Mind Games - Part One
#1 of Mind Games
This is a work of fiction. The story is intended for an adult audience over the age of 18.
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Mind Games - pt. 1
Pepper Fields never liked the morgue. It wasn't the cold, sterile whiteness or the harsh glare of the neon lights that bothered her. It was the smell. No matter how diligently they cleaned and scrubbed down here, it still carried the scent of death. Her partner didn't seem to share that problem, but then he was a human. A pug dog with a cold would have a better sense of smell.
The vixen stood a little over 61 inches tall, not counting her ears, and weighted a scant 86 pounds. Her fur was a fiery reddish-orange color, offset by a beige muzzle, cheek ruff and flash that started at her neck and ended along the inside of her thighs. Her hands, feet, tail and ear tips were midnight black. She wore a dark gray skirt, a powder-blue v-neck shirt and a lightweight, dark blue jacket.
Her partner, Solomon Blackthorne, or Saul to his friends, was equally unusual. It had taken doctors three years worth of treatments to arrest his agromeglia when he was a teen. By the time they had finished he was 84 inches tall and weighed 350 pounds, all of it muscle thanks to four years of college football. His taste in clothing tended to run into blue jeans, football jerseys and tweed jackets. The pug nose and heavy eyebrow ridge made him look like a Neanderthal. Glancing at this odd pair one would be hard pressed to believe they were cops, let alone detectives.
The M.E., a plump, balding human continued to read off his clipboard, marking off various items as he discussed them. "...Bruising was found on both wrists, consistent with the use of handcuffs. Postmortem lividity extends from the knees down through her ankles and feet, as well as through her wrists, hands, posterior and tail to varying degrees. It is most extensive from the line of the lower jaw through the muzzle where the blood flow was initially restricted. That would make the time of death approximately 2130 hours last night."
"Any unusual marks or abrasions on the body?"
He checked his clipboard. "Nothing unusual for this type of death. The victim suffered severe neck trauma to include a distortion and tearing of ligaments, tendons and musculature, but no clear separation of the vertebrae or spinal column. Additionally her larynx was crushed and there is extensive bruising of the neck. All of this indicates the victim was subjected to a process of slow strangulation."
"Bottom line, doc..." Pepper interrupted. "What was the cause of death?"
"Heart failure induced by auto-asphyxia."
Saul's eyebrows twitched slightly. "You're saying she hanged herself? What about the handcuffs?"
"The crime scene unit found a credit receipt for them in her purse, along with one for thirty feet of nylon rope. Both bought within the last twenty-four hours. Prints lifted off the cuffs matched those of the victim. The windows and doors were all locked from the inside and no other prints could be found anywhere else in the room."
"But no note," the vixen said.
The M.E. shook his head. "No... No note."
"...And no apparent reason to commit suicide," Saul added. "Any possibility she had a tumor of some kind that would have triggered the suicidal urge?"
"Well, I can request a postmortem M.R.I., though it's not a routine budget item."
"Yeah... Why don't you do that and forward us the results." He ran his hand through his close-cropped hair and rubbed at the back of his neck. He looked down at his partner. "What do you think?"
Pepper glanced at the corpse one last time. In life, the young anthrop-lynx would have been stunningly beautiful. In death her body was nothing more than a piece of meat. What bothered her most though were the eyes. Looking at them, she had the sense that the last thing the victim had felt was... fear. Not an emotion one normally associated with suicide. Determination or resignation, yes... but not fear. Her feeling was hardly logical, or for that matter very scientific, but she couldn't quite dismiss it.
Shaking her head, the vixen looked up at Saul. "I tell you back at the office." She turned and left. The large man picked up an evidence bag from a nearby table, signed his name on the doctor's clipboard, and hurried after his partner.
* * * *
Pepper leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. Saul sat at his desk across from her and passed a manila file folder across to the vixen. "Here's another one that fits the profile."
She snapped it up and flipped it open, ignoring the "Case Closed" stamp emblazoned on the cover. She read through it quickly then dropped it on top of a smaller pile of six other such folders. Seeing she was running out of room, she shifted the pile over about a foot. "How many more do we have to go through?"
"Well, if we cap it at the last eighteen months, that's at least another thirty-five files."
"I never knew so many people committed suicide in this county each year," she replied.
"Well, at least we don't live in New York or L.A. The suicide rate there is astronomical by comparison, as is the murder rate." Saul leaned forward slightly. "Speaking of which, how are you planning on explaining this to Captain Harris without getting murdered yourself?"
Almost as if in answer to his question the door to the squad room flew open and an anthrop-wolf stuck his head in. "Fields... Blackthorne... The Captain wants to see you both, pronto."
Saul sighed. "Think he noticed our report was missing?"
"This is your fault," Pepper said, grabbing her jacket off the back of the chair. "You're the one who invoked his name."
"Maybe..." he responded, pointed at her desk. "But you're the one with the pile of file folders sitting on top of the intercom button."
"SHIT!!!"
Captain Harris was one of the few people Pepper knew who she felt thoroughly lacked any kind of imagination. As a result his career within the sheriff's department had been meteoric. The two detectives sat stiffly as the gray furred badger paced back and forth in front of them.
"...Not only didn't you close and file that suicide case this morning, but you still have three... count them! Three case summaries due on the D.A.'s desk by eight A.M. tomorrow. Then there's your normal caseload... What is it up to now, twelve?" He paused long enough to pour himself some water from the cooler next to his file cabinet.
"Captain..."
"Don't interrupt," he said pointing a finger at Pepper. "Now you propose to re-open six..."
"Seven," corrected Saul.
The badger glared at him. "SEVEN... closed case files and add them to your workload."
"Actually, sir, we'd only be adding one," the vixen said.
"How do you figure that?"
"Because," she replied, "we believe them to all be part of a larger, single case."
Captain Harris looked at her, his brows furrowed. "Are you saying we have a serial killer out there?"
"Wadda ya mean WE kimosabe?" Saul mumbled under his breath. Pepper shot him a quick sideways glance. Fortunately, the badger didn't hear him.
"I don't know," she replied. "There are elements to these particular suicides that match too closely for random chance to work."
"Like?"
"Well, the details for example. These seven cases all involved anthrop women between 21 and 27 years of age. They all used the same kind of rope with the same exact placement and number of turns in the knot. They all used similar gauge handcuffs to guarantee they couldn't back out of the suicide None of them left notes, nor had any apparent motive for killing themselves. It's almost as if they were following a careful series of instructions."
"Anything else?" Harris growled.
"Yes," Pepper nodded. "They'd all had sex within the twenty-four hour period before they died."
"Damn it!" the captain exploded. "Now you're talking tabloid garbage! Was there any DNA testing done?"
The vixen nodded. "Yes, sir. There was testing done in five of the cases. One was inconclusive, the results of another are still pending."
"What about the other three?"
"There was a positive DNA match in all three, though the labs couldn't make any specific individual."
"Probably someone with no priors flying under the radar. What about species?" the badger snapped.
"Human." Saul said
The badger stopped pacing and stared out the window of his office, his back turned to the detectives. "So how come no one else put this together?"
"The cases were spread between different local jurisdictions or different detectives within the sheriff's department. We started looking because this was the second such case that I and Detective Blackthorne worked on in the last three months."
"Just a roll of the dice, sir. Someone would have noticed sooner or later," Saul added.
Harris continued standing in front of the window, his arms crossed. After several long moments he snorted once and turned back to face them. "Okay, here's what you do. Send an inquiry to every county jurisdiction adjacent to ours, same time frame, same details. If anything comes back positive, I'll let you two open an investigation. If not, you file the suicide report and we're case closed, understand?"
Pepper opened her mouth to object, but was cut off by Saul. "Understood, captain. We'll let you know what comes up." The vixen reluctantly nodded in agreement and the two detectives stood to leave. As they did, Saul placed a set of file folders on the Captain's desk.
"What's this?" Harris rumbled.
"Our case summaries," the human answered. You might want to make sure the D.A. gets those ASAP."
The Captain glared at the two detectives. "You were just waiting to do that, weren't you? Wanted to make me sound like a jerk?"
"It isn't hard to do," Pepper replied, a sweet, innocent smile curling her muzzle.
"OUT!"
As the two detectives returned to the squad room the vixen mumbled something under her breath. Saul looked at her. "What did you say?"
"I said you are a Class A wimp. How could you have agreed with the Captain so readily? What if there are no other matching suicides?" She sat down heavily in her chair.
Saul chuckled. "Oh ye of little faith." He picked up a pair of files from his desk and tossed them into Pepper's lap. "The first one's from El Paso County, the other's from Custer."
The vixen quickly flipped the files open and scanned through them. "Saul... You're amazing.
So how come you didn't show me these before."
He shrugged. "They were routine reports from another jurisdiction, thus outside the profile you set up."
"How soon should we tell the Captain?" she whispered conspiratorially.
"Let's send out the inquiries first and break for lunch. We can show him these after we eat."
"Sounds good to me," Pepper grinned. "Besides, it's better to confront the beast in his lair on a full stomach."
* * * *
Rosie's Café had been a downtown fixture for over sixty years and was a favorite among cops. The menu was relatively simple and the food both good and easy on the pocket. Rosie herself was a spry twenty-nine going on eighty and had been running the place since it had opened in the late twenty teens.
"I can still remember seeing my first construct when I was about thirty," she related as she poured Pepper a cup of coffee. "He was a cat, called himself Felix of all things. He was a real friendly sort. Someone told me later that it was actually a military code word for his species."
"Figures," the vixen commented. "I suppose they had a code word for my species as well?"
"I think you were called Zorros, though there weren't many of you back then. Construct foxes and cats tended to be a little too independent thinking for their purposes."
"Natural enough," Saul observed "When you're bio-engineering cannon fodder you don't want to make them too intelligent,"
Pepper took a sip of coffee. "I always wondered where we got the name Zorrs."
"I remember a time when constructs around here outnumbered humans about twenty to one. Back then they were pumping them out of the Cheyenne Mountain facility like crazy. Everyone thought we were going to war with China."
Saul knew something about that from his history class in college. Technology had found a way of creating shielding that dampened down and stopped fissionable reactions, making nuclear weapons obsolete. Without nukes, mankind had reverted to old style conflicts where numbers of soldiers played a key roll.
Faced with confronting a country with a ten-million man standing army, the U.S. military turned to the lab boys. They created seven basic types of anthrop-soldiers: felines, canines, equines, mustilids, mephitis, ursoids and vulpines. The theory had been that using constructs would uncomplicate many of the resource problems that existed with human soldiers. They could be made more obedient, loyal, happy and expendable. It was relatively easy to create them in large quantities through the use of maturation pods. As for training, all you had to do was program in the basic information necessary while their minds were developing. Connect the synapses the right way and the new soldier would wake-up knowing everything they needed in a body pre-conditioned and sculpted for combat. At least that was the theory. What they failed to take into account was the resiliency of a sentient mind.
For the first two years of their existence the constructs, though fully functional, were disoriented on the sub-conscious level. This resulted in the kind of obedient behavior the army was looking for. What the Generals didn't realize was that those two years were more or less a sort of incubation period. During that time they literally absorbed knowledge like a dry sponge, learning to read and write within only a month. Knowledge came easily thereafter, and with knowledge came higher-level cognitive skills. By the end of their second year, they had gone from obedient little soldiers to questioning everything.
Male soldiers began refusing to follow orders that didn't sound well thought out or reasonable. The females, who had been intended merely to "service" the males started to form strong attachments to particular individuals. Maternal instincts began to kick in and they refused to take their regular doses of contraception drugs. Had all of this taken place within an autocratic regime, the solution would have been quick and simple. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, America was still a democracy. The problem couldn't be swept under a rug. On top of that, the Second Cold War ended abruptly with the unexpected collapse of China and its breakup into a dozen smaller, less threatening nations. There was no longer a need for the anthrop army.
Left with few options amid a storm of controversy, the military pulled the plug on the project and went back to training soldiers the old fashioned way. Nearly one million constructs were given their citizenship and discharged from the Army. Like many soldiers before them, they were unceremoniously dumped into the civilian population. Unemployment, prejudice, poverty, addiction, underground slavery and homelessness were but a few of the problems they had to overcome. As a result it took nearly twenty years for the anthrops to assimilate into human culture.
While Pepper and Rosie continued talking, Saul's thoughts returned to the case. Every death had occurred between 8 p.m. and midnight. Nine victims had been found so far. All were beautiful anthrop women. Three were cats, one a mink, two were canines, two were vixens and one was a skunk No pattern in their species, that was obvious. The detective sat back and closed his eyes, trying to picture the crime scene. He felt certain there was some small detail he was missing, something that would help steer him in the right direction.
She'd killed herself in the living room of the small apartment. The doors and windows were locked. There were no exposed overhead beams for the rope, so she had driven a hook into the ceiling, the kind normally used for hanging plants. She had been careful to attach it to a wooden stud so it could support her weight. The couch had been moved aside to make room for it. Why? There were a number of places she could have done the deed without rearranging the furniture. What was important about that particular spot? Again he pictured the room. Couch, overstuffed chairs, entertainment center, bookcase, coffee table, lamps, desk, magazines, computer... Computer!
Saul felt someone tapping him on the shoulder. "Your turn to order, big guy... " He looked over at Pepper, then at Rosie.
"Roast beef on rye, hold the mayo, extra tomatoes and onions," he said, rising from the booth. "And make that to go." He dropped a ten spot on the table, grabbed his coat and left. The vixen watched him exit the coffee shop and dash across the street. She glanced up at Rosie and shrugged."
The old woman just smiled. "Sort of reminds me of my third husband. The poor man couldn't sit still to save his life."
To be continued...