Connection - 22

~1712

Kerra whipped her head around, looking for the building manager, but the old woman had disappeared. It was if she had been able to sense the horror that awaited inside the room and had wanted nothing to do with it.

Seeing her mother’s body, Kerra felt strangely devoid of the emotion he was expecting. Shandi having died so recently, it made no sense to Kerra why the feeling wasn’t the same. Why didn’t her head and heart hurt? Ruth had become a bit strange, but Kerra still loved her. Why didn’t this hurt as much?

It must be the connection, Kerra thought. The connection being severed had hurt her physically, but she had no such link with her mother. Of course. Of course. She shook her head to clear it of a useless train of thought. It didn’t matter if it hurt her or not: what mattered right now was that her mother was dead and Kerra needed to do something about it.

The police came quickly after Kerra’s call. The police central station was fairly close to Ruth’s apartment, so Kerra only had to sit alone in silence with the body for just a few minutes before they arrived, decked out from head to foot in cybernetics and technology. They’d brought in what looked like a whole mobile science lab because Kerra had told them that she suspected foul play. But it must have been—her mother never would have done something like this.

The police bustled around, taking samples, scanning the floors and walls with special lights, checking for fingerprints or anything that wouldn’t have belonged to Ruth. As Kerra watched them, she was reminded of film footage that she’d seen of bees buzzing around a hive. Then she remembered that the footage had been from a documentary about old customs surrounding bees, and how, when someone in the household died, it was bad luck not to “tell the bees” and perform one of various customs to put the bees properly into mourning. Kerra wondered if the greenhouses used bees to pollinate. She didn’t think she’d ever seen real honey at the store before. Maybe all the bees were gone. Had they died out before the disaster had even occurred?

Kerra shook her head again. She was realizing that her mind was prone to wander whenever there was something painful she was supposed to be thinking about. She looked around. The police had stopped their frantic work, and most had gone home. One of the three who were left, Officer Kinghorn, was swiping through something on a tablet and shaking her head. She looked up and, when she realized Kerra was looking in her direction, walked over.

She said in a clear emotionless voice, “Our team was quite thorough, and for better or for worse, we can conclude that this was not a homicide. All signs point to suicide. I’m sorry.” She reached out and placed a heavy hand on Kerra’s shoulder. 

Kerra yelped in pain and quickly stepped back.

“Oh no! Do you have a pulled muscle or something?” Officer Kinghorn asked, her eyes suddenly full of sympathy. Where was that sympathy before? Kerra cared more about her dead mother than about some momentary pain.

“Something like that,” Kerra muttered. “Please don’t touch me.”

“I won’t,” Kinghorn said solemnly, holding up a hand like she was getting sworn into court.

“It couldn’t have been suicide though,” Kerra said. “I would have… she wouldn’t have… She couldn’t have…”

Kinghorn sighed. “Listen, Ms. Hope. All signs point to suicide. There has been no sign of anyone coming in or out of this apartment in a very long time, much less using any kind of force to break in. This place is also scrupulously clean, which you told us yourself is perfectly normal. But she couldn’t have cleaned up all of the skin cells of anyone who’d stepped foot inside. But despite that, we could not find a trace of a single other person having been here, not even you.” Kinghorn gave Kerra a quizzical look.

Kerra rolled her eyes. For a detective, this woman sure was dense. She lifted her hand and pointed at it. “I don’t have real skin. I don’t leave skin cells around. I also don’t have fingerprints. Or real hair.”

“Why then, I think you’ve just become our prime suspect,” she said, eyes serious. Just as Kerra opened her mouth to adamantly protest against the absurd accusation, Kinghorn smiled. “I’m just joking. It’s still clear that Ruth Hope died by her own hand. There's a specific angle and cut pattern in the injury, and… well, I won’t get too specific. But we have a lot of technology made to figure out just this kind of thing. There was no way that someone else would have been able to inflict this specific injury on someone besides themselves. I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Hope, but this was not a homicide. A lamentable death, but there’s nothing more we can do here.”

Kerra was silent, gears turning. It didn’t make sense. Kerra knew that while Ruth might have changed, might have been a little abnormal in the way her brain functioned, and sure, maybe she had been sad and angry, especially after Shandi had left… Kerra’s heart suddenly plummeted.
She had never actually told Ruth that Shandi had died. She was going to, of course, but she hadn’t. Ruth had died not knowing that one of her daughters had passed on as well. This for some reason was what made Kerra break her calm outward demeanor. A few hot tears dropped down her face, heavy and sudden. “I know it wasn’t suicide. I know it,” she managed, speaking between clenched teeth. “I can feel it.”

“Alright, Ms. Hope, I believe you,” Kinghorn said placatingly. “But unfortunately, without evidence, we can’t do anything more. According to the law, Ruth Hope committed suicide.”

One of the other officers snorted. “Don’t feed her fantasies, Kinghorn. There’s no way anyone could have gotten into this apartment unless the lady let them in. The girl told us that she was the only one who ever came anyway and that Ruth here never even communicated with anyone else except for occasional failed attempts to contact her other daughter. Who would even have the motive? Nothing has been stolen, there’s no DNA evidence whatsoever, and the lady was clearly unhappy. It’s the cleanest case of suicide I’ve ever seen, and to entertain any other thoughts would be delusional.”

Kinghorn shot the officer the dirtiest look Kerra had ever seen on an official’s face. Then she turned back to Kerra. “Don’t listen to Officer Tregas. Think whatever helps comfort you. There’s nothing we can do, but you are free to come to whatever conclusions you like, and if you get evidence for them, we’ll help you out.” She smiled kindly.

“Why are you being so suddenly nice to me?” Kerra asked, suspicion growing, though she had no idea what she would even have to be suspicious about.

“Can’t I be nice to people whose loved ones just died?” Kinghorn responded.

"Um, you weren’t very nice when you told me the first time,” Kerra pointed out.

Kinghorn shrugged and looked a little uncomfortable. “It’s just that… now I recognize you.”

“What do you mean?” Kerra asked, certain that she’d never talked to Kinghorn before in her life.

“When you pointed out your skin, I remembered that I saw you going into the government building one time. When I asked about you—being a detective, you tend to be pretty curious about people you see sometimes—the guy at the front desk told me that you were the speaker for, the connection to our space colony!” Kinghorn’s eyes were sparkling now.

“Okay…?” Kerra said, unsure why someone would care so much about her weird job.

“My great, great grandmother is on that ship! They really needed her, so they asked her to leave her children behind to live with her sister. I think about her a lot. It’s strange to think that she’s awake now, and we’re about the same age. I was named after her, you know!”

“Oh?” 

“Her name’s Haven Kinghorn. Have you heard anything about her?” Kinghorn was bouncing giddily like a child on Christmas morning. Kerra thought it was rather unprofessional.

“Haven? I don’t think I…” It was then that Kerra remembered. She did know of a Haven Kinghorn. It had been one of the murders that had occurred on board Everen’s ship after Shandi had died. But how could she tell Officer Kinghorn that her great, great grandmother had been murdered? And so recently! Why hadn’t she been informed in the first place? “I… er… I have heard of her actually,” Kerra edged.

Officer Kinghorn gasped. “Really? Did she do something so important?”

Kerra waffled between telling the officer or keeping the information secret. Eventually, she rationalized that Kinghorn dealt with horrible deaths all the time. She should be able to handle it. “Um, no. Well, kind of? Um, she actually… uh… died.”

“What? How? They said everyone there was in great physical shape and that they had top-of-the-line medicine if anyone got sick, which they shouldn’t have.” Kinghorn looked genuinely confused.

“She was murdered. I thought the government would have informed everyone who were descendants. I’m… really sorry.” Kerra felt the absurdity of that sentence as soon as she said it. Here she was, consoling the officer who had just told her that her mother had committed suicide. Kerra supposed it was a time for grief. Death seemed to be following her somehow.

“It’s… it’s alright,” Kinghorn said. “I’m just… I just thought that she would, you know… go on to do great things. They really needed her, you know. Had to leave her children and everything. I thought we could live our lives simultaneously. We could both do great things together, lightyears apart. It’s just something I would think about sometimes. Sorry, I’m blubbering. If you’d give me a moment.” Kinghorn practically fled the room.

“Thanks for that,” Officer Tregas said derisively. “She really needed to hear that while she was on the job. Come on,” he said, addressing the third officer, an android, “Let’s bag up this body and go home.”