Steven Harper - Nightmare

Ben paused for a long time. "I don’t need you to fight my cousins for me, Kendi," he said. "It’s stupid."

"Those two were your cousins?" Kendi said in disbelief.

"They’re creeps and they’ve been pulling shit like that all my life. This was nothing new."

"Ben, they tripped you down the-"

"I don’t care what they did," Ben said. "I get it all the time from them. So what? They’re assholes-full of shit."

"Don’t tell me it doesn’t make you mad," Kendi almost snapped. "They tripped you on the damn stairs!"

"It makes me mad, yeah," Ben said heatedly. "But I don’t need you to take care of me, and I definitely don’t need you telling Mom about it."

"Ben, I didn’t mean-"

"Just leave alone for a while, okay?" And Ben’s face shut down. After a moment, Kendi got up and headed for the Rymar home. As a result, he was just getting in the door when Inspector Tan called to tell Mother Ara that another dead body had turned up.

The first thing Ara noticed was the smell. Mother Diane Giday’s house was high up in this particular talltree, and Ara was less than halfway up staircase that wound around the trunk when it hit her-the ripe, rancid smell of rotting meat. Ara faltered, then forced herself onward. Tan had said on the phone that Giday had been killed quite some time ago and that the body was in an advanced state of putrefaction, but Ara hadn’t thought the smell of it would greet her before she even reached the front door. Now she was doubly glad she had spent considerable time convincing Kendi-ordering him, really-that he didn’t need to come to the site of the murder.

The staircase ended at a wide platform. Just ahead, Giday’s little house was so high up that the roof poked up above the talltree’s leaves. When she arrived at the address, a Guardian was just switching on the holographic generator. Around the house appeared the same ring of blue light Ara had seen at Iris Temm’s home. Ara walked through it and the generator beeped an alarm, just as the other one had. Ara wondered if she was going to be crossing scene barriers for the rest of her life. The Guardian recognized her and waved her on. Ara wasn’t sure she wanted to go but knew she should.

Linus Gray, his face matching his name, met her just inside the door. The stench washed over Ara and made her gag. She suddenly wished she hadn’t eaten that sundae at lunch.

"Here," Gray said, pressing a dermospray to her upper arm. The drug thumped home.

"What is it?" Ara demanded

"An neurological inhibitor," Gray explained. "It’ll put the olfactory bulb in your brain to sleep for about an hour. You won’t smell a thing."

He was right. The horrible stench had already faded. Ara nodded her thanks and glanced around the room. Giday’s house was little more than a cottage, with three tiny rooms and a bath. Ara could see into every room from the front door. The miniature living room contained one easy chair, a short sofa, and a set of wall-mounted shelves that displayed various knickknacks. On the couch was a lumpy bundle covered by shiny black cloth. Two Guardian technicians were just starting to tuck in the edges. Ara caught a glimpse of discolored flesh. Tan was watching, her eyes flat and angry. A small gravity sled hovered in front of the couch like a coffee table.

Gray handed Ara a set of gloves. She put them on. "Do you want to see the body?" he asked.

"No," Ara said flatly. "What about her finger?"

"Cut off and replaced," Gray said. "The DNA of the new finger matches Iris Temm’s. We’ve already compared a sample of Giday’s DNA to the samples we collected from the finger sewn to Vera Cheel’s body. It’s a match. Giday’s DNA also matches the blood Tan found on the shirt in Dorna’s room."

"So Dorna’s definitely the killer, then," Ara murmured.

"Sure looks that way," Tan said.

The technicians finished tucking the cloth. With a soft hissing sound, it sealed itself around the corpse and the couch cushions beneath it. The techs gently lifted the entire bundle onto the sled. The first tech adjusted the sled’s controls until it hovered at waist level and maneuvered it out the door. The second technician nodded at Tan and followed.

"How long was she in here?" Ara asked.

"Preliminary scan suggests about two weeks," Tan said.

"Two weeks ?" Ara gasped. "How did she go this long without being found? Who found her?"

Tan took out her data pad and consulted notes. "The downbelow neighbors called in to complain about a weird smell. One of our boys came up to look around and found her. No one noticed Giday was missing because she was supposed to have left for an off-planet vacation fifteen days ago. Spaceport records show she had a ticket to DelaCruz, but she never boarded the ship. Between that and the fact that her house is up so high hid the smell for a while, no one even knew she had been murdered."

Ara thought about a woman named Diane Giday in the Dream taking care of last-minute business and looking forward to her vacation. Perhaps she had hummed to herself a bit or sighed with satisfaction at the completion of her last piece of work. Then a dark man appeared and turned the Dream into a nightmare, leaving her corpse to rot in her cozy little house. Ara’s mouth turned down with silent fury.

"If she’s been dead for two weeks," Ara said in a flat voice, "there’s no way I can recreate the scene. Too many minds won’t be in the same place, and most of the others will have forgotten the patterns."

Tan nodded. "I thought as much, but figured I’d ask anyway."

"Giday was probably the thirteenth victim," Gray said. "That means the killer is escalating."

Ara gave him a blank look.

"He means the attacks are coming closer together," Tan explained. "Look, Prinna Meg was murdered about three years ago, a few weeks after Dorna Saline was recruited into the Children, in fact. About a year later, Wren Hamil is killed. Eleven months after that, Iris Temm is murdered and we bring you in to have a look. Nine months later, this woman Giday dies, but we don’t find the body until now. Two and a half weeks after that-two and a half weeks -the monster goes after Vera Cheel. There’s going to be another one, Ara, and soon. We have to find this guy."

"The word is out among the Children," Ara said. "Female Children aren’t supposed to enter the Dream alone, and they need to be ready to leave it on an instant’s notice. But you know how it goes-plenty of people disregard the advice. At last count, we have over three thousand Sisters, Mothers, and Grandmothers, and most of them figure that they’re either more powerful than the stalker or the odds are against any one of them being attacked."

"Technically they’re right about the odds," Linus said. "Less than one in three thousand."

"Tell that to Mother Diane." Ara shuddered. " I certainly wouldn’t take the risk."

"Let’s do the search," Tan said. "See what clue the killer left for us this time."

Searching the cottage didn’t take long. Ara found six pairs of earrings lined up on Giday’s dresser and a thirteenth singleton broken in the wastebasket. "It was probably fourteen earrings and the killer broke one to make a ‘set’ of thirteen so he could keep one and leave twelve."

"Dorna’s a she," Tan said. "Unless there’s something the monastery medics don’t know about."

"I don’t think it’s Dorna," Ara said.

Linus Gray, who was carefully stowing the earrings in an evidence bag, gave her a hard look. "Why not?"

"Call it a feeling," Ara said. "It’s just-it’s just-I don’t know. Out of character for her."

"For Dorna, maybe," Tan pointed out. "But who knows about one of her alternates?"

"I just think we need to keep an open mind," Ara said. She started to sit on Giday’s narrow bed, then stopped herself. The crime scene technicians might want to examine it.