Burnside's Killer: An Interlude Novella between Parts 1 & 2 (The Hunter Legacy Book 6) Read online

  I turned back to the local detectives.

  "I'm finished here. It's your crime scene now. I'll be in the living room for a short time before I leave."

  They nodded to me, and Ed glazed over, obviously pinging the rest of the crime scene team they could do their jobs. It wasn’t worth me staying around for the forensics, as there were never any worth staying around for. This killer was extremely clean, and never left any useable dna behind. They'd check, and I'd receive the data down the track, but I knew from looking at the bedroom there wasn’t anything there of any use to me.

  I stepped into the living room, looking for the house computer interface. I initiated a PC to computer connection, and hacked my way into it. This wasn’t strictly legal, but I'd long since given up asking permission, let alone obtaining warrants.

  I downloaded everything on it. I'd been doing this since the fifth victim I'd seen, desperately looking for any clue. When I’d started, I'd been hoping one of the victims recorded everything, and the killer wouldn’t have noticed it happening. No such luck. Several times I’d found evidence of deleted recordings, showing the killer was checking for them. The deletions had been done properly, and couldn’t be recovered. This killer wasn’t stupid.

  Until the crime scene several days before, several systems away, I’d found nothing.

  Each victim met the killer a different way, but always related to what the victim was known for. Hence today's victim, a sports star, had met a fan after a game. Nothing unusual in that, especially when the victim was known to pick up fans after a game. The stupid thing was, the victims made it easy for the killer to get to them.

  Most of the detectives who worked these cases thought as these had done. The female was assumed innocent, and some other nutter came along after they left. I knew better. Or at least, I was guessing with a very high probability factor.

  A female serial killer was very rare, and most cops ignored the possibility until evidence pointed that way. To date, this killer had left zero evidence. I knew this killer was female, but I couldn’t tell anyone how I knew. I just did. If I had to explain it, I would have pointed out that none of the victims had any kind of bruising on them, which you would expect had a male killed them, after they'd had sex with a female. Of course, it could be about male sex, but there had never been anything to suggest that, and there had never been a case where the last public recording of the victim, was in the social company of another man. This suggested to me the killer was female, and was the last person seen with the victim. Unfortunately, we'd never found an image or description good enough to make an ID from, and the killer was always long gone before anything became available. This killer was that good. Most of the descriptions were vague, and between them could have described just about anyone local. I was the only one who wasn’t looking at a local killer.

  What was unusual, was the activity I'd found on the last victim's computer, after the victim was dead, and before the cops arrived. What appeared to be a random information lookup, had given me an aha moment about where the next victim was going to be. When I went back over all the previous computer logs, I'd found a pattern for the first time.

  What had been obvious this last time, had been visible before, but I'd never made the connection. Computers logged everything, if you knew where to look. When someone was using their PC, it connected to the local computer in the building, which connected them outside. Even if the PC was interfacing with local Wi-Fi, log entries still appeared on the local computer, and more often than not, the request went through the local computer first, without the user realizing it. You could tell when there was no-one home, you could tell exactly when someone arrived, and used their PC for anything outside their own head. Remotely turning on a light, left a log entry on the house computer. What had caused me to miss this, was the logs always continued from the moment the victim arrived home, until I arrived on the scene, often days later.

  It was apparent to me now, after each kill, the killer had already chosen the next target, and used the nearest computer to access information about both the next victim, and the city, planet and system the victim was located in. It had never occurred to me the killer would research the next kill from the location of the current kill. I'd always assumed this was done in space.

  As I said, I'd been waiting for a slip up, and good things come to those who wait.

  The problem for me, was this was buried in a large amount of information, and without a leap of intuition, I’d have continued to miss it.

  This time however, I'd known where to come, and knew the victim was going to be someone from a specific sports team. I just hadn't been able to convince anyone of the threat while on the move, and was just too late to do anything about it in person.

  On the way here, in between jumps, I'd set up a search program, designed to find the next victim if my intuition was proved right. Now I set it going.

  I left the house, hearing the two detectives joking with their crime scene colleagues about a Dick chasing dicks, and walked to the local PD's ground car. As if I hadn't heard that one before.

  "Spaceport please, as fast as you can get me there."

  The car shot forward, but I wasn’t paying attention.

  The computer had been accessed after the victim died. The logs stopped only a few minutes before the neighbor had entered the house, before starting again when the cops arrived.

  So the killer was less than two hours ahead of me.

  My search program came back with a result, as the car was pulling into the space port environs.

  The killer had searched for information on the Midnight system, and a station called Hunter's Redoubt.

  The person of interest, was Admiral Jonathon Hunter.

  Two

  Hunter had been in the news for the last couple of months, almost continuously. Little more than a kid in the eyes of many, he had never-the-less racked up an impressive kill score as a pilot, before going on to be the fastest promoted officer in any military service, ever.

  He obviously had enemies, and when military force had failed, assassins had followed him wherever he went.

  Hero of the Midgard war, and the more recent British coup, he was certainly the sort of person my serial killer would target. Some of the previous victims had been very high profile, and would definitely have been a challenge to get to.

  What bothered me about Hunter, was where assassins had failed, a serial killer who killed in the bedroom might get to him.

  I waved goodbye to my driver, and hurried through the terminal building. My ship was parked on the far side. It was a police version of a private yacht, made available by the Earth System PD, to get me from A to B without needing to use public transportation, or PD ships from other jurisdictions. Or put it another way, it stopped me being dependent on others and their timetables. I was never much of a pilot, but good enough for getting about on my own.

  I pulsed the code at the airlock door as I walked up to it, and it opened up to allow me to walk straight in without breaking stride. I slapped the door close button on my way through, and made straight for the cockpit, dropping into the pilot's chair. I brought up the flight systems immediately, and pinged the flight controller for a priority lift.

  Within five minutes of arriving at my ship, I was in the air, and boosting for the Orbital stations.

  Hunter had been Sci-Fi military for a while. I opened a channel to the Military Orbital, requesting contact information. There was a long pause before someone came back to me.

  "This is General Price. Identify yourself please."

  "Special Detective Richard Burnside," I replied. "Earth System PD. I'm chasing a serial killer, and have reason to believe Admiral Hunter is the next target. I need to warn him. I also need a priority search of all ship movements as of two hours ago."

  "Dock at the Military Orbital Detective. We need to talk."

  "Time is of the essence General. The killer has the smallest lead time on me I've ever been able to manage, and I
don’t want to lose the SOB because someone wants chapter and verse, and all the paperwork filled out."

  "I hear you Detective. My office please, as soon as you can get here. I think we can help you, and it will be worth the delay."

  "Fine. See you soon."

  I closed the channel, and sat there wondering what could possibly help, other than them giving me a contact address, and a faster ship.

  Three

  There were two people in the office as I walked in.

  The General was obvious, being in SFSF uniform with four stars on his shoulders. Command came off him in waves. He was seated behind his desk, and made no move to stand as I entered.

  The other person was a pretty girl in her middle twenties, dressed in a deep red colored ship-suit, which showed off her figure. Her hair was dark and short. Her eyes were a deep blue, and seemed to bore into me. She was standing next to the desk.

  The inconsistency grabbed my attention immediately. She wore the four stripes of a senior trader captain, while not having the age to have attained the rank. It was rare for anyone to make senior captain before forty. She wore no other badges, which was consistent with a senior captain, as the stripes made most other captain badges redundant. Something was definitely wrong about her.

  I looked back to the General.

  "I'm General Price," he said. "This is Captain Jane."

  I nodded to both of them, while removing my badge from my jacket pocket and flipping it open for the General.

  "Special Detective Richard Burnside," I said. "Earth System PD."

  "So you said," said the General. "Take a seat, both of you."

  There were two chairs in front of the desk. I sat in the closest one, watching Captain Jane sit as well. There was something subtly off about her body language, but I couldn’t place it.

  I also had no idea what she was doing at this meeting.

  "Give us the fast version of why you’re here," suggested the General.

  I ran them through the basics of my investigation, ending with my suspicions about the next target.

  "So," said Captain Jane, "you have two objectives. Firstly to warn Admiral Hunter, and second, to get there first, and set up a trap for this serial killer."

  "If at all possible, yes. But every minute I spend here, I'm losing ground as the killer gets further away."

  "Not a problem," she said. "Jon Hunter is a personal friend of mine, and has already been warned. I can also get you to Hunter's Redoubt ahead of the killer, and most likely identify the ship on the way."

  I gaped at her. They both smiled back at me.

  "How?" I gasped.

  "I captain a small freighter for Jon," she replied. It explained a lot. "My ship and her sisters, are the fastest freighters around. Even if we leave in a couple of hours, I can get you there in plenty of time to set up a trap. In fact, I can organize Jon to turn up at the right time, and allow himself to be used as bait."

  My mouth fell open, and it dangled there for a while before I grasped it and pushed it closed. The general was quietly laughing.

  "What do you need?" I finally asked her.

  "Everything you have. Pulse it to me now."

  I did so. She sat there for five long minutes, without a movement. We waited for her to say something. Again I wondered about her, as this ability to stay completely still just wasn’t right. I'd never seen the likes before, and it was the little oddities about people which I noticed, and made me so good at my job.

  At last she stirred.

  "I agree with your general assessment Detective. I completely agree that the killer is a woman. But I disagree with you on one point."

  "Which one?"

  "This is not a serial killer."

  "How do you figure that? I agree it's unusual for a female to be a serial killer. Is that your problem?"

  "No. It’s the lack of evidence left at any crime scene, and knowing the next target before taking out the work in progress."

  "So what?"

  "Did you ever consider you were tracking a professional assassin?"

  I looked at her dumbfounded. It had never occurred to me.

  "Apparently not," she said with a laugh. "There have been more female assassins than serial killers over time. And Jon is not the sort of target a serial killer is going to choose. Not only is he well protected, he is lethal in his own right. His only weakness is a liking for female company, and a lack of paranoia. Since all the male assassins have failed using brute force, hiring a female one to spring a Venus trap on him makes sense. Interestingly though, whoever is paying for the hit doesn’t know he's already survived one Venus trap already."

  "So you can get me there in time?"

  "Not only that, I will make sure we capture the bitch."

  I couldn’t help grinning.

  "There's only one thing though," she added.

  "Yes?"

  "Your participation will be as an observer and advisor only. Once we pass into Midnight, it's Jon's jurisdiction, as he now owns the system. We will take the killer into custody. You may be present for the interrogation which follows, but we will run it."

  "I can't expect much more than that. But Earth sector in general, and Earth system in particular, is going to want her extradited for trial."

  "That won't be a problem, but extradition will have to wait for the new mini-sector to be established, and the various treaties with Earth sector signed."

  "I can live with that."

  "This also may provide us with some much needed intel on other issues. It's one reason why you won't be leading the interrogation team. Our needs will come first."

  "Can you tell me what they are? I might be able to help."

  "Let me put it this way. Jon's been a target for months now, but this is the first time we've had advance warning, and it'll be the first time on our turf, under our rules. Until now, other forces have always taken over the survivors, and none of them have succeeded in providing any useful information. This will be our first opportunity to take a live assassin ourselves."

  I grinned at her.

  "No problem for me. Let's get on with it."

  She turned to the general.

  "Thank you sir, for the use of your office. We won't be needing any further help by Sci-Fi sector. I'll be offloading my cargo for another ship to pick up tomorrow, and taking on one for the Australian sector. As soon as it's on board, we'll be on our way to Hunter's Redoubt."

  "You're welcome Captain. Good luck to you both."

  We all stood, and she and I left.

  On our way to the docks, I asked her, "Can you give me a lift?"

  "I can do better," she replied. "I'll give you a tow. My ship has limited life support, so you'd find it an uncomfortable trip. I can tow yours without losing any speed, so you can maintain the level of comfort you're used to."

  She grinned at me, and I grinned back.

  Four

  The trip to Midnight zipped by faster than I’d ever travelled before. I slept for a lot of it, which helped.

  Before leaving, Jane, (we'd agreed to using first names), had installed an ID overlay on my ship, identifying it as owned by Hunter Security. I'd agreed to it, as the last thing we wanted was to spook the killer, by having an Earth system PD ID racing past at an insane speed. So we appeared to be a small freighter towing a salvaged ship back to Hunter space. As Hunter himself was widely known now for both fast ships, and salvaging everything possible, we hoped this wouldn’t raise killer eyebrows.

  By the time we docked at Hunter's Redoubt, we'd spent a lot of time discussing the case over a short range channel, and had a short list of possible vessels the killer could be traveling on.

  The station looked ordinary at a glance after you came out of down jump. But when you looked at the top of the station, which atypically pointed directly at the jump point, you could see the battleship turrets which made it unique. If that didn’t intimidate you, the three Pocket Battleships nearby did. I grinned to myself, thinking it was going to be
a foolhardy pirate who came here.

  The station controller, who identified herself as Janet, informed me my ship had been scanned, no contraband had been found, my ESPD ID had been noted, and could I please present myself to station security at my earliest convenience.

  This was a surprise. I'd never come across this level of scanning before. The fact they could detect contraband was amazing. Being able to see through my ID overlay was initially just as amazing, but it soon occurred that anyone who could program such a thing, would also be able to see through them.

  Jane messaged me to tone the earliest convenience down to whenever I was ready. Earliest convenience usually meant get your arse there immediately, but Jane seemed to think this was funny and unnecessary. We had time for planning she said, as the earliest the killer could dock was at least six hours away.

  I followed the guidance into the small ships dock, took time to freshen up and change from a casual ship captain into a properly suited detective, and headed for station security.

  Jane was waiting outside the office of the head of security. She motioned me in, and followed after me. Inside was another woman, who looked remarkably like Jane, except she had long hair well below her shoulders, and green eyes instead of blue. I wondered if they were sisters. They were identically attired in what I suspected was the Hunter uniform, although only Jane had insignia.

  "I'm Janet," she said, extending her hand, which I took. "The station doesn’t have a head of security as yet, so I'm it for a number of top jobs around here."

  "What security forces do you have?" I asked.

  "Enough for the present. Most of the residents are from the Pompeii system, you'll get used to the American accents pretty quickly, and there are only several thousand of them. A few transients at the moment, but overall, no-one around making trouble. The station has lots of uninhabited areas at the moment, which Jon hasn’t made available for people to buy or rent yet. Until he gets his mini-sector organized, we're keeping things very low key. The station is open for trade, but not much else. Food and entertainment mainly, although there is some variety to the stores and services. We see a few drunk and disorderly from ship crews, but they're easy to deal with, more often than not by security droids. Eventually the station will get a head of security, but it will probably wait until General Smith arrives back from her current mission."