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Over the (Pitiful) river and through the wood(ish)
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Amanda
(last edited Aug 30, 2016 12:31PM)
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Aug 30, 2016 12:29PM
This is the next story in Luka's world. It is a completed story, it just might take Richard and I some time to post the whole thing on here. Any questions or comments should be posted in the other other thread for that.
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Over the (pitiful) river and through the woods(ish)__’Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house I go.’ The song kept repeating over and over in my head. I wasn’t even going to my Grandmother’s house.
__That wasn’t even taking into account the fact that there aren’t really any rivers or woods on New Hawaii. Almost every available parcel of land was now used for the massive amounts of people that lived here. I sometimes almost wished that old Hawaii had just be left to die in peace.
__But I’ve gotten off track. Again. If I were going to count the New Hanalei River as an actual river I would have to call it pitiful. And don’t even get me started on the ‘woods’ part of that. The only trees around here now were in parks. And our parks aren’t that big. Suffice to say that woods was definitely stretching it. But ‘Over the pitiful river and through the woods-ish, to not Grandmother’s house I go’ didn’t make any sense.
__I was so lost in my musings that I completely missed the sound of the motor coming up behind me. “Get out of the way,” a man screamed. His surfing dirt bike swerved to avoid me and the resulting wake nearly made me wipe out. As it was I had to drop down to the board and start paddling. I didn’t feel too bad about it though. I was on the wave first after all.
__Still I didn’t want it to happen again. ”Get your head in the game Luka,” I told myself sternly. I definitely needed to pay more attention when I was surfing. Especially now that surfing dirt bikes were all the rage. But nothing could be as bad as the RV that was out here a few weeks ago. Luckily everyone, even the dirt bike surfers, had petitioned to make that illegal. I still thought using a motor powered vehicle to surf was cheating. I was old school though.
__If I didn’t have to go see Brenda I wouldn’t even be out here. But she had news that she needed to tell me and apparently it couldn’t be relayed over the phone. I suppose I could have walked, but only rubes didn’t surf to their destination on New Hawaii.
Mod
__My board slid smoothly out on to the white sand. All the same, what I really needed was a new case. Since stepping off the ship from Bigtime I'd been resting up - seeing plenty of Brenda and lazing on the beach - but to tell you the truth, after only a couple of months of that my feet were already getting pretty itchy. What I could do with is a new challenge, I was thinking: an incredibly rich heiress, say, a trillionaire's daughter gone missing on a paradise planet...the distraught parents...the huge fee...
__"Aka'aka called," said Brenda, shattering this pleasant train of thought the moment I walked in: Aliioa Aka'aka is New Hawaii's Chief of Police. "The cops on Planet X have found a body."
__"A body?" That threw me - I'm a PI, I usually track down living ones not dead ones. "So what does a body have to do with me?"
__She eyed me levelly, expression unreadable. Then: "Luka...it is you."
***
__It took Brenda some time to make me fully realize what she was saying. Fortunately there were pictures as well. The body in the pictures looked so much like me that I got chills. I could understand Brenda’s need to get me over here in a rush. She may have looked more shaken up than me.__”I don’t understand what’s going on exactly but I’m very glad you’re not dead,” Brenda told me. “I’ve got tickets for the next rocket to Planet X. They’re expecting us.”
__”Who’s the flight through?” I asked. Last time I had to go off planet I was booked on a Red Frog Rocket. Worst ride ever was being too generous.
__Brenda smiled. She had gotten a kick out of my experience on the Red Frog Rocket. “It’s a Glass Bottle Rocket. No pie in the face on this flight. I wish I had been there to see that though.”
__The Glass Bottle Rocket Company had a very good reputation. I released a breath I hadn’t even realized I had been holding. “That’s a relief. Do you still have that bag I left here just in case?”
__Brenda nodded and picked up the bag from behind the desk and put it on top of it. Then she picked up another bag and placed it on the desk. “We’re both ready to go.”
__The flight was pleasant, except for the movie. It was apparently retro month so they played ‘Killer Klowns from Outer Space’. Whoever decided that was a good movie to play on a rocket to another planet was completely nuts. Of course Brenda wasn’t bothered by it. She spent the whole trip reading the files sent from Planet X about the body. I scanned them, but I wanted a more real life version of them. Instead I just kept staring at the pictures.
__We were met by two Planet X cops. They both did a double take when they saw me, but quickly recovered. “I’m Detective Lucy Grant and this is Detective Miles Wadas. Welcome to Planet X. I’m sure you wish you were visiting under better circumstances.”
__Everyone shook hands and then we all piled into they’re waiting car and headed away from the airport. I looked around and was somewhat disappointed that everything looked so normal. Planet X was definitely no Bigtime.
Mod
__So where better than a place like Planet X to get away from it all? A fortnight's vacation in Hell recharges the batteries and soul alike, makes it possible to get through another undemanding year in Heaven.
__"We have every kind here you could think up I reckon." While Grant was doing the driving, Wadas was doing the filling-in. "I mean, some clients do prefer a traditional hell alright - demons armed with tridents, lakes of fire, plenty of screaming in the background - but we cater for everybody. A lot go for the B-movie theme: creeping about in cemeteries with ghouls and vampires."
__"Anything you won't do?"
__"Actual torture, we draw the line at that."
__"I like the sound of the Budget Package Holiday," said Brenda, glancing up from the files. "That looks like fun."
__"One of our most popular. You arrive to find your hotel still only half-built, with concrete-mixers and tipper trucks everywhere; the balcony looks out on to a flyover and the nearest beach is ten miles away. On the second day you get mugged, on the third diarrhoea..."
__"Love it!" She actually clapped her hands in delight. "And pubic hair in the shower?"
__"Comes as standard."
__There is virtual reality of course - and, sure, you can be in Hell at the press of a button using that - but it's never quite fulfilled the promise it showed early on. While you're in it it is brilliant, convincing, totally real, but afterwards something else creeps in: way down at the bottom of your mind somewhere, at some reptile- or fish-brain level, you weren't fooled at all, you knew all along that none of it was really happening and the memory you're left with is tinged with that falseness; it's like getting back home from a vacation and finding that all your holiday snaps now look like they were faked.
__Which is why, even in this twenty-third century of ours, we still have these theme-park planets, real bricks-and-mortar fantasies.
__"Morgue," announced Grant from the front, expertly slewing the aircar down on to a rooftop.
__Inside, the building was a standard sterile morgue. It was all business too. Though there didn’t seem to be that much business for the morgue to handle.__”This looks just like an actual morgue. Do you get a lot of dead people here?” I asked.
__”We get the normal amount of dead people. It’s mostly accidents. This is only one of six functional morgues on the planet. The public façade has many fake morgues though. We have to have somewhere to put the actors when they die horrible deaths.” Detective Grant laughed lightly as she explained it to us.
__We walked down a hallway and turned into a room with swinging doors. There were four tables in the room but only one of them had a body on it. The body was covered in a sheet but I knew who was under it. Or at least I knew what he looked like. I didn’t actually know who he was.
__A man with dark skin and tired eyes walked in to the room. He was dressed in scrubs so I assumed he was the medical examiner. Detective Wadas introduced him as Dr. Rojas and confirmed he would be doing the autopsy.
__I saw Brenda flinch when the sheet was pulled back and I rubbed her back to try and comfort her. Truthfully I wished someone would have comforted me. The man on the table was a dead ringer (no pun intended) for me. I just knew watching the autopsy would be disconcerting.
__”His name was Silas Jacobs. He was a double of you for one of the true crime vacation plans. It’s a very popular plan,” Detective Grant informed me. Her tone suggested I should be proud of my popularity.
__I nodded neutrally. Inwardly I was kind of proud though. I quickly went from neutral to confused when the whole body was revealed. “What happened to him?”
__”Didn’t you read the files we sent?”
__Brenda snorted. “Luka read the files? He was definitely too freaked out for that.”
__I glared at her. “I simply preferred to get the information first hand.”
__The detectives looked at us in amusement. Dr. Rojas cleared his throat and all attention was turned back to the body.
__”As you can see it appears he was attacked by several wild animals. Though it’s a confusing mix of creatures I think I’ve found evidence of. There are what looks like shark and piranha bites and marks that came from an octopus. Plus the tox report revealed he has puffer fish toxin in his bloodstream.”
__ “But I thought all the animals on the planet that aren’t native are animatronic. Where would he get attacked by those animals?” Brenda asked.
__Obviously the files didn’t explain everything. I almost felt like smirking. “It’s true. When we were building on this planet we couldn’t get the clearance to bring live animals over. But we have very lifelike animatronics. Our pufferfish robots have actual toxin in them. It would take a very skilled person to make them all attack someone though. And you’d have to really want that person dead to go to the trouble.” Detective Grants’ explanation didn’t make me feel very good.
__”And then there’s the card and the note left where he was found. We still don’t know what it means.” Detective Wadas added.
__”What card and note?” I was definitely regretting not reading the file.
__”After he was killed Silas was dressed in a suit and posed by a fountain. On the bench next to him was his library card and painted on the ground in front of him was the message ‘Depths of echoes cannot always be measured’.”
__My whole body chilled and gooseflesh broke out all over. I knew those signatures. They were from a case I worked a few years ago. We never caught the guy.
Mod
__"The Red Herring Killer," said Brenda. "I always did have the feeling we hadn't seen the last of that creep."
__I nodded. "A real nut-job."
__The Red Herring Killer, a face from both our pasts. "It was a news reporter on Waynesworld who christened him that," I explained. "Everywhere he went he left irrelevant clues, like the ones in classic crime novels: a discarded driving glove, or a coffee cup with traces of lipstick on the rim, or a button which could only have come from a twenty-first-century space cadet's tunic, or a footprint in mud showing the brand name and shoe size. And I'm not talking just one or two clues either, he scattered them about like confetti."
__"Sounds pretty smart to me," said Grant, "covering your tracks with...well, tracks."
__"Sure was, it made it a nightmare trying to follow him - we spent most of our time figuring out which were the genuine clues and which the red herrings."
__"And it got worse as we went along," added Brenda. "After you've been looking for him for months on end, you start to 'see' clues where there aren't any, real or fake. Some guy in some random hamburger joint drops a napkin on the floor, say; five minutes later you walk past it yourself: 'He was here!' you're shouting, 'We just missed him again!' We nearly went nuts ourselves."
__There was silence for a second or two as Planet X's finest began to see just what they were up against. Meanwhile, I cast my own mind back to another time, another world. "His real name's Johnson, Cedric Johnson, and it all started twenty years ago when he was failed out of Private Eye School on Waynesworld..."
__It was Wadas's turn to snort. "There's a Private Eye School? What do they teach - how to lurk in doorways wearing a raincoat?"
__"...and on his final report card it said: 'Too easily led astray by red herrings.' A year later he goes back there and ices the guy who wrote the report."
__"That crime scene must have been a dilly."
__"The local cops had never seen anything like it, irrelevant 'clues' everywhere you looked: theatre-ticket stubs, three stopped grandfather clocks, more tyre tracks across the croquet lawn than you'd know what to do with and at least fifteen different plausible murder weapons. It looked like a gigantic version of Cluedo."
__"So they called in Galactopol," said Brenda. Which is, of course, how I met her in the first place - still a rookie detective back then on her very first case.
__"And you?" asked Grant. "Where do you fit into all this?"
__I squirmed a bit, face reddening. “They called me in to help as well. I knew him...I'd been in his class."
__"You?" smirked Wadas. "The famous Luka Pala-"
__"It's a perfectly respectable institution," I said testily. "Fully accredited."
__Happily Dr Rojas came to my rescue at that moment, clearing his throat to draw our attention back to what was left of Silas Jacobs. And what he showed us next shut all of us up.
__He pulled the sheet off the body. I was happy to see that aside from the build and the face he didn’t completely resemble me. He didn’t have an appendectomy scar like me and he had way more chest and leg hair. I also thought I was definitely in better shape than Silas was. I didn’t say any of that though.__”Your talk about the killer leaving fake clues is starting to make a whole lot of the odd stuff I found on my external examination make sense. Well, at least as much sense as all the odd and random things I’ve found can make.” He motioned towards the body.
__We all gathered around the table as he walked us through what he had found so far.
__”I’ll just start at the top and work my down if that’s alright with everyone.” We all nodded and he cleared his throat again. “Okay. First, his hair has some metallic glitter in it.”
__He ran his hand through the hair and held it up so we could all see the sparkling on it. “That’s so odd,” Grant commented. We all nodded again.
__”That’s nothing,” the doctor told us. “I found a feather in his mouth.” He held up a petri dish with a feather in it. “It looks like it’s from a dove but we still have to run tests to make sure. There is soot in his ear, which I think slightly explains the smoke smell.”
__I leaned forward and took a whiff of the body. “He does smell like smoke.” Everyone else leaned in to smell the body as well. I couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped when I thought about how ridiculous we all looked smelling the body.
__Brenda got it immediately but I had to explain it to everyone else. The only one who didn’t find it amusing was the doctor. I wasn’t surprised. He must have had his funny bone amputated.
__That thought got me chuckling again. Brenda elbowed me in the stomach but it didn’t help. Elbows are where the funny bones are after all. They let me laugh until it died down. I think they understood how odd it was to see Silas autopsied. I just hoped I didn’t tart laughing again when the cutting started.
__”He was wearing contacts even though, according to his medical file, he didn’t need them,” the doctor continued as though he hadn’t been interrupted. “He has a symbol in red paint on his back.
__Detective Wadas helped him lift the body up so we could all see the symbol. “It looks like a martini glass,” Brenda said. She had her head tilted and was squinting at it. I followed her example and had to agree. It definitely looked like a martini glass.
__”What kind of red paint is it?” I asked.
__”We have to run tests on it. But I’m pretty confident its henna. My wife got painted with henna on our trip to Delhi.” He trailed off as he became lost in a thought that put a smile on his face. “Anyhow.” The smile disappeared and he got back to business.
__”There are some weird wooden shavings in the bites. If they were metal I would have written them off as having come from the robots that bit him. And, before you ask, I don’t know what kind of wood yet.”
__”All the hair on one of his legs has been shaved off. It had to have happened right before he died because there is no stubble yet.”
__”Well, he’s dead. Why would you be expecting stubble?” Wadas asked.
__”Oh, I thought it was common knowledge that hair appeared to still be growing after death. That’s not actually what happens, but its a pretty common misnomer.”
__”It’s the dehydration that really does it,” I chimed in.
__”That’s right. After death the dehydration causes the skin to shrink and the appearance of hair and nail growth,” Dr. Rojas agreed. “There’s two more things before I begin the internal examination. I found what appears to be red clay under his toenails and a yellow rubber duck has been tattooed on the bottom of his foot. I can’t conclusively say the tattoo was done by the killer, but judging by the amount of healing it could have been.”
__We all stared at the bottom of his foot. “How can you tell its supposed to be a rubber duck?” Grant asked.
__The doctor looked surprised by the question. “I don’t know. I guess I just assumed.” He seemed appalled by the thought that he had assumed something.
__”There are no feet,” I said. Everyone turned to look at me. “On the duck. I’ve never seen a rubber duck that had feet. Have you guys?”
__This seemed to make the doctor happy. “No, I haven’t,” he agreed with a smile.
__”Let’s cut him open.” With the smile on his face that was a seriously creepy thing for him to say.
__After he had all the organs exposed he started cutting them out and weighing them. “The lungs are heavy and there was a red fluid in the trachea.”
__”What does that mean?” Brenda asked.
__”It could mean he drowned to death. Though what he drowned in needs to be tested. It wasn’t water. Smells like wine. Just one more possible cause of death.” Dr. Rojas rolled his eyes and seemed slightly annoyed.
__”Could it have been added after he was already dead? As another Red Herring clue.”
__”It’s possible. I don’t think I would be making an assumption to say its definitely probable. There wasn’t any froth at the mouth or in the air passages. I guess we’ll see if there is any fluid in the stomach or intestines that are consistent with what’s in the lungs.” He moved the stomach to a tray and started cutting into it. “There are some interesting stomach contents in here.”
__”The same red fluid?” I asked.
__”No . I can’t find any of that red fluid in here. There is a butterfly is here though. Completely intact. Doesn’t appear to have been chewed or digested at all.”
__”Well, that definitely sounds like another fake clue,” Wadas said.
__”There is no way to know whether any of what has been found so far is real or fake until we track them all down.” I rubbed my face as I thought of how long it would take to figure out the real from the fake.
__”Is there anything else?” Brenda asked the doctor.
Mod
__Brenda was looking from the clothes to me and back again. "What?"
__"These are mine." I lifted a worn leather jacket, turned it first one way then the other. "Or at least, they're imitations - almost identical to what I was wearing myself twenty years ago."
__"Johnson's making fun of you?"
__"That's what this case is all about - the lookalike body, the impossible clues: he wants to make me look like an idiot."
__Det. Grant gingerly lifted a pair of voluminous bright yellow flared trousers and held them out at arm's length. "Well, he's making a pretty good job of it," she was measuring the flared bottoms with an expert eye, "these have gotta be twelve inches at lea-"
__"They were all the rage back then," I said quickly, "everybody was wearing them. Everybody."
__"You should have seen him on the dance floor," said Brenda, picking a huge medallion from the pile and swinging it round and round on its chain.
__I eyed Rojas who was struggling to keep a straight face himself. "Anything in the pockets?"
__"A bunch of keys, one with a numbered plastic tag attached..." I could see the number on it: 2216 "...and some money - not local, it's all in Centauran dollars. No weapons."
__"You mean actual, old-style, cash?"
__"Sure, notes and coins. There are a few places where they do still use it." Rojas passed across a manila envelope and, as I tipped the contents out on to a tabletop, everybody crowded in for a closer look.
__"Spondulicks," said Grant, her eyes bugging out.
__"Dough," whimpered Wadas, mopping his brow.
__"Lolly," whispered Brenda, visibly moved.
__"Loot," I heard myself croak. I mean, seeing the stuff in old films is one thing, but none of us had ever had the chance to handle real live moolah in the flesh.
__"So," said Wadas at last with an appreciative sigh, reluctantly handing back the notes, "anything you've seen so far mean anything to you?"
__"Just one," I said. "That plastic tag - 2216 was the year Johnson was failed out of school."
__"So maybe this is the key to the whole case," suggested Brenda, picking it up, "if that's the way this nut's mind works."
__"Or just another red herring. It looks like a locker key, or for a safety deposit box."
__"That's what we thought too," said Grant, "but we've checked the spaceport, all the monorail terminals, every bank vault right around the planet - and come up empty."
__Brenda was looking thoughtful though. "Then there's the butterfly in the stomach - is he saying, 'Getting a bit nervous Luka?' "
__"The lenses too. Telling me my eyes need testing."
__"Ah, those," said Rojas. "I forgot to tell you about those - here, put them in."
__I recoiled. I mean, I'm not squeamish by nature, but they'd been taken out of a dead guy's eyes.
__"They're interactive," said Wadas, "retinal-pattern recognition." He took one himself and held it up to the light. "None of us see a thing, but I've a feeling you might."
__I'd already guessed as much myself. "But how would Johnson get hold of my retinal ID?" Swallowing my reluctance though, I put them in, blinked once...and found the Red Herring Killer himself standing directly between me and Rojas.
__For a second or two nothing happened, as if he was studying me, waiting for me to react, then he bowed suddenly and grinned. "Welcome to Planet X, Luka. I won't try to shake hands for obvious reasons - good to see you again though, so to speak, after all these years." I examined the familiar face, now two decades older than I remembered it: thinner and with an odd expression, but nothing in the hazel eyes that said "murderer" or "madman" - just the ordinary face of the ordinary student I once knew.
__"Him?" asked Brenda.
__I nodded - was this live, or a recording? Either way, there was something strange about his manner, the way he paused for a fraction too long between sentences, or maybe-
__"...and of course..." He was already speaking again, it was obviously a recording. "...being the smartest PI in the entire Universe, you'll have guessed exactly why you're here..."
__To set the record straight, I thought to myself, or straight in his eyes at least. To show the School they failed the wrong man.
__"To play a little game, Luka, like we did when we were students, sitting up all night with a few beers playing board games. Except this time..."
__Except this time he wins every point, every round.
__He was telling me nothing I hadn't figured out myself already, so I reeled off another shoal of red herrings for the others: "There's a pink carnation in his left lapel, the bottom button is missing from his jacket, he's wearing contact lenses of his own, untinted, and in his right hand he's holding a bell - brass, old-school...some kind of handbell."
__"He's saying, 'Anything here ring a bell?" said Brenda immediately, shooting her hand in the air like a schoolkid at a desk. "I'm starting to get the hang of this stuff."
__"...so beat me if you can, Luka Palakiko. But if..."
__I'd heard enough, took the lenses out and handed them back to Rojas, then glanced down at my double again and shuddered: if I ever fall off a boat into a sea full of mako sharks, I reckon this was pretty much how I'll look afterwards. "Where was Jacobs found?"
__"A place called The Lagoon," said Grant, "ten minutes away."
__That didn't help my mood either; don't ask me why, but words ending in "-oon" always give me the creeps: bassoon, buffoon, loon...
__"Pantaloon?" suggested Grant, hoisting the yellow twelve-inchers high; I hadn't realised I'd been thinking out loud.
__"Macaroon," added Brenda with a giggle. Is there anything, I wondered, anything at all, which this woman doesn't find just hilarious?
***
The Lagoon was
-definitely not what I was expecting. It looked like it used to be a literal lagoon, but time had made it something else. I could see where the lagoon should have been. There were several large, smooth rock bowls, without any water in them, separated by the ocean by large sand dunes. The dunes were littered with fulgurite. Since the sand was an odd purple hue mixed with black they were quite pretty and I could see why there were so many signs warning about trespassing on the dunes.__There was a rumbling sound that brought my attention away from the dunes and towards the rock bowls. A person dressed like a giant lobster spun through the air above the bowl before catching a skateboard and landing smoothly back in the bowl. I squinted trying to tell how he caught the board with claws and was relieved when I could see hands under the claws. The other bowls were also occupied by costumed people skating with various wheeled conveyances. Only people outside of the bowls were on hoverboards. I guess it made sense. The skateboard did look more fun than a hoverboard.
__I was taken aback by all the people wondering around as we walked from where the tram dropped us off. Some of the people were dressed completely normal but some of them looked like a special effects company had thrown up one them. Everyone seemed relaxed and happy. I stopped on the sidewalk and turned in a circle so I could take it all in.
__”What is this place?”
__”The Lagoon is one of the natural parks on the island. It isn’t for the public though. This is basically a staging area where the actors, and everyone else who works in this area, hang out when they aren’t working. It used to be open to the public, but they don’t always obey rules and the governor decided the damages caused outweighed whatever restitution money they could get.”
__”You don’t have any problems with the workers?” Brenda asked.
__”Not anymore. Ever since they made it a jail-able offense we don’t have any problems. This is an awesome place to work, but not a good place to be thrown in jail.” Wadas explained.
__”Yeah. No one wants to actually be in hell without knowing when it could end. That’s part of the punishment. They don’t tell the offender how long the jail sentence is. It’s actually a pretty great deterrent. Well, that and the fact that they’ll be blackballed from the whole planet.”
__We resumed walking and didn’t have to go far before we came to an area with yellow tape around it and a uniformed officer standing in front of it.
__”Any problems?” Grant asked the officer.
__”A cleaning crew tried to get in there, but the paperwork wasn’t in order and I knew you guys were coming. It was kind of odd but they didn’t argue when I wouldn’t let them past.”
__Grant nodded. “I’ll look into it. That is kind of odd. Everyone knew we were coming to see where the body was found as soon as we were done at the morgue.”
__There was a relatively small area taped off around the fountain and bench. The officer held up the yellow tape and we stepped under it as we pulled on gloves. “Why was there even a cleaning crew here? This place is basically pristine. There isn’t even any blood,” I commented.
__”It still needs to be sanitized. There was a dead guy here after all,” Wadas said.
__”That’s true,” I agreed. I walked over to the bench and knelt down. The crime scene people had been very thorough and there wasn’t much left to see. I ran my hands over the bench in the hopes that there was something I could feel but not see. One of my gloves snagged on something on one of the benches legs and I got excited. I leaned in closer but it was just a splinter in the wood.
__The fountain was made out of marble and in the center, with water spouting into the air arcing over the main statue, was an octopus holding a sword in each of its arms. I eyed it with amusement as I ran my hands over the whole thing. Caught in one of the suckers on the third arm was a button. A button that I recognized as being from the jacket Johnson was wearing in the message. “Look what I found. This proves Johnson was here.”
__Before the two detectives could answer me we all started as a bell started ringing. It immediately made me think of the message in the contact lens. I could see their thoughts mirrored mine.
__”We should split up,” Grant said. “I’ll take Brenda and we can follow the bells and see if they mean anything and you guys stay here and see if Luka can find something else we missed.”
__”I don’t think splitting up is a good idea.” I didn’t like the idea of Brenda being without me. It would be the perfect way for Johnson to get at me through her. Another thought occurred to me. “If this place is for employees only then that means Johnson has to be a worker here. Or at least pretending to be one. He could be anywhere.”
__”Or anyone. Look at all these people in costumes. Who knows who’s under them,” Brenda agreed.
Mod
__"And," added Grant, "none of them needs the money badly enough to help a double-murderer. From the lack of bloodstains we know Jacobs was killed off-site and brought here already dead - and you'd think Johnson woulda needed help with that - but every one of them, including the robots, have got cast-iron alibis."
__"The security cams?"
__"Zip there too. In fact, we can't figure out how he placed the body here and arranged all his fake clues around it - the footage shows nothing at all."
__"Not even on thermal," Wadas shrugged, "so he didn't even use cloaking. It's spooky."
__"Well someone must have helped him," said Brenda. "There's the animatronics too - that's skilled work."
__I nodded, but Wadas was right: it was odd, like there was something obvious here we weren't seeing. Anyway, my instinct - and what I actually remembered of Johnson himself - was telling me that he'd definitely be working alone.
__Something else had just struck me. "I reckon there must be two different kinds of clue here. Think about it: he wants to keep me on this case, obviously, so all these red herrings may be fine as revenge but in among them he'd have to leave some helpful clues as well, designed to keep me on his trail despite the red herrings."
__"And there's all the random stuff," Brenda reminded me, "like the dropped napkin that time. So that's three kinds."
__"In fact," I added, "better make that four. Johnson's no genius, he'll make mistakes along the way as well. So here's what we've got: there are deliberate red herrings left by Johnson; there are helpful clues also left by Johnson to keep me on his tail; there are random things which look like clues but are nothing to do with Johnson at all; and then there are mistakes Johnson makes - genuine clues."
__There was silence for a bit after that. This case was already becoming the most confusing in the entire history of crime.
***
Kompleat Kleaning (and I do wish companies would stop doing that) was in a two-storey firetrap on the outskirts of town which had "insurance scam" written all over it. My instinct had been doing the talking again: that cleaning crew, it was telling me this time, is one of the helpful clues Johnson arranged to keep me after him - that's where he wants me to go next.
__As we pulled up outside, we took turns at reeling off all the possible red herrings we could see just from where we were sitting even before we got out of the car:
__"Tire tracks from some kind of six-wheeler," said Wadas.
__"Bush with broken twigs," said Grant.
__"Pizza box," said Brenda, shooting her arm in the air again. "This is fun!"
__"Broken window!"
__"Missing drain cover!"
__"Pigeon!" I shouted as one flew directly over the building.
__"Pigeon?" Brenda was looking at me with a What? expression. "You think maybe the guy trains birds now?"
__"Carrier pigeon," I deadpanned. "His way of saying, 'Getting the message yet, Luka?' "
__I was getting his message though and, sitting there, suddenly realized one more thing. "I'm going in there alone."
__"No way, cops in first," Grant turned around in the driver's seat to look me in the eye. "You saw what he did to Silas Jacobs - this joint could be booby-trapped or anything."
__"No it won't," I looked out at the flight of wooden steps leading up to the main doorway. " I'm the one person in the whole Galaxy he doesn't want dead - if I did somehow get killed on this case, I'd probably become even more popular and famous than I am already." I opened the car door. "You three keep your heads down - particularly you," I gave Brenda's arm a squeeze, "I reckon he'd just love to take a pot-shot at you. Me though, I could walk in there blindfolded and he wouldn't touch a hair on my head."
__They didn't like it of course, but could see I was right. So in I went.
__The building was deserted, as I'd been expecting: "Kompleat Kleaning" didn't exist - had never existed - and those four goons who'd showed up weren't really trying to access the crime scene at all; they were robots most likely, bribed or reprogrammed, and the whole charade just a way of leading me here. I drew my blaster...then put it away again, reminding myself that firepower was the one thing I wasn't going to need.
__I went from room to room, which was eerie in the way all deserted buildings are, but Johnson wasn't in any of them. That was also as I'd been expecting; our killer was where he intended to stay all the way along: one step ahead of yours truly, all the way along to...well, to where exactly? That was the one thing I hadn't figured out yet, what kind of Big Finish, what kind of ritual humiliation, our double-murderer had in mind for me: something as public as possible, that's all I knew, something with the whole Galaxy watching.
__More classic red herrings: a single fingerprint on a dusty banister, a locked door (I carried on straight past, didn't even try to force it), a dripping tap in a washroom, the same broken windowpane but seen from the inside this time... There'll be something here though, I was thinking, to take me on to the next stage of the game. As I opened door after door and peered into each musty room, I also realized why he'd brought me here: to separate me from the other three of course; it was just me, working alone, he wanted on his tail. That had been clever.
__I made it all the way up to the top floor, out on to the roof...and found myself looking at an empty aircar: the driver's door was open, the keys hanging invitingly in the dash - no instructions, nothing to tell me where I was supposed to fly this thing. But I didn't even break step; just got in, took her up and sped away out over the bustling city.
__It got a lot more exciting after that. Before I'd even crossed the last few blocks and then trees and open fields beyond, another car slotted in up ahead of me keeping a steady half-mile distance.
__I was so focused on following the car in front of me that I completely forgot to check the rearview mirror. Which is why I missed the drone that started following me. We had just passed into the next city, this one took me a moment to figure out from above, but it was a town where everything looked like creepy dolls and puppets. The buildings, cars, and the people walking around in their costumes were all dolls. I definitely would consider that a seriously hell holiday.__Once we finally got past the doll town we were flying over a corn field with several crop circles. After doll town the crop circle corn field seemed especially creepy. I fully expected alien dolls to fly out of the corn field at me. Fortunately that didn’t happen. Unfortunately something else just as bad did.
__There was a shrieking behind me and I finally noticed the drone. As I was wondering why there was a drone following me the car in front of me slowed down and a man jumping from it onto the hood of my car when it was close enough. The drone disappeared under my car and reappeared at the other car to take control of it.
__”Hello Luka,” Johnson said. “Did you miss me?” He climbed nimbly from the hood to the passenger door and shimmied through the open window. The corn field below us seemed deserted and it made sense why he took me here before acting. No witnesses.
__I’ll admit I shouted in astonishment. It may have been more like a shriek though. Johnson laughed and punched me in the face. The car plummeting when I lost control is the last thing I remember.
* * *
__”Are you gonna hog the bench all day dude? Cause I totally twisted my ankle skateboarding and I really want to sit.” The voice was male and loud. It really made my head hurt.
__”Not so loud,” I pleaded, “my head really hurts.” I sat up and quickly regretted it when my head spun. It took a moment for the dizziness to pass. ”What’s going on,” I asked as I squinted my eyes up to try and see who I was talking to.
__Several people were standing over me in an odd assortment of costumes. Edward Scissorhands was standing beside to a really creepy rabbit with his rabbit head in his hands. Next to them was a chick dressed like a disco mass murderer. She was holding a knife and they were both dripping fake (I hoped) blood.
__Edward Scissorhands clicked his scissorhands together to get my attention. “We have to go back to work but I need to wrap my ankle. So are you going to lie there all day?”
__”Where am I?” I asked. I looked around and realized I was back at the bench where my double was found. “How did I get here?” I was freezing cold despite the hot day I knew it was. We were there during the summer after all. I wrapped my arms around myself to try and warm up. “Why is it so cold?”
__”Dude, it’s not cold. You must have partied too hard. You better not let them catch you or you’ll get fired.” This came from the creepy rabbit, who had a surprisingly deep voice.
__”What are you?” the chick asked. “I’ve never seen that costume here before.”
__”It is an unusual costume. And I’m a creepy rabbit.” The creepy rabbit agreed.
__I looked down at myself and gaped. I was wearing a dress and my skin was pale blue. Under my natural tan it looked odd. My hair felt crusty and I was itchy from something coarse under the paint. “Does one of you have a phone I can borrow quickly?” I asked as I sat up and scooted down so Edward Scissorhands could sit down.
__”What’s with all the butterflies?” he asked as he sat and pulled off his shoes. At my blank look he gestured at the bench.
__There were butterfly stickers all over the bench. Another one of the red herrings clues, but I couldn’t tell him that. ”I honestly have no idea,” I responded.
__The disco murderer chick gave me a pitying look and pulled a phone out of a pocket I wasn’t sure how she fit anything into it her outfit was so tight. Not that I was staring. I tried Brenda first but she didn’t answer. I found that slightly odd but tried Grant. She answered on the third ring.
__”Grant. What do you want?” she said brusquely.
__”Hey, its Luka. Can you come get me?” I said somewhat sheepishly.
__”Where the hell have you been? All hell is breaking loose here,” she yelled at me. In the background I could hear a lot of noise.
__”I’ll tell you when you get here.” I gave her my location and we were just about to hang up when I stopped her. “Wait, I almost forgot. Bring the crime scene people. And an ambulance I think. You’re going to need them”
__While I waited for her to get there I helped instruct Edward how to wrap his ankle properly (I’ve had to do quite a bit of first aid in my time as a private detective) and they wished me luck before leaving. They wanted to know what my deal was but they didn’t want to be late for work either. People really liked working on this planet. But I guess could understand that. Instead of having to suck up to the customers there were supposed to intentionally give them a hard time. I could see the appeal in that.
__I had wanted to get a good look at myself before they got here but I also didn’t want to disturb the crime scene or whatever evidence was on me so I stayed on the bench and tried not to move. It didn’t help that I was shivering so much though.
__Grant and Wadas burst into laughter when they stopped and got of their car in front of the bench. “I know it’s not supposed to be funny but you look ridiculous,” Grant said when I glared at her.
__” Take a good look. Can we hurry up the evidence gathering? I think he gave me something to make me freezing cold. I just can’t seem to warm up.”
__They sobered up at my words and the crime scene people got to work. They took pictures and collected samples of the paint, whatever was in my hair, and a bunch of other stuff. When they were done the paramedics that came in the ambulance got to work on me. I let them work as I talked things over with Grant and Wadas.
__”These might be the oddest clues Johnson has ever left. How are we going to figure out what’s real and what’s fake?” Grant commented.
__”I can’t really see all the clues. Show me a picture,” I requested.
__“Are you sure you want to do that?” Wadas asked.
__“Just show me a picture.”
__Grant gave me her phone and my eyes widened as I got a good look at what had been done to me. “Poli`ahu,” I said immediately recognizing who he had made me.
__”Poli who?” Grant asked.
__”Poli`ahu. She’s a Hawaiian snow goddess. Though I don’t remember her ever having a head of- what is that exactly mud?”
__”I can think of a few things it could be. Mud is definitely one of them. We’ll have to wait for the lab results. You do have some more brown stuff on your face as a mustache though. You make a horrifying woman Palakiko,” Wadas said.
__”I’d like to see you pull it off,” I said snarkily. “There is a fast way to tell what it is.” Before they could ask me what I was talking about I reached up and ran a finger through my hair.
__“Hey, disturbing evidence,” Grant yelled.
__”It’s already done.” I looked at the substance and then smelled it. Then I tasted it. “It’s definitely mud,” I said. Grant and Wadas, and even the paramedics looked horrified at me. “What if that had been something else?” Grant asked. I finally understood what they thought it could have been.
__”But it wasn’t. Besides it wasn’t much of a risk. Do any of you smell shit?” I sounded casual about it now but I hadn’t even thought that was a possibility until they said something.
__”Now do the same with the stuff on your face,” Wadas prompted. He seemed way too eager to have me taste the substances on my body. I wanted to know what it was though so I tasted it anyway. “Chocolate. Possibly chocolate milk. None of this makes any sense.
__A machine the paramedic was holding beeped and he started gabbing a needle out of his bag. “What is that for?” I asked.
__”It figured out the substance he gave you to make you so cold. I need to give you the antidote.”
__”What did he give me?”
__”BitterIce. Why that’s such a popular drug I’ll never know. What’s so great about freezing to death if you get the dose wrong?” He went back to rooting through his bag until he found the right drug to counter the effects.
__”Am I in danger of freezing to death?”
__”Whoever gave you this definitely wasn’t trying to freeze you to death. Just make you cold.”
__I looked up to grant and Wadas to tell them it was probably another clue when I noticed Brenda wasn’t with them. I shot to my feet and caused the paramedic to stick me in the leg. He glared at me but I ignore him and the slight pain. “Where the hell is Brenda?” I shouted looking around frantically as though she would suddenly appeared. Grant and Wadas exchanged a glance that was both uncomfortable and apologetic at the same time.
Mod
__I shook my head, "Johnson was with me," and gingerly tapped the end of my bloodied nose as evidence.
__"He was inside the Kompleat Kleening building all the time," said Wadas, "up on the second floor. We waited five minutes, then followed you in there - went up the first staircase and suddenly the joint was full of Johnsons. There musta been a dozen of them, just the freakiest thing you ever saw."
__"But the place was completely empt- " That locked door of course, the one I'd walked straight past: it had been a double-bluff, a "red herring" which wasn't red at all - he'd been waiting behind it all the time with. . .well, with what exactly? A crowd of animatronic lookalikes? And up in the sky a couple of miles away meanwhile, punching me in the face, yet another lookalike? This was more than just an ordinary obsession, the guy must have spent the whole twenty years since our college days planning, preparing, building. . .
__"These didn't look like animatronics though," said Grant. "We reckon he had himself cloned."
__Cloned. Illegal almost everywhere and hideously expensive, but just about possible. So the whole thing - the four stiffs trying to access the crime scene, then the Kompleat Kleening building, the aircar and now these clones - had been a diversion, a way of getting his hands on Brenda.
__But how had he known Brenda would even be along on this case, she'd been out of my life for years until Bigtime brought us back together. He couldn't have known, so if he'd been planning his revenge for the past two decades he must have altered the script at the last moment, seen in Brenda his chance to inflict an extra humiliation.
__I grinned to myself at that - Grant and Wadas were looking at me oddly, but the mere thought of our nut-job tangling with Brenda was ridiculous. Johnson ( if he was even still in one piece by now, which I doubted) had just made his first big mistake.
* * *
To understand that grin, there are one or two things you need to know about the Girl From Galactopol.
__Brenda Francine Cassiopeia Murchison. To look at she always reminds me of the dames in those 1950s cigarette commercials, or the cheerful-housewife-hoovering-carpet ads they used to plaster across roadside billboards in those days: pretty as a picture in tight sweater and slacks, wide smile with two rows of perfect white teeth. She throws herself into everything with total uninhibited enthusiasm; and, a born giggler, collapses into helpless laughter at the slightest excuse. We were staying in a cheap hotel one time, when a mouse ran across the carpet; most of the women I've ever known would have been straight up on a chair screaming their heads off, but not Brenda - she just found it completely hilarious, named the mouse "Mickey" as I remember and left a cheese sandwich out for it.
__But in the field, out on a case, I've got to know the other Brenda too - she's good, even by Galactopol's standards, and they only recruit the very best of the best; when the heat's really on, that infectious giggle disappears and you're left with the calmest, coolest, head in the business. Her ability with sidearms is legendary - I mean, I'm a six-out-of-six crack shot myself, but she's better: ordinary hand guns, gravity guns, lasers, handheld particle-beam weapons (up to and including the infamous Higgs). Another time, on a practice range, she spotted a large bird that had got itself caught on a wire fence, and shot the wire away with a single blip of laser light - one-handed, and without a telescopic sight, from more than two hundred yards. Afterwards, watching the bird flap away, she didn't say a word, just did that thing gunslingers do in old movies: blew imaginary smoke from the end of the barrel, twirled the gun round her finger once and then down into its holster. That's Brenda.
__Oh yeah, and I nearly forgot to mention that she's also a black belt at "invisible hand" (and the less you know about that, probably, the better). For a moment there I almost caught myself feeling sorry for our Red Herring Killer.
__"We have a fair idea where he's taken her though," Wadas was saying, "and you, we figure, are the clue."
__"Place up at the north end of the island - gotta be," Grant indicated my, er, costume. "A factory, Snow Goddess Ice Creams- "
__"And, don't tell me, they make a brand called Chocolate Moustache?"
__"A milkshake, famous all over this part of the Galaxy. Just the best."
__"Well, don't worry," I said, "I doubt we're exactly going to find Brenda tied to the railroad tracks or anything."
__Barely skimming the treetops, we spotted several more obvious red herrings on our way out there - a gate into a field left open, wheel tracks in mud matching the ones we'd seen earlier that day - but then, all these red herring "clues" were starting to look obvious by now; after a while, I was finding, you get your eye in even with this sort of stuff. So I left the detective work to the detectives, while I just sat in the back seat and thought some more about Brenda: I reckoned there was actually a fair chance we'd find her tied to some sort of railway line - as well as cowboy films, she's also a fan of those early, flickering, black-and-white silent ones and, I hadn't any doubt at all, would absolutely love being the girl tied to the rails. I could see her hamming it up outrageously: wrists and ankles in chains she could have slipped out of in five seconds flat, screaming silently and mouthing, "Help! Help!" at the imaginary camera.
__"Well this is it," said Wadas, as Grant put us down in full view of the main entrance; no point in creeping about, we'd already decided, since Johnson knew full well we were coming. The idea this time was for me to go straight in through the front, while Wadas headed for a loading bay round the back and Grant busted her way in from the roof. Although Snow Goddess was huge - a sprawling complex of mostly windowless blocks linked by catwalks and a forest of stainless-steel pipes - I figured Johnson would lead me through the maze.
__The main doors led into their front office where the receptionist (remarkably slim, I remember thinking, for someone who works in an ice cream factory) was sitting at her desk, and as I walked across the carpet I suddenly wondered what in the world I was supposed to say to her. "Had any murderers in today?" maybe? I looked around: there was no way he could have brought Brenda through here in any case. . . was there?
__And that was when I noticed the fish. Behind the receptionist's head, partly set into the wall, was a giant fishtank and I stood, dumbfounded, watching what was swimming about in it. They couldn't be; I mean, they were red, sure, but you couldn't keep a school of those in an aquarium, could you? And even if you could, how had he got his hands on these, how had Johnson organised all this? You don't get red herrings in real life, so had he taken some of the ordinary kind and dyed them red? Or were these more, but tiny, animatronics? Or had he even, bearing in mind the depth of this nut's obsession, been breeding red ones - which would have taken years and years - just for this one joke, for this single moment? As I stared in at them all swimming about, with them staring back at me out of the side of the tank, I couldn't help thinking to myself: this guy should have been a stage-set or window-display designer, what a terrible waste of talent.
__The wide-eyed receptionist, meanwhile, was already phoning Building Security - and catching a glimpse of myself reflected in the tank, I remembered that I was still painted bright blue from head to toe and wearing a dress. The place was full of cameras, of course, recording this sight for posterity - and also, if this next bit of the story went very badly wrong, for the TV news in every home right across the Galaxy.
__Without a word, I pushed my way through a side door and found myself in a corridor.
__Wadas and Grant followed me through the door after smoothing things over with the receptionist. They both had their hands on their weapons and looked puzzled as to what I was doing.__”The fish were swimming this way so I figured it was best to follow them.” It sounded absurd when I said it out loud. I was not about to tell them I thought that though. Besides, could anything sound odd from a man dressed like a Hawaiian Goddess?
__”That’s sound logic for this case. As much as anything is. Lead away,” Grant gestured me forward.
__As we walked down the hall I began to notice markings high up on the wall. I got up close to one and chuckled when I saw they were brown, clearly meant to be chocolate, mustaches. Obviously we were on the right track.
__We were almost to the end of the hallway when I noticed we hadn’t run into anyone else since we stepped away from the receptionist’s desk. Every door we passed was open and had empty rooms beyond. “I thought this place was a working ice cream factory. Where are all the people?” I asked.
__Wadas and Grant exchanged an uneasy look. “It is supposed to be a working factory,” Wadas said.
__They drew their weapons and looked even sharper than they had before. The hallway ended at a fire door and with no other way to go I touched the handle.
__”Are you sure this is right?” Grant asked. Her voice was tense and came very close to shaking.
__”The mustaches lead right to this door. And there isn’t anywhere else to go. Flank the door and I’ll go first. If something is wrong on the other side the code word is banana.”
__ “How are you going to work banana into a conversation?” Grant asked.
__”I don’t need to. I’ll just yell it at the top of my lungs and you’ll know I need rescuing.”
__”That sounds like a pretty thought out plan. Let’s do this,” Wadas said.
__They moved to either side of the door and made sure their guns were good to go before nodding at me. I nodded back and grabbed the handle again. This time I pushed it open. Despite the sign on the door saying an alarm would go off nothing happened.
__I quirked an eyebrow at Grant and pushed it open. It was so bright on the other side that it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Once they did I wished I couldn’t see. Or, better yet, that I hadn’t gone through the door at all. In fact I was starting to regret ever coming to this planet in the first place.
__”I know we didn’t actually discuss a code word for running away but if we had I think I would have picked mango. Or pickle. It doesn’t matter now. And since there isn’t time to run away anyhow, and I won’t tell you to try and rescue me. That would be pointless since you’re both caught with me. I’m going to suggest we surrender.”
__Grant and Wadas both peeked around the door frame and sighed. Unlike me they didn’t seem at all surprised to see a group of people dressed like eighties hair band members standing in front of us. They put down their guns and held up their hands in an imitation of me. We all filed through the door silently and waited patiently for the men on the other side to pat us down. Once they seemed assured of our weaponlessness they parted and revealed a man holding a tablet with Johnson and Brenda on it.
__She was covered in melting ice cream, looked like strawberry, and leaves. He was holding a gun to her head but otherwise she seemed fine. She smiled tersely at me through the screen.
__”You look a little worse for the wear,” I commented to her.
__”You’re one to talk,” she shot back.
__”I see you finally got yourself a posse. That’s quite an accomplishment from such an outcast like you,” I informed Johnson. “You are the real Johnson right?”
__He rolled his eyes. “Yes I’m the real Johnson. I’m starting to regret using those stupid clones. Everyone feels the need to make sure I’m me now.”
__”Maybe you should have tattooed numbers on all of them. You could be number one. Or you could be the last one. No one would expect that,” I suggested.
__Johnson looked thoughtful. “That’s actually not a bad idea. If I ever use clones again I’ll remember that.”
__”So…Are you going to introduce us or what?”
__”Oh yes. Where are my manners? Luka, and cop friends, these are my new friends. They call themselves the Devilish Honchos. This particular group is made up of the leaders of the Devilish Honchos.” Johnson paused to let us take that in. Grant and Wadas blanched and their eyes widened. That name obviously meant something to them. “Ah, I see they’ve heard of them. I personally don’t really understand the name but it seems to cause some fear with the people that work on this planet. It really has helped me put all of this in motion. Isn’t that fun?”
__He definitely wanted an answer to that stupid question. I had several of my own questions burning holes through my brain and didn’t actually feel the need to answer him. “So what’s the plan now?” I asked instead.
__”Now they bring you to me and I finally get my revenge.” Johnson’s words weren’t unexpected but somehow still very clichéd.
__”The anticipation might very well kill me,” I said.
__”One can only hope,” Grant quipped behind me. I rolled my eyes and we all headed around the side of the building and then through a hole cut into the fence to the woods behind the ice cream factory.
__I didn’t miss the warning sign as we got to the woods. I didn’t catch all of the words on the sign because they were rushing us but I caught enough to know we were entering a hostile place. Specifically the sign said that the woods were a no go zone and certain death awaited beyond.
__I raised an eyebrow at Grant and she sighed. She exchanged a look with Wadas before speaking quietly. “When the planet was being…outfitted for the whole hell tourist destination there were some logistical problems.”
__”Local population that didn’t want you here? Or, seeing as how we’re in the woods, killer plants?” I guessed.
__”Not quite. Or at all,” Wadas said. He was looking at me like I was odd.
__”Long story short, they should have done psychological tests on the people they were hiring. Some of them liked the whole ‘make the tourists suffer’ too much,” Grant explained.
__”I think I would have preferred the plants.” We were all quiet after that. Well as quiet as a group of people tromping through the woods could be. I spent the time attempting to subtlety leave a trail and remembering our path. I didn’t want to rely on anyone else to get out.
__All of a sudden the trees we were passing were decorated with balloons and paper garland in all colors. A few of the trees were even wearing giant festive hats. A clear path was marked with stuffed animals. They were all holding sticks, forks and knives as though actually defending the path. As we walked down it I felt them staring at me. It was creepy. And unfortunately familiar.
__Brenda and Johnson, unnumbered but most likely the original, were waiting at the other end of the path when we arrived. She looked very uncomfortable covered in now dry ice cream. I knew how she felt. Walking in a dress while painted from head to toe with nothing but flimsy gold sandals on my feet was not fun. I had to keep plucking out sticks and leaves that were poking my feet when they got caught in my sandals.
__”It’s good to see you in person,” Johnson told me once everyone had gathered around him. He seemed very happy and self-assured in the middle of all those people.
__“I’d say the same but I am definitely over dressed for this particular party. And they’re under-dressed.” I gestured to Grant and Wadas. “Perhaps you could let us go and get ready. I promise we’ll come back. The Johnsons laughed at my absurd request. “I didn’t think it would be that easy. “ I said resignedly. I looked at Brenda and she winked at me. Not the best cue, but at least she didn’t have to work a word like banana into the conversation. Time to start figuring out exactly what I was supposed to do.
Mod
__The reason I haven't told you much about PI School until now is that there's a bit of a stigma attached to it; not everyone (including me) likes to admit they've been there. PIs who just become PIs - ex-cops a lot of them, going into the business after retiring early from the force - look down on PIs who went to PI college. It's plain snobbery because a lot of its graduates are every bit as good as (many a whole lot better than) the unschooled ones. Sure, the unschooled ones will tell you that they have been to college - the college of hard knocks, the university of real life itself - and, it's true, a PI School can't make you streetwise; but the teaching there is superb, the instructors all ex-gumshoes themselves with hundreds of years experience between them. Also, it's not just about classwork either - in fact, far from it; you spend as much time out there on the streets doing cases as inside with your knees crammed under a desk.
__...which is precisely where Cedric Johnson came unstuck. In the classroom, doing theory, he had no problems; but as soon as he went out into the field to do the practical stuff, he'd start to flounder. Just didn't understand people, is what I reckon (quite some handicap that, for a budding PI, you've got to admit).
__Apart from training to be private dicks, we were typical enough students I guess: four of us - me, Johnson and two other guys - sharing a shabby apartment. We were young, green and without a cent between the four of us most of the time; but we got along just fine and had some real laughs during the first two years. I remember we were so poor we didn't even have a cooker for instance; what I did have though was an unregistered (i.e. completely illegal) blaster, and one time around midnight, hungry after an evening drinking beer the way students all over the Galaxy often are, we stumbled in and I decided to make everybody toast. I put the blaster at its lowest setting, barely above zero, and the beam at its widest spread; then, egged on by the other three, attempted to toast slices of bread. Well I tell you, I toasted the furniture, the wallpaper, the curtains and the carpet, burned holes in my clothes, singed off my own eyebrows, melted a plastic light fitting, blew out one of the windows - then shambled off to bed of course, the way students all over the Galaxy also do, saying, "I'll sort it all out in the morning."
__Where it went bad, though, was during our final year. There was one particular section of the course - 303: Evaluating Clues - which included a sort of murder case: the "murder victim" was a plastic mannikin our instructor laid out for us, complete with lots of clues - there was a feather in its mouth, it had a rubber-duck tattoo on the sole of one foot, smoke particles in its ear...and, yeah, those are kinda familiar aren't they? He also left a trail of clues through the streets leading to the "murderer's hideout", some of them real clues, but most irrelevant non-clues - i.e. red herrings. The trail led through an empty building formerly owned by the Kompleat Kleening Company, there was a park bench by a fountain, a chocolate factory...you get the idea I think.
__Anyway, most of the class passed the test with only a few hints from the instructor along the way, and found the "murderer" (a stuffed toy animal "hiding" in a wood outside of town). A few didn't make it though and ran out of time; I did the best of us, got there quickest and without any help from the instructor at all. In fact, looking back now, that was the day I realised I wasn't just good, but was a natural, had a real eye for it.
__And Johnson? Total humiliation: he simply could not tell the real clues from the red herrings. The instructor had made some of the non-clues easy, glaringly obvious, jokes almost: the "victim" had a red liquid in its throat, there was a red tattoo on its back, a red butterfly in its stomach, red banknotes in its pocket, but these herrings just sailed (or I suppose swam) clean over Johnson's head. The final red herring of all was a plain joke, our instructor's way of saying to us all, "Well, you've followed the trail this far, guys, so have this last one on me!": it was a smoked herring tied to a tree - a kipper in other words, which is what "red herring" originally meant. Everyone else laughed at the joke and carried straight on past, but not Johnson. He spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the local smoke-house and kipper factory where they process and pack the things, convinced that's where our teddy-bear murderer was hiding. He just didn't get the joke at all, and even back at our desks next day had to have it carefully explained to him, several times over. As the penny finally dropped (face now bright red, ironically enough) his humiliation in front of the rest of the class was, in retrospect, an awful thing to see. Worse was to come though: he showered, he changed all his clothes, but couldn't get rid of that oily-fishy smokehouse smell; even weeks later the rest of the class still got a faint whiff of kippers - his humiliation relived and renewed, over and over again, every time he walked into the room.
__And that, I guess, is where we kinda parted company; I'd discovered my true calling in life, but for him it was only failure and ridicule. Later, he became more solitary and I slowly realised we were no longer friends. None of which, though, really explains what tipped his mind over the edge into obsession - and here's where I make my confession. It was just a joke, a throwaway remark, made as we got back (as usual) from the local bar one evening; hefting my blaster I said to the other three, "So, lads, what's your favourite chef going to prepare for your delight tonight - kippers on toast?" That's all it was, that's all I said, just one of those dumb-ass things you say when you're drunk and twenty years old. I could have bitten off my own tongue as soon as the words were out of my mouth, but it was too late. Without a word, Johnson went to his room. A week later he moved out of the apartment and during what was left of the course the remaining three of us saw very little of him.
__Even then I had no idea of the damage I'd done - until two years later of course, when I heard that Johnson had returned to the School and committed his first murder. To this day I almost feel like it was me who pulled the trigger.
__And now here he is, trying to run the film through a second time - the same murder-hunt, all the same clues, all the same red herrings, but just him and me this time. That, of course, also partly explains why he brought me here: back then, twenty years ago, Planet X was still being laid out - for a while it was the biggest construction project anywhere in the Galaxy - as students we'd all read about it, fantasised about going there when we were rich, when we'd made it big. I'm guessing it, too, must have gradually become part of Johnson's obsession: a sort of Promised Land to him, the one place he knew of where anything - even rewriting your own past - might be possible.
__Slightly understanding where he was coming from wasn’t as helpful as it could have been. I was still having trouble with why he kept singling me out. I truly thought enough time had passed when I made that stupid joke. I only wanted my friend back. How was I to know he would still be so sore about the whole thing?__But back to the present. Still standing in the clearing surrounded by crazy people and stuffed animals and with only Brenda and two cops for backup. If she had given me a playbook on signals earlier then I missed it. I knew that her Galactopol buddies were around here somewhere. She always had an angle worked out with them. Always. But they couldn’t have taken Johnson’s craziness into account. Even if they thought they did, I knew he still had something up his sleeve. He still hadn’t gotten whatever he wanted from me. They had enough to take him down but I couldn’t go along with it yet. I had to know what he wanted from me.
__I walked around the clearing, pretending I hadn’t seen Brenda’s signal. Johnson watched my every move with an unnerving smile on his face. Turning back to face him I smiled back at him. “Now that you’ve gotten me here what is it you want?”
__”Isn’t it obvious? I didn’t think I was being that subtle.” He yanked Brenda’s arm so she was forced to follow him as he walked away. “I’ve got some old friends that want to see you again,” he called back over his shoulder.
__As if that wasn’t enough of an invitation to follow him the hair band members of the Devilish Honchos poked and prodded the three of us to walk in front of them again. The clearing split off into several different trails. We followed Johnson and Brenda down the path to the right with the gang members directly behind us.
__I stopped so suddenly I skidded in the sandals and would have gone down had Grant and Wadas not grabbed me to keep me upright. “What’s wrong?” they asked simultaneously.
__They followed my gaze to where Johnson had stopped in the middle of another clearing where three trees stood away from the other trees in the woods. It wasn’t the trees that shocked me though. It was the three people tied to the trees. And they were dressed almost as outrageously as me, though their outfits probably weren’t intended to be clues like mine. Johnson sure had a certain kind of flair. I suppose he did it to humiliate them.
__The first man was in a very unflattering, very pink, ballerina costume. Complete with laced up pointe shoes and pretty pink make-up. The second man was dressed like a mermaid. He pulled it off fairly well. His bikini top was made out of shells and his tail shimmered in the light illuminating the clearing. He didn’t have any make-up on, but he was wearing a wig done up with more shells. I felt especially bad for the third man. His outfit was the most revealing of the three. He was dressed like a genie. His light blue top was tiny and had gold edges and his pants were the same light blue but were completely see through and were split all the way down the side of his hairy legs. He was also wearing a wig. It was a blonde ponytail with a mini hat and harem veil. If I hadn’t just been thinking of the old days I never would have recognized them.
__”Who are they?” Brenda asked. She could see my distress. I’m sure everyone could.
__Johnson laughed again. “Fellows, you remember Luka Palakiko. Now the gangs all back together,” he talked directly to the three men.
__The three men looked at me with wide eyes that pleaded with me to explain wat was going on. I felt frozen, unable to think about what to do. If I were given a thousand guesses I still wouldn’t figure out what they were doing here or what Johnson wanted.
__”Everyone I’d like to introduce you to Benji Parson, Edgar Land, and Professor Kanu Bae. Benji and Edgar were roommates with Luka and me at P.I. school. And of course the professor taught us everything we know about being P.I.s.” Johnson smirked as he explained.
__”Sorry Luka,” Benji said to me. “I don’t know how this happened.” Edgar and Professor Bae stayed silent. Aside from being tied to trees they appeared to be in good health. I found myself wondering what Johnson had done to them to make them so fearful before I got here.
__After Johnson had moved out all those years ago Benji and Edgar and I drifted apart. I think it was because I felt so guilty about Johnson leaving. They tried to tell me that it was Johnson and not me, but I was never convinced. Then after Johnson started killing people they tried to reach out to me again. Surprisingly his murderous rampaging did not make me feel any better.
__Brenda was the one who helped me realize how nutty it was to blame myself. I hadn’t made Johnson a terrible clue finder or teased him relentlessly. I tried to help him and all I got for my trouble was him focusing on me.
__”What are they doing here?” I asked when it became apparent that Johnson was too busy being proud of himself to continue.
__”Oh, right. My grand plan. Despite some extra pieces,” he looked pointedly at Grant, Wadas, and Brenda, “now that you’re here, Luka, all the pieces are in play.” His grin was so gleeful it unnerved me.
__”This isn’t a game. You’ve kidnapped two cops, a Galactopol agent, and a P.I. Not to mention those poor men. Do you know how much trouble you’re in?” Wadas couldn’t seem to contain the words spewing from his mouth. Once he’d finished he looked like he wished he hadn’t spoken though.
__”I don’t know who you are. And I don’t care. This is between us.” Johnson’s gesture encompassed me, Brenda and the three men still tied to the tree. “I do owe the Devilish Honchos payment for helping me.” The long haired men surrounding us shuffled with interest in where Johnson was going. Grant’s eyes widened and Wadas opened his mouth again but shut it before he could do anymore damage. “How’d you guys like a couple of cops?”
__One of the men stepped forward. “That sounds like a good down payment. Just so you keep in mind you still owe us.” His voice was deep and just bold enough to sound good in front of the others, but not so bold that it would challenge or offend Johnson.
__Johnson nodded at him and despite both of their protests, as well as mine and Brenda’s, the two cops were taken away. Johnson stopped Brenda from doing anything to help them and two of the Devilish Honchos stepped in my path so I couldn’t follow them. “What are they planning on doing with them?” I asked the men in my path. They crossed their arms and gave me blanks looks.
__”Johnson they have no part in this. Get them back. Or better yet just let them go. You can pay those men another way,” I tried to reason with him.
__”Where would the fun in that be? Besides you shouldn’t be worried about them. Instead you should focus on everyone still in this clearing.”
__I kept looking in the direction Grant and Wadas disappeared for another minute. I didn’t hear any screams or anything else that would make me think they were being mistreated. I don’t know what I would have done if there were any.
__Turning back to Johnson I glared and said “What now?” Johnson motioned to one of the men behind me and he pulled out a knife. I tensed but he ignored me and walked over to the first tree. Then he proceeded to cut the men down one by one. They fell to the ground, groaning and rubbing their wrists before helping Benji, the mermaid, stand up. His tail appeared to be giving him some trouble. Then they stayed silently huddled in a little group.
__”I’ve thought up a most wonderful revenge. It may seem fairly generous but I assure you it’s not. I’m looking for long term effects, not instant gratification. Even if I most likely won’t be around to see the effects I’ll know.” He was ebullient in his speech, despite not making that much sense.
__Brenda looked at me. Her eyes spoke volumes. She didn’t want this to continue. I was fed up myself but I still needed to know where this all was going. “Do you have to be so cryptic? Can’t you just spit it out already?” I snapped at Johnson.
__”See. This is already fun for me.” He clapped his hands wildly and laughed. Then he abruptly stopped and his whole demeanor changed. “Since you’re in such a hurry to find out my grand plan I’ll tell you. But you’re going to wish I hadn’t.”
__”I’m sure that’s true,” I agreed. Still I motioned with my hands for him to continue.
__”I’m giving you a choice. The hardest choice you’ll ever have to make. You need to choose between them.” He pointed at his group of hostages. “You’re going to kill one of them.”
__The three men shrunk back, suddenly more fearful than when they were tied to a tree. I looked at them in confusion, both because they seemed afraid of me and because Johnson honestly seemed confident that I would do it. “Why on earth would you think I’d do that?” I asked him.
__”If you don’t then I’ll kill Brenda.” He grabbed her arm again and pulled her up against him all the while smiling maniacally at me.
__She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even try to struggle. I knew what she would be saying if we could talk though. We’d had that talk before. Our answers had been identical in this regard. Neither one of was wanted to be regarded as more important than someone else in any kind of hostage situation. I wanted to ignore this but I knew if I was standing where she was and looking at her like she was looking at me I would want her to respect my wishes. Hell, I’d get mad at her if she didn’t.
__”No,” I informed Johnson, clearly so he wouldn’t misunderstand. Brenda’s eyes closed as a resigned relief overtook her face.
__”You’ll be sentencing your girlfriend to death,” Johnson lamented.
__”No, you’re sentencing her to death. I’m simply refusing to play your games anymore. Everything that happens is on you, not me,” I countered.
__He smiled like he expected my answer. “So be it.” He reached into his pocket to pull something out. I didn’t get a chance to see what it was. Suddenly the clearing was surrounded by Galactopol agents. I didn’t even see Brenda move but all of a sudden Johnson was on the ground with her standing over him. That was her invisible hand in action.
__In just a matter of minutes the Galactopol agents had rounded up all the Devilish Honchos and brought them all to the clearing. They put them all in odd looking cuffs that I had never seen before in a group together. Johnson was treated to the same cuffs but they put him away from the others. I was happy when Grant and Wadas were escorted back to the clearing by one of the agents. They didn’t even look harmed in any way. Galactopol must have rescued them as soon as they left our sight.
__Everyone was bustling about and I walked over to greet them and make sure they were okay when Johnson started laughing. I turned back to him. Everyone else did as well. The look on his face confused me. He seemed pleased by this turn of events.
__”Now you think you’ve won. That is priceless.” He started clapping which caused all the agents to point serious weaponry at him.
__”How did you get out of those cuffs?” Brenda asked. “It’s brand new technology.”
__”I have many skills. Maybe following clues isn’t one of them but I’ve got others that make up for that. Such as knowing all the right people,” he bragged.
__I didn’t care about the cuffs. I just wanted this all to be over. ”What do you mean this isn’t over? Look around. We got you,” I told him.
__”Yes, you did. Did you think I didn’t know she’d bring her agency with her? I always have backup plans.”
__Brenda stepped closer to him. “What are you talking about?”
__He laughed again. “It was never between you and one of them. I studied you before I lured you here. I knew he’d never fall for that. And that you’d never let him do it. I needed something much bigger to coerce Luka into doing my bidding.”
__I was getting worried again. Johnson had been acting crazy for so long that I hated to think what else he had in store for everyone. “Why don’t you clarify how I’m supposed to be coerced? Because you’re being too
subtle and I don’t know how much more I can take.”__”I apologize. I’m so used to mind games that I just don’t know how to stop.” He didn’t really seem sorry or like he wanted to stop playing games with people. “I’m still going to need you to choose one of them to kill.” He gestured over to where several Galactopol agents were standing with Benji, Edgar, and Professor Bae.
__They looked back and forth between him and me. I looked back at them and shrugged my shoulders. “I’m still not understanding why I would do that.”
__”Of course.” He hit himself on the forehead. “I still haven’t shown you.” He whistled and a screen rose up from the ground. Once it was completely upright it came to life. Someone was carrying a camera and walking on the beach. It was sunny out and there were a lot of people having a good time. I frowned at Johnson but he motioned for me to keep watching.
__The camera stayed on the beach but you never saw who was holding it. It panned all over the beach before catching a sign. The person holding the camera got up close to the sign so it could be read. My heart sped up when I saw what it said.
__”Why are we watching a video of people at Waikiki Beach?” I asked.
__”Keep watching. It gets better.”
__I focused on the video again. It had moved on from the sign and was heading away from the beach. The person holding the camera got into a vehicle and put the camera on the dashboard so we could see where we were going. We didn’t go far. Maybe twenty minutes to the Aloha Stadium. The car parked at the stadium, which was packed, and then we were heading inside the stadium.
__When the camera stopped moving everyone in the clearing was absolutely still and silent. I thought it had been quiet before, but now it was as though if we breathed wrong the bomb in the video at the stadium would go off. It had a timer on it and was counting down. There were only seven minutes left on it.
__”Stop this,” I pleaded with Johnson.
__”You’re the only one who can.” He smiled maniacally again. “I’ve got a guy who is an expert at Nano technology. It’s how I got out of the cuffs.” He smirked at Brenda. “I coated our three friends over there in them. And those Nanos are connected to the Nano technology in that bomb. If you don’t strangle one of them before the countdown stops. Well, let’s just say there will need to be a New New Hawaii. Your fingerprints and the cessation of just one of their lives and all those people get to live.”
__He was a psychopath. There was no way I was just going to believe him about it. “Prove it,” I commanded.
__”I knew you’d ask that.” He stuck his hand in his pocket again and the agents became even more tense. With a wide smile on his face he slowly took his hand out of his pocket and showed everyone the dime sized data disc on his finger. One of the agents stepped forward and took it from him.
__We all waited impatiently while he pulled out a handheld computer and plugged the disc into it. He had a quiet conversation with someone over the phone before looking up from the device. “As far as the technician can tell he’s telling the truth,” he said.
__The silence after he stopped talking was only momentary. Then agents rushed over to Johnson and made him get down on the ground before using zip ties on his hands in lieu of more fancy gadgets. Brenda stared down at him until the agents stepped back and then she leaned down over him and said something to him. I couldn’t hear what it was but it made Johnson laugh. She stood up and looked at me before striding to my side.
__”What’d you say to him?”
__”I told him politely to stop the bomb. He laughed and said he couldn’t even if he wanted to. That you are the only one who can.” She said it quietly so no one could overhear her but I noticed Professor Bae watching her intently and remembered he could read lips. It was one of the classes he taught.
__”Our tech guys don’t think they can hack the signal in time. If at all. We have people on the ground in New Hawaii but I don’t know if they’ll make it in time.” One of the Galactopol agents came up to us and started speaking before I could warn him about the Professor knowing what they were saying.
__Brenda started speaking but I stopped listening as I watched Professor Bae shrug off the blanket draped over his shoulders and head towards us. Benji and Edgar both turned when he started over to us. They were as alarmed as I was by the determination on his face.
__Brenda and the agent abruptly stopped talking as I walked away from them to meet the Professor half-way. “No. I won’t do it,” I told him when I reached him.
__”There’s no other choice. I don’t consider this murder. I consider it a sacrifice for the greater good.” The professor talked like it was already decided. Perhaps it was an easy decision for him. If I had been in his shoes I’d probably feel the same way. But I was wearing my own shoes.
__Benji and Edgar reached us. “What’s going on?” Edgar asked.
__”Luka is going to do what Johnson wants. I volunteer,” Professor Bae explained.
__”I didn’t agree to that. I most certainly am not.” I held up my hands and backed up from them.
__I looked around the clearing to find everyone looking my way. Brenda and the agent she was standing with were discussing something in very low tones while staring from me to Professor Bae. They seemed to come to a conclusion and Brenda sedately walked over to me again.
__”You have to do it. Millions of people’s lives are at stake,” she whispered in my ear.
__”That’s easy for you to say,” I exploded. “You wouldn’t have to live knowing what you’d done.” My words triggered recognition in Johnson’s ramblings. “This is what you wanted all along.” I stalked over to him. “To know that no matter my decision it would affect me forever.”
__He gave me a smug look and I lost it. I punched him in the face and kept punching until I was pulled off him. He wasn’t smiling anymore. I don’t think he could.
__”We’re running out of time. You have to do it now.” Brenda said. She was holding my arm and led me back over to Professor Bae and the others.
__They all looked resigned to the Professors decision. I glanced over at the screen and saw several minutes had already passed. Now there were only three and half minutes.
__Professor Bae put his hands over mine and brought them up to his neck. Brenda put her hands over mine and Edgar and Benji followed her example. With some many hands around his neck it was hard to know who was actually squeezing. And it didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Probably because Professor Bae wasn’t really struggling. All I know is that when it was done and I looked over at the screen the timer had stopped counting down.
Mod
__Professor Bae wasn't really dead of course. Sure, he'd put on a real Oscar-winning performance, desperately windmilling his arms around, then sagging to one side with his tongue sticking out of his mouth and all that - I almost applauded. But something I, Ed and Benj all remembered, but none of the others there knew, is that he has this weird party trick where he can hold his breath for minutes at a time: picture him sitting cross-legged on a bottle-strewn carpet, cheered on by a ring of half-drunken students, with his face turning blue inside a polythene bag - it's a real show-stopper at house-parties I can tell you. (Talented guy our Professor Bae: he can also pull the smallest toe on each foot completely outwards, which is a truly horrible thing to see.)
__Unfortunately, though, Johnson did remember it. "Nice try Prof," he leered, handing me a knife instead, and I wondered if Bae had any other neat tricks up his sleeve which even I didn't know about - like getting-stabbed-by-a-private-eye-and-not-dying for example.
__Meanwhile, the countdown had started up again: less than two minutes until New Hawaii was blown to kingdom come. I was studying the screen intently, something I'd seen there had been nagging at my mind all along. I mean, there just had to be something wrong - the screen itself, or the timer, or the bomb - this just has to be fake, I was thinking, it can't possibly be real...
__Ahhh, home, New Hawaii; for a moment or two my mind lingered back there among its palm trees, sunshine - and noisy overcrowded beaches. That is the one thing wrong with it as a planet: a sort of paradise not so long ago, its very allure has drawn people from all over that region of the Galaxy and the population, as populations do, has already climbed way up into the billions. I remember it the way it was in the old days: you could go for a morning run and have miles of unspoilt beach all to yourself. Well, not any more. These days you can hardly move for sunbathers, souvenir shops, hotdog stands - and traffic. That's the latest craze all along Waikiki: motorised surfboards, an abomination which to any true Hawaiian is an insult to the very spirit of surfing. On a bad day out there it's like being in heavy traffic inland; I thought back to that RV I'd seen just before this whole Red Herring case broke over me - I mean, an RV! On surfboards! During rush hour you even have to queue for a wave, irritably twiddling your thumbs like in a nose-to-tail jam on the highway, and the last time I went out, just the day before I left for Planet X, I even spotted this guy at the wheel of a furniture delivery van (yeah, I know. It was this big!) waiting for the next free space on a breaker, when two sponge-wielding characters moved in on shabby boards of their own and started soaping his windshield with a "Gonna stop us or what?" expression on their faces.
__If it gets any worse, I was thinking, people are going to start heading out to found yet another new colony, another new Hawaii, and the whole process will happen all over again. I can see it now: Even Newer Hawaii they'll call it, an imitation of an imitation of the original old Hawaii back on Earth. But then, doesn't that pretty much sum up the entire history of the human race...
__My mind suddenly snapped back to the present - and I smiled: I had our Red Herring Killer in the bag. "Pineapple!" I shouted this time - fruit-code for grabbing anyone in the vicinity called Johnson and pinning them face-down in the dirt - which Brenda took care of while her Galactopol boys tidied up the rest of the gang. A second later the bomb-countdown reached Zero and the screen briefly glared an eyeball-searing white, then filled with dramatic-looking static. Not bad, I thought, for an amateur, almost convincing. But not quite.
__"And New Hawaii?" said Brenda, eyeing me calmly. "Still there I trust?"
__"Safe as houses. There was no bomb, it was just a piece of film, all of it fake."
__Johnson spat out a mouthful of dirt. "How d'ya guess?"
__"I walked back through it all in my mind: Aloha Stadium, New Honolulu's streets, Waikiki, the big surf rolling in. And then I realised: no surfing RVs, no furniture vans - just surfers with the wind in their hair the way it ought to be. The way it used to be in fact: that footage was shot some time ago, maybe years ago." I looked down at him. "But then, that always was your weakness I remember: details never were your strong suit."
* * *
So we got him in the end, laid poor Silas Jacobs to rest in peace, then stayed on as star witnesses in the trial. But this story has a disturbing postscript - a real unsatisfying sting in its tail.
__Grant and Wadas made the formal arrest, since Silas's murder was on their patch, and Johnson was duly found guilty right there on Planet X. Which was fine with just about everybody - including the Red Herring Killer himself. You see, Planet X (as I mentioned somewhere along the way) has this peculiar policy on sentencing: punishments are allocated entirely at random. Any crime can get you any sentence at all: shoplifting, say, or breaking into a car, can land you with anything from a token fine to the death penalty. It's an experimental programme, the idea being to make potential burglers pause, with one leg over the window sill, and think to themselves before slipping into your house, "Do I feel lucky tonight, or not? Is a clapped-out hi-fi and a bunch of crummy brass candlesticks really worth the electric chair?"
__Which is why, of course, Johnson lured us there in the first place with his second murder: to get his revenge certainly, get caught probably, then take his chances. And you know what? Well what can I tell ya, for the first time in his miserable life he did finally get lucky: he got five years. Yep, you heard me right, just five short years for the cold-blooded murder of two innocents. And, as you may have guessed yourself already, this whole case I've been telling you about happened exactly five years ago...
__Brenda just called: he was released right on time this morning. He's out there again, somewhere, right now.
