The Furnace Read online

  He tapped the table with his fingers. “How much longer?” he grumbled. “This is tiresome.”

  “As long as I want. I’m here under the CCF’s highest authority. You’re obligated to answer my questions.” I forced a smile. “Let’s be civil, Lars. I’m just doing my job. Answer my questions and I’ll leave you alone. Surely you want to know what happened to your crewmate.” After all, the incident had occurred in his clinic; the mutilation should have incensed the man.

  He moved to a stool and lowered himself onto it. He seemed to deflate. “I guess I should apologize. I’m not accustomed to being interrogated. And I do feel terrible about what happened. You’re right, of course—I should have done the autopsy immediately. I didn’t, and now we’ll never know what happened.”

  I bristled at the word interrogate, but shrugged it aside. “I’ll discover the truth, don’t worry. I just don’t want you to make it harder for me.”

  “Fine,” he said, but he still didn’t seem completely willing. I waited, but nothing more came.

  “The following morning...” I prodded.

  “I grabbed a coffee from the common mess. I came here and got the instruments ready. I was going to use that table, right there.”

  “Do you have an assistant? Someone to help?”

  “Are you kidding?” he snorted. “Not enough crew to warrant help.” He gestured behind me to a narrow opening in the bulkhead that disappeared into a partially hidden chamber. “I went back to the freezer and pulled open the drawer. I found Jimmy minus two hands and a head.”

  I rose and marched into the tiny alcove. Malichauk followed close behind. There were three small hatches on one side of the room, all stainless steel. “Which one?” I asked.

  “On the left.”

  “Open it.”

  He paled. “Why?”

  I frowned. “So I can see the body, of course.”

  He immediately grew nervous. “Ah...that won’t be possible.”

  My brow wrinkled. “Why not?” I said, suddenly troubled. He’d better not have—

  “I jettisoned the body that day.”

  My mouth hung open. “Say again?” It was a ridiculous development, criminal in itself.

  “Just following regs. Cremate the body immediately following the autopsy, unless next of kin requests it.” He continued to watch me. Then, “Don’t worry, I took some pictures. I’ll upload them to your reader.”

  I shook my head. “Doctor, you of all people should know the importance of examining the victim’s body for evidence. A murder investigation supersedes those regs.”

  His face appeared drawn; he was clearly embarrassed. He opened his mouth to speak, then immediately closed it. He knew there was little he could say in his defense. He glanced away, then back again, and seemed to realize by the look in my eyes that he had to say something. Anything.

  “Look,” he finally managed. “All I can say is that I didn’t think it was murder. The death appeared to be an accident.”

  “For Christ’s sake, someone cut his head and hands off!”

  “But his death was an accident! That happened afterward!”

  “So you think. But you don’t know for sure, Malichauk. It’s my job to find out, and you’ve destroyed evidence, which is a crime.”

  He looked at the deck morosely. “I know. I’m sorry. It wasn’t smart. I already admitted that.”

  I watched him in silence for a long moment. No matter how upset I got, nothing could change what had happened. What’s done is done, as they say. I sighed. “When did you begin to think it was murder?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your report. It said you thought it might be murder.”

  “Ah. The captain suggested it after we saw the body, so I put it in.”

  “Do you agree?”

  “I’m not sure. I didn’t think so at first.”

  I paced the small enclosure, thinking. Manny had recommended the murder notation despite his assertion to me that it was just an accident with some possibly unconnected vandalism afterward. At least he had acted professionally with the report. At the very least, someone had to look into it, and he had recognized that.

  “Tell me about the body,” I said, now resigned to the loss.

  “Whoever did it severed the head at the C2 vertebra. The hands just above the thumb. He or she used an extremely sharp instrument.”

  “Laser?”

  “No burn marks.”

  “Serrated edge on the knife?”

  “No. It was very sharp—the cuts weren’t jagged.”

  “Scalpel?”

  “Longer. At least six, eight inches.”

  “Why do you think it was done?” I asked.

  He grunted. “How the hell would I know?”

  “I’m asking for conjecture. Why would someone—”

  “Because they’re sick,” he snapped. “I don’t know.”

  I paused. “I’m a homicide investigator, Lars. Do you know why someone would tamper with a body after death? Other than sexually, I mean.” He frowned but didn’t respond. I continued, “There’s only one reason. The killer is trying to hide something.”

  * * *

  The questioning continued for another hour. Malichauk grew more annoyed as the session dragged on. I didn’t get the impression that he had deliberately delayed the autopsy, but it seemed to me that he was trying to conceal something.

  I just couldn’t tell what.

  Killers tamper with corpses to hide evidence or for something sexual. I had seen similar things in the past, and those cases had always turned my stomach. I would now have to review the entire crew’s history, looking not just for criminal activity, but for abnormal sexual behavior.

  It gave me something to go on, though. If the mutilation had indeed been for something of that nature, it meant the missing parts were probably still on the station.

  Chapter Six

  The captain was next on my list of people to question. There were numerous things I was hoping he could tell me—inconsistencies regarding regulations being foremost on my mind. However, before I did that, I needed to get to know Jimmy a little better.

  Understanding that Crewman Chin’s closest friends would most likely be from among the crew, I stalked over to Module E. I hoped to find a colleague of his to chat with so that I could come to a better understanding of his life here at SOLEX.

  I passed through the scientists’ cylinder on my way and found a cluttered mess on the deck in the corridors: equipment, computers, old circuit boards, fiber optic cables, plasma and holo screens, broken stools and desks, and various cables and electrical components. It was typical of scientists so engrossed in their work that they cared little about cleanliness and order. The four at SOLEX probably loved it here. They had orbited closer to their object of interest longer than any manned satellite had before. They had unlimited access to the sun; they could watch it endlessly if they wanted, study it every hour of the day, day after day. It seemed like madness, but I couldn’t pretend to understand what the scientist’s mind is like. I shook my head as I stared at the deck.

  A hatch slid open and a skinny, middle-aged Asian man in a lab coat stepped into the corridor. He held an armful of electronic components that he unceremoniously dumped on the deck. He kicked the little pile and mumbled something under his breath.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  He looked up as if startled. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Lieutenant Kyle Tanner. Who are you?”

  Understanding slowly dawned on the man’s features. “Ah, of course. Please excuse me. I’m still waking up. I only got two hours of sleep and haven’t had my coffee yet. Manny told us you were coming. It just slipped my mind.” He looked at me for a minute in awkward silence. “Oh, sorry.” He thru
st out his hand. “I’m Reggie Hamatsui, one of the scientists here.”

  Really? I thought. Could have fooled me. He had a thin neck and closely cropped hair. His Adam’s apple protruded and bobbed as he talked. I had to fight to keep from staring at it.

  “I was just on my way to the crew module,” I said.

  “You’re going the right way.” He smiled and another silence ensued.

  “I’m here to investigate Jimmy’s death.”

  “Yes, yes. A very sad thing. Tragic. Do you really think it was murder?”

  “I’m going to find out.” I peered past him into a cluttered lab that made the corridor look spotless.

  He noticed my gaze. “Want to look around?” He gestured inside and a grin split his features.

  “Of course.” Never turn down a chance for information. One of my mottos.

  I stepped past him and entered a different world. Charts and pictures of the sun covered every vertical surface. There were so many that I could barely see the bulkheads. Benches and tables were everywhere, all covered with papers and folders. There didn’t seem to be organization of any sort. At least seven computer monitors were in view; on each I could see either a graph or an image of the sun. Flames churned about its surface and flickered in seemingly slow motion. It was almost hypnotic.

  “My specialty is atmospheric dynamics,” he said.

  I frowned. “The sun has an atmosphere?”

  “Of course! It’s not like Earth or Venus, to be sure, but it does have one. We call it the corona.”

  “I’ve heard of that. I didn’t know it was the atmosphere.”

  “Yes. The structure of the sun is fairly straightforward.” He led me to a nearby diagram. “It has a core that generates incredible energy. Ten percent of its mass is located there. The immense pressure from the layers above actually causes fusion there. The temperature is sixteen million Kelvin.”

  “Fusion of hydrogen into helium, right?” It was all coming back to me, though slowly—primary-school science.

  His eyes sparkled. “You bet. Four atoms of hydrogen combine to form one atom of helium and an emission of neutrinos and energy. It’s that energy that produces all the heat and light. The next layer is the radiative zone. Here all the core’s energy moves to the outer layers. This occupies about eighty-five percent of the sun’s radius, and technically includes the core.”

  “I see.” I wasn’t so sure I needed this lesson. I tried to change the topic. “Did you—”

  “The next layer,” he said, on a roll now, “is the convective zone. The motion of gas occurs here in convection currents like we’d see in any fluid. It’s just trying to move heat out into space.”

  I didn’t really have time for all of this. I’d accepted his invitation, hoping to get a look at what he was doing and where he worked, but this was a little much. “I think—”

  “The surface comes next. We call that the photosphere. It’s only about six thousand degrees Kelvin, which is relatively cool. It’s here that sunspots, which are cooler areas of the sun’s surface—only about five thousand Kelvin—occur. We actually have a scientist here totally devoted to studying sunspots—Lingly.”

  “How interesting,” I murmured.

  “Solar prominences occur here—they’re bright clouds of gas that form above the sunspots and follow the sun’s magnetic field. They’re really quite fascinating. They last days to weeks. A large prominence is what we call a flare. They only last minutes to hours, and material from them can actually escape the sun’s gravitational pull. When the burst of ions hits Earth, it can cause a lot of trouble, let me tell you.”

  “Not to mention what it would do to us,” I muttered. Reggie seemed single-minded in his quest to teach me about the sun. His Adam’s apple was going like crazy. I studied the lab in more detail as he wore on. Nothing seemed overly unusual—it was just incredibly disorganized. I remembered back on Venus I had once marched right into a suspect’s apartment and caught him with the murder weapon in plain view. He’d been getting ready to dispose of it, and I had been lucky enough to enter a minute before he’d done so. It had been insanely fortunate, one of those things that happens once in a career and never again.

  I looked around for the eight-inch blade used to sever Jimmy’s head, but of course saw nothing. Regretfully, I turned my attention back to Reggie.

  “—but don’t worry, we’re fully protected here,” he was saying. “We have Shaheen Ramachandra to thank for that! She may be an officer, but she’s a scientist at heart, let me tell you.”

  “So I—”

  “I haven’t gotten to my area of study yet.”

  “Your area?”

  “Yes, the atmosphere, remember? The corona. It’s just past the chromosphere, the layer above the photosphere. The density decreases there, but for some reason the temperature actually increases.”

  “I thought it decreased out from the core.”

  “Yes, it does, until it gets to the corona, where the temperature suddenly surges upward! It reaches about two million Kelvin, where it was only six thousand at the surface. It’s most peculiar. There are a lot of scientists studying this phenomenon, but the four of us here at SOLEX are the lucky ones. We have an astounding amount of information and data coming in every minute from our sensors. We’re hoping we can solve this mystery once and for all.”

  That, at least, was interesting. A mystery that needed solving. I could relate to it. In many ways scientists and investigators did the same thing, only my area involved a hell of a lot more gore and pain. Despite my better judgment, I asked a question. “What’s your theory?”

  He looked guarded. “Ah, there are already many. I’m reticent to tell you mine before further study. But rest assured, I think it’ll stun the astrophysics community.”

  Great, I thought. The only information about the sun I was interested in, and he refused to talk about it.

  “You don’t look too impressed,” he said, studying me.

  “No, I—”

  “You have to understand that this increase occurs over only two hundred kilometers! It’s a very small distance to have such a drastic change in temperature. The sun is full of intriguing riddles.” He pointed at a nearby chart and continued without even taking a breath. “As I mentioned, the sunspots are another item of intense curiosity for us here, although it’s not my area. But there’s talk of sending a probe to the surface to monitor conditions there! Imagine, landing a probe on a sunspot!”

  “Really. That is fascinating.” Yawn. He seemed unable to read body language. If given the opportunity, he would probably fail miserably at my job, despite the similarities in what we did.

  “How did you get picked for this post?” I asked, steering him in a direction that suited my investigation.

  “We applied. There was a long selection process, interviews, and so on. They studied our research and published works. The other three scientists here are really quite good.”

  “I’m sure you’re good too.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.” He grinned. “I’m just thrilled to be here!”

  “You never feel nervous?”

  He looked quizzical. “About what?”

  “The heat, radiation. The danger.” I studied him as I said it. I stressed the last word to see if he’d react in some way.

  “Oh, no. Our station is quite safe. The heat shield that Shaheen invented is remarkable. We’ve been here nine months with no problems. I don’t foresee any trouble.”

  “That’s not quite true.”

  He frowned. “What do you—” He stopped abruptly. “You mean Jimmy’s death. Yes, that was sad. But it wasn’t because of our proximity to the sun. It was an accident.”

  You can’t be sure of that, I thought. The stress could have just been too much for someone. “Did you know h
im?”

  A sigh. “Just casually. You know, I said hi to him in the mess, but I don’t often eat there, so it was just now and then.”

  I marched to another display and pretended to show interest in the structure of a solar prominence. “Are you familiar with EVA procedures?”

  “I think that’s the officers’ responsibility, not mine.”

  “What I mean is, are you familiar with them generally?”

  “Not really, no.” He looked puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious. Can you tell me any more about Jimmy?” He shook his head and didn’t respond. “Perhaps things you heard from your colleagues—rumors, that sort of thing.” Still nothing. “Any problems here at the station? People getting stressed, fights, and so on? Anything of interest?”

  He pursed his lips. “Really, I wouldn’t know. I’m kind of secluded here. I spend most of my time in F. I don’t see much of anyone else on a regular basis. Just my three colleagues. Only thing that bothers me is the CCF asking for reports.”

  His mention of “F” threw me off, until I realized he was referring to the cylinder where the scientists worked and lived. I pointed to a small hatch set into the bulkhead. Stenciled red warning labels had attracted my notice. “What’s that?”

  “Ejection chute for hazardous waste. All the labs have them, as well as the clinic.”

  I moved back toward the corridor. “Thanks for your help. I may be back.”

  His face brightened. “The sun can be incredibly fascinating. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.”

  My smile was forced. Weird guy. I wondered if all the scientists were so...obsessed.

  * * *

  In a cramped lounge in the adjacent crew module, I found a woman sitting by herself and drinking a mug of coffee. She was staring at a datachip reader in silence. I recognized her from SOLEX’s personnel dossier. She looked up as I entered and watched as I approached. I introduced myself and she nodded in recognition.

  “The captain told us you were coming. I hope you find who did this terrible thing to Jimmy.”

  “You’re Aina Alvarez, right?”