Scott Cleveland - Pale Boundaries

“Is this what I think it is?” Dwin asked as he drove through the ornate gate.

You already know, Bragg thought, but said: “Neil Sorenson’s estate.” A meticulously groomed hedge blocked the grounds from view. The drive made a gentle S curve and opened into a cul-de-sac full of unmarked vehicles. Two EPEA troopers stood at ease at the walkway leading to the mansion. Submachine guns suspended from three-point harnesses tracked the police car as Dwin pulled up.

“Ah, you want me to come in?” Dwin asked.

Bragg shook his head. Once he would have appreciated the backup. Now he operated under the assumption that Cai would allow no one outside her clandestine cabal near him for the foreseeable future. Therefore, he had no more to fear from the EPEA thugs than his own driver.

“You got an evidence kit?”

“Under the seat.”

Bragg rummaged through the kit and pocketed half a dozen evidence bags, a pair of sterile sample tubes, latex gloves and a fingerprint wand. He checked the chamber of his automatic before he opened the door and leaned on the cane to stand up. The EPEA trooper studied his ID carefully for a moment. “We’ve been expecting you, Major. This way.”

They led him through the hedge and turned onto a pathway rather than the steps leading to the main house. The grounds were artfully over-grown with native flora, a model of environmentally friendly landscaping. Half a dozen more EPEA personnel loitered outside the pool house, including one lieutenant. The ripe stench of decomposition wafted through the open door.

Bragg ignored the EPEA officer’s salute. “What have we got?”

“Neil and Philip Sorenson,” the EPEA officer said, following him in. “Both found in the pool, dead. No marks on the son. Father was shot in the head.”

The bodies lay at the edge of the pool already zipped into black plastic bags. Bragg stepped as close as he dared to the edge and peered into the murky, putrescent water. “I suppose you people have trampled the crime scene already?” Bragg asked.

“We’re here to sanitize it,” the lieutenant said emphatically, “not protect it.”

“Then I suggest you have someone get that glass off the bottom of the pool,” Bragg said. “What else did you pick up?”

The young officer looked flustered. “There was a deck chair here,” he said. “I moved it back to the table. And there was another glass, broken, over there.”

“What kind?”

“Sir?”

“What kind of glass! A kitchen glass or a bar glass like the one in the pool?”

“I don’t—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bragg interrupted. “What are you calling this?”

“Poaching-related double homicide,” he ventured uncertainly.

“Oh, that’s original.” He pulled out a pair of evidence bags. “Put the glasses in these.”

“Sir, we threw the broken one in the garbage.”

“Then get it out!” Bragg exclaimed. “My God, it has to look like we at least tried!” He glanced about the pool house while the officer ordered one of the EPEA troops into the pool and another to dig the glass shards out of the garbage.

Nothing here they haven’t destroyed, Bragg thought. The glass in the pool had been submerged too long to recover any latent fingerprints or DNA. He needed to get into the main house without raising suspicions.

“Philip Sorenson was drunk,” Bragg told the lieutenant when he returned. “He fell in and drown. What did Neil Sorenson do when he found his son dead?”

“He killed himself,” the man answered.

“Good! Now you’re getting the idea. Where’s the gun?”

“The… gun?”

“Lieutenant, it’s difficult to make a case for suicide when means for it is absent,” Bragg sighed. “We need a gun. Did Sorenson have one?”

“There’s one in the study. I’ll have someone—”

“I’ll get it myself!” Bragg snapped. “Just point the way.”

Sorenson’s home lacked the grandiose accessories Bragg expected a man of his wealth to accumulate. Everything he owned was of the highest quality, but there were no gaudy paintings or statuary. The decor was expensive, but strictly conservative.

The study smelled strongly of whisky. Bragg found and bagged the pistol, then traced the source to an open bottle on the bar near a display case filled with vintage liquor. There was an empty ring on one shelf, and the remains of the seal lay next to the bottle.

The bottle was less than a quarter full. Sorenson might have cracked a bottle now and then, Bragg supposed, but a serious collector and connoisseur certainly wouldn’t leave it to evaporate. He cast a furtive glance at the door to the hallway, half expecting to find an EPEA watching. No one. He knew what he should do, which direction the wise course pointed. He didn’t have the power to oppose Cai, lacked the resources and knowledge necessary to effectively subvert her, but the thought of meekly acquiescing to the new order she’d thrust on him made him sick.

He’d betrayed his oath as a police officer once already, sacrificed Terson Reilly—dead though he may be—before the idol self preservation. By all appearances, Cai took that to mean that he considered himself irrevocably damned, and she would have been right, once. A few months earlier Maalan Bragg would have condemned anyone who stepped from the path of truth, who washed his hands in another man’s innocence, with no regard to circumstances.

Now, however, Bragg held fast to the conviction that, though he condemned himself, the person he’d wronged would not. Reilly, he was certain, might even approve, provided Bragg make an attempt to set things right, no matter how long it took.

Bragg sprayed graphite powder over the bottle. Fingerprints leapt out immediately; it hadn’t been handled more than once or twice since the last time it had been polished. He scanned each print with the wand, and then capped and wiped down the bottle but paused before returning it to the display case. He wasn’t likely to get a chance like this again on his salary—even as a major. He pulled off the cap again and took a straight slug. The liquor flowed down his throat with a smooth, even burn.

Fiction, he discovered, was easy to write; it took far less than the two hours Cai allotted to work up the report. His conclusions as to the causes of death—“accidental: alcohol related” and “suicide” met with Cai’s full approval.

She gave him the next two days off, and suggested that he and his wife pay another visit to Reproductive Services.

Den Tun sat with his eyes closed on a bottom-polished stone bench beneath the shade of a patiently trained and manicured tree in his garden, listening to the lazy trickle of water against stone in the stream at his feet.

The tree was nearly as old as he was, not much more than a sapling when he planted it with his own hands decades ago. It had survived the whims of fate and circumstance as he had, passing from the careful tending of the young Minzoku gardener who first planted it for the pleasure of the Onjin whose garden this had been to the rough handling of those who saw it as nothing more than a prop.

Den Tun was pleased to find it still living, albeit shamefully neglected, when the garden came into his hands once again half a century later. The tree had gone its own way, as trees were wont to do when left unguided; the struggle to tame it again had been arduous, and Den Tun would never claim that it had been he who prevailed in the end. The tree was now pleasing in form and function, but any who cared to look could see the signs of its wild years.