Dead Man on the Moon (7 page)

"He was clawing at something," she said. "And I found traces of paint under the nails. It's a common type, often used on ceramic walls—and airlocks."

Noah's stomach churned. "Jesus," he said.

"What are you thinking?" Linus said.

"Someone tapped this guy on the back of the head and shoved him into an airlock," Noah said, "but the victim woke up before the killer could hit the button. He punched and clawed at the door, but the killer ran the cycle anyway. The blast of escaping air tossed him out of the lock. Maybe that's how the bones were broken."

"Airlocks generally don't blast open, except in an emergency," Linus pointed out. "The air gets evacuated first."

"Well, maybe the bones were broken when the killer hauled the body out to the crater. In any case, it wasn't a pleasant way to go."

"Sounds reasonable," Dr. Fang said. Was that a hint of forgiveness in her voice? Noah couldn't tell. "I have more tests to run, of course."

"What worries me," Linus said, "is the lack of ID. The DNA of every single person who enters Luna City is registered. So how did this guy avoid that? Does it have to do with the reason he's dead?"

"Maybe he's a Morlock," Dr. Fang said.

"Don't go there," Linus sighed.

"Morlock?" Noah asked.

"There are stories—urban legends—that the maintenance tunnels under the University are inhabited by groups of homeless people," Linus said. "They supposedly live off scavenged food and escaped lab animals."

"I hear one of them has a hook for a hand," Dr. Fang said with a straight face. "One time he followed this young couple who had found a place for a bit of pashing in one of the side corridors, and he—"

"All right, all right," Linus said, holding up a hand. "Can we concentrate on reality for a while? We still need to figure out who this guy is."

"An illegal clone?" Noah hazarded. "One whose DNA was altered enough to make him look like an entirely different person?"

"The first part would be possible, but not the second," Dr. Fang said. "Changing DNA like that would make rather a mess of your genetic structure—and you. In any case, you couldn't clone someone and raise him from childhood on Luna without
someone
noticing. Maybe it's a computer problem. The victim's file was erased to make it more difficult to identify him."

"I'll get the IT people to check that angle," Linus said. "But it seems unlikely. There are maybe five thousand people in Luna City, and a missing person gets noticed quick. They don't show up for their job or for class for a few days, and people start to wonder. We have no outstanding missing persons claims right now."

"Did you check against people who
used
to be here?" Noah asked. "Maybe someone was scheduled to leave but didn't actually go."

A moment of silence. "No," Dr. Fang admitted finally. "I didn't do that."

Linus's eyes lit up. "Do you have the DNA sample stored, K?"

"I started an investigation file," she said. "John Doe three."

Noah wondered briefly who the other two John Does had been, but the thought was quickly lost in a wash of hope that his idea was right. It might make up for his earlier mistake. Linus stepped over to a counter that sported a full computer workstation, complete with keyboard. His fingers danced across it, and the floating holographic display showed a rotating view of a DNA helix in one column. The column next to it flashed dozens of other DNA helixes. The words
Checking Database
appeared below it. Noah held his breath.

No
Match,
the computer reported. Noah felt hope rush out of him like water from a sieve.

"Worth a shot," Linus muttered. "So what now?"

"We need to find the primary crime scene," Noah put in almost timidly. "I'm thinking we should check the airlock closest to the dump site, then check the ones further and further away."

Linus nodded and waved his hand through the DNA display. It vanished, and he called up a three-dimensional map of Luna City. The place looked surprisingly small when viewed this way. A large central dome sat surrounded by perhaps a dozen smaller ones. Tunnels snaked in a thousand directions like tentacles connecting a clump of jellyfish.

"Highlight all airlocks," Linus ordered, and almost a hundred tiny lights popped up all over the map in red, yellow, and green. "The green ones are general use," Linus explained. "Anyone can go out at any time. The yellow ones are restricted—you need special access. They're for University personnel or maintenance staff or whatever. The red ones are emergency only. Anyone can use them, but each one sets off a general alarm. You probably already know that anyone can
enter
any airlock at any time—we don't want to strand someone who's about to run out of air—but you'd better have a good reason if you come in through a yellow or red one."

"The computer keeps track of each use, right?" Noah said.

"Of course." Linus shot a glance at the body. Dr. Fang had shut off the holographic projector, and the body once again lay in the vacuum chamber, like a magician's assistant appearing in a sealed box. "Though it'll only tell us who actually opened the door, not who went through it."

"Surveillance cameras?" Noah asked.

"No," Linus said. "Privacy laws on Luna don't allow surveillance on public streets. We were founded by a mess of liberals, you know. In any case, we've never needed that kind of security, so why spend the money?"

"Is that the proper term?" Dr. Fang said from the autopsy table. "A mess of liberals? You know—like a pack of wolves or a murder of crows?"

"Anyway,"
Linus said, "the body was found here." He pointed with a stylus, and an orange dot appeared on the display. "The drag mark pointed in this direction." He drew a line. "And as it happens, the mark points toward an emergency airlock about two hundred meters from the dump site. That's also the airlock closest to the body."

"So it's likely that's where the body . . . exited," Noah said.

Linus called up a second display and checked the text. "There's no record of that airlock ever being used. It's been shut since it was built, except for routine testing."

"Two possibilities, then," Noah said. "The killer is a maintenance worker who ejected the body during one of the regular checks, or someone tampered with the alarm and the records."

"I like the maintenance worker idea," Linus said, scrolling through more text. "Let's see. The last time that airlock was tested was twenty-nine days ago. It's due for testing again tomorrow, in fact. I'll tell them to cancel it."

"Who ran the last test?" Dr. Fang asked.

"Charlene Molewski," Linus said. An identification photograph of a dark-skinned woman in her late twenties appeared. "Grad student in the physics department. No police record. We'll have to talk to her."

"I'll get a kit and check the airlock itself," Noah said.

"You should probably go home and rest," Linus said. "It's been a long day, and I'll need you at your best later."

"No, I'll go," Noah interrupted. "I want to. Really."

Linus looked at Noah for a long time, then nodded. "Go ahead, then. Kits are upstairs."

Noah headed for the door, paused, and turned to Dr. Fang. "What type of coffee do vampires prefer?" he asked.

"Decoffinated," she replied promptly.

"Damn," Noah said, and fled before anyone could respond.

Half an hour later, he was standing at emergency airlock 567-B with a crime scene kit the size of a small suitcase. It felt too light in his hand. The airlock was at the end of an undergraduate dormitory hallway, one done up with rather less flora than Noah's apartment hallway. The ever-present plants were scraggly and thin. No flowers scented the air, and no birds sang among the stunted trees, several of which were scarred with carved initials and obscene sayings. The doors and walls desperately needed fresh coats of paint. The high ceiling, however, still shone with a bright artificial sun, which was trying valiantly to disguise the fact that this section lay completely underground.

The round airlock door was painted a bright red, indicating its emergency-only status. A row of lockers sat nearby. In an emergency, they would unlock and the vacuum suits stored within would spill out in a silver pile for anyone to snatch up and use. Otherwise only authorized personnel could use them.

Noah pressed his palm to the airlock door. Immediately his onboard buzzed and a text display flashed across his monocle.

"This is an emergency-only airlock," said the computer, in case Noah couldn't read the text message. "No emergency has been detected. Please state—"

"Open on authority of Noah Skyler, deputy for Luna City Security," Noah interrupted. "No alarm."

"Acknowledged," said the computer, and the door rolled open. Noah took up his kit and stepped inside. The room beyond was the size of an elevator, with enough room for six or seven people, though a dozen would fit in a pinch. A second door, the one that led outside, sat directly across from the first. Control panels were set beside both doors. Noah looked at the open airlock door that led back to the hallway and at the closed one that led into vacuum. Then he opened his kit and extracted a rubber wedge. He shoved it into the track of the open door so it couldn't roll shut even if the computer forced the issue.

"Better," he said aloud, and pulled on a pair of poly-gloves. "Obie, play music. Compose new Irish folk."

Immediately a live-sounding band played a full-stereo Irish slipjig in Noah's ears. Noah listened for a moment to see how it was coming out. Sometimes it was kind of fun to have the computer create new music on the spot, but the process was really hit or miss. Most of the music came out mediocre or downright boring. On the other hand, wasn't that the case with human-composed music?

The slipjig seemed decent enough. Not something he'd want to actually dance to, but good enough to fill the quiet. Noah pulled out a high-intensity flashlight and shined it over the doorjamb. He found no scrapes or scratches. Next he pulled the wedge and allowed the airlock door to rumble almost shut. He felt the vibration in his shoes. At the last moment he stopped the door again with the wedge and ran the flashlight over every centimeter. This took quite some time, and Noah found himself falling into what he privately called the Zen of Investigation. When repeating the same motion over and over, he often dropped into a trancelike state, his body in robotic repetition, his mind alert to any anomaly. The regular rhythm of the music helped. He scanned the top of the door, the middle, and the bottom. Not a single scrape or scratch.

"Obie," he said to get his onboard's attention, "link with the Luna City University maintenance records on my authority as a deputy."

"Working," said the onboard. "Link established."

"When was the last time emergency airlock 567-B was repainted?"

Pause. "There is no record of emergency airlock 567-B being repainted."

Meaning nothing. Someone could have tampered with the records. "How often is the interior of an emergency airlock repainted?"

"The interior of an emergency airlock is not repainted unless specifically ordered by Engineering Services."

"Has engineering services ordered the repainting of emergency airlock 567-B?"

"There is no record of such an order."

So much for that idea. It seemed unlikely the killer would have thought to purge both types of record. Noah stowed the flashlight in his kit with a sigh and switched on the small, blocky scanner that took up most of the bottom of the kit box. Its tiny readout screen glowed a warm green. A wand, linked to the scanner by wireless connection, was clipped to the scanner's right side. It hummed faintly.

"Obie," he said again, "link with the kit scanner and display."

"Working," said his onboard. "Connected."

Noah adjusted his monocle, unclipped the scanner's portable wand, and ran it slowly over the walls and floor. It cast a bar of soft green light. Several times the light bar, filtered through Noah's monocle, turned yellow, indicating it had found DNA. Each time, Noah ran a cotton swab over the spot and ran it through the sampler in his kit. In all, Noah came up with fifteen samples that yielded DNA from four people, all of whom were listed in the ID database as maintenance workers.

Noah sat back on his heels and thought while the computer blithely played a song reminiscent of "Blind Mary."

No scratches or other damage to the airlock, and the only DNA in it belonged to people who had every reason to be there. Linus was following the maintenance worker angle, and Noah had exhausted the possibilities of the airlock itself. That left him only one more place to look for evidence.