CHAPTER 2 - John Works the Case and SID Shops for Condoms

 

 

John Biebe stared at his computer screen and leaned back in his chair, pensively rubbing his whiskery chin.   Shoving away from the desk he stood and stretched his back and shoulder muscles.  The inactivity of office work wasn’t his forte.  In Mystery his duties more typically required a brisk walk from witness to witness in summer, or Jeeping it in winter.  Face-to-face discussions, the rare scuffle with a pugnacious offender, negotiations with lawyers often on the jogging path or even on the pond in skates.  Computer research couldn’t compete.  But in this case it was essential. 

 

Fingerprints retrieved from Chuya Crasche’s house had identified her as originally Lydia Lindenmeyer.  John set Sarah to find everything the Net had to offer on her.  Already established was her lack of convictions but she did have one arrest on suspicion of burglary, ending in her release.  

 

August’s fingerprints had obviously been obscured by acid burns.  John already knew that. August’s business license had required fingerprinting since liquor was involved.  His faint, scarred whorls he had explained as the result of work in a radioisotopes lab where he’d handled concentrated acids daily. Checking that, John had located the lab – its burned-out ruins, anyway.

 

Not helpful.  At both the VR club and the crime scene other prints were gathered.  The only bloody ones were even stranger than August’s were: besides the slipper-prints leading out to the missing car, partial footprints textured from some sort of smooth fabric, and what seemed to be finger and palm prints of hands gloved in the same material as the feet, appeared in the parlor and bedroom.  And some on the corpse.  And all utterly useless.

 

So they would depend on DNA from hair at the Crasche house to generate August’s true ID and perhaps a criminal record.  From that house August’s photographs had also been removed, and with his car’s license plate number sent to state police and urban P.D.’s around Alaska, maybe some cop in another town would recognize him.  Expanding the Be On Look Out to western Canadian provinces John had yet to get a call back.  August might have switched plates, sure.   Meanwhile August’s photos had been posted on the Web as well.

 

The weird machine in the parlor still defied interpretation.  Computer search engines had turned up nothing like it.  Theories varied.  John suggested it was some sort of glass or ceramic kiln, an artist’s molding machine.  Inside it, funneled canisters held residues of ground-up minerals.  And what seemed to be unusual batteries were linked to the power train, augmenting AC with DC.   John believed the device had fashioned the “killer condom.” But how the obscene thing could have done some of the damage was an unanswered question:  the M.E. had reported that Chuya had suffered internal burns as well as cuts.  How had the killer managed to insert it that hot? 

 

Initially Sheriff  Biebe had considered the hollow pale-blueish object the murder weapon. But the M.E. had informed him that Chuya had actually died from pressure applied to her spinal cord.

 

“Remember Mr. Spock of Star Trek?  He’d squeeze a guy’s neck to temporarily disable him? Whoever squeezed Chuya’s neck had very strong fingers; we’re talking extreme pressure.  And he knew just where to apply them.  Right above the first cervical vertebra; in terms of the neuronal disruption between brain stem and spinal cord – the uppermost part of the cord is brain cells, you know – he effectively decapitated her.  Yet all I see on the surface is a nasty bruise.”

 

John had carefully sawed off one of the blue object’s spikes and mailed it to a mineralogy professor in Anchorage.  In his training days Dr. Abernathy had introduced the student lawman to the importance of geological evidence.  He and John had hit it off.

 

Abernathy’s report had just arrived by email.  According to the mass-spectrographic analysis  the blue thing’s chemical composition was “predominantly fused silica.  To give you some reference, fused silica is made from melted pure silica sand, for greater strength and higher melting point so it can be used in Halogen light bulb envelopes, optical telecom fibers, other stuff.  Your sample has fine bits of rock reminiscent of trinitite suspended in it.  And the samples you sent from that machine you found, there was ground-up trinitite among those, too.  Pretty exotic, John.” 

 

“What’s trinitite, where does it come from?”  John typed and sent, expecting a clue.

 

“White Sands, New Mexico.  It was created by fusion of the sand there when they set off those atomic bombs.  It ain’t natural; you don’t run across it anyplace else.  Trinitite is mostly melted quartz, feldspar and olivine.  Olivine is a green volcanic glass.  Trinitite is greenish under a sort of rind that accretes over time.  The first bomb was named Trinity so when specimens of a new rock were found after its detonation that rock was named trinitite.  It had been fused in the vast heat of the blast and rained down out of the mushroom cloud.  Your thing is more blue than green due to the addition of a copper phthalocyanine pigment; color varies with how that’s formulated.”

 

John’s imagination had conjured an image of a glowing turquoise alien encased in some unearthly body suit, shooting scalding fluid in to Chuya’s...  John shuddered.  His town was a venue for some pretty odd characters in some pretty kooky pursuits, sure.  But aliens? 

 

Of course Deputy Michan waxed ecstatic at the atomic twist.  Bobby  was a rapt sci-fi fan and MUFON member.  The bizarre kill method and the superhuman strength it required had already revved up his E T interest; now it shifted to high gear.  But a thermonuclear criminal alien in Mystery, Alaska?  No freakin’ way.  A very inventive fiend but a human one...the Sheriff fervently hoped.

 

August Crasche hadn’t struck anyone as an alien.  And by all accounts he and Chuya had been happy.  You never knew, though, if you didn’t live with a couple.  But John was not so certain that August had killed his wife. 

 

Borrowing a rubbery quick-setting molding medium from old Archie the grouchy hermit artist who lived in the woods, John had filled the hollow object with it.  The glassy blue shell was not of consistent thickness.  There were gaps in it, particularly near its base.  So John removed the mold cautiously.  Staring with distaste at the finished product John was left with no doubt about what it represented.  Hefty, circumcised, ramrod straight.  But not typical: the original oeuvre had been idealized, John guessed, too symmetrical and lacking the ridges of engorged vessels.  A statue’s stone organ perhaps?

 

“I think,” he told his Deputies who were peering over his shoulder, “that this killer condom was made by dipping a solid schlong shape –”

 

“A dildo,” Sarah clarified, drawing sharp glances from the three men.  “What?  I call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

 

“Seen a few of ‘em, eh?”  Galin Winetka chortled.  “So that’s Skank’s secret.”  Mystery was abuzz with Skank Marden’s renewed attention to the girl who’d once brained him with a shovel. 

 

(“It’s the uniform,” Skank had explained.  “The way that badge bounces on her boob when she walks by.  Those shiny black boots, too.”

 

“Yeah, cute, but watch your butt when she gets her gun!”  Galin had warned him.)

 

John resumed, “– by dipping a dildo in molten glass and chilling it fast so the drips solidified.  However, that can’t explain her burns.” 

 

“Unless he put a little heater in it when he...used it on her.”  Deputy Winetka had his own active imagination.  But his grimace showed that the idea was hard to dwell on.  “Creeps me out, man.”

 

The Sheriff nodded.  “Likewise. Hey Bobby, I think it’s  time to search the back roads.”  Local inroads in to the dark fir forest were short and unpaved providing access to hunters’ pickups, but also favorite illegal dump sites.  “Our BOLO’s getting us nothing.  August’s car might’ve been abandoned.  Or his body, if he isn’t the murderer.”

 

“And some extraterrestrial is,”  Sarah interjected.  “Watch for strange lights and if there’s a landed vehicle don’t approach it, call the Air Force!”  She grinned at Michan’s insulted glare.  “Wow!  Sheriff, this Lydia Lindenmeyer had a weird family tie – check this out.  Mad scientist shit!”

 

All three men gathered at her desk.  The wild story of the copycat killer who had emulated a VR creation of Lydia’s brother Daryl evoked astonished whistles.  And a sudden memory from Biebe’s “sheriff school” days.

 

“Daryl Lindenmeyer! Man, small freakin’ world.  I met that guy at a law enforcement seminar, more sales pitches than lectures.  New products and techniques.  Yeah, that dude with a VR system to pitch.  Impressive but fuckin’ way off our budget.  He had virtual criminals you’d try to outmaneuver before they slaughtered their next victims, or you.  Lindenmeyer was an expert on serial killers. Totally immersed in their psychology, their favorite tortures, how they preferred to kill, how some of them advertised themselves...”  John recalled how convincingly Lindenmeyer’s plasmoid players moved and spoke.  “I got into it, it was so real.  You’d be in a room full of normal looking folks, trying to guess which one was going to draw on you.  It was never the ugly derelict types.”  At the time, John had remarked to Daryl that the less sensational criminals of his acquaintance had always given themselves away.  They looked mean, mad or just guilty.

 

“Ah, but you weren’t dealing with world-class psychos,” Daryl had countered, smiling.  “The guys I study can look like Doctor Jekyll or Mister Hyde or anything in between. Some are babe magnets, like you.” He had eyed John in a clinical manner.  “I’ve found that the better they look the more victims they chalk up.”

 

“But wouldn’t that added vanity be their Achilles heel?”

 

“Sometimes, yes.  The more photogenic they are, the more they want their pictures in the news.    Same goes for some cops.  A good face attracts and disarms; but it’s also easier to remember.”

 

The thin man with the lugubrious eyes and superior air nodded as he continued to stare at John’s face.  Apparently it was a memorable one.  John had felt as if his features had been scanned in to a hard drive.  

 

And now Lindenmeyer was dead, capped by a police psychiatrist named Madison Carter in his VR theater at LETAC.  He had tried to protect his macabre offspring – to preserve his cyber-assassin’s “character module.”  And his sister Lydia had chosen John’s town to be butchered in.  Small world.  Weird world.  Bloody world.

 

~*~

 

During his surreptitious explorations of his new environment SID attempted to learn the code by which Clyde had communicated with the nanites.  Judging by the death of Chuya SID knew some adjustment to his design was crucial.  Consulting his internal manual he gained a grasp of his vascular system.  Surely a re-design could prevent the searing silicates from discharging, hurting his Honey Babes.  Couldn’t the molten flood turn back and recycle?  He could find no function in its discharge.  He followed threads from his polymer neural net in to every nook and cranny of his intricate site map but discovered no solution.

 

SID’s frustration mounted as he tried to boss his nanite repair crew.  Clyde had neglected to provide him with the necessary instructions.  Perhaps the key to the code was still in Chuya’s house.  SID couldn’t go back there now to search.  Law enforcement personnel had cordoned it off and had scurried in and out day and night.  Trained to identify the chiefs among these foes SID knew that a deep-voiced man with a powerful build and insignia on his jacket was the one giving orders: John Biebe, the Sheriff. 

 

While SID’s hearing was far sharper than that of humans, his LED vision was pixilated and constantly adjusting for range and object relationships, like multi-layered mosaics shifting in and out of informative collages.  Pattern recognition and movement were paramount.  Colors conveyed data but also varying degrees of excitement along his circuits.  He was provided with telephoto binocular lenses.  And a special product of Daryl’s whimsy, a preference for the human female’s curved contours contrived by hot-wiring the visual recognition center to the sex-drive chipset.  SID 6.66 could accurately translate body language and vocal inflections, and react accordingly.  He possessed an olfactory recognition function, too.  (Noticing how Chuya had sniffed him in a baffled way he intended to buy some men’s skin and hair products advertising seductive scents.)   

 

So SID, spying on the Sheriff and his two Deputies Michan and Winetka from a safe distance learned to recognize them by particular voice and movement patterns, more than by their faces.  By programming he assigned them enemy status.  Their images sent provocative signals through SID’s assassin circuits.  Such a selection of slaughter techniques to use on them...    

 

SID took up residence in the resort hotel.  He had researched the value of the Crasche cash and which basic needs of human-imitation  he should spend it on.  Shelter was primary in this “climate” – in the chill of night his own system had suffered a slow-down apparently attributable to plunging air temperature.  A hotel also provided food, bars, shops with clothing and scented concoctions to make one’s smell attractive.  This hotel had other offerings: adult females some of whom should be available for – and eager to try –  his skills.

 

The resort’s guest suites occupied its main building.  This was a massive nine-storey stone-faced edifice suggestive of a Bavarian castle, with high-peaked roofs of dark slate, and planters growing evergreens on every balcony rail.  Inside the main entrance through a broad ornate arched doorway one found oneself in a high-ceilinged lobby bright with brass and pale marble reflecting light from antique-styled sconces.  SID strode up to the check-in desk. 

 

“Your luggage, Sir?”  The concierge saw none.

 

“It’ll catch up later,” SID replied. 

 

“Airline lost it, huh?  That always happens to me,” the concierge commiserated.  “We’ve got several shops here, you can get whatever you need,” he added.

 

 As SID strutted through the lobby several likely ladies checked him out.

 

Lindsay Hollister, bejeweled and trendily coiffed, returned SID’s bold glance with interest. She was bored with her hubby’s attempt to identify with the famously macho “Icemen” of Mystery, and his past-prime preoccupation with the resort’s skiing and hockey.

 

“He’ll end up in a cast with me having to hire a home nurse for him,” she had just complained to her friend Francie Dolens. Both their spouses were skating on a frozen pond in a mountain col above the hotel, having (they’d convinced themselves) graduated from the roomy electrically-refrigerated rink in the resort.

 

“What I’m longing for is a metrosexual type to ride my slopes instead of snowy ones.”  She had kept her slopes shapely with a personal trainer and displayed them proudly in a snug sweater and black leggings.  “Like him.  Yum!  Look at that perfect hair, that suit with the jacket a bit too tight to show off muscles – the gym kind, I bet.  And that swagger.” 

 

“He’s up for it,” Francie concurred. 

 

“Light my fire, melt my ice,” Lindsay murmured, straightening her back and smiling at him.  Six months ago she’d had work done under her chin and around her eyes.  Such details escaped SID’s vision, though.  He focused on her body language.  That was blatant.

 

Hauling Francie along by her elbow Lindsay undulated across the colorful carpet to engage the hotel’s new arrival in flirtatious conversation.  “Please tell me you don’t play hockey.” 

 

“I don’t.”

 

“A skier?”

 

“No ma’am.  When I want speed I get it on wheels.”

 

“Oh, that is so refreshing!”  After a bit more small talk Lindsay invited him to lunch with her, but he had to decline.  “Lost my luggage,” he explained.  “Got to scope some threads.”  He gestured towards the gallery of shops. 

 

Lindsay was charmed by his outdated slang – familiar to her age group – and the sexy Southern rumble to his voice.  “I know: you’re a singer, an Elvis impersonator.  Am I right?”

 

“Elvis?  Only with you, Hon.  If that’s what whips your cream.”

 

She took a deep breath.  They made a date for that evening.

 

“How do you plan to slip him past Leyton?  Your husband, remember?”  Francie was quite scandalized.  And envious.

 

“Oh, you know how he is fresh in from the cold, he heads for the bar.  If not for the nearest ambulance.  Drunk or in traction, he’ll be no problem.  Last two nights I haven’t seen him before two-thirty A.M.”

 

“Just like mine.”  Francie sighed.  “We’re just baggage on these damn trips.”

 

SID sauntered in to the resort’s drug store and inquired if there were condoms made of asbestos available.  His request knocked the counter girl off balance. 

 

“Asbestos?  You shopping or advertising, Honey?  I mean, you’re hot as tabasco but...”  She caught herself. 

 

“I’m a high-temp dude, just made that way.  It’s...it can be a little uncomfortable for her, know what I mean?”  His most boyish smile and a shrug of his impressive shoulders won her to his cause. 

 

She extended a manicured finger and touched his throat.  “Wow!  You’re not kidding!  Can I sell you some aspirin for that fever, Dear?”

 

SID leaned across the counter and purred,  “No thanks, sweet Darlin’.  Only one way to cool my jets.”

 

“Well, she’s a lucky woman if you ask me.  Asbestos we don’t have, though.  You can’t get anything in asbestos, it’s toxic.  And so many guys have the latex allergy, we stopped selling latex condoms.  We do sell the sheepskin kind.  Couple of layers of those might do the trick.  Oh, dear,” she tittered, “pardon my pun.”  His direct gaze had heat rising in her own rouged cheeks.

 

SID ordered some of the sheepskin sheaths.  As the flustered clerk addressed her register his eyes strayed to a Traveler’s Pressing Kit on a nearby rack.  It contained a “heat-proof ironing cloth.” Consulting his internal encyclopedia he confirmed its chemical constituents as polymeric organic silicon compounds applied to textile as silicone oil to render it heat-resistant.  So he bought the kit. After all, his “skin” was basically the same stuff.  SID also purchased a little box full of basic sewing supplies.

 

~*~

 

SID was fascinated with women’s expressions of pleasure, auditory as well as muscular. His own “pleasure” was more a mathematical experience: sums added to the success side of a ledger.  Success of the cyborg imitating the super-primate.  Humanoid machine over human.

 

But for his born nemesis the Sheriff pleasure was deeply physical as he embraced his Donna.  He never tired of her, had yet to memorize everything about her.  Even their rare arguments were exciting.  Though he couldn’t confess it to her, he was usually the one who learned from them.

 

On this night he shook off the absorbing new case to concentrate on her.  He knew the women of Mystery were on alert in case the torture-killer was still around; so were the men.  John doubted that this monster was local-grown.  He’d have to have honed his unique sadism somewhere else.

 

It was “Hot Date Night at the Sheriff’s Shack.”  With the two older boys away at camp and the youngest sound asleep, the Biebes enjoyed a long shower pressed together in the glass stall.  Conditioned to rushed coupling often interrupted by minor domestic crises – or just plain mischief – they didn’t linger long there, left the stall wet and warmed.  They had tired their toddler out on a well-worn “Twister” game mat.   Now they tried it nude and complicated their play by gulps of Tree Lane’s notorious homemade “Snowmeltin’ Schnapps.”  Soon they looked like an illustration from the Kama Sutra. 

 

“I’m seeing a side of you I never saw before,” John marveled, peering under an elbow.

 

“Well, it’s your turn now,” Donna giggled.  “Don’t sprain anything.”

 

John managed the next contortion but by then was ready – very ready – to adjourn to the bed.

 

~*~

 

SID’s date was likewise hot – dangerously hot.

 

Lindsay answered his knock in silk and lace  underthings of SID’s favorite hue: purple. Eyeing her up, down and around appreciatively he had her mince across the room in them before he removed the delicate little strips.  Shedding all but his snug briefs he let her lead him in a samba to soft music from a radio.  Leading him to the bed she passed him a brandy cocktail poured over ice in a big glass “snifter” – so named he supposed because you could get you whole nose and mouth over the rim and take a thorough whiff of the tangy contents.  He sniffed his but drank very little.  They reclined and embraced.

 

When he wriggled out of the briefs Lindsay  found SID’s odd layered condom as quaint as the rest of him.  He told her, “Don’t worry, I just tend to overheat.  You got me turned up to High, Baby.”  The strength with which he plunged into her made her gasp. 

 

After a long vigorous session in three positions he stopped, withdrew from her and – as she watched dumbfounded – pulled off the sheath and dipped his engorged phallus in to his icy brandy cocktail.

 

Excusing himself for a bathroom break he took the snifter with him, emptied it and while the toilet flushed, ate the glass. 

 

“Obviously your li’l ole radiator’s...hyperactive,” she observed, giggling nervously as he sprang back on to the bed.  He was still erect.  “I can’t believe that ice didn’t make you shrink.”

 

Her remark seemed to puzzle him.  “Guess not.”  Did that happen to humans? 

 

“You remind me of that woman in Body Heat  – remember that flick?  Kathleen Turner, always hot?  Hey, let’s get that video up here.”  Turning to the bedside stand she punched the phone’s Room Service button, ordered the tape.  And more cocktails.

 

SID watched the film as well as he could, processing the steamy, sordid plot with interest. His erection subsided partially, gradually; later he would have to eject the residual fluid.  When the film ended he yawned histrionically – people did that when sleepy since their shallower breathing left them low on oxygen. 

 

“Got to catch me some winks, Honey Babe.”  He kissed her and bounded off the bed.  She watched him dress. 

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” 

 

“You bet.”

 

“So you dug the flick...”

 

“Fascinating.  She was hot on the outside but cold on the inside.  Destroyed every man who crossed her.”  He looked at Lindsay and grinned.  “The perfect woman.”

 

“Really, you think so?  Well, if I asked you to kill my husband, would you?”

 

“Sure.  Why not?  It’s the least I can do for such as you.”  He bent and kissed her again.  “Is he cruel to you, Honey Girl?”

 

“‘Don’t be cru-u-u-el to a heart that’s true,’” she sang, tickling his belly with her toes. 

 

“But your heart ain’t true,” SID observed gently.

 

Lindsay stiffened.  “It was true for never mind how many years.  Through his dope habit, booze habit, poker habit, office-bimbo habit, health-food habit, now his winter-sports habit.  I’m the one habit he couldn’t break because I put up with all the rest.”  Her tone was bitterly defensive.

 

“Now, Honey, don’t get all shook up.  You want him gone, he’s history.”

 

“Oh, really?  What’s your price, if I want to hire you?”

 

Briefly SID considered.  “Whatever you want to pay.”  Doing it for free might worry her.  Humans were frequently financially motivated.

 

“I’ll get back to you, you dangerous hunk of burnin’ love, you.  How long will you be here?”

 

“Don’t know yet.  As long as you are, that’s for sure.”  He went to the door, blew her another kiss before he left.

 

Leyton Hollister was just stepping off the elevator when SID exited the Hollisters’ suite.  Freezing, Leyton glared.  Turning towards him SID made a smart salute.  “Fine night, ain’t it?”

 

The fairly pickled Leyton pointed at the door and back at SID’s face with a wavering digit. “That’s my suite.  Who are you, what were you doing in my room?”

 

“Your wife,” SID replied.  “You must be the husband with the habits.”

 

“My wife?  You – you son of a bitch, my wife doesn’t – you god damned cocky prick, who do you think you are?”  Hollister’s eyes bulged in his flushed plump face and he charged, stumbling.

 

Easily ducking Leyton’s hopeless swing, SID braced one hand against the man’s heaving chest.   “You can call me SID sex-point-sexsex.  Your wife’s a blossom oozin’ honey, man.  You should have given her a buzz more often.”  His other hand made a fist that smashed in to the man’s frontal bone where it thinned between the supraorbital tauri, squashing the prefrontal lobe.  Unconscious, Leyton dropped in a sagging heap.  Sid listened for stirring in the suites close by.  It was very late but that was no guarantee that he would not be caught.  Facing him now was the challenge of relocating Leyton’s dead weight and preventing a murder investigation.  First SID considered interfering with the elevator’s electronics so Leyton could take a convenient fall down an empty shaft.  Too noisy.  SID chose another option.

 

Divesting Leyton Hollister of his wallet SID inspected its contents for signatures and other scrawls which he scanned as images for analysis.  He dropped the wallet by the suite’s door.  Then he hoisted Hollister on his shoulders and climbed the fire stairs to the roof.  A narrow railed walkway fringed its steeply angled shale peaks, more a maintenance convenience than a vantage for guests although there were benches at intervals along the walk.  From up here it would have been a suicidal plummet to the flagstone terrace below, had Leyton leapt.  SID held him upside down at the knees, swung and dropped him. He hit the rock with a crunch amplified in SID’s audio system to a satisfying volume.

 

Returning to the hallway outside the Hollister suite SID availed himself of one aspect of the resort’s touted “Old World Charm”: the desk alcove.   Every hotel hallway had one.  Lit by an inviting lamp it provided letter-headed resort stationery and even a jar full of pens.  Having committed to memory the particulars of Leyton’s penmanship, SID wrote his suicide note.