Murder in New Eden
by Charles C. Cole
Welcome to New Eden, an isolated city floating in space, whose founders believed the start of the 20th century was as good as it would ever get. Gun-free police supervise from atop their penny-farthings, carrying only batons. Aggression has been chemically suppressed for years. But then violence erupts. In response, the chief of police weighs the prospect of thawing secret soldiers. In the middle of it all, two bright young women push for equality and recognition.
Chapter 14: Many Patients on Medication?
In what amounts to early morning on Satellite City New Eden, the police headquarters is quiet. A row of department high-wheelers are lined up neatly in front of the station.
Alone in his office, Police Chief Leo Schiavelli watches out his window as Dr. Vittorio Valdez approaches from the street.
“Lois,” calls Schiavelli through his open office door, “I’m going to be heads-down for a while. If we get any visitors, ask if they can come back later.”
“Early for a nap, isn’t it?” She hands him his coffee.
“It’s not what you think.” He closes his door, locks it, and takes a potentially soothing sip, but the drink is too hot and he burns his tongue. He puts it down on the cabinet beside him and goes back to his desk. The knock is almost instantaneous. “Not now, Lois.” The knock is insistent. He goes over to the coffee, cools it with his breath, and has another sip. The knock continues. “This isn’t a good time.”
A male voice: “It’s Dr. Valdez. We need to talk.”
The chief unlocks and opens the door. “Vittorio, what a pleasant surprise. You must be exhausted. Come on in. How can I help you?”
Behind Valdez, Lois holds both arms up, as if gesturing, “What could I do?” The chief ushers his guest inside and winks at Lois, flustering her even more.
“Let me close the door. Lois doesn’t want to be bored by two old guys talking shop. What’s on your mind?”
“Eartha Wayne’s promotion for one thing. Rather sudden, isn’t it?”
“Straight to the point.” The chief settles into the swivel chair behind his desk. “Probably long overdue, by some estimates. Is it a problem?”
“It would have been nice to be consulted. She’s practically an employee of mine.”
“Actually, she reports directly to me and always has.”
“Right, of course, but I’ve been like a mentor to her, guiding her along professionally. I could have offered details of her work habits, like her erratic follow-through and her propensity for losing herself in minutia, that sort of thing, behaviors possibly to consider before giving her more responsibility.”
“I wish you’d spoken up sooner. I had no idea.”
“I don’t mean to suggest that she’s not a good worker. She means well. It’s just that she’s easily distracted. It’s probably a curse of her gender, not her fault at all.”
“That’s good to know. I’ve had a sense lately about the curse of her gender, but I thought it was just me. Do you think I made a mistake? I suppose I could rescind the offer or make it conditional, based on a favorable probationary review in three months that we could attack together in a sort of united front. How’s that sound?”
“I don’t mean to be a squeaky wheel.”
“You? Not at all. You tend to work below the radar, dedicating yourself to the care of your patients. Your obvious self-sacrifice is admirable.”
“I do what I can.”
“And more. That’s why this promotion was meant, really, to be a gift as much to you. In recognition of your tireless devotion to healing the sick and injured, I thought, maybe impulsively, that we could remove some of the more mundane administrative functions from your day-to-day duties.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You’re an important man.”
“Thank you for noticing.”
“How can I not?”
“So, are you going to roll back the promotion?”
“I probably should, but I’ve already made it public. I can’t imagine her reaction. Maybe I’d better leave things the way are. The last thing we need is another Bernie Ketchum-style meltdown. Agreed?”
“Of course. Agreed.”
“Well, there we are.”
“I could always give her a prescription to take the edge off.”
“There’s a thought that hadn’t occurred to me.”
“If it helps you in your decision-making.”
“It might. I’ve always been pretty healthy myself. Lucky like that. Or good genes. So I never had to take pills. Do they make that big of a difference?”
“They can. They’re a modern miracle the size of your fingernail. Taken regularly, they can help people achieve what could only be described as a heightened state of awareness. Turn a meek man bold or help a despondent widower find his purpose again.”
“That’s amazing! Will they help me clean my dishes more often? Just kidding.”
“It’s serious business. Sometimes the side-effects are dangerous. You have to closely manage the dosage, not too much or too little.”
“Just right.”
“That’s why I stay in close contact with all of my patients.”
“You have many patients on medications?”
“I have a spreadsheet at home to help me keep track.”
“And you make the pills yourself?”
“It’s not hard, if you know what you’re doing. I happen to know what I’m doing.”
“You’ve never made a mistake?”
“Not once. Not so far. I’m very careful. Very methodical.”
“I have made mistakes. Not many, and I’m dealing with them.” Schiavelli stands. “Glad we could have this talk. Sounds like I have lots of data points to consider. I’m probably keeping you from your higher calling. Thanks for stopping in.”
“What about Wayne’s promotion?”
“I guess I’ll let it stand. If she flubs up, I can always demote her, right?”
Valdez seems smaller than when he first arrived. He’s reluctantly giving up but managing to maintain his professional bearing, barely. “Thank you for your time.”
“Not at all. You should go see her. Wish her congratulations. I bet she’d love a congratulatory handshake from her professional mentor.”
“I just might do that. Good day.”
“Good day.”
* * *
Back in City Operations, Nakamura, in loose gray sweats, manages to throw Cody to the ground where he hits the carpet with an unattractive grunt. She’s flattered by the turnabout.
“Now you’re just being nice,” she says, “not that I mind.”
Cody stands, bouncing back to his feet. “I think you underestimate your abilities.”
“The assassin who can use his body as a deadly weapon in more ways than I can count on both hands was caught off-guard by little, ol’ me.”
“The most important tool of a warrior is camouflage.”
“Please. What happened to big guns and flashy outfits?”
“It’s key to the element of surprise. We used to paint ourselves at night to be as dark as our surroundings or sometimes attach leaves and brush to our camo BDUs when we were operating in dense woods. For you, you look like the gentler sex, the fair maiden, to most men here. They will never expect you to stand your ground or use their own aggression against them. You will have a distinct advantage. You will be able to ambush them from within an arm’s reach.”
“You’ve got a lot of faith in me.”
“Are you a helpless damsel in distress waiting for her masculine hero to rescue her? No.”
“No, but—”
“You’re a secret weapon.”
“You’ve got the wrong impression of me. I happen to like male heroes. In fact, I think they’ll never go out of style. But I also have resigned myself to the fact that there are not many of them around here, except you and your teammates.”
“You’ll like my teammates, you’ll see. Warden can play guitar and sing! Randall is the funny one! He can make you laugh against your will, even when you know you should be crying. I once saw Abbott juggle five knives! And nobody bluffs better in a card game. Conti can do dead-on impressions of all of us! He notices important details. Maccario is a master chef! He can take the most modest scraps and make a soup better than your grandmother’s. And Boyer, most important of all, is a man of action. I never saw him doubt himself or a mission, not once. No matter how dire our situations got, he always knew we’d get through, and he was always right.”
“Sounds like a dream team.”
“The best, because we’re family, through thick and thin.”
“No fighting over girls?”
“We didn’t have time for them.”
“Anybody ever embarrass you or tick you off, maybe cheating at cards? Or maybe they belched at the dinner table in front of a general. Or they couldn’t hold their liquor: they were an obnoxious drunk. You know, like Jekyll and Hyde.”
“They were good guys. They are good guys. All of them. To a man. And I look forward to working with them again.”
“Hypothetically, is there any one of them who’d want to be in charge if you weren’t around, who disagreed with you and the mission, who could be used against you, the anti-Cody?”
“Never. Why?”
“Boyer is missing.”
“What?! Impossible! I just saw him!”
“He’s gone. Chances are he was taken for nefarious purposes. We’re just guessing that the other team, the ones who like chaos and bloodshed, took him. They saw how ‘easy’ it was to revive you and they wanted a toy soldier of their own.”
“We need to get him back.”
“We will. As soon as we find out where he is.”
“Who took him? Petrillo? I’ll kill him.”
“We don’t know. Probably not Petrillo. We’re thinking it’s Dr. Valdez. I don’t think you’ve met him yet. He works with Wayne.”
A little too enthusiastically: “Take me to him. I’ll find out if he knows anything.”
“We don’t want him dead.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Information. Anything that can help us better understand Boyer.”
“So you can kill him?”
“No, so we can talk him down.”
“I’ll talk him down. He’ll listen to me.”
“But if something happens to you—”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“Or if you’re not there when we confront him.”
“Because I’m locked up?”
“No! Because it’s a big town. Have you looked at all those monitors?”
“We need more people.”
“To watch the monitors? I think the chief is sending over a few police officers.”
“To stop Boyer. He’s a one-man army. He’s exceptionally good at killing. If he thinks he’s alone and they give him a righteous mission. Or if they’ve convinced him he’s behind enemy lines, there’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. I forgot to tell you one thing about Boyer: he’s as gullible as a toddler.”
* * *
Wayne is alone, comfortable in her white lab coat and the gentle low-lit coziness of the lab. She is finally running some toxicology tests against the hair of the first victim, Edgar Dumont. She holds up the vial of pills she found on his bureau, squinting at it, shaking it as if somehow the sound will allow her to discern its chemical breakdown.
Suddenly, the room “explodes” with a flare of garish white light as Dr. Valdez sweeps in and promptly turns on the vast array of overheads with one flick of a switch.
“Hey!” Wayne yells. She turns to greet her expected guest. “It’s you. Welcome aboard, Dr. V. Long time no see. Forgive me if my eyes start to water in an unseemly fashion. I’m really not sentimental; it’s a just temporary response to my retinal burn.”
“Duty calls. Been a bit of a spike in our usual activity.”
“So I’ve noticed. You patch them all up?”
“Getting there.”
“Well, at least now you’ll have more time to devote to the warm-blooded air-breathers.”
“Why is that?”
“The chief cut you loose of all things dead. I assumed you’d heard. Sounds like a promotion to me. And we won’t have to fight over the lights after today.”
“I’ll always be available if you need a second opinion, no matter how busy I am.”
“Thanks. I think I’ll manage. Though I’ll never be as eloquent as my predecessor, at least I won’t be pulled in two opposite directions by two completely different worlds. You can have the homey house-calls and the stimulating hospital rounds, and I’ll keep the drab lab and the cold steel autopsy tables with the primitive microscopes.”
“You make it sound so glamorous.”
“We could swap if you want, but I don’t know anything about live people.”
“No, you don’t.”
“They’re a complicated bunch, with not just biomechanical functions but fluctuating and vaguely needy emotions. Yuck! Like I once said: you were born with a golden stethoscope in your hand. They’re lucky to have you.”
“Thank you for that.”
“Hey, I left a box on the floor by the desk, to make it easier for you to pack up. I was hoping you might let me keep the ugly little gooseneck lamp as a keepsake, if you don’t mind.”
“Why not? No files of yours in any of the drawers?”
“When I’m done with a body, I’m usually done with the paperwork. The chief keeps the originals.”
Valdez steps closer. He seems surprisingly interested. “Is that the last of Bernie?”
“No, this is from the first victim, the one they didn’t give you a chance to see before they shot him into space.”
“Dumont.”
“Right. How you keep all those names straight in your head, I’ll never know.”
“How did you find—?”
“Off his hairbrush. No offense, but there was a lot to work with. I only took what I needed.”
“What have you discovered?”
“I know this is going to come as a shock, but he’s absolutely definitely dead.” Cornered in her own lab by someone she has little respect for, Wayne lets sarcasm flow freely. “The hair analysis proves it. I’m not a medical doctor like yourself, but in my limited experience we usually find it’s still attached, and in significant amounts, when the individual is alive and walking and talking. But this is all that’s left of poor Edgar.”
“That’s good detective work.” It takes enormous restraint to NOT react. He needs her open and trusting and sharing.
“You think so?”
Valdez notices the vial in her hand. “I see I prescribed some pills for him, anti-anxiety if I recall. I think he was a recent widower.”
“Just like Bernie. So they did have some things in common: recently widowed, your pills, violent end.”
“Coincidence. Sometimes pills alone aren’t the answer. If you choose to withdraw from life, you’ve essentially closed the door on other options.”
“But, as somebody once said: When one door closes, another one opens.”
“What door would that be?”
“That’s right: you’ve missed all the good news while chasing the bad. New Eden has reinforcements.”
“Is the chief increasing the police ranks?”
“Better than that.”
“He’s unlocking the armory and passing out guns.”
“Interesting option, but no. Guess.”
“I’m not very good at guessing games and, believe it or not, I’ve already had a long day, so why don’t you quit with the teasing cryptic proclamation and just tell me what’s going on.”
“We found an old, dusty, cobwebby soldier.”
“I’m not following.”
“Turns out the chief had a secret cache of old-world warriors in cryosleep. When Bernie ruined the concert, well, that was the last straw for Police Chief Leo Schiavelli. I revived one. He begged me to. It wasn’t easy. I don’t know how I managed without you. I was chewing my nails the whole time. Girls, am I right?”
“That’s amazing!”
“Coming from a brilliant man like yourself, I’ll take it, the first compliment you’ve ever given me. And he’s good, by the way. Functioning. A little distracted sometimes, but maybe his brain’s still catching up, misfiring occasionally. He’s well enough to be training the troops on self-defense and tactics. He is simply the best thing that could have come out of such a profound human tragedy. And we owe it all to Bernie and his passionate ambivalence for classical music.”
“You did all that?”
“Yes, I did, and I’m a little proud if I may say so, but my mother always said, ‘Self-praise stinks.’ So I’ve been holding it in. And I feel like I could bursting or howling shamelessly at the artificial moon. But I figure as one life-saving professional to another, you’d understand. I’m allowed to brag a little around the masterful teacher who taught me my professional ropes.”
“Feel free.”
She does, long and loud, at which the professional gentleman can’t help cringing.
“Thanks. I’m better. I’ve never done that before. But then again, I’ve never brought a man back from near-death before.”
“Where is he? I’d like to meet this miracle man.”
“Nakamura’s been keeping him busy, obsessing over him a little, just between us. Sure, he’s a looker, but I like my men more... horizontal, quiet, you know: dead.”
“You’re very clever, Wayne. I don’t think I could have done it. I hope the chief knows how fortunate he is.”
“I suppose that’s what the pat on the back and the promotion were supposed to indicate. Snd the smelly cigar which I politely declined.”
Valdez is plainly green with envy. “He offered you a cigar?”
“Oh, I guess I could have saved it for you. I wasn’t thinking. Sorry.”
“I don’t suppose you’d share your notes, since you didn’t share the cigar. Would you?”
“I don’t see why not. I mean this is the middle ground, you know. I deal with dead people. You deal with living people. This crazy process, never before attempted in my lifetime, deals with dead people who become living people.”
“But he wasn’t completely dead, was he?”
“More like ‘shut-down’ than dead.”
“And what did you do? How did you start? Tell me. I’m all ears.”
“Really?! I’m sure you must have places to be.”
“Soon. I’ll get there soon. Go ahead. I’m here now.”
“Patients who are expecting you?”
“They’re stable, with others watching over them, getting exactly the care they need.”
“Okay! At last somebody I can talk to as an equal, though we’ll never truly be equals, I know. Pull up a chair and let me reveal the wonder that is modern science.”
Copyright © 2018 by Charles C. Cole
