“They caught him, Aiden,” Marcus said, squeezing the phone so tight his knuckles went white. “They caught Claudia’s killer.”
Aiden gasped, rubbing his chest. At the mercy of a shiver, he remembered how eerie the morgue lab had felt when he’d arrived there, how empty but haunted even after the news. The low hum of the air vents had been theonly sound to disrupt the quietness around as he and Marcus had stared at each other, bringing forth an unsettling cold into his bones he could still recall to this day.
As Aiden restarted the video again, he found himself reliving his visit and feeling an immense sense of relief that modern recording equipment had noise canceling. It was a silly thing, perhaps an unintended fixation, but the vents’ subtle whirring noise from that day had kept playing in his head and prevented him from falling asleep on countless nights.
Aiden watched the last few minutes, his eyes following Dr. Smith as he turned around to walk out of the lab through a keycard-controlled metal door. His assistant remained motionless by the body and then disappeared altogether at the end of the playback. Aiden stared at the empty room with tall white walls, powered down equipment and tools, silver lockers and… He squinted at the screen, his heart jumping.
There wasnot even a single vent.And there had definitely been a vent when he visited the morgue.
Frowning at the screen, he spun the room’s 3D model around, checking the spot above the door and then the rest of the walls from every possible angle. No vents.
A twinge of adrenaline made Aiden’s heart rate spike. His fingers tingled, the architect side of him filling with confusion. In a morgue lab, temperature, humidity and air-circulation were paramount, so why weren’t there any vents in the room from the recording?
When he’d visited in person, there had been one. He didn’t know why his mind remembered this particular detail. Maybe it had been that chill in his bones from the air circulation when Marcus had told him about Claudia’s cremation, but now he couldn’t unsee the white grillesthat had been right there, above the door, but weren’t present in the video.
But that justcouldn’tbe right.
“This makes no sense…”
The next two hours Aiden spent looking up any of the building’s public blueprints he could find online, as well as scouring through a heap of documents for various renovations sponsored by generous donors and university alumni. Nothing indicated the morgue had even a single lab without access to the air-circulation systems and so Aiden picked up the phone and contacted the Lecart Morgue, asking the receptionist about it. The man was a little confused, but handled the request professionally, assuring him that the Lecart Morgue most definitely adhered to all regulations.
Aiden frowned at the proof of the opposite on his screen.
What the Hell was going on? Where did this discrepancy come from?
Soon, it became obvious that Aiden wasn’t going to figure this out from his couch.Were his memories shaky?But he’d confirmed with the morgue’s receptionist…Then what about the video?Maybe the university had had a room like that back then and the receptionist just didn’t know about it… It could be that or it could be something else, but at any rate, one thing was clear: he had to go to Mars and visit the morgue himself.
Aiden contemplated calling PI Deverson, but since he had another day off and could simply go and check if there was any reason to even get the PI involved, he decided to postpone that phone call. He had just about enough time to make the trip happen without having to book extra leave from Horizons, so grabbing his backpack,he got himself a ticket for the earliest shuttle to Mars, hoping that when he next set foot on the prison station, he would be one step closer to solving the mystery of Claudia’s murder.
Bribing the intern at the Lecart Morgue was relatively easy. After he let Aiden check the lab to confirm the vent was in fact there, a stack of cash convinced him to pull up the 3D visualizations of the room from the day of Claudia’s autopsy as well as that from a week before and after. His heart rate spiked when they didn’t match, even if he’d expected it.
Pushing against the sense that something wasn’t right, he took a photo of the two layouts and dropped another wad of money, so the receptionist would show him thefullautopsy report. Not the redacted version available to the public, but the actual document that remained classified even two years after her death.
The first part was the same, announcing the time of death and listing the cause.February 8th, 2103. Gunshot to the chest.Images from the video surfaced to his mind, but he stuffed them down and inspected the rest of the document, snapping another photo when he found what he was looking for—the name of the officer who’d brought the body to the morgue.
Patrick Cleveland.
There was a familiar ring to it, but Aiden’s memories from the time were a little fuzzy. If he had to guess, Cleveland was someone from the first response team.
Looking the name up on his way back to the hotel got him a phone number. Mars’ dark streets told him it was way too late to call now though, so he postponedit until the morning, messaging PI Deverson with the update so he could run a background check on Cleveland first thing tomorrow.
When Aiden arrived at his hotel, he sat on the balcony and just watched the skyline, finding in it so many similarities to what he remembered of Earth, though also not missing that red tinge that accompanied anything and everything here, no matter the time of day. The magtrain passed on its rail just to the left of the hotel and as his attention focused on its sleek chrome form, he decided that the next time he had a reason to visit the red planet, he was going to ride the train and see how far the development of Atlan had progressed.
Chapter 8
Aiden rang the intercomat the gate, taking in the relatively big estate on the other side. A huge white mansion with decorative marble columns peeked from behind lush rose gardens and a gravel driveway with three cars, betraying Patrick Cleveland’s taste for classical style.
How could an ex-cop afford this?
“Mr. Kesley, welcome,” Patrick Cleveland said, glancing up from his laptop with a professional smile when the security guard announced Aiden. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, his black hair and beard both styled in a way that complimented his rotund face.
Aiden returned the gesture as he sat on the indicated chair. Plants and statues of various sizes filled up the space, creating the impression of an exotic greenhouse. Minus the humidity.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice, Mr. Cleveland,” Aiden offered, accepting the glass ofwater the guard brought over. “I won’t take much of your time.”
Smiling again, Cleveland closed his laptop and slid it to the side, lacing his hands together on top of the marble tabletop. “That’s no issue at all. I’m always happy to help a criminal journalist. Which case did you have questions about?”
Aiden took a sip from his water, then fished out his tablet from the bag. He’d twisted the truth of who he was and why he was here, so he needed to maintain the lie or he doubted Cleveland was going to cooperate. After all, Aiden’s rather… explosive behavior toward police officers at the time had made the rounds to more than a few precincts.
