Houston, 2030 Page 10

  “Happy to be useful,” Mr. Todd smiled.

  “By the way, I always wanted to ask. In the Salvation Way, do you have a full list of vets in your Command area?” Mark inquired.

  “No, sir. We are only aware about the vets in the Change for Vets program. Fully disabled, like this legless Andy Hobson, or your armless Billy. Plus, let say, if a one-legged vet gets into some other program: the drug users' or alcoholics' rehab, and such. But in the latter case, the spreadsheet would not even mention that he is a disabled vet.”

  “And who would have the full list of the disabled veterans?”

  Mr. Todd shook his head. “No idea. The Pentagon, I suppose. For some strange reason, they don't report to us. OK, I am joking, naturally. We are an independent charity! Maybe, one can ask in the prosthetic clinics? No, that's not right. Not every vet applies. Anyway, only the Pentagon can do it. Keeping a list of all the vets would be a huge undertaking.”

  “Why so?”

  “Just too many of them. You see, in our program, we have, as I said, six hundred and twenty four collectors. But this is just the top of the iceberg. As the statistics goes, for every vet without both legs, there should be eight or nine one-legged. And not everyone without both legs would be in the Change for Vets, anyway. Some may have another paid job, or run a private business, right? Besides, if somebody has both knees, we don't accept him in the program. I'd say he should find himself a better job than shaking a bucket…”

  “And how many would you estimate in total? For the whole ‘iceberg,’ I mean?”

  “In our Command area? Six to seven thousand vets. Let say, about two and a half percent of the total population.”

  “Holy shit! You mean: one out of forty people? It can't be true!”

  “Why not? Take your own street as an example and do some mental math. As the statistics goes, this is garbage, but – can give you the general feel for the numbers.”

  OK, take our little cul-de-sac, Mark calculated in his head. Thirty houses, about five people in each… No, it was too few. That was true before the Meltdown, but now many families live together, right? And prefer to have more and more kids. OK, simple enough. We have ten people in our own household, can assume this as an average. Thirty by ten, roughly, three hundred of the total population. Right. How many vets? Blind Paul, from the house across the road, a boy on crutches further down the street, another boy with an artificial leg… And another one, the postman's son, what is his name, Chris? Still making his prosthesis… Plus Damian from the corner – with no hands, then, another young man in a wheelchair. Plus our William… Seven?

  “I am getting seven vets out of about three hundred population. It's not quite two point five percent, but close enough. You must be right, even if it sounds unbelievable…”

  Strangely enough, I never thought about this, Mark contemplated. Earlier today, Kim told me about his slum: ‘one out of three families has someone killed or wounded,’ and I agreed: yes, our neighborhood was the same. But I never considered the scale. If every neighborhood was equally affected, the number of vets must be thousands and thousands. Indeed! Taking the US population at 345 million, 2.5% was what? Eight and a half million! Enough to replace the entire Houston, women, elderly and babies including, – with armless and legless cripples. With a million or so to spare.

  While in the high school, Mark read about this cruel experiment: if you drop a frog into a pot of hot water, the frog jumps out. But if you put the same frog into cool water, and then slowly, slowly bring the water to boil, the frog sits in the pot happily. Until it's too late. It had a scientific name: ‘Conditioning.’ Of course, Mark had never done such an experiment in the class, or even had not seen it done on video. By the double standards of the pre-Meltdown total political correctness, such show was considered too gruesome. You could chop somebody's head or spill somebody's guts in a mere PG-13 movie, but boiling a frog to death? No, it must be an unthinkable cruelty. I should ask Pamela if they boil frogs in their Science-and-Technology class, he made a mental note… We had been bloody conditioned, Mark concluded. Ten or twelve years ago, a young man on crutches or with a prosthetic leg would be a rarity. Now they were so common, one would not pay attention to them anymore. Slowly, slowly it became absolutely normal.

  “OK, Mister Todd,” Mark said after the sad pause. “Back to the funerals business.”

  “As I said: no problem at all. The man is a military vet. The Army Corps of Engineers, you said? I will not even need to get an approval from the Houston Command! Who is the killed girl, by the way?”

  “Apparently, she was the vet's girlfriend. We do not have a name yet. I doubt she had anything to do with the military, although.”

  “No big deal. Funerals for one or for two – the same expense. Ten o'clock tomorrow. We will perform a standard military ritual. A small music band and a squad with the rifles. Plus a little charity luncheon for all the participants – at twelve… I ask the SRTV to run a line in the evening news tonight. Fine with you?”

  “Absolutely. Could you tell them the victim was with the USACE and not the Marines? Also, they should reiterate that the youngsters should find themselves something else to do after dark besides wandering in the woods. I know, nobody will ever listen, but it doesn't mean we should stop trying to deliver the message, right? The more times the TV says it, the better.”

  “OK, got it, Mister Pendergrass. Besides the television, I need to do some calls and send the volunteers to dig a grave and so on. When do you want us to retrieve the bodies from the morgue?”

  “Today! Major Ferelli will chew my ass if we have to run the generator for another night.”

  They quickly discussed the usual details: closed caskets, photographs, et al. Unfortunately, it was a frequent business: the Salvation Way helping the Police with the victims' funerals.

  “I am happy we can help,” Mr. Todd said, extending his hand for good-bye, “oh, one more thing, before I forget. Your Billy was also in the Engineers, right?”

  “Yeah. William even was deployed in Venezuela just after this Nicholas Hobson was there.”

  “Excellent! Excellent! Your Billy must attend the funerals!”

  “I am not sure if this is a good idea, Mister Todd. The cemetery is good five miles away from our place. William can't go alone, and Clarice is seven-months pregnant… As you know now.”

  “Oh, five miles! For such a strong, young, fit girl as our Rissy? No big deal. Besides, there will be a charity lunch! I really want Billy to do the shops and saloons along the Beaumont Highway. Did he tell you he made it into our top-twenty list? Two hundred and fifty-three dollars of revenue yesterday – his personal record! If he continues like this, a ‘Collector of the Month’ may be coming his way! Billy and Rissy must do the Beaumont Loop from tomorrow. I am sure they will love it.”

  Mark lifted the corners of his lips in a half-polite, half-upset smile. “OK, Mister Todd. I will pass the word. Let Clarice decide if she is up to such a walk.”

  Mark's suspicion that the Salvation Way Command treated the vets as ‘half-human robots’ had been unexpectedly confirmed. Mr. Todd recalled with one-dollar accuracy how much William collected yesterday, and could probably quote the serial number on William's red bucket without looking in any spreadsheet. At the same time, he did not know when Clarice's pregnancy was due, and really did not care if the seven-month pregnant woman had to walk ten miles a day, so her helpless husband could collect more donations…

  Back to the Station, the first order of business was to talk with the CSIs and the Medical Examiner. Doctor Alan Moss was sitting in his cubicle, typing a report and sipping acorn coffee. He often jokingly complained that the caffeine deprivation was the only real concern in his life.

  “Hi, Mark,” he said standing from his chair and waving for two CSIs in the adjoined cubicles into the little conference room across the hallway. He switched on the wall LCD panel and inserted its cable into the laptop port. “Let's start with the simple one. The male vic. Yo
u already have the ID. Having the military record, this is trivial. We have compared all ten fingers, just to avoid any mistake: Nicholas Hobson, confirmed. A healthy young man, not counting the missing leg. There is something to narrow your search. We ran the serial numbers from his prosthetic parts. He got his leg in New York, and was in the rehab center from the 14th till the 31st of May, 2029. Then, he had the follow-up visit to the same rehab on the sixth of September. It means he has been to Texas for seven months maximum: October to December last year, plus this year, naturally. Unfortunately, in Texas, Nicholas had not visited any rehab, not the ones which send data to the Pentagon, anyway…”

  “The cause of death?”

  “Severed carotid artery. He expired in seconds. No other evidence on the body, no signs of struggle, nothing. I doubt the perp touched the vic with anything, but the knife blade. One single blow, very professional. Well, it is pretty much the same as in all the other cases.”

  Mark nodded. This was the usual modus operandi. The serial killer would swiftly kill the male victim, so there would be no struggle, and the female victim had little chance to escape. All suggested some kind of special training: the Navy SEALs, or Marines, or Special Ops. The FBI had been checking the service records of soldiers who left the service two or three years ago, but to no avail so far.

  “Anything we can learn from the female vic?”

  “Oh, this is more intriguing than it looked initially!” Alan exclaimed, “I let Natalie explain.” He located a photo in his laptop and projected to the screen. There were several hairs photographed under magnification.

  “As usual, we do the external search first. These hairs come from five different people. The numbers three to seven – positively a pubic hair. These two hairs on the left – they have follicles – so we could extract the DNA. The DNA is from two different males, and neither of them is Nicholas Hobson. And not from any of the victim's close blood relatives. All patterns are too distant.”

  “You don't believe, how much trouble it cost me to convince our dear boss to let us use yet another DNA kit…” Alan remarked. “Budget is tight, he said. Budget-schmudget, my ass!”

  “So I was told, you can be very convincing, Alan,” Mark commented. “To the point of being abrasive! What exactly did you call Benito this time?”

  “Never mind. What I called him, stays between two of us… We haven't told Mark the main thing, Natalie! Please continue.”

  “The main thing is: the female vic has been surgically sterilized! On… this photo you can see the tiny scar at the abdomen… Also, the autopsy strongly indicates she had a second-trimester abortion, probably at the same time as the sterilization. OK, if not for the pubic hair from five different men, this could mean practically anything. All kinds of life circumstances… Although, in combination with the hairs – there is only one prominent possibility… The female vic got to be a hooker!” Natalie concluded.

  “And all odds are that she works… was working for a pimp. The ones who work for themselves, seldom do such a thing,” Alan added, “besides, now it would cost you an arm and a leg… More like, – both arms and both legs! After the abortions and sterilizations became illegal, the doctors, who remain in the business, – are charging like mad. Only a rich, fat pimp can smack enough cash on the table for an illegal laparoscopic procedure.”

  “That would explain the male vic removing his prosthesis,” Mark agreed, “if the girl was doing sex for money, she would not have much choice. To the contrary, this would not explain the thermal flask and the home-made cookies. How do you imagine somebody hiring a prostitute and serving her tea? Besides, the female didn't have a license on her.”

  “The last one is not a valid assumption,” the second CSI, Tom, objected, “for each licensed one there are at least three illegals.” This was true. Despite five-year effort to legalize (and tax) the sex trade business, most of the ‘workers’ still preferred to stay illegal. “Well, in the unlikely case she was registered, but had her dog-tag removed, we can quickly scan the SSP database for the fingerprint match.”

  “You are too late with your suggestion,” Natalie smiled, “I have requested it yesterday. No match…” The abbreviation SSP stood for ‘Sexual Services Providers,’ but most would translate it as ‘Some Serious Prostitutes.’

  “This, actually make me think of something,” Mark suggested. “The Salvation Way will be making a funeral service for the vics – tomorrow at ten. Do you, guys, have a reliable friend around the Harris County Cemetery area? Got to be inconspicuous and no association with the Police whatsoever. Preferably a young woman – it would be typical for the role. I wonder if we can outfit her with a high-definition camera, like a news volunteer. To maintain the cover, we can actually send the footage to the SRTV later, no harm here. The more people hear about these murders – the better.”

  “You don't hope the perp will show up at the funerals, do you?” Alan said. They have tried this trick on several occasions previously, but without success. The Butcher apparently expected such tricks.

  “No. That is not what I have in mind. If the female vic is indeed a hooker, especially an unlicensed one, we may see her pimp in the footage. He would be probably missing his ‘asset’ and wonder if she was killed, right?”

  “I can go,” Natalie volunteered. “Can dress like a landfill worker.”

  “No, not any of us. Our faces have been on TV more than few times already. Originally I wanted to go myself, but on the second thought, the total stranger with a camera would give us some better chance.”

  “If any at all…” Alan nodded.

  “Apart from the abortion and the sterilization, anything else on the female vic's autopsy?” Mark asked.

  “Same-O. Killed with two strikes of the same knife. The first one was into the middle of the left lung. The blade was rotated just right to get between the ribs. Professional. The second wound is at the neck, but she was already collapsing. And finally, the cut at the buttocks. But this was a postmortem wound, clearly.”

  They browsed through the endless photos of the victims. Mark remembered the terse definitions from the Butcher's profile they requested at the Washington Behavioral Unit: well organized, high IQ, forensically aware, pays close attention to details, prefers to be in control…

  “Anything else from the scene evidence?”

  Natalie nodded. “Lots of the usual small things: the polka-dot gloves, the knife blade… The most interesting thing, of course, is the bike. Remember, I mentioned that imprint of the rear sprocket on the girl's jeans?”

  “Yes.”

  “On the road, there was a fresh tire trail. Mountain bike tires, looks like 26 inch. And most importantly, the rear tire has a distinct patch. We will be able to do a positive ID. If you can find the bike for us, that is.”

  “Outstanding work, guys! Obviously, the ball now is on our side of the field…” Mark was pleased. Apparently, they were getting somewhere, at least with the victims' identification.

  Alex arrived to the Station just before five, tired and sweating. He reported no particular luck: he and Deputy Tan did house-to-house walk in all the neighborhoods around the crime scene, but could not uncover anything of significance. Surely, the woods were a known spot for the young lovers on a date, but it was just as much as anybody could tell them. No suspicious strangers had been seen, no screams or any unusual noise. Once again, the Sheldon Butcher made no obvious mistakes…

  Chapter 7

  The next morning, Mark's family woke up even earlier than usual. During the previous evening, the arrangements were made, so William, Clarice, and Davy could attend the funerals. Mark delivered the message of Mr. Todd as promised. “I don't think you have to go, Clarice,” he added, “back and forth, it will be over ten miles. With your tummy, I would stick to our marketplace, if I were you. Despite Mister Todd is called a ‘Senior Officer,’ who the hell is he to give you such orders?”

  But for Clarice it was too difficult to say ‘no.’ With her easy-going atti
tude, she just smiled: “Mister Todd has a point. We heard the collections at the Beaumont Loop are pretty darn good. Worth walking ten miles. And the best time of the day is after five. The 'Fill dudes go to the local watering holes with their pockets full of money!”