13 Degrees of Separation (51 page)

A few
were vans, one had a Forensic symbol on the side. “Why not just put an ad out
in the paper,” Nohar sighed, looking around. He ignored the keystone cops, he
was more intent on the witnesses. If the killer was among them, then he would
hopefully get a face in his recording.

Nothing
malevolent jumped out at him though, no one jumped up and down and screamed
'here I am!' he snorted at the very thought. Nor did anyone have a black cape
and top hat on. No, but they could still be there, using their anonymity to
watch. Many serial killers did it, they loved to gloat. And again, no sign of
that expression either. No, that would make it too easy.

He
turned as Magnum continued to patently explain to one cop after another what
had transpired. A pair of cops had pulled other people aside, each isolated so
they wouldn't be able to share details or compare stories. It was a typical
tactic, divide and conquer, allowing investigators to see who was telling the
truth. Nohar knew it was his turn as soon as they were finished questioning any
potential witnesses, the owners of the buildings, and other people. From the
look on the restaurant owner's face, he wasn't at all happy about the police
presence and the sudden notoriety and negative publicity this would bring down
on him. “It's bad for business, is what it is,” Milo, a white Neo mutt kept
saying over and over.

When
they were finished with the locals it was Nohar's turn. Two fat detectives, one
with a spot of powdered sugar on his green jacket, both smelling of sweat came
over and tried to stare them down.

Nohar
pointed out to the cop Bob Draskin, junior detective O'shee and Magnum that the
kill happened here, though he wasn't sure of a time line. The cop listened,
taking notes. Nohar realized he thought it was a confession. He handed over his
PI ID to Draskin's partner. O'shee took it hesitantly and then showed it to his
partner. Draskin grunted in irritation, looking over his shoulder to Magnum who
just shrugged with his hands out and grinned.

“From
what I can gather, the two were here for some reason. The paper said hookers.
Hookers don't like to work an area alone, its' like having a fat target on
their back. Usually they tell a partner where they are going and for how long.
They may even have hiding spots in this area or a room rented to them to get
the John's jollies off and then off and on their way.”

“Probably,”
Magnum replied, looking around.

“What
I'm wondering here is, did this Tracy get killed first, and then the other one
walked in on the killer, and then was chased down and killed in the other
alley?” Nohar mused, rubbing his jaw.

“Sounds
plausible,” O'shee said nodding.

“Shut
it kid,” Draskin growled. “You two know better than to get involved in an
active police investigation,” he said looking from one PI to the other. He
settled on Nohar.

“Active?”
Nohar snorted bitterly. “You had no leads, I read the paper report. I quote,
the police have exhausted all leads and are asking for the public's help. I
think this qualifies as public help,” he said. “Though I find it kind of odd
that you exhausted all leads in an investigation that isn't quite 48 hours
old.”

Draskin
scowled. His Asian partner looked down and away. “Yeah, that's what I thought,”
Nohar murmured. “Sweep the Neo killings under the rug. After all, it's not a
human so who cares?” he growled softly.

“That's
enough,” Draskin growled. “You want me to revoke your license and stuff you in
the pound keep talking...” he growled.

“I cut
you a break, got you leads and found another vic and you bitch at me?” Nohar
asked. He started to bristle, hair on end. O'shee's eyes went wide in fright.
He could smell a trickle of urine from the small female human. She suddenly
reeked of fear.

“That's
enough Nohar,” Magnum said, hand on his arm. Nohar turned a glare on the human.
“Come on,” Magnum said jerking his head to the bar. “We're done here. Let's go
get a beer and steak and let the officers do their jobs,” he said. “We're done
here right?” he demanded.

“Just
don't leave town,” Draskin said.

“You're
all heart Bobby,” Magnum replied, taking their ID's back. Nohar turned in time
to catch a rookie cop move the bin aside. He saw a jumbled mess of body parts.
The cop gagged, turned and ran for the street to barf. Nohar and others
wrinkled their noses.

“Yeah,
lunch, right,” the Tiger murmured.

“Let's
um, go someplace else. Preferably down wind,” Magnum said, steering him away
from the mess and the crowd of people who were gathering to watch. “Wanna bet
that guy's going to be on the news?” Magnum joked as they walked off. Nohar
grunted.

...*...*...*...*...

They
ended up a few blocks away at another restaurant, this one country style. The
twang of a guitar made the tiger wince. Neo buffalo heads were on the walls as
trophies, as were big horn sheep, antelope, and some species he didn't
recognize right off. Some others had big long horns... the stereotypes went on
and on. The place was dim which he appreciated, with a rustic wood floor
complete with wood shavings, smell of humans in heat, leather... right. He
could smell beef though, beef and only slightly stale beer so maybe it would be
all right.

In the
corner a band was singing an old folk song, 'All my ex's live in New Texas,
that's why I hang my hat in Airea 3' he winced again, the singer really needed
to either shut up or get singing lessons. His pitch could bend metal. Besides,
he'd heard the original version of that song, the new one didn't give the old
one justice.

“So,
the hunt is on,” Magnum said, just loud enough to be heard over the noise and
what passed as music to the humans.

“Yeah,”
Nohar replied, growling slightly. They took their seats and ordered steaks.
Nohar ordered 5 pounds of rare steak, making the girl blink in shock at him.

“You
want to be on the wall?” she asked. She pointed to the wall of photos of people.
He looked in the indicated direction, ignoring her slutty cowgirl outfit. The
leather vest she had on barely kept her double D's from spilling out.

“Why?
What wall?” Nohar asked.

“Where
people gorge on food Nohar,” Magnum replied.

“Oh no,
I normally eat that much as a light snack,” Nohar replied with a diffident
shrug and ear flick. The humans blinked at him and then the waitress slowly
whistled. She wrote the order down and left, muttering about needing big Eddy
to bring it out.

“A hunt
for a real serial killer, it's been a while,” Magnum said. “You think the cases
are related don't you. The human prostitute and the Neo's.” he took his glasses
off and tucked them into his breast pocket.

“Don't
you?” Nohar asked as the waitress arrived with their drinks. Nohar sipped the
water through the straw, glad he had the straw. It wouldn't do to make a mess
out of eating and drinking right now. He'd do that when the steaks arrived.

“Yeah,
yeah I do,” Magnum replied. “You got hired to investigate?”

“Something
like that,” Nohar replied, noncommittal. It shouldn't take the humans long to
cook his meat, after all, just heat it up, sear, flip, sear, and done.

“Been
on the job long?”

“You
know how long,” Nohar replied snorting. He was fairly certain Magnum knew just
when he got into town.

“Just
curious,” Magnum replied, sitting back. “Want my records?”

“Pass
for now, thanks though,” Nohar replied. They might give him a jump, but they
might make him pick up the human's prejudices and blind spots as well. “My
client wants discretion,” he admitted.

“Ah,”
Magnum nodded wisely. “Pity. I guess we're in competition then,” he said,
sipping his drink.

Nohar
snorted softly. “I guess so,” he said as a rather disgusting looking fat human
with a tray of meat and the waitress dressed in the cowgirl outfit returned.
“Oh, lunch is up,” he said.

...*...*...*...*...

They
parted a half hour later, Magnum looked a little green and didn't say much.
Apparently seeing a tiger eat had been a little too much for him. Nohar flicked
his ears and flicked a bit of meat out from between his teeth. It hadn't been
all that bad, a bit tough, but not bad. He looked around, noting the dropping
light level. He also noted the people around, all looking on edge and warily
looking at him. He wanted to stick around, but no, it was probably not a good
idea. Not with everyone on edge. Besides, the cops sitting under the street
light on the corner didn't look at all amused at being there. It'd be just his
luck to get questioned again.

He
headed back to the hotel, and then settled down in his bed and started
processing the loads of intel he'd gathered. He checked the laptop, it had
filtered out all the crap he didn't want, but there were quite a few deaths.
He'd forgotten to limit it to unsolved homicides.

Now
though, looking... he wasn't sure that his mistake was a mistake at all, it
might be one of those happy accidents. Stranger things had happened after all.
Some of these deaths were strange indeed.

He
tallied up the totals and something jumped out at him. There had been a lot of
accidental deaths in the past year. A lot of accidental deaths and suicides.
Something bothered him about it, his instincts screamed to look closer.

 He
frowned, picking at the idea. It didn't come to him easily so he started to
read the reports. When he did he saw a pattern, one he didn't like. One that
threw all the accidents into the doubtful column. He tracked the accidental
deaths, and in doing so he found that many of the first suspicious ones were
young neolion cubs. Each are young, under 5 years old. Each death was death by
strangulation, a fall, on a train track, or drowning.  The identities were
withheld because the victims were all minors, but the circumstances... he
compiled them. Several were almost word for word identical, identical victim,
identical location, circumstances... it read like a bad holo novel drama. What
started to bother him was no one else had noticed. You'd think going to the
same crime scene 3 times in a year for the exact same thing would have made
someone sit up and take notice!

He
wasn't sure if the two crime signatures were related though, after all, one
series were children, the other were prostitutes. His damn instincts though...
he dug deeper, focusing on the changes to the older kills.

He
switched from the train track deaths to drowning, the trains wouldn't have left
much.

Ring
City had a power house north west of the city in the foothills. Instead of
using a hydroelectric dam to contain the water, they tapped water coming from
the mountains through the forests north west of the city. The snow melt had a
great deal of force behind it.

Some of
the water from the canyon river was diverted into a flume. On top of the flume
was a trestle and train track. When the water reached a high hill above the
power house it was diverted once more, this time into narrow pipes called a
header which concentrated the flow into a tight powerful stream running at
800kph when it hit the bottom and the turbines in the power house. The power
house had six turbines, but usually only three or four were in use in late
spring. During the spring melt all six and the excess flow system were in use.

The
water came crashing out from under the power house, spewing out from under the
arches and then back to the main river. New Seattle had a similar system, in
fact the system here outside Ring City had been copied from the Seattle one. It
was more modern even though it was a century old, with a recent upgrade in
turbines to make it more efficient. It could now put out over 14,000 kilowatts
of power, enough to power ninety-five percent of the city. Ring City was
shaping up to be a Major city... but it was all tourists, logging, and fishing.

He
shook himself to regain his focus and continued reading. According to the
reports several bodies had been found in trash traps and in eddies and even in
one of the turbine intakes. The bodies were found both above and below the
power house. It was theorized that the people had been playing on the flumes
and had fallen in and drowned.

Now
though, Nohar didn't buy that. One maybe, but 22 in a year? When the flume had
a record of only
2
deaths in over a
century
of use... and all of
them were from workers who had slipped on slippery wood? No, something else was
going on here, something sinister.

Unfortunately
the bodies were too badly damaged to get much from them. Or so the local paper
said. Again, he didn't believe that. The water may have flushed most forensics
off a body, but a lot of data could be gathered. You could normally tell for
instance, if an injury was made post or premortem. They weren't saying that
though. Again, he suspected someone was just sweeping the mess under the rug.

Most of
the early deaths had been Neo's. Only recently had human fatalities started to
surface. That told Nohar something was very wrong. It was a pattern of
escalation, but the police were focusing on recent events, not looking at the
older crimes for clues. Usually a serial killer was sloppy in the opening
moves. Most killers planned the act in minute detail, but didn't plan the
aftermath. He'd have to start there.