Eve On Station

Chapter Three

Eve had been working at cleaning up her new office for about half an hour when her office door opened and a slim man with mostly Asian features strode in. "Are you the barbarian who beat up those men?" he demanded without any opening pleasantries.

"No, I'm the person whose office you just barged into without bothering to announce yourself," replied Eve looking up from the container she had found crammed into a drawer of her desk. She had been trying to decide if the greenish blue lump had been pizza or lasagna. It hadn't occurred to Eve that she needed to change the door settings to require visitors to press the button to announce themselves before the door would open, but that would have to be one of her next jobs when the clean-up was completed. "Who the hell are you anyway?" Eve asked as she gave up on the mystery of the unidentified substance and dumped it, container and all, into the garbage bag Jasleen had brought her.

"I'm Dr. Lee, Head of Medical," replied the man with the tone of voice that implied that only a moron would ask such a question.

First Ms. Reynolds and now Dr. Lee, Eve wondered if all the senior staff at this station were this belligerent and cranky. Maybe they had been out in space for too long and needed a holiday, or as someone she had met on a previous assignment had put it "they need to get laid real bad!" Well, that certainly wasn't her responsibility. Rather than immediately replying to the doctor, Eve swung the monitor she had unearthed around and played the video from the subway pod showing the two robbers entering the car waving knives around. "I could have let them rob everyone, or stab me," Eve finally said when the video finished. "Is that what you would have preferred?"

"No, obviously not," replied the doctor somewhat stiffly. "I've patched them both up. The one called Lampman has a broken wrist and jaw. The other one has a broken nose, a fractured occipital bone, several broken fingers and a slight concussion. That last needs to be monitored 24/7 for the next few days to make sure it doesn't get worse."

"I'll make sure he is monitored," replied Eve. "I understand you also attended the crime scene where the man was murdered. Can you tell me anything more about that yet?"

"As soon as I have finished the autopsy and written up the report, I will make sure you are the first to get a copy," replied Dr. Lee. "The process will be expedited if you desist in assaulting any more people that I have to take time out to treat," and with that he turned and left Eve's office as abruptly as he had entered.

"Nice to meet you too," Eve called after him, but she doubted he heard her as the door had already slid shut.

A minute after Dr. Lee exited, Sergeant Fitzgibbons stuck his head in Eve's office to see if she was ready to go visit the murder scene. "Sorry, for the delay," he apologized, "but Dr. Lee insisted I stay with him as a witness while he treated the prisoners."

"I hope you hid all the torture instruments before he saw them," replied Eve as she paused to pick up a plate that she had just noticed that had previously been wedged in behind the monitor. "What do you think," she asked, "brownie?"

"One can only hope so," replied Fitzgibbons as he led the way to one of the lifts that ran up and down the central hub. "This one is reserved for security and emergency engineering use only," he explained as he held his badge up to the blank panel beside one of the lifts. It is also one of only two lifts that will go to the very bottom level where the power plant, life support and so forth are located."

"I haven't had much time to study the schematics of the station," said Eve, "but I believe the murder is supposed to have taken place in the transient quarters on level minus two?"

"That's right," agreed Fitzgibbons as the lift arrived and they stepped inside. "This main level is Level Zero, the twenty levels above are plus one through twenty and the ones below are minus one to minus twenty. Actually, Engineering is technically minus twenty one, but everyone just calls it the Engineering Level."

Since it was only two levels down, it was a short ride and Fitzgibbons led the way through a few hallways to the transient living quarters. "These don't get a whole lot of use," said Fitzgibbons as they arrive at room T6. "There are hostels in the ring where spacers between berths and temporary workers often stay since they are cheap. There are also some VIP suites up on Plus Seventeen and Eighteen if a company bigshot comes out this way for some reason. These transient rooms tend to get used by the odd reporter or the flunkies of the VIPs. Since Grand Central, unlike all the other stations like Alpha, Beta and Gamma doesn't orbit a habitable planet, we don't get tourists."

With that Fitzgibbons triggered the room door to open using his badge and the two of them stepped inside. It's better than the jail cells, thought Eve as she looked around, but it was a close thing. The room was maybe three meters by three meters and contained a small bed, a desk, rolling chair and a wardrobe for clothes. Half of the wardrobe was a cupboard for hanging clothes and the other half were a series of drawers for holding everything else. A check of the cupboard and drawers showed they were empty. "There's a small washroom through there," said Fitzgibbons indicating a sliding door.

"All the victim's belongings were removed?" asked a slightly disgruntled Eve.

"There were none," answered Fitzgibbons. "There was the body and that was it."

"What about the body, where was it?" asked Eve.

Fitzgibbons gestured to a small cube on the floor and then he bent down and did something with it and a moment later a holographic representation of the body appeared. "This was made to show the exact position of the victim," he explained. "Dr. Lee needed the body to carry out his autopsy."

"And we don't even know the name of the victim?" asked Eve as she studied the hologram. The dead man looked to be in his forties, with short cropped dark hair, starting to gray slightly at the temples. He was wearing generic work clothes, tough looking pants, long sleeved shirt and work boots.

"There was no identification," affirmed Fitzgibbons. "In fact there is no record of anyone matching his description or fingerprints in the station database.

To make it worse, the computer says this room was unoccupied and the body was only discovered by the cleaning robot when it went in to do its daily cleaning."

"If he was killed by a knife through the heart, why isn't there any stain on the rug where the body was?" asked Eve. "Could he have been killed elsewhere and his body dumped here?"

"I suppose," replied Fitzgibbons as he rubbed his moustache, "but why bother doing that?"

"Damned if I know," admitted Eve. "I noticed there were cameras at either end of this hall to the transient quarters and the computer must record a log of when the room door opened."

"Yeah, funny thing about that," said the Sergeant. "According to the computer this room has been vacant for three days and no one has come in or out via the door. Lieutenant Singh looked at the video and he says it doesn't show anyone entering or exiting the room either."

"Then either someone with a high security clearance erased all the computer evidence, or the computer has been hacked," reasoned Eve. "This just gets better and better. Who on the station would fit those criteria?"

"Well, the only ones with the security clearance would be the Station Administrator, Captain Demery and Chief Engineer Null. As for who could have hacked it, that's harder to say. There are a few pretty sharp people on the Engineering staff who might be able to do it, though there could easily be some pretty good hackers in the general population of the station. Just a few months ago, someone hacked into the school records and deleted all the marks."

"I take it as a given that someone did a forensic sweep for DNA," commented Eve as she looked around the room to see if there was anything she was missing.

"Yes ma'am, that should be in Dr. Lee's report," replied Fitzgibbons.

"Oh goody, I can hardly wait to have another stimulating chat with the good doctor," said Eve, more to herself than the Sergeant. "Let's hope he isn't the murderer."

"That would be unfortunate ma'am," agreed Fitzgibbons who hadn't realized the question was rhetorical, if meant for him at all.