The Langley Case: A Nathan Roeder Mystery

Diving Deeper, Wishing I’d brought a Towel

Though I knew from the beginning that it was important to leave no trail leading back to myself, I have kept myself on a strict diet, a strict time table of murder. My readings on serial killers have told me that scheduling was good, and my experience has shown me the joy of it. Unfortunately, no serial killer has ever existed in Tri City.

People have believed for far too long that murderers are the result of genetic inferiority. Certainly, a goodly number of them are. Those that rely on the lottery to determine their genetic stock are much more likely to be depressive, sociopathic, delusional, or possessing of any number of other genetic deficiencies. So it has always been believed that as long as we keep the Natborns out in the Sprawl, we won’t have to worry about the problems of the killers.

But we serial killers are a different breed. Genetics does nothing to slake our bloodlust. Only blood can fulfill our need. I am here with the divine mission of showing everyone how wrong they have been.

Soon I will commit my seventy-fifth. This one will be in the Sprawl again. Such is the pattern. Off times are in the Sprawl. Every six and a half years, someone in Town. And once every thirty, one of my supposed peers in the Tiers. I’ll rain blood down on the world below, every thirty years, until my life finally gives out in that last meaningful moment of destruction.

When this document is read, all will understand just what an accomplishment I’ve made. No successful serial killing in my entire life. None but me. At least, none that have been identified as serial killers.

I doubt anyone in my lifetime will ever put together that these murders are connected to one another. This is why I leave this testament. The people, the family of the victims, have a right to know. They should know fear, and see that what I have done may have been done before. May be done on a regular basis.

I’d read enough to get me started, and didn’t need to sit through a dead man’s preaching about how he is the greatest thing since slicing up a baker. I didn’t need to hear his shit. I knew when the most recent killing had happened, and I knew that I was in luck.

The B3 works harder for a death in the Tiers than one in Town. It’s a discrepancy I’ve worked hard not to care about. But how could I be surprised? They take care of the people who pay them better. Those of us living in Town can die, and that’s a problem. But when someone in the Tiers dies, it’s an issue. Especially if their death was unexpected.

No use trying to Connect and get this info. This was shit better done in person. Which gave me a chance to head up to the Tiers.

I figured I could get by on a little bit of charm, and a few of the doctor-given gifts mom and dad were good enough to pony up for me. And if that didn’t work, there were always bribes. Bribes counted as part of ‘expenses’.

I tossed the Wire down on my desk and headed out. I wished, not for the first time, that I could afford an internal Wire, like Theresa had.

On the way out, I slipped on a coat and put a piece in my pocket. Guns don’t fit with the Sam Spade image, but it’s a tough world out there, and sometimes wearing a cup just ain’t enough. You’re a whole lot safer with a tough attitude and the ability to shoot some motherfucker in the gut than you are with just the attitude.

Walking around Town is always a blast of sensations. I never really paid any attention to it until my first time to the Tiers. This was not that first time, so I knew that it was strange to see someone selling cooking spices four feet away from someone else hawking libido pills. The two of them together could have made a killing.

Not much of Town is open to the air, so I usually have no idea of the weather. Much as I hoped it would be a dark and stormy night, it turned out to be clear and kind of warm. Too warm for the coat. I couldn’t take it off though. It had my gun in it. That kind of made me attached to it.

It wasn’t a long walk from my office to one of the elevators. I needed an Executive elevator, though, and that was a bit farther. So I walked past the street vendors, past the clothing boutiques, and past a movie theater. I love those things. The one near my office shows three hundred movies at a time. Good enough for me, and cheaper because of the selection.

At the elevator, there’s a poor bastard whose lot in life is to make shit more difficult for people like me. He looked me up and down with a sneer in his eyes and a smile on his face. His eyes lingered on the diary in my hands, but just for a second. He apparently decided it, like me, wasn’t worth his time.

“Can I help you sir?”

I handed him my credential stick. “Name’s Roeder,” I said.

He looked down at the stick, then looked at me again. It’s his job to be an asshole, and I can respect that. But I was still getting ready to punch his face off. I could afford the fine. It would be an ‘expense.’ “What’s your business?”

“I’m looking into records of a murder.” That sort of thing usually gets people interested. Murder’s a buzz word; always has been.

The bastard was unaffected. “I see,” he said. “And do you have an appointment with someone?”

I thought about whipping out what was in my pocket and showing him my fucking appointment card. But all that would do is get me fined and give him the satisfaction of having beaten me. “Look,” I said. “I’ve got a right to go up there for investigatory work. It’s right there on my stick. You want to let me by, or you want to involve the B3?”

I hate invoking the law. I hate saying that I can do it because I’ve got connections in the bureau. I feel like I’m running home to daddy, so that he’ll get me that new car I’ve always wanted. I haven’t asked my father for a damned thing in forty years. Except the occasional dinner.

Still, I didn’t have the time to fuck around, and the B3 tends to work. He inserted my stick into a reader by the elevator. “You have thirty minutes,” he said. “After that, you will be fined by the minute.”

I ripped the stick out of his hand and walked past him. No time for pleasantries; barely time to give him the finger. Thirty minutes might be enough time, might not. But it certainly wasn’t enough to waste.

Once in the elevator, I hit the button for the Tiers, and off we were, like a rocket. I hate riding the elevators. I think they do that on purpose. You can’t convince me that with all the technology we have, we can’t make an elevator ride comfortable and fast at the same time. It’s bullshit. Just another ‘fuck you’ from the rich to the everyone else in the world.

Up in the Tiers, I moved through moving walkways until I found a Better Business Bureau help center. The people there are designed to be as helpful as possible. And they have memories that you have to pay for. The lottery won’t ever produce anything like it. At least, not often enough to notice.

“Can I help you?” No second thoughts about my looks. For all she knows, I belong on the Tiers. The executives up here have all kind of eccentricities. Down in Town, I’m a bit much. Up here, I’m about as tame as they come. On the way in, I saw at least one guy in Renaissance garb, two women walking in tight leather, and a kid dressed in a uniform that looked more like pajamas. Some old sci-fi show.

“My name is Nathan Roeder,” I said.

I swear her eyes flashed. “Nathan Roeder. You live in Town, don’t you?”

“I’m on a short pass,” I said. “Investigating a murder.”

She nodded, flashed me a set of the most beautiful teeth I’ve ever seen. “Mrs. Medford,” she said. “Murdered three weeks ago. Is that right?”

I didn’t know how she knew, but I nodded.

“We don’t get many of those,” she said, flipping through something on the computer terminal in front of her. “Can I see your license please, Mr. Roeder?”

I handed her my identification stick. She put it in the reader much faster than the man at the elevator. She was paid to be convenient and helpful. But something about the way she stood told me that there was more there. She smiled at me a little too long to just be polite, and she played with her hair for just a second before realizing what she was doing and stopping. There was a little bit of blood rushing to her face. She was embarrassed.

It suddenly occurred to me what the best method of getting this information in half an hour was. “What time do you get off work?” I asked.

“What?” There was a certain breathlessness in her voice.

I smiled, as charming as I get. “I was hoping maybe you could join me for dinner,” I said. “Somewhere in Town, if you don’t mind going down there.”

“I live down there,” she said, giving a smile full of self-deprecation. “This is just my day job. I’m off in an hour.”

“Well, if I can get what I need here in half an hour, maybe I can spend the rest of the time you’re working finding somewhere for us to eat. Would that be okay?”

She smiled, and I smelled her excitement. I may not be trained as a Reader, but I was built like one.

Before I asked her out, she was efficient. Afterwards, she was nothing short of miraculous. Within minutes, I had a copy of all the information the B3 had on Mrs. Medford.

As soon as she handed it to me, I jumped on the track of the date. I wasn’t terribly interested in her, but there was a chance. Real tail is better than Net tail any day of the week; even if they will do things on the Net that they wouldn’t dream of doing in real life. “So what kind of food do you like?” I asked, checking my watch. I had twelve minutes left to get out of the Tiers before they started charging me. Well, before they started charging Theresa Langley, anyway.

She shrugged, in that way people shrug when they have an opinion, but don’t want to express it. I wish I’d succeeded at that Reader training. It would have made all this so much easier. I figured I’d go with the old standby. “Mexican?” I asked, ramping up for my list. She would agree to anything, I knew, but there was something specific she wanted. “Thai? Italian? Swedish? Sushi? Chinese?” I watched her reaction to each suggestion, looking at the way the blood flowed through her face, listening to the change of breath. It was better than the lottery could have given me, but not as valuable as if I’d had the training to go with it.

I hit the jackpot with the next suggestion. “French maybe?”

Her eyes lit up just a little, losing that glazed over look they’d had just seconds ago. She had been about to tell me that anything was okay, and was already planning her exit strategy from what she was sure would be a bad date.

“French sounds great,” she said. “Do you know anywhere?”

“I’m sure I can find something,” I said. “Where should I meet you?”

She pulled out her PDA. I pulled out mine. “There’s my number,” she said. “You can call me.”

I pressed the button and sent her my number. Probably a mistake, but I was used to making them by that point. “Why don’t you call me when you get off work,” I said. “And I’ll pick you up.”

She smiled. “I’d like that.”

It was a lie, but how was I to know? Aside from the fact that I watched her pupils contract and saw the twitch at the corner of her mouth, that is.

I walked away from the Better Business Bureau help desk with plenty of time to spare. Part of me wanted to jump up and click my heels together, but that isn’t my mojo. It’s not my style. I’m more the type to groan at the weight of the world than to jump for joy. It’s just the way I try to be, no matter what urges may try to say different.

Jumping for joy wasn’t the only thing I was doing. I also wasn’t paying attention. If I’d been paying attention, two things would have happened. First, this whole thing would have gone down a whole lot simpler, a whole lot smoother, and with a whole lot fewer people trying to kill me. Second, and at this point far more important, I wouldn’t have bumped into Jack Stoppard.

When I say I bumped into Jack Stoppard, I don’t mean to say he’s a friend of mine I happened to run into. I’ve never known the guy, except what I read in the papers. In fact, I only know what he looks like based on seeing that body on the news. When I say I bumped into him, I mean I bumped into him. Like the way a rock will bump into the ground if you drop it.

If Jack Stoppard were your normal every day CEO, we both would have fallen to the ground. If Jack hadn’t reached the end of his natural life, he might have ended up sprawled on the ground. As it was, I ended up with a bruise on my upper arm for my troubles, and Jack, decked out as he was in his DownLoaded body, ended up mildly annoyed.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to pick myself up in the most dignified manner I could.

The face on his body was an unreadable mask. That was probably beneficial for whatever parts of his mind were working in the body at any given time. I would love to say he smiled, but he didn’t. His synthesized voice didn’t sound upset though. “My fault entirely,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said. He offered me a hand to help me up.

I reached over and closed the diary, which had fallen open when I dropped. I took it in one hand and him in the other.

His eyes flicked to the diary, and for a second, I was afraid he was going to pulverize my hand. “Nathan Roeder,” he said. He must have taken a picture and looked me up. “You’re an investigator.” It wasn’t a question. “I assume that’s why you’re up here.”

“Yes sir,” I said. You call people like him sir. And by ‘people like him’ I mean people who have more money than your entire family line will ever have, who can buy and sell you before breakfast, and who are soiling themselves just by coming so far down into the Tiers that they’re crossing your path.

He knew I didn’t live in the Tiers. I had no idea what kind of information he had access to. But whatever it was, I was pretty sure he’d just accessed all of it.

“Just speaking to the B3 representative over there?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He was talking to me way more than I expected. I was a bit star struck. Like I said, he was the kind of guy you read about, not the kind of guy you chatted with.

I wish I knew where his eyes were looking. That would have made things so much easier. “Well,” he said, “I’m sure you have business to attend to.”

“I do,” I said. Again, someone like him, you say no more than you have to. This guy’s time is worth more than most people’s lives. If he was walking down the street on his way to a meeting, and he spotted my net worth on the ground, he’d lose money to stop and pick it up.

I can’t say I hate people like him. But I can think it.

“So do I.” He stared me up and down for a second, like he was trying to decide what to do with me. “Be careful where you walk.”

“I will, sir.”

“Good,” he reached out, like he was reaching for the book. It was in my right hand. I figured out what he meant, switched the book into the other hand, and shook his offered hand.

“A pleasure to meet you.”

“You as well, Mr. Roeder.”

I stepped into the elevator down with five minutes to spare. I could have gone sight seeing. But I’d done what I came there to do, and had a date to go with it. The ride down was more comfortable than the ride up, but not by much. When they have gravity to handle the motion, and they just let it go, you end up where you wanted to be nice and fast, with just a little bit of jarring as the brakes catch themselves before smashing you into the street like so much putty.

Once back in Town, I noticed the smells again. Everything in the Tiers smells so clean and perfumed, almost sterile, that the variety of Town hits me like a freight train. It’s nothing compared to the Sprawl, but it’s still something worth noticing. I can smell all the different shampoos people are using, along with the food being sold on the street, the plants that the city planners have hung to make people forget that they’re living in the city.

I didn’t have time to linger on the smells, or really to linger on anything. I had to find a good French restaurant, and quick. If I could manage someway to talk about the case over dinner, without revealing any of the information I already knew, then I could write it all off as an expense. If not, it would have to come out of already thinning accounts. So it had to be good, but it didn’t have to be expensive.

I went to a phone booth and called up the search engine. There was no need for avatars there; I didn’t connect. “I need a local French restaurant,” I said. “Closest proximity to this location.”

“There are three establishments meeting that criteria within one mile,” the computer told me. “Please refine search.”

“Sit down dinner, private atmosphere,” I said. “Date.”

“Le Petit Enfant,” the computer said. “Would you like directions?”

I held out my PDA. “Yes,” I said. “Download.”

When she called, it occurred to me that I didn’t know her name. “Hello?” I said, slipping the ear piece in.

“Nathan?” I recognized the voice, and realized I didn’t know how to respond. I’m much better in person.

“Yes,” I said.

“This is Karen. From the Better Business Bureau help desk? In the Tiers?” She was making sure that I remembered her.

“Sure,” I said. “Are you done working, Karen?”

“Yes. Where are we going for dinner?”

“Le Petit Enfant,” I said. “Do you want me to pick you up at the elevator?”

“No,” she said. “I’ll take a service elevator. Want me to just meet you there?”

“Okay.”

“How’s an hour?”

She probably wanted to change. I realized that I should do the same. And I should make reservations. “Sure,” I said.

“I’ll see you there.”

She disconnected, and I called the restaurant. “I need a table for two in an hour,” I said.

I didn’t know what to expect on the other end. Maybe laughter. Maybe ridicule. What I got was simple, mechanical efficiency. Things were going too well. I knew that meant something was about to get much worse. “Please state the name for the reservation.”

“Nathan Roeder,” I said.

“Reservation is set.” The voice said. “We will be expecting you.”

On my way back home, I looked at the files I’d been given. Mrs. Medford had been killed by strangulation, then mutilated rather severely. There were signs of sexual conquest, but no signs of forced sexual contact. In other words, they thought the killer got off on it, but didn’t think he violated her.

Terrific. So not only was the guy nuts, he was a pervert. Hard to do in this day and age.

The details, what little there were, confirmed a lot of what the diary had said. Serial killing, going with the same pattern over and over again, as a kind of ritual. He was a serial killer. And it didn’t take long to find the pattern in timing. Every thirty years, on the same day. May twenty-sixth. Always a married woman, but always one having extra marital affairs. Never worked for the same company, no connection in physical appearance or age. But definitely something connecting them. There was a method behind the selection of victims.

I didn’t feel any closer at that point than I had when I started the job. I don’t know why I’d expected it to be a quick thing. Seventeen thousand was too much money for a one day job. But I still wanted to make progress.

Trouble was, I had no way of tracking that progress. In the old books and movies, you could always tell you were getting close because someone would try to kill you. Whether it was a drive-by shooting or just some thug with a gun, there were clear markers to your advancement. I had none of those. All I had was a date with a cute receptionist. Hardly a life or death sort of proposition.

At least, that’s what I thought at the time.