time organizing the shipbuilding contracts, the Red Bands, the commissaries, and keeping an overall view on things. They didn't control Freeport's heading, but they did sort of make sure the colony didn't drive itself into a hole.
Duo had told Wufei about the Elders a couple of weeks back already. He'd obviously expected Wufei to be shocked. Since Wufei's clan had had pretty much the same system, Duo had not gotten the rant on the virtues of democracy that he'd expected, and had seemed rather disappointed at that.
Wufei heard a quiet murmur and then the sound of the front door being closed. Steps came towards them. Duo opened the door after a last glance around the courtyard, dark and echoing like the bottom of an empty aquarium, and then he slipped inside, followed by Wufei.
"Duo." Up close, and despite its unshaven condition, the older man's face was hard and commanding. He was dressed in the utilitarian grey of the factory workers, the only mark of his position of Elder was the authority in his voice and the gesture he made towards the stairs. "Second floor."
"What-"
"You'll see," was the curt answer. Wufei was spared an equally curt glance, hard and borderline hostile, but Braun didn't comment on his presence.
Wufei smelled the blood before he reached the landing. Whatever had happened had been fairly recent. The streets outside were still humming, and Wufei heard the muffled voice of a Red Band asking people to disperse. The silence of the first floor was oppressive by contrast. A murmur threaded its way through the stifling quiet, a gentle, soothing voice.
There was only the slash of light from outside to illuminate the hallway. It seemed Braun didn't want to switch on the light in view of the spectators in the street and the surrounding buildings. Two people were sitting on the first stairs up to the third floor, barely visible in the darkness. Wufei made out a woman's face, whiter than the whitewash that reflected the streetlights from unpainted walls. The man sitting next to her was murmuring, a gentle threnody of compassion. The murmur ended in a gentle question. "Do you want to leave now?"
"No!" the woman said harshly. Wufei heard the hysteria barely leashed in her voice.
Duo glanced at her, then obeyed Braun's nodded instruction to step through the door. He stopped immediately and whistled under his breath. Wufei glanced over his shoulder and took in the sight with a professional glance.
Victim was male, around thirty years of age, lying flat on his back with his head thrown back and his left arm up near his head. The right arm was partly hacked off, hanging by a curdling thread of skin and ruptured muscle. Bone glistened whitely through the blood clots. It was that cut more than the actual deathblow that caught Wufei's attention. The arm had been nearly severed, but even from where he stood, it was obvious that there were no hack marks. That cut had been made with a single blow from a heavy, long-bladed weapon. Something like a very sharp machete, for example.
Wufei glanced at Braun who'd followed them in and was leaning against the doorjamb as if to block either access or exit, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were flat and unfriendly when they met Wufei's gaze, but it seemed he wanted something from him, Wufei wasn't sure what.
A whisper of leather brought Wufei's attention back to where the corpse lay. Duo had gathered up his coat to lean over the body without letting the hem drag in the thickening bloodstains. Wufei made a motion to hold his friend back, but what was the point? There were no local law enforcement to cordon off the scene, no authorities to bring in a team of forensics and interrogate the neighbors.
Duo examined the dead man's face and then he glanced up at Wufei. There was none of Braun's hostility in his gaze. It was simply a question, and it did not look like Wufei would be blamed if he turned down the silent request that lay behind it.
As far as Wufei was concerned, the question did not need to be asked. There might not be any police force and forensics team available, but there was at least one Preventer present, and by god he was going to do his job whatever the unusual, not to say surreal, conditions and circumstances. Given the chance, he'd have done it even without that bastard Carver possibly being involved.
Wufei removed his jacket and laid it on a table nearby after carefully examining the surface for anything he might disturb. From the breast pocket he fished out the small flashlight Duo had given them the first day they'd arrived in the colony. "The lights tend to fail in Freeport," Duo had explained in a lazy drawl that implied this was a frequent event that made life interesting. "You never know when you might need it." Truer words...
Leaving the corpse aside for a moment, Wufei examined his surroundings. The room was the width of the building, twenty-one feet by fourteen, Wufei estimated. It wasn't an apartment, the area had been set aside as a craft shop. Waist-high bins of leather, cardboard, thick cloth and sheet plastic lined the wall. An open cupboard revealed paintbrushes, tubes, bottles and boxes. Small tables throughout the room bore works in progress: simple slippers, toys, gaily painted bags and purses.
The victim was near the window. Strangely enough, the chair nearest to him was not pulled out and there was no work on that table. There was in fact no indication of what he'd been doing here.
He had been killed here, though, that much was certain. The quantity and splash pattern of blood confirmed it. Neither were his clothes ruffled or torn as one would expect if he'd been dragged here against his will. No bruise sign of a gag either, and Wufei knew Freeport's overcrowded conditions well enough to know that nobody could drag an ungagged man anywhere without ten citizens knowing about it. So what had the man been doing here, standing near the window...?
Wufei finally approached the victim. Duo stood back and let him have the floor. As they passed each other, Wufei caught Duo's eye and glanced back at their silent companion.
"Braun, this is Agent Chang," Duo said very softly in answer to Wufei's unvoiced question. "Wufei, this is Elder Braun."
Braun grunted. He didn't look happy about any of this. His long cheeks sagged, he looked like a cross, elderly basset hound in the bad light. But he nodded grudging acknowledgement in Wufei's direction. So with Cesar in Zapata, that made at least two people who knew some of Wufei's real purpose in Freeport. And Braun was someone in authority, if one could call it that. Someone who knew enough of the details to call Duo and Wufei in for this murder. Interesting.
Wufei crouched near the corpse, careful to keep his boots out of the rivulets of blood that had snaked their way along near-invisible indentations in the linoleum. Wufei glanced around the corpse, staring at the cheap flooring and flashing his light's beam around. His fingers traced a deep cut near the body, lifting white plastic edges towards his illumination. Recent, he judged, the plastic had not had time to yellow and curl. The cut was precise and near the victim's side.
In Wufei's mind, different scenarios played out. Two men near the window, arguing, the flash of a blade...or else the murderer had burst into the room, catching his victim doing something near the window. A first fierce blow towards the man's arm which he'd have lifted in defense. Unless...
"Duo? Look around for a weapon."
"Sure. Uh, you think he'd have left it here?" Duo kept the query as neutral as possible, visibly unwilling to question Wufei's expertise in front of Braun; a nice show of support in the tense atmosphere.
"The victim's weapon, if he had one," Wufei elaborated. "And anything else you can find."
"Oh, right." Footsteps shuffled behind him, followed by the click of another flashlight turning on.
"Don't disturb the evidence," Wufei added, then scowled down at the corpse. There was no need for such caution in Freeport.
"'Fraid it won't be telling us much either way, mate, but I'll do my best," Duo answered placidly. A glance showed Wufei that Duo was moving carefully, watching where he put his feet. The Preventer turned back towards the victim.
So a fierce blow to the arm which had been lifted in attack or just in defense. The hack of metal against flesh. The victim's cry as the bone split and muscle gave way. A stagger back, a stumble into the nearest table and chair which were knocked out of alignment with the others, a wide smear of blood on the plastic table top.
Once the victim was on the ground...first that blow to the floor. The victim must have rolled away from it as it came at him. Then the killing blows.
Wufei wished he had some latex gloves handy. He hesitated, but what the hell. He was vaccinated against most things, his immune system was still abnormally boosted five years after the war and he had no cuts on his hands. As for his contaminating the crime scene, the idea was laughable. He slipped the torch between his teeth, long practice keeping the beam perfectly steady. His fingers teased apart the cloth of the jacket, shirt and t-shirt from the wound, noting how the threads had been sliced as cleanly as flesh and dragged into the resulting incision.
The murderer had caught the man at a slight oblique. It looked like part of a rib was sectioned. Wufei grumbled to himself, remembering he wouldn't be getting an autopsy report on this one.
The blow had beaten in the ribcage. Pink-white tissue clung to the edges, dragged out when the blade was removed. Lung tissue, probably. It curdled against the victim's bloodied clothes.
The blow at the neck had been next in all likelihood. The killer wouldn't have bothered with a wild blow to the man's torso if he'd managed to score the throat first. The blow was off-center though. The victim must have been thrashing in agony. It had caught half the neck, tendons gleaming grey under Wufei's flashlight. The blood had stopped flowing awhile ago already. It had spurted as far as the wall; the blade had hacked into the carotid. From the angle of the blow, the killer must have gotten hit by some of the flow.
Wufei carefully pushed the victim aside. He had to bludgeon his conscience into submission first. It was shrieking that he was tampering with a crime scene, and waiting in vain for the flash of light from photographers who would never show, coroners and forensics experts who would never have the chance to examine the man's position before moving him.
The weapon had scored the floor through the torso and the neck. The cuts in the cheap wood amalgam beneath the linoleum looked deep.
Wufei stood up and glanced around, then walked up to the cupboard. Braun watched him in silence. Duo had stopped examining the room and was standing near the window at an angle that would keep him from being seen from the street. He was scrutinizing the crowds. Wufei wondered what he was looking for. Seeing if anyone unexpected had shown up to check out the fuss? As an investigator, Wufei knew that the old adage of 'the criminal returns to the scene of his crime' occurred more often than one would expect.
The cupboard yielded a tape measure. He used it to feel out and measure the incline of the cut in the floor, scraping out clotted blood with a piece of cardboard first. From the angle, the killer must have been standing or half crouched, and he'd hammered down with the point of the weapon. It had sunk deeply and sharply into the floor. That put the killer's strength to way above average, and the weapon must have been heavy and broad. The end of the hack mark in the body and the floor did not correspond to a sword or saber. Wufei was not a certified forensics expert, but he knew his blades and this really looked like the work of a machete, however much he tried to keep an open mind about the possible identity of the killer.
A pat-down of the corpse's pockets revealed no papers that Wufei could find, but it did turn up a long hunting knife strapped to the small of the back. There had been no attempt to unsheathe it. The man's clothes weren't even rumpled up around the holster. The murderer had taken the victim by surprise. This had all happened one to three hours ago, Wufei judged by the gathering rigor mortis in the body's joints and muscles and the cold in the room that would have delayed it.
"Find anything?" he threw over his shoulder as he carefully washed his hands in the small sink surrounded by cleaned paint pots and brushes.
"No," said Duo without breaking away from his scrutiny of the street and the opposite building.
Wufei turned, wiping his hands on a rag, and caught Braun looking at him. The Elder was frowning, but his eyes were sharp, curious, and had lost some of their previous hostility.
The Preventer made his way towards the door. Braun looked surprised and none-too-pleased as Wufei strode right up to him. Near the window, Duo turned around and shifted forward.
"Excuse me," Wufei said crisply.
Braun stared at him, then followed the beam of Wufei's flashlight towards the bloody hand-print on the doorjamb just above his head. Braun jerked away, mouth dropping open. He fetched up against the other jamb for a split second until he started and spun around to see if he'd missed other gory testimonies there as well.
Wufei didn't pay much attention to the Elder, he concentrated on the hand-print. He'd been expecting some kind of trace. The killer hadn't gotten any blood on the soles of his shoes, but he had been doused with it, so there would surely be something. He'd been wearing gloves of course. Not that that mattered, since Wufei didn't have a fingerprint kit, or anything other than his eyes and his flashlight.
The victim must have screamed. The killer lost precious seconds dealing the deathblow. After that final cut to the neck, he must have gotten out as quickly as possible. He would have leaped to the doorway, catching himself on the jamb as he halted to check the hallway for witnesses before running towards the stairs. His right hand had come to rest here and smudged his victim's blood on the white paint. Wufei had noticed other traces on the banister as he'd climbed the stairs earlier.
The print was on the right side of the doorway; he'd been carrying the weapon in his left hand. In the circumstances, he'd have put his hand nearly at head height to stabilize himself. The print was very high up on the doorjamb. Wufei used the tape measure to confirm that it was at five eight.
Carver was over six feet tall and left-handed.
Wufei felt the cold prickle of the hunter lift the small hairs on the back of his neck, but he ruthlessly crushed the excitement. He had to stay objective and focused. He turned towards Braun, lifting the flashlight so the beam cut the air between them, illuminating both their faces faintly.
"Did you know the victim?"
Braun blinked, obviously startled at being addressed. "No, I don't. Oh, I do know his name, though, if that's what you mean. Joshua Brindlow."
"Who's the woman outside?"
"Marta Bernstein. His partner."
"Business or-"
"Family."
"Did he live in this building?"
"No, he's not even from this sector."
Then what the hell was he doing here?
Wufei glanced around. "Who does this room belong to?"
"Nobody. It's a communal room for several buildings."
"What are you doing here?"
There was a tense silence and Wufei remembered that he was a Preventer waaaay outside his jurisdiction. Braun's eyebrows had shot up.
"I meant, are you the Elder of this sector?" Wufei elaborated stiffly.
"No, and I know what you meant," Braun answered with an edge of dry smile for Wufei's audacity. "I can assure you, I was not here when this happened. I was in the Compound when this news came down the lines. That's in Lao Tzu sector, nearly an hour from here," he added, interpreting Wufei's blank look. "I...keep an eye out for these sorts of things," Braun added. The brown eyes flickered in Duo's direction. "So I decided to look into it. Heral, the man outside, is one of the Elders for this sector. I fetched him and we came to investigate. We had one of my Red Bands check the man's ID tattoo and we traced him through central records. Found Marta at their home, had her brought here by one of the Red Bands."
And then he'd sent for Duo. Why, Wufei wanted to ask, but he wasn't sure the question would be answered. Braun's attitude seemed to discourage any further comments. Though the hostility was gone, he was still treating Wufei's presence here as something he'd rather not contemplate. Considering he'd called in a Preventer into something that had Freeport in turmoil, Wufei found that understandable. If the crowds outside learned about any of this, Wufei and Braun might both end up swinging from the same lamppost.
"Which sector does this man come from?"
"Mooncurse."
"That's like five or six sectors away from here, at the edge of the industrial sector and nearer the dockyards," Duo interjected thoughtfully, tapping his chin with his gloved finger. "It's a sector full of freetraders and pirates, hence the name. Any witnesses?"
"No. A woman on the ground floor saw somebody running out the building and down the street, but I couldn't get much of a description out of her. Tall, was what she said first, short brown hair, dressed in a knee-length brown coat. Then she started elaborating wildly and I stopped listening."
That fitted Carver. It also fit a fourth of the male population of Freeport, Wufei added severely, batting down once more the hope that they'd finally found some proof that the man they were chasing wasn't a ghost.
"Nobody else heard Brindlow scream several times and fall to the ground, and then notice a very tall man with a machete and bloody clothes run out of the building?" Wufei asked tightly. "Who lives beneath this room?"
"Nobody, it's a crèche."
"Wonderful," Duo muttered.
"The screams were heard," Braun added. "It's - it was the middle of the night for the dockers here. Everybody was asleep. The two families living on this floor heard a shout, cries and sounds of a struggle and then someone running down the stairs. But by the time they went to investigate..."
"And outside?" Wufei asked, walking back towards the corpse.
"If somebody had seen him, they'd have come forward already."
Great. Carver had disappeared into thin air again. Still, he had been here. Wufei would never be presenting this murder scene to a court, so he could drop the 'presumably' and the 'alleged' and go with his gut instincts. They were telling him he'd found his man, albeit briefly.
He stared down at Joshua Brindlow's tightening features, lips pulled back over teeth, eyes wide and staring. Since Wufei was the coroner here as well as everything else, he passed his hands over the eyes, closing them. Then, remembering the woman in the hall, he did his best to pull the man's features into something a loving partner could carry with her in her memory.
"Does anybody in this building know the victim?" he asked.
"No. Or they're not saying." The last was added very reluctantly. Braun, like Duo, wanted to believe in the crude honesty and openness of Freeport even with the evidence to the contrary under his nose. "That's why we had to look up his tattoo. Nobody's even seen him around before. I checked with Marta. Joshua was a freetrader. A solo operator for the most part. His ship is - was the Jolly."
"The Jolly?" Duo said thoughtfully.
"That's what Marta said. She also said that Joshua was doing something for a friend these past two days. Marta didn't know what."
"Duo, what route did the Jolly run?" Wufei asked quietly as if the answer were a small animal that could be frightened away if he barked the question out.
"If it's the Jolly I'm thinking of, exclusively L4," Duo answered glumly in a 'don't get your hopes up' tone of voice. Braun looked from one to the other curiously. Apparently he knew some particulars of the case, but not the details.
Damn. So this wasn't a Freetrader who could have fingered Carver as a passenger on his ship coming from L2. Wufei stared at the features which were somewhat more peaceful now, as if accepting the trip that lay ahead of him with the serenity that befitted the dead.
Why did he kill you, Joshua?
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Marta Bernstein was a small woman in her thirties, about Joshua's height and a few years older. Her face was colorless in the dark hallway. Heral, the sector's Elder, looked up as Wufei and Duo approached.
This time it was Wufei who stood back and let Duo operate. Duo didn't insult the woman's grief with pity, his voice stayed firm and matter-of-fact, but there was genuine sorrow in his eyes as he talked.
Marta listened to his questions in silence. She wasn't crying. Her wide eyes were dull and flat, and her attention wandered to the door of the bloodied room at one point while Duo was talking. Wufei wondered if she'd seen the body yet. Duo brought her attention back to him gently.
Unfortunately she didn't know much. Or, the Preventer's paranoia added, she wasn't talking. Wufei wanted to ask her where she'd been a few hours ago, what she knew of Joshua's movements these past two days, and if she was acquainted with a big tall son of a bitch who carried a machete around. Duo's questions and gentle insistence seemed to take ages and didn't get them anywhere, but Wufei reined in his impatience. This was not a witness interrogation. Freeport citizens had a mentality that still escaped Wufei for the most part, but they didn't respond well to threats and orders, he knew that much. He leaned back against the wall to wait, and caught Braun giving him that speculative look again.
"I'm sorry." Marta's face was loosing the stiffness of shock and starting to crumple. "I just don't know- I'm not- he didn't say, he said it was for a friend, and he was looking into something. But Josh is- he's not a rat-catcher or- or anything!" She seemed distressed that Duo might think so. "He just-... a friend- a friend asked him-"
"Shhh, s'okay, Marta." Duo patted her shoulder as she hunched over. Heral drew her into his arms for a hug. Duo watched her for a minute in silence, his hand still on her shoulder, then he glanced up at Braun.
"We have a Red Band outside who can take her home, or to a friend's house," said the latter. "Marta?"
She was shuddering now, eyes narrowed as if she didn't want to look ahead and see what was waiting for her there. Duo squeezed her upper arm but didn't attempt to say anything. Wufei, inured by his own widowhood, his losses and too many interviews with grieving parents and spouses, felt nothing but fatalistic. The future was there, waiting for her, and there was nothing he or anyone could do about it. Hopefully she had some friends to stay with and help ease her into it. Ultimately, she would face it alone.
Duo was silent as he led Wufei back to the courtyard behind the building. They'd parted with nothing more than a wave from Braun who bore the expression of a man gearing himself up for some serious organizing.
The silence between them was leaden and heavy. Though Wufei's head was telling him there was nothing he could have done to save Brindlow's life, his soul still seethed with feelings of undirected guilt and he thought Duo felt the same.
"Braun knows. About me," Wufei murmured finally, knowing that shroud of silence had to be broken sooner or later.
"Yeah." Wufei could barely hear Duo's soft voice above him as they started to climb the ladder. He trod extra lightly on the rungs to avoid covering the near-inaudible words. "When Tro asked me the first time to get Heero in...there's no rules here, but it's still a good idea to get an Elder on your side when you're trying something like this, yanno? It'll stop me from getting spaced if ever this stuff gets out. I'll probably get clobbered, mind you, but at least I won't get recycked."
"You mean," Wufei paused to haul himself over the parapet. "You mean Braun's known about this, about Heero, from the start?"
"Yeah, him and another Elder. It's Braun who checked for me that Carver wasn't hiding out in quarantine. Like all Elders, he's got unrestricted access to IDs and the computer system."
Wufei's gaze went from the building they'd left behind to Duo's features as he measured the import of that. "Why?" he asked bluntly. "Why does he help you? Why does he let you do this?"
Duo rubbed his nose with the back of a gloved finger. "Braun's got a sister. She's sixty years old and a real shrew, but I'm pretty damn sure he doesn't want Carver dating her anyway."
Wufei rolled his eyes in exaggerated annoyance, though inwardly he was unaccountably thankful for the reappearance of the cheeky grin that had been momentarily dampened by Marta's grief. Duo was no stranger to dead bodies, but Marta's pain had affected him where Joshua's bloodied corpse had not. Unlike a cop, he put up no barriers against that sort of thing. But he was already casting off the sorrow and the gloom, and moving on.
"I take it we both think Carver's shown up at last," Duo continued, eyeing Wufei for confirmation. When Wufei nodded, Duo rubbed the back of his neck in the familiar gesture. "That's weird, though. This guy's been living in Freeport for years now as far as we can tell. I don't think he's ever cut anybody up on his home turf before. 'Don't shit in the kitchen' is kind of a motto for the criminal characters in the colony."
"Would you know it if somebody had been murdered this way before?" Wufei inquired, scrutinizing Duo's face.
Was that the slightest flicker of blue eyes away from his? The barest hesitation? "Oy, sure. Rumors fly about this place faster than fire."
"I see," Wufei said, unconvinced. Then he rubbed the bridge of his nose, concentrating on the matter at hand. "In my line of work, criminals often reveal themselves when an investigation puts them at bay."
"Ye-ah," Duo drawled. "And you really think our poking around qualifies? We barely got started."
"It's too big a coincidence. I can't believe my presence here and Brindlow's murder are completely unconnected. Though I fail to see how."
Duo didn't answer. He was staring thoughtfully at the building opposite the courtyard.
"I think she knows something... "
"Marta? About the murder?" Wufei asked sharply.
"No...I think she knows something about what Josh was doing here. No details, but..."
"Why wouldn't she tell you?" Wufei's paranoia was getting into full gear. Four times out of five, the spouse was in on the murder...
"Because it's a small detail she doesn't see as immediately relevant to his death. Or because she doesn't know me from Adam. Or because...because she trusts the 'friend' who sent Josh here a hell of a lot more than she trusts me. Any of those reasons, or all of the above. I'm not sure she's actually thinking at this point, just reacting. If I could get her to trust me...but I don't see how that'll happen. Maybe I'll ask her later, but I think I'll have more luck getting someone from my network to watch her. See who she talks to. That might-"
The soft musings were interrupted by a metallic noise from a nearby building. The sound of a roof door creaking open and then shutting again, followed by footsteps against rough concrete.
Wufei and Duo had instantly crouched low at the first scrape of metal on concrete. Their rooftop was higher than the others around it by an extra floor and surrounded by a concrete balustrade. As long as they kept their heads down, they could not be seen.
Wufei looked pointedly at the door down from the roof, and Duo turned slowly, walking towards it as noiselessly as a cat, keeping low. But he kept glancing over his shoulder towards where the noise had come from, curiosity plain on his face. Wufei wasn't surprised when Duo stopped his prudent exit halfway to the door and turned around, heading towards the parapet instead. Wufei resisted the urge to grab Duo by the back of his coat and haul him away by force. It was a needless risk, but they should be safe as long as they kept their heads down and were discreet. Might as well indulge the famous Maxwell curiosity.
Duo glanced over the parapet. The way he tensed indicated that what he'd seen was unexpected and very interesting. Wufei crept nearer, trying to move as quietly as his friend, and took a look as well.
A man was kneeling at the edge of the roof of the neighboring building, staring through the bars of a metal railing. He was looking straight at the second floor window on the other side of the courtyard; the window into the room of the murder scene.
The man was small, and the way he crouched in the shadows hid many details. Wufei thought he was dressed in a rough, dark-blue woolen coat. His hair was lanky and graying, falling in threads over thinning spots and the collar.
As Wufei and Duo watched in silence, the man lifted a black object to his face. A pair of night-sight binoculars, Wufei realized, familiar with the shape. From the angle he was holding them, he was looking at the second floor, at the window of the long room that contained the body. The building the stranger had chosen as his vantage point had only three floors; the angle wasn't too sharp, he had a pretty good view of the entire room. Wufei was suddenly very glad the man hadn't been watching ten minutes ago while they were investigating the crime scene.
Duo and Wufei exchanged a meaningful glance. This seemed like a lot of effort for just a curious bystander.
As they watched, the man glanced from the view in the binoculars to the nearby emergency ladder, visibly hesitating. The ladder lead down to another courtyard. He would be one scramble over a low fence away from the murder site.
Somebody moved in the window on the second floor. The binoculars were back in place in a flash. There was a window to the hallway as well as into the room. Wufei wondered if Marta was visible through that window, if she was still there. He felt a flicker of anger that those grubby, snooping binoculars might be scrutinizing her in her grief.
Neither Wufei nor Duo made the slightest noise, yet the man suddenly jerked away the binoculars and glanced over his shoulder, hunching down further into the shadows. He had the instincts of a rat, thought Wufei, eyes narrowed as he tried to get a look at the face. Something was setting his own instincts stirring.
Duo had ducked behind the parapet, he was tugging urgently at Wufei's sleeve, but the Preventer barely noticed. He leaned forward, eyes scouring the darkness, trying to see the man better.
The man started like frightened vermin when he spotted Wufei in the faint light from the sector ceiling. The movement gave Wufei a good view of his face.
They stared at each other for a tense second. The man looked confused, he wouldn't know who Wufei was or what he was doing there...but those rodent-like instincts must have told him that Wufei was no curious bystander either. With a flick of the blue coat and a scurry across concrete, the man darted towards the door down from the rooftop.
Wufei shot to his feet, hesitated for a split second with one hand on the parapet. He might sprain an ankle jumping to the other roof, two floors down - he was the faster runner anyway.
"Wu?!"
Duo's startled exclamation was abruptly cut by the roof door swinging shut behind the Preventer. Wufei leapt from the iron stairs and raced towards the next flight at full speed.
This might have something to do with Carver or nothing at all. It didn't matter, Wufei only had one certainty. This particular bastard was not going to get away from the law again!
End Part 13
Part 14
As usual, thank you for any comments and typo spotting ^__^
Link to all chapters
We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.
---Angela Davis
Freeport by Maldoror
Chapter Thirteen
The tension and the anxiety pervading the sector increased the closer Duo and Wufei got to their destination. It was obvious their summons had something to do with the murder. Wufei followed Duo in silence; the streets were too crowded to talk freely.
There was a loose ring of people around the door at the address Braun had sent them. Three Red Bands stood in front of the building.
Wufei expected Duo to walk up to them and identify himself, but his friend strolled on down the road with barely a glance. Wufei trailed after him, puzzled. Duo picked up the pace as soon as they reached a dark alley leading away from the street. They circled the block of buildings until they were one edifice away from the murder scene. There was nobody in the roads on this side, so Wufei leaned towards his informant.
"What are we doing?"
"We're going round back to get in. More discreet."
"Oh. Why did Braun call you?"
He thought he caught the slightest flicker of blue eyes, though Duo's expression stayed open and, to all appearances, honest. "Dunno. I suppose there's a reason. Maybe it's Mako who got recycked and Braun thinks I'm to blame."
In other words, I might know but I won't tell you. Fair enough. Wufei would figure it out soon enough.
"Why's everybody so upset?"
"Because they have a dead body on their hands." Duo looked a bit surprised at the question.
"From what I've seen, dead bodies aren't exactly in short supply in Freeport. We've produced one of those already and nobody in Zapata looked quite this disturbed. And they certainly would not have been this distressed if we'd been the ones to bleed out on the pavement." In fact the spectators in Zapata had been rather looking forward to it. By contrast, the worry in the streets of Kropotkin had been almost palpable.
"Ah, but there's a difference. In this case, it's murder."
"What the hell would it have been if Ericson had had his way?"
"Duel. Confrontation. Accidental death, if you want to get cute."
Wufei stared at him, but there was no indication that Duo was joking, not even a little bit.
"Of all the-"
"Murder's different."
It was, in fact, Duo's very seriousness that interrupted Wufei's tirade.
Duo stopped and glanced around carefully, then he put his hands in his pockets and stared straight ahead, face hard. "Look, we're a violent bunch. You've seen enough by now to realize that life is easier to lose than your house keys in Freeport. I got no excuse for that. It's the way we are. Conditions are brutal here, life is too. But at least we're open about it. If you hate a man's guts enough to want to ex him, you call him out on it, knowing and accepting the consequences. That's the way it works. Murder breaks the rules."
"Rules?! What rules-"
"Murder is when somebody finds a dead body somewhere, and there's nobody obviously responsible. Somebody died, and the reason wasn't one that his friends, or even the bystanders, would accept. And that's wrong. I told you that what motivates us desperate creeps is survival. We don't let anybody take that from us. Everybody's got to die, in Freeport we know that better than anyone, but we won't die for no good reason."
The smuggler looked up and pinned Wufei with an all-too-old gaze.
"I deserve to get crucified for some of the stuff I did during the war," Duo said, completely matter-of-fact. "Well when that day comes, I'll go down with a grin on my face, 'cause I'll know exactly how I got there. I'm the only master of my life, and the one who's responsible for it. I won't die as some statistic, I'll die because of what I did, I'll die as me. And I don't know any better way to go. Do you?"
Wufei was silent for a moment. Two sets of instincts, frequently in conflict, were arguing over what Duo was saying. The Preventer was more than appalled. The warrior, however, understood.
"That works for the individual," he finally said. "That worked for us five years ago because of circumstances. But a society-"
"-is made up of individuals, and our circumstances have always been a bit desperate here," Duo interrupted with a shark-like grin. "Which is why we don't need some kind of festering, secret war erupting under our noses in the shape of people dropping dead for unknown reasons. Especially in Kropotkin. There are places where things are hazier and bad shit happens. Gang wars and such. It's messy. But Kropotkin is one of our most orderly sectors, and for this to happen here...yeah, that'd get even the Elders worried. Something damn heavy must have gone down, and this is just the ripple on the surface, the first warning sign..."
Duo's eyes had narrowed and wandered over the blind windows, the empty streets. Wufei followed his gaze. What was it that Duo saw? To Wufei, the buildings were metal bars, the sector wall was a prison cell and one of the inmates had just murdered another while all the guards were gone. The chemical and metallic stink in the air seemed to reek of blood. And yet a small part of him was starting to see a thin thread of guiding logic through the chaos.
Anger at his own lapse of judgment fuelled his voice. "Duo, this place is a zoo! And I can't believe you-"
A finger was pressed against his lips; he'd barely saw Duo move. The leather of the glove was cold. Wufei, silenced, gaped at Duo, who was now examining the unlit windows staring down at them.
"I'd love to have this debate, but I don't think we should do this now. Or here. Come on, we can fight about all this later." Duo turned to Wufei with a smirk, his eyes shining roguishly once more. "I got to admit, you're more fun to argue with than Heero is. But now's the time to focus. We got a dead geezer in the next house over, and Braun seems to think I should know about it."
The braided man opened the door to the nearest building and walked in on cat's paws. Wufei followed, surprised and disturbed by his own passion a moment ago. He knew what Freeport was, he'd known before coming here, why was he getting so upset? He needed to focus. Duo was right. It was this bloody place, it was continuously throwing him off-balance...
The hallway they had entered was silent, and Wufei saw Duo's shoulders relax. They were in a five-story building with three numbered doors on each floor. Duo ghosted to the door at the end and glared at it.
"Damn, the yard door's in someone's house. We can't go through there."
Before Wufei could ask a question, Duo turned and walked silently towards the stairs. He climbed up four flights of steps, pausing at the window at the end of each hallway to stare out in the eternal night of Freeport, his face slashed by shining neon streetlights outside.
They reached the last floor and made their stealthy way up a short flight of iron stairs. Duo produced a couple of lockpicks from about his person like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and had the door to the roof open with two twists of the wrists. He moved out, looking around carefully.
The rows of buildings on each side of the block were not back to back; communal courtyards kept them separated by a few meters. Duo walked silently to the edge of the roof and glanced down. His eyes glinted in the light from the small yard five floors below. He examined the building opposite and the blind eyes of darkened windows around them. Then, with barely a murmur of leather, Duo swung himself up and over the parapet and down the rungs of an emergency ladder which ran down the back of the building, passing by each of the windows, a possible out in case of fire. Wufei followed, trying to mimic Duo's utter silence and cursing inwardly at every scuff of boot against metal. They could hear people talking and moving in the street on the other side of the silent building, echoes rising and bouncing around the sector streets. It made Wufei feel watched as he scuttled down the ladder like a roach fleeing a spotlight.
Duo was waiting for him at the bottom, his eyes on the back door to the building containing the crime scene. He rubbed his nose with a gloved thumb and squared his shoulders. "Let's do this."
The back door was locked, but Duo made short work of it. He cracked the door and peered inside cautiously. Wufei leaned over Duo's bowed head and applied his eye to the crack as well, fingers on the strap of his sword.
This door led to a hallway rather than someone's apartment. Two men were visible through the crack in the door. Wufei could barely make out the first; he was at the front door, blocking it. One of the Red Bands they'd seen earlier. His back was turned to them, he was facing the crowds of curious and concerned citizens outside. Another man was standing at the stairwell halfway down the corridor. He was scowling, his arms crossed and his eyes fixed on the front door.
Duo let the door swing open a bit more and hissed very quietly.
The man started and turned his head. Wufei got a better look at him; a man in his late fifties, his face deeply carved with lines like vertical ravines marking long, mournful cheeks. His cropped hair was grey, nearly white, and it looked like he hadn't shaved today. The bristles were dark grey and black against the pallor of papery skin.
The tension that had wound the thin shoulders tight loosened a bit as he saw Duo. The man made a wait-a-sec gesture and turned towards the front door. Duo silently shut the back entrance, though he left it open just a crack.
That must have been Braun. He hadn't looked as old as Wufei had expected. Then again, becoming an Elder was not dependant on your physical age but the number of years you'd lived in Freeport, the number of people you knew willing to put your name forward and a vote of approval by the other Elders. There were two Elders per sector. They weren't in charge of Freeport, Duo had mischievously hastened to reassure Wufei, but their full-time job was to make sure everything turned over alright. They were too old for the physical labor in the shipyards and factory floors, so they spent their time organizing the shipbuilding contracts, the Red Bands, the commissaries, and keeping an overall view on things. They didn't control Freeport's heading, but they did sort of make sure the colony didn't drive itself into a hole.
Duo had told Wufei about the Elders a couple of weeks back already. He'd obviously expected Wufei to be shocked. Since Wufei's clan had had pretty much the same system, Duo had not gotten the rant on the virtues of democracy that he'd expected, and had seemed rather disappointed at that.
Wufei heard a quiet murmur and then the sound of the front door being closed. Steps came towards them. Duo opened the door after a last glance around the courtyard, dark and echoing like the bottom of an empty aquarium, and then he slipped inside, followed by Wufei.
"Duo." Up close, and despite its unshaven condition, the older man's face was hard and commanding. He was dressed in the utilitarian grey of the factory workers, the only mark of his position of Elder was the authority in his voice and the gesture he made towards the stairs. "Second floor."
"What-"
"You'll see," was the curt answer. Wufei was spared an equally curt glance, hard and borderline hostile, but Braun didn't comment on his presence.
Wufei smelled the blood before he reached the landing. Whatever had happened had been fairly recent. The streets outside were still humming, and Wufei heard the muffled voice of a Red Band asking people to disperse. The silence of the first floor was oppressive by contrast. A murmur threaded its way through the stifling quiet, a gentle, soothing voice.
There was only the slash of light from outside to illuminate the hallway. It seemed Braun didn't want to switch on the light in view of the spectators in the street and the surrounding buildings. Two people were sitting on the first stairs up to the third floor, barely visible in the darkness. Wufei made out a woman's face, whiter than the whitewash that reflected the streetlights from unpainted walls. The man sitting next to her was murmuring, a gentle threnody of compassion. The murmur ended in a gentle question. "Do you want to leave now?"
"No!" the woman said harshly. Wufei heard the hysteria barely leashed in her voice.
Duo glanced at her, then obeyed Braun's nodded instruction to step through the door. He stopped immediately and whistled under his breath. Wufei glanced over his shoulder and took in the sight with a professional glance.
Victim was male, around thirty years of age, lying flat on his back with his head thrown back and his left arm up near his head. The right arm was partly hacked off, hanging by a curdling thread of skin and ruptured muscle. Bone glistened whitely through the blood clots. It was that cut more than the actual deathblow that caught Wufei's attention. The arm had been nearly severed, but even from where he stood, it was obvious that there were no hack marks. That cut had been made with a single blow from a heavy, long-bladed weapon. Something like a very sharp machete, for example.
Wufei glanced at Braun who'd followed them in and was leaning against the doorjamb as if to block either access or exit, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were flat and unfriendly when they met Wufei's gaze, but it seemed he wanted something from him, Wufei wasn't sure what.
A whisper of leather brought Wufei's attention back to where the corpse lay. Duo had gathered up his coat to lean over the body without letting the hem drag in the thickening bloodstains. Wufei made a motion to hold his friend back, but what was the point? There were no local law enforcement to cordon off the scene, no authorities to bring in a team of forensics and interrogate the neighbors.
Duo examined the dead man's face and then he glanced up at Wufei. There was none of Braun's hostility in his gaze. It was simply a question, and it did not look like Wufei would be blamed if he turned down the silent request that lay behind it.
As far as Wufei was concerned, the question did not need to be asked. There might not be any police force and forensics team available, but there was at least one Preventer present, and by god he was going to do his job whatever the unusual, not to say surreal, conditions and circumstances. Given the chance, he'd have done it even without that bastard Carver possibly being involved.
Wufei removed his jacket and laid it on a table nearby after carefully examining the surface for anything he might disturb. From the breast pocket he fished out the small flashlight Duo had given them the first day they'd arrived in the colony. "The lights tend to fail in Freeport," Duo had explained in a lazy drawl that implied this was a frequent event that made life interesting. "You never know when you might need it." Truer words...
Leaving the corpse aside for a moment, Wufei examined his surroundings. The room was the width of the building, twenty-one feet by fourteen, Wufei estimated. It wasn't an apartment, the area had been set aside as a craft shop. Waist-high bins of leather, cardboard, thick cloth and sheet plastic lined the wall. An open cupboard revealed paintbrushes, tubes, bottles and boxes. Small tables throughout the room bore works in progress: simple slippers, toys, gaily painted bags and purses.
The victim was near the window. Strangely enough, the chair nearest to him was not pulled out and there was no work on that table. There was in fact no indication of what he'd been doing here.
He had been killed here, though, that much was certain. The quantity and splash pattern of blood confirmed it. Neither were his clothes ruffled or torn as one would expect if he'd been dragged here against his will. No bruise sign of a gag either, and Wufei knew Freeport's overcrowded conditions well enough to know that nobody could drag an ungagged man anywhere without ten citizens knowing about it. So what had the man been doing here, standing near the window...?
Wufei finally approached the victim. Duo stood back and let him have the floor. As they passed each other, Wufei caught Duo's eye and glanced back at their silent companion.
"Braun, this is Agent Chang," Duo said very softly in answer to Wufei's unvoiced question. "Wufei, this is Elder Braun."
Braun grunted. He didn't look happy about any of this. His long cheeks sagged, he looked like a cross, elderly basset hound in the bad light. But he nodded grudging acknowledgement in Wufei's direction. So with Cesar in Zapata, that made at least two people who knew some of Wufei's real purpose in Freeport. And Braun was someone in authority, if one could call it that. Someone who knew enough of the details to call Duo and Wufei in for this murder. Interesting.
Wufei crouched near the corpse, careful to keep his boots out of the rivulets of blood that had snaked their way along near-invisible indentations in the linoleum. Wufei glanced around the corpse, staring at the cheap flooring and flashing his light's beam around. His fingers traced a deep cut near the body, lifting white plastic edges towards his illumination. Recent, he judged, the plastic had not had time to yellow and curl. The cut was precise and near the victim's side.
In Wufei's mind, different scenarios played out. Two men near the window, arguing, the flash of a blade...or else the murderer had burst into the room, catching his victim doing something near the window. A first fierce blow towards the man's arm which he'd have lifted in defense. Unless...
"Duo? Look around for a weapon."
"Sure. Uh, you think he'd have left it here?" Duo kept the query as neutral as possible, visibly unwilling to question Wufei's expertise in front of Braun; a nice show of support in the tense atmosphere.
"The victim's weapon, if he had one," Wufei elaborated. "And anything else you can find."
"Oh, right." Footsteps shuffled behind him, followed by the click of another flashlight turning on.
"Don't disturb the evidence," Wufei added, then scowled down at the corpse. There was no need for such caution in Freeport.
"'Fraid it won't be telling us much either way, mate, but I'll do my best," Duo answered placidly. A glance showed Wufei that Duo was moving carefully, watching where he put his feet. The Preventer turned back towards the victim.
So a fierce blow to the arm which had been lifted in attack or just in defense. The hack of metal against flesh. The victim's cry as the bone split and muscle gave way. A stagger back, a stumble into the nearest table and chair which were knocked out of alignment with the others, a wide smear of blood on the plastic table top.
Once the victim was on the ground...first that blow to the floor. The victim must have rolled away from it as it came at him. Then the killing blows.
Wufei wished he had some latex gloves handy. He hesitated, but what the hell. He was vaccinated against most things, his immune system was still abnormally boosted five years after the war and he had no cuts on his hands. As for his contaminating the crime scene, the idea was laughable. He slipped the torch between his teeth, long practice keeping the beam perfectly steady. His fingers teased apart the cloth of the jacket, shirt and t-shirt from the wound, noting how the threads had been sliced as cleanly as flesh and dragged into the resulting incision.
The murderer had caught the man at a slight oblique. It looked like part of a rib was sectioned. Wufei grumbled to himself, remembering he wouldn't be getting an autopsy report on this one.
The blow had beaten in the ribcage. Pink-white tissue clung to the edges, dragged out when the blade was removed. Lung tissue, probably. It curdled against the victim's bloodied clothes.
The blow at the neck had been next in all likelihood. The killer wouldn't have bothered with a wild blow to the man's torso if he'd managed to score the throat first. The blow was off-center though. The victim must have been thrashing in agony. It had caught half the neck, tendons gleaming grey under Wufei's flashlight. The blood had stopped flowing awhile ago already. It had spurted as far as the wall; the blade had hacked into the carotid. From the angle of the blow, the killer must have gotten hit by some of the flow.
Wufei carefully pushed the victim aside. He had to bludgeon his conscience into submission first. It was shrieking that he was tampering with a crime scene, and waiting in vain for the flash of light from photographers who would never show, coroners and forensics experts who would never have the chance to examine the man's position before moving him.
The weapon had scored the floor through the torso and the neck. The cuts in the cheap wood amalgam beneath the linoleum looked deep.
Wufei stood up and glanced around, then walked up to the cupboard. Braun watched him in silence. Duo had stopped examining the room and was standing near the window at an angle that would keep him from being seen from the street. He was scrutinizing the crowds. Wufei wondered what he was looking for. Seeing if anyone unexpected had shown up to check out the fuss? As an investigator, Wufei knew that the old adage of 'the criminal returns to the scene of his crime' occurred more often than one would expect.
The cupboard yielded a tape measure. He used it to feel out and measure the incline of the cut in the floor, scraping out clotted blood with a piece of cardboard first. From the angle, the killer must have been standing or half crouched, and he'd hammered down with the point of the weapon. It had sunk deeply and sharply into the floor. That put the killer's strength to way above average, and the weapon must have been heavy and broad. The end of the hack mark in the body and the floor did not correspond to a sword or saber. Wufei was not a certified forensics expert, but he knew his blades and this really looked like the work of a machete, however much he tried to keep an open mind about the possible identity of the killer.
A pat-down of the corpse's pockets revealed no papers that Wufei could find, but it did turn up a long hunting knife strapped to the small of the back. There had been no attempt to unsheathe it. The man's clothes weren't even rumpled up around the holster. The murderer had taken the victim by surprise. This had all happened one to three hours ago, Wufei judged by the gathering rigor mortis in the body's joints and muscles and the cold in the room that would have delayed it.
"Find anything?" he threw over his shoulder as he carefully washed his hands in the small sink surrounded by cleaned paint pots and brushes.
"No," said Duo without breaking away from his scrutiny of the street and the opposite building.
Wufei turned, wiping his hands on a rag, and caught Braun looking at him. The Elder was frowning, but his eyes were sharp, curious, and had lost some of their previous hostility.
The Preventer made his way towards the door. Braun looked surprised and none-too-pleased as Wufei strode right up to him. Near the window, Duo turned around and shifted forward.
"Excuse me," Wufei said crisply.
Braun stared at him, then followed the beam of Wufei's flashlight towards the bloody hand-print on the doorjamb just above his head. Braun jerked away, mouth dropping open. He fetched up against the other jamb for a split second until he started and spun around to see if he'd missed other gory testimonies there as well.
Wufei didn't pay much attention to the Elder, he concentrated on the hand-print. He'd been expecting some kind of trace. The killer hadn't gotten any blood on the soles of his shoes, but he had been doused with it, so there would surely be something. He'd been wearing gloves of course. Not that that mattered, since Wufei didn't have a fingerprint kit, or anything other than his eyes and his flashlight.
The victim must have screamed. The killer lost precious seconds dealing the deathblow. After that final cut to the neck, he must have gotten out as quickly as possible. He would have leaped to the doorway, catching himself on the jamb as he halted to check the hallway for witnesses before running towards the stairs. His right hand had come to rest here and smudged his victim's blood on the white paint. Wufei had noticed other traces on the banister as he'd climbed the stairs earlier.
The print was on the right side of the doorway; he'd been carrying the weapon in his left hand. In the circumstances, he'd have put his hand nearly at head height to stabilize himself. The print was very high up on the doorjamb. Wufei used the tape measure to confirm that it was at five eight.
Carver was over six feet tall and left-handed.
Wufei felt the cold prickle of the hunter lift the small hairs on the back of his neck, but he ruthlessly crushed the excitement. He had to stay objective and focused. He turned towards Braun, lifting the flashlight so the beam cut the air between them, illuminating both their faces faintly.
"Did you know the victim?"
Braun blinked, obviously startled at being addressed. "No, I don't. Oh, I do know his name, though, if that's what you mean. Joshua Brindlow."
"Who's the woman outside?"
"Marta Bernstein. His partner."
"Business or-"
"Family."
"Did he live in this building?"
"No, he's not even from this sector."
Then what the hell was he doing here?
Wufei glanced around. "Who does this room belong to?"
"Nobody. It's a communal room for several buildings."
"What are you doing here?"
There was a tense silence and Wufei remembered that he was a Preventer waaaay outside his jurisdiction. Braun's eyebrows had shot up.
"I meant, are you the Elder of this sector?" Wufei elaborated stiffly.
"No, and I know what you meant," Braun answered with an edge of dry smile for Wufei's audacity. "I can assure you, I was not here when this happened. I was in the Compound when this news came down the lines. That's in Lao Tzu sector, nearly an hour from here," he added, interpreting Wufei's blank look. "I...keep an eye out for these sorts of things," Braun added. The brown eyes flickered in Duo's direction. "So I decided to look into it. Heral, the man outside, is one of the Elders for this sector. I fetched him and we came to investigate. We had one of my Red Bands check the man's ID tattoo and we traced him through central records. Found Marta at their home, had her brought here by one of the Red Bands."
And then he'd sent for Duo. Why, Wufei wanted to ask, but he wasn't sure the question would be answered. Braun's attitude seemed to discourage any further comments. Though the hostility was gone, he was still treating Wufei's presence here as something he'd rather not contemplate. Considering he'd called in a Preventer into something that had Freeport in turmoil, Wufei found that understandable. If the crowds outside learned about any of this, Wufei and Braun might both end up swinging from the same lamppost.
"Which sector does this man come from?"
"Mooncurse."
"That's like five or six sectors away from here, at the edge of the industrial sector and nearer the dockyards," Duo interjected thoughtfully, tapping his chin with his gloved finger. "It's a sector full of freetraders and pirates, hence the name. Any witnesses?"
"No. A woman on the ground floor saw somebody running out the building and down the street, but I couldn't get much of a description out of her. Tall, was what she said first, short brown hair, dressed in a knee-length brown coat. Then she started elaborating wildly and I stopped listening."
That fitted Carver. It also fit a fourth of the male population of Freeport, Wufei added severely, batting down once more the hope that they'd finally found some proof that the man they were chasing wasn't a ghost.
"Nobody else heard Brindlow scream several times and fall to the ground, and then notice a very tall man with a machete and bloody clothes run out of the building?" Wufei asked tightly. "Who lives beneath this room?"
"Nobody, it's a crèche."
"Wonderful," Duo muttered.
"The screams were heard," Braun added. "It's - it was the middle of the night for the dockers here. Everybody was asleep. The two families living on this floor heard a shout, cries and sounds of a struggle and then someone running down the stairs. But by the time they went to investigate..."
"And outside?" Wufei asked, walking back towards the corpse.
"If somebody had seen him, they'd have come forward already."
Great. Carver had disappeared into thin air again. Still, he had been here. Wufei would never be presenting this murder scene to a court, so he could drop the 'presumably' and the 'alleged' and go with his gut instincts. They were telling him he'd found his man, albeit briefly.
He stared down at Joshua Brindlow's tightening features, lips pulled back over teeth, eyes wide and staring. Since Wufei was the coroner here as well as everything else, he passed his hands over the eyes, closing them. Then, remembering the woman in the hall, he did his best to pull the man's features into something a loving partner could carry with her in her memory.
"Does anybody in this building know the victim?" he asked.
"No. Or they're not saying." The last was added very reluctantly. Braun, like Duo, wanted to believe in the crude honesty and openness of Freeport even with the evidence to the contrary under his nose. "That's why we had to look up his tattoo. Nobody's even seen him around before. I checked with Marta. Joshua was a freetrader. A solo operator for the most part. His ship is - was the Jolly."
"The Jolly?" Duo said thoughtfully.
"That's what Marta said. She also said that Joshua was doing something for a friend these past two days. Marta didn't know what."
"Duo, what route did the Jolly run?" Wufei asked quietly as if the answer were a small animal that could be frightened away if he barked the question out.
"If it's the Jolly I'm thinking of, exclusively L4," Duo answered glumly in a 'don't get your hopes up' tone of voice. Braun looked from one to the other curiously. Apparently he knew some particulars of the case, but not the details.
Damn. So this wasn't a Freetrader who could have fingered Carver as a passenger on his ship coming from L2. Wufei stared at the features which were somewhat more peaceful now, as if accepting the trip that lay ahead of him with the serenity that befitted the dead.
Why did he kill you, Joshua?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marta Bernstein was a small woman in her thirties, about Joshua's height and a few years older. Her face was colorless in the dark hallway. Heral, the sector's Elder, looked up as Wufei and Duo approached.
This time it was Wufei who stood back and let Duo operate. Duo didn't insult the woman's grief with pity, his voice stayed firm and matter-of-fact, but there was genuine sorrow in his eyes as he talked.
Marta listened to his questions in silence. She wasn't crying. Her wide eyes were dull and flat, and her attention wandered to the door of the bloodied room at one point while Duo was talking. Wufei wondered if she'd seen the body yet. Duo brought her attention back to him gently.
Unfortunately she didn't know much. Or, the Preventer's paranoia added, she wasn't talking. Wufei wanted to ask her where she'd been a few hours ago, what she knew of Joshua's movements these past two days, and if she was acquainted with a big tall son of a bitch who carried a machete around. Duo's questions and gentle insistence seemed to take ages and didn't get them anywhere, but Wufei reined in his impatience. This was not a witness interrogation. Freeport citizens had a mentality that still escaped Wufei for the most part, but they didn't respond well to threats and orders, he knew that much. He leaned back against the wall to wait, and caught Braun giving him that speculative look again.
"I'm sorry." Marta's face was loosing the stiffness of shock and starting to crumple. "I just don't know- I'm not- he didn't say, he said it was for a friend, and he was looking into something. But Josh is- he's not a rat-catcher or- or anything!" She seemed distressed that Duo might think so. "He just-... a friend- a friend asked him-"
"Shhh, s'okay, Marta." Duo patted her shoulder as she hunched over. Heral drew her into his arms for a hug. Duo watched her for a minute in silence, his hand still on her shoulder, then he glanced up at Braun.
"We have a Red Band outside who can take her home, or to a friend's house," said the latter. "Marta?"
She was shuddering now, eyes narrowed as if she didn't want to look ahead and see what was waiting for her there. Duo squeezed her upper arm but didn't attempt to say anything. Wufei, inured by his own widowhood, his losses and too many interviews with grieving parents and spouses, felt nothing but fatalistic. The future was there, waiting for her, and there was nothing he or anyone could do about it. Hopefully she had some friends to stay with and help ease her into it. Ultimately, she would face it alone.
Duo was silent as he led Wufei back to the courtyard behind the building. They'd parted with nothing more than a wave from Braun who bore the expression of a man gearing himself up for some serious organizing.
The silence between them was leaden and heavy. Though Wufei's head was telling him there was nothing he could have done to save Brindlow's life, his soul still seethed with feelings of undirected guilt and he thought Duo felt the same.
"Braun knows. About me," Wufei murmured finally, knowing that shroud of silence had to be broken sooner or later.
"Yeah." Wufei could barely hear Duo's soft voice above him as they started to climb the ladder. He trod extra lightly on the rungs to avoid covering the near-inaudible words. "When Tro asked me the first time to get Heero in...there's no rules here, but it's still a good idea to get an Elder on your side when you're trying something like this, yanno? It'll stop me from getting spaced if ever this stuff gets out. I'll probably get clobbered, mind you, but at least I won't get recycked."
"You mean," Wufei paused to haul himself over the parapet. "You mean Braun's known about this, about Heero, from the start?"
"Yeah, him and another Elder. It's Braun who checked for me that Carver wasn't hiding out in quarantine. Like all Elders, he's got unrestricted access to IDs and the computer system."
Wufei's gaze went from the building they'd left behind to Duo's features as he measured the import of that. "Why?" he asked bluntly. "Why does he help you? Why does he let you do this?"
Duo rubbed his nose with the back of a gloved finger. "Braun's got a sister. She's sixty years old and a real shrew, but I'm pretty damn sure he doesn't want Carver dating her anyway."
Wufei rolled his eyes in exaggerated annoyance, though inwardly he was unaccountably thankful for the reappearance of the cheeky grin that had been momentarily dampened by Marta's grief. Duo was no stranger to dead bodies, but Marta's pain had affected him where Joshua's bloodied corpse had not. Unlike a cop, he put up no barriers against that sort of thing. But he was already casting off the sorrow and the gloom, and moving on.
"I take it we both think Carver's shown up at last," Duo continued, eyeing Wufei for confirmation. When Wufei nodded, Duo rubbed the back of his neck in the familiar gesture. "That's weird, though. This guy's been living in Freeport for years now as far as we can tell. I don't think he's ever cut anybody up on his home turf before. 'Don't shit in the kitchen' is kind of a motto for the criminal characters in the colony."
"Would you know it if somebody had been murdered this way before?" Wufei inquired, scrutinizing Duo's face.
Was that the slightest flicker of blue eyes away from his? The barest hesitation? "Oy, sure. Rumors fly about this place faster than fire."
"I see," Wufei said, unconvinced. Then he rubbed the bridge of his nose, concentrating on the matter at hand. "In my line of work, criminals often reveal themselves when an investigation puts them at bay."
"Ye-ah," Duo drawled. "And you really think our poking around qualifies? We barely got started."
"It's too big a coincidence. I can't believe my presence here and Brindlow's murder are completely unconnected. Though I fail to see how."
Duo didn't answer. He was staring thoughtfully at the building opposite the courtyard.
"I think she knows something... "
"Marta? About the murder?" Wufei asked sharply.
"No...I think she knows something about what Josh was doing here. No details, but..."
"Why wouldn't she tell you?" Wufei's paranoia was getting into full gear. Four times out of five, the spouse was in on the murder...
"Because it's a small detail she doesn't see as immediately relevant to his death. Or because she doesn't know me from Adam. Or because...because she trusts the 'friend' who sent Josh here a hell of a lot more than she trusts me. Any of those reasons, or all of the above. I'm not sure she's actually thinking at this point, just reacting. If I could get her to trust me...but I don't see how that'll happen. Maybe I'll ask her later, but I think I'll have more luck getting someone from my network to watch her. See who she talks to. That might-"
The soft musings were interrupted by a metallic noise from a nearby building. The sound of a roof door creaking open and then shutting again, followed by footsteps against rough concrete.
Wufei and Duo had instantly crouched low at the first scrape of metal on concrete. Their rooftop was higher than the others around it by an extra floor and surrounded by a concrete balustrade. As long as they kept their heads down, they could not be seen.
Wufei looked pointedly at the door down from the roof, and Duo turned slowly, walking towards it as noiselessly as a cat, keeping low. But he kept glancing over his shoulder towards where the noise had come from, curiosity plain on his face. Wufei wasn't surprised when Duo stopped his prudent exit halfway to the door and turned around, heading towards the parapet instead. Wufei resisted the urge to grab Duo by the back of his coat and haul him away by force. It was a needless risk, but they should be safe as long as they kept their heads down and were discreet. Might as well indulge the famous Maxwell curiosity.
Duo glanced over the parapet. The way he tensed indicated that what he'd seen was unexpected and very interesting. Wufei crept nearer, trying to move as quietly as his friend, and took a look as well.
A man was kneeling at the edge of the roof of the neighboring building, staring through the bars of a metal railing. He was looking straight at the second floor window on the other side of the courtyard; the window into the room of the murder scene.
The man was small, and the way he crouched in the shadows hid many details. Wufei thought he was dressed in a rough, dark-blue woolen coat. His hair was lanky and graying, falling in threads over thinning spots and the collar.
As Wufei and Duo watched in silence, the man lifted a black object to his face. A pair of night-sight binoculars, Wufei realized, familiar with the shape. From the angle he was holding them, he was looking at the second floor, at the window of the long room that contained the body. The building the stranger had chosen as his vantage point had only three floors; the angle wasn't too sharp, he had a pretty good view of the entire room. Wufei was suddenly very glad the man hadn't been watching ten minutes ago while they were investigating the crime scene.
Duo and Wufei exchanged a meaningful glance. This seemed like a lot of effort for just a curious bystander.
As they watched, the man glanced from the view in the binoculars to the nearby emergency ladder, visibly hesitating. The ladder lead down to another courtyard. He would be one scramble over a low fence away from the murder site.
Somebody moved in the window on the second floor. The binoculars were back in place in a flash. There was a window to the hallway as well as into the room. Wufei wondered if Marta was visible through that window, if she was still there. He felt a flicker of anger that those grubby, snooping binoculars might be scrutinizing her in her grief.
Neither Wufei nor Duo made the slightest noise, yet the man suddenly jerked away the binoculars and glanced over his shoulder, hunching down further into the shadows. He had the instincts of a rat, thought Wufei, eyes narrowed as he tried to get a look at the face. Something was setting his own instincts stirring.
Duo had ducked behind the parapet, he was tugging urgently at Wufei's sleeve, but the Preventer barely noticed. He leaned forward, eyes scouring the darkness, trying to see the man better.
The man started like frightened vermin when he spotted Wufei in the faint light from the sector ceiling. The movement gave Wufei a good view of his face.
They stared at each other for a tense second. The man looked confused, he wouldn't know who Wufei was or what he was doing there...but those rodent-like instincts must have told him that Wufei was no curious bystander either. With a flick of the blue coat and a scurry across concrete, the man darted towards the door down from the rooftop.
Wufei shot to his feet, hesitated for a split second with one hand on the parapet. He might sprain an ankle jumping to the other roof, two floors down - he was the faster runner anyway.
"Wu?!"
Duo's startled exclamation was abruptly cut by the roof door swinging shut behind the Preventer. Wufei leapt from the iron stairs and raced towards the next flight at full speed.
This might have something to do with Carver or nothing at all. It didn't matter, Wufei only had one certainty. This particular bastard was not going to get away from the law again!
End Part 13
Part 14
As usual, thank you for any comments and typo spotting ^__^