The Last Case

Chapter 1

I only had three days left before I needed to be on a shuttle back to Earth. The trip takes three weeks, which was plenty of time to wallow. Mars decided it didn’t want me anymore, and it’s not something I was happy about it. I liked living on Mars, but I guess when you screwed up like I did, you can’t expect people to just forgive and forget. I was completely packed, and looking forward to three days of pure relaxation at home when there was a buzz at my door.

When the door slid aside, Captain John Greyson of the Hale Central Police was standing there. Greyson was my former boss. Until two days before, I was an inspector with the Extreme Crimes Division, or ECD as we call it. It was John Greyson that asked for my badge and gun. It was John Greyson that delivered the bad news that I was being deported because of my involvement in a case that ended with the deaths of ten innocent civilians. And now John Greyson was standing at the door to my little two bedroom apartment.

I lived in a crater condo, a collection of small units that are built in the opposite direction of a high rise. Instead of being built up, they are built down into the crust of Mars in a funnel shape. The outer edges of Hale are covered in these complexes and are populated by the working stiffs, laborers, public servants (like me) and most of the general populace. Downtown has its high rise homes of course, but those tended to be reserved for people that worked for the largest corporations and held important jobs. In other words, people with the right financial situation. The fact that Greyson came all the way out to my place, which is almost an hour away from where he lives and works, made me suspicious as to his intentions.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“Sure. Why not,” I said and stepped aside.

He walked past the threshold and the door slid shut behind him. He was wearing a full suit, looking coifed and professional. He even had his glasses on, which told me that he probably just came from a press conference. Greyson thinks that wearing a pair of old style glasses makes him look more respectable. He’s right, too.

“Come to apologize?” I asked, but I knew that’s not what he’s here for. He doesn’t even know the meaning of the word “apology.”

“Not quite,” he said. “I need your help Felic-” he pauses. “Felix.”

He almost called me Felicia. It’s something I’ve had to deal with from the few people that actually knew me before I came to Mars and decided to reinvent myself. My name is Felix Rook, but that wasn’t always the case. I was born Felicia. John knew my dad, Morris Rook, back on Earth. He is one of the few people that knew me back when I was still Morris’ daughter. Even though I grew up as a girl, I was always my father’s son. That’s probably why I get in trouble in much the same way my father did when he was a cop.

“You fired me, remember?” I said. I walked over to the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of twelve year old Talisker. “Scotch?” I asked.

“No thanks,” he said. He walked up to the counter where I was pouring myself a glass. “And you fired yourself, by the way. The moment you disobeyed a direct order, you let yourself go.”

“That guy was a psychopath,” I said. “He was going to kill those people anyhow.”

“We can’t know that,” he said.

“I know that.”

I drank. I’d been doing a lot of that since I got asked to leave the force.

“We’re a for profit business, Felix. Public opinion is everything and you fell on the wrong side of public opinion,” he said.

“At least I tried to do something,” I said. “The rest of you assholes were sitting on your hands while a mental patient set a bunch of civilians on fire. I-” I stopped, took a deep breath, and slowly opened and closed my hands. It was an anger management technique someone taught me back in my rookie days. I’d forgotten how helpful it was.