You call to a dog and a dog will break its neck to get to you. Dogs just want to please. Call to a cat and its attitude is, 'What's in it for me?'
--Lewis Grizzard
Back at the chair, I flipped Singer, if that was his name. As you probably know, you can learn a lot about a person from their body alone. I used the belt again to secure his torso to the chair. I couldn't do much about his head though. It just flopped over the chair back and the wounds at his neck spread open, a little more blood oozing out the gaps.
I looked over at Darwin, who was watching me with disinterested curiosity, a feat that only a cat could manage. "That was pretty efficiently done," I said to him. He had this 'Of course it was' attitude on his face, so I decided not to pursue it any further.
I carefully opened Singer's shirt and inspected his chest. It was dirty and scared. Not big scars, but small irregular cuts and abrasions that had never been cared for properly. Rolling up his sleeves, I discovered the same for his arms. No marks from drug use or stims, but plenty of nicks and scratches. His musculature and bone density backed up the fact that this guy had always lived here, and that he was likely one of the long-time families of the Station.
The higher gravity sections of the Station were reserved for the rich visitors who didn't mind a little light gravity for entertainment, but demanded something approximating planet side for activities such as eating, sex, and their daily ablutions. The poor didn't get to go down to the planet for regular breaks, like station personnel were required to do in order to keep up their health.
"So, you are true blue rat then. Who hired you to kill me?" I went through his shirt pockets for identification or money. He had neither, but he did have a code of some kind written on a torn piece of fabric. I stuffed it in my own shirt pocket and kept looking.
I examined the pants. The pocket appeared empty. They were standard issue station garb, available at any dispenser, made of the same material as the shirt, probably some form of recycled plastic that you could toss into the re-chute whenever it got dirty and grabbed another in exchange.
His belt intrigued me however, so I carefully removed it. Instead of the normal flexible plastic, this one was made of the woven fabric of what appeared to be old shirts. I examined it more closely, pulling the woven strands apart. Between the strands I found tightly rolled script. It was an older form of portable money, still legal tender, just not extremely popular. Script had the advantage of being impossible to track and trace, whereas the standard chip money transfer was passed through a myriad of computer systems and always had your personal ID attached to it. I unwove the entire belt and found about 3 months' worth of standard wages tucked away. Even a serious body search would have missed this.
Clearly this was no simple rat. He had been good at what he did, and had been paid well for it. I was wondering if he had been paid in advance for this job. If not, it could be a lead to his employer. This brought up another issue. If he had been so good, why did he botch this one so badly?
I had to think about it. Maybe he hadn't botched it. He came very near to actually killing me, and had it not been for Darwin, he would have succeeded. He had gotten into my locked room without my notice, and without warning from Darwin. I scanned the room again for signs of entry, and there were none. The door was still locked from the inside, and nothing else seemed out of place, not that I would be able to tell now with the carnage the covered the bed and floor.
I walked over to the bed and rolled up the cover to capture as much of the blood as possible, then stood on the bed to explore the ceiling. Being over 6 feet tall, highly unusual even on planet side, I could reach the padded ceiling panels easily. I felt around the panels between the safety rails looking of a catch or a spring that would release one of them. I found it, centered almost perfectly over the bed.
The spring catch flipped out and I pulled the panel open. It was spring loaded so that it would close automatically, and I let it go to see what would happen. The panel quietly closed itself, hidden once again against the padding. I opened it again and inspected it. It was an access panel to the wiring and air for the room, which probably led through the entire hotel, if not the whole station. It was about 18 inches wide, filled with clips and ties holding the wires and panels together, and some of them appeared to be very sharp. That would explain the cuts on Singer's chest and arms, and if I looked I would likely find them on his back.
I wouldn't be able to navigate it, but Darwin could manage it, even though he was probably the largest cat alive at that time. The fashion breeders on planet side had crossbred early Savannah cats with various domestics to produce a selection coats in keeping with the seasonal colors and patterns. Darwin was bred for his black coat, and as a kitten was precocious, or so I am told. This delighted the string of owners who had passed him along like a new scarf or this month's hat. It is when he reached adolescence that the trouble began. As a young teen he was already larger that was convenient, and he hadn't stopped growing yet. He also refused to follow commands, or even follow his owners. My sense is that he thought they were idiots. This, of course, led to him falling into disfavor, which meant he was slated for 'disposal.' The story of our meeting and mutual rescue will have to wait, though. I still had an interrogation to complete.
The mystery of our visitor's entry solved, I returned to the chair. By this time, Darwin was at Singer's feet, chewing at the cuff of his right pant leg.
"What have you found?" I asked. He paused, looked at me, then sat back, satisfied that he had drawn my attention to the correct place. I reached down and tore open the seam. Singer had a length of razor wire looped into a bunch, ready to grab through a small slit in the front of his pants. The razor wire intrigued me. It was relatively cheap, serrated on one edge. Much thicker and bulkier than my diamond wire, which was now sadly lost, it being embedded in the arm of that damned cyborg who was currently residing at the bottom of some lake planet-side. I really missed that wire. I decided to keep the razor wire.
So why didn't he just use the wire? Why the belt? Why say anything at all? Then I looked at Darwin. Singer had been surprised. He hadn't expected Darwin to be, well, Darwin. Even if he had been told that I had a cat, it wouldn't have prepared him for Darwin. This told me something else about his employer.
I decided it was time start following up on some of these hunches. I untied Singer, and flopped him onto the bed. As soon as he was off the chair, Darwin jumped onto it and positioned himself into his favorite sphinx pose, watching me work. It wasn't as if this was the first time he had seen me do this.
I stripped again, tossing my clothes onto the blood soaked floor, did my best to mop up what I could, and dumped it all onto the bed. I pulled out the sonic shower from the corner or the wall and set it to non-depilation, mild-abrasion. After a brief clean, I stepped out feeling a little raw from two sonic showers in such a short time frame. I was pretty sure that it would take a fairly sophisticated test to determine whether any DNA on my body was not my own.
Just to be sure however, I picked up Darwin and held him in my arms and against my chest. He enjoyed the attention, even though I suspect that he knew why I was doing it. Cat fur drives automatic DNA sniffers crazy, they aren't programmed for it. I continued to pet him for a while, even after I was sure that the contamination was complete. He deserved it, after all. At last he made it known that he had been sufficiently thanked and jumped down, catching himself on the floor with his claws to keep from bouncing back up.
He trotted over to the food dispenser and issued a single command. The command was directed to me, not to the dispenser. Following up on leads would have to wait, apparently. It was breakfast time, and despite our nocturnal exercises, he wasn't going to miss the most important meal of the day. Which to a cat is every meal, of course.
I have to admit that, despite the gore that covered the floor and bed, I was getting a little peckish as well. There was a time when all of this death and carnage would have repelled me. Not anymore. The place in my mind that would have retched at the sights and smell, that would have felt regret and remorse at participating in the death of human being, that would have panicked at the thought of being caught in a murder, that place was dead, sucked into the void that now lived in my soul.
I went over to the food dispenser and ordered two meals, one regular rations, and one vegetarian. Through some sick twist of gastronomic chemistry, I had discovered that the 'meat' delivered through the dispenser was more vegetable organics than protein, and paradoxically, the vegetarian meal consisted of nearly perfect replications of protein chains formed into some things vaguely resembling plant stuffs.
I place the vegetarian tray on the ground, much to Darwin's delight. He was through the first 'carrot' before I had even picked up my nameless sandwich. We finished out meals in silence while I wracked my brain for the next step to this mystery. I had the code that I picked up from Singer's pocket. I had his money, and I was fairly confident that his employer was still on the Station.
I went over to the bed and grabbed a cushion, tore it open and shook out the contents. I kept the casing and went over to the com panel. I tucked the casing around the screen pickup to hide the vid on this side. There was a privacy setting on the screen, but I was concerned that deliberately hiding my pickup might raise suspicion.
I started up the comm panel, then punched in the code. The receiver immediately picked up, but without video. Apparently the employer had no qualms about concealing his identity.
"Well?" The voice that answered was quiet, and strangely modulated. I couldn't identify a gender or accent.
"It's done," I whispered hoarsely.
"What's wrong with your voice? Why is there no visual?"
"There was a struggle. He was very strong. Still died though. And how the hell do I know why the damn video doesn't work. It's not my damned hotel. I want my money, in script like we agreed."
This last was a risk, but I wanted to establish credibility. If I could arrange a meeting, I could have my next lead to Finding Leena. From there, it was a short step to giving her information to Mr. Jones, then Darwin and I could finally head home again, to the peace and quiet of our little office.
"Fine. Meet me at your place."
"No," I said. "Hotel lobby restaurant. I want it nice and public."
"You're smarter than I gave you credit for, Singer. Fine. Hotel lobby restaurant it is. Thirty minutes."
I hung up. Time to check out. I ordered more clothes from the dispenser, and packed my bag. I tucked the razor wire into my shirt pocket and let Darwin do his business in the corner lav. I told you he was a smart cat. I had been forced to pay for the the top line decontamination protocol for my 'pet', at the insistence of the hotel manager, to avoid any 'aminal based infections' to be spread to the next guest. Aminal. Seriously, I wonder about these people.
The decontamination would incinerate the contents of the room with extreme prejudice, then dump the ash into space, just in case. None of it would head back to recycling. Suited me just fine.
I set the cleaning program and walked toward the door, Darwin at my side. Locking the door behind me, I punched the button to start the cleaning, and headed to the lobby.