Connection - 25

~1148 words

(directly continued from previous chapter)

There were, however, also people who had not removed their chip. Kerra was able to rule out all of these because not a single one had gone anywhere near Ruth’s apartment.

She was finally left with a list of about thirty people who had anomalies that could have helped them commit such a crime and who had also removed their location chips. She started combing through the small details of each one, looking for something that would make one suspect stick out more than another.

She wasn’t finding much until… there. The file of Destiny Dupree-Hollins looked as if it had been tampered with. There was a special note saying that the file had been wiped, but some of the information had been recovered using a remote backup from several years earlier. The information that had been recovered included things like her name, date of birth, gender, address, and parents, but many other, more detailed pieces of information had not been restored. That would have been enough for Kerra to sit up and pay attention, but it was something else that placed Destiny fully into suspect territory: there were a couple names listed under “known friends” that Kerra recognized.

She recognized the names George Ramirez and Angela Lefebvre as Numbers and Angelface. If Destiny was friends with them, it seemed likely that she had known Shandi too. In addition to a host of useless anomalies like regenerating teeth and a sensitivity to magnets, Destiny had an anomaly that seemed to perfectly fit the crime: semi-malleable skin, which she could take advantage of by changing her facial structure to more resemble Shandi’s to get Ruth to open the door. Additionally, from the old picture in the file, it looked as if Destiny had light brown skin very similar to Shandi’s. Kerra also assumed that such skin was less likely to flake off constantly and leave behind DNA evidence.

Kerra didn’t know how Destiny might have influenced Ruth to kill herself, or make it look like she’d killed herself, but Kerra was sure that there was some way it could have happened. She could figure that part out later. The most pressing problem was finding Destiny. She’d removed her chip, of course, and the address that the file listed was likely outdated. After a little bit of poking around, Kerra discovered that the address listed was actually where Destiny’s parents, Mrs. Dupree and Mr. Hollins lived.

Kerra set Destiny aside for the moment and combed through the rest of the suspects. If she was going to actually go to Destiny’s parents’ house, she wanted to make sure there was no stronger suspect. There wasn’t. None of the other suspects had any connection to Ruth or Shandi at all, and what’s more, their files were untampered with. There was something fishy about Destiny Dupree-Hollins, and Kerra was going to get to the bottom of it.

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It was the anniversary of the ship’s launch, and, as usual, everyone had been invited to a ship-wide social. The cafeteria was full, with almost all of the 175-person crew in attendance. It was a lot of people, but they had all been awake for a few years now, and Everen knew them all. She scanned the crowd of grinning, chatting faces. Everyone looked relieved to have an evening away from work and it was a release they dearly needed what with the recent murders.

Everen’s usual day, however, consisted mostly of socializing until someone needed to send a message to Earth, and so the break aspect of this gathering was not nearly as exciting to her as the idea that the murderer was likely somewhere in this room.

Sure, maybe the murderer was avoiding the party, too wracked with guilt to show their face, but Everen had made a special note of all the people who were not in attendance. She’d seen all of them in the past week, and all of them had jobs that were essential to keep the ship running. It could be one of them, but Everen guessed that a mastermind culprit would not want to draw attention to themselves by not being in attendance at something like this.

From where she sat at a table in the front corner of the room, she looked from face to face, scrutinizing every one. Sure, there were a couple people in the crew that always rubbed Everen the wrong way, but she couldn’t imagine any of them murdering their crewmates.

This left two options: Either someone was a psychopath and was expertly hiding the fact that they didn’t care about others with their deceptive charms, or someone actually thought they were doing the right thing somehow.

If it was the first option, she could rule several people out. Some people just don’t have the chops to being a psychopath. For example, Everen could tell that Janna was no psychopath. Based on the emotional conversations they’d had in the past, Everen knew Janna’s love and empathy ran deep. Not that Janna was a suspect anyway. Everen had exposed the misaligned units of measure to her, and Everen was still around. Not to mention the fact that she’d been with Janna when the first murder had happened.

That’s right, alibis, Everen thought to herself. About a third of the ship had an airtight alibi for at least one of the murders. Everen could rule those people out for now, unless there were multiple killers or some sort of collusion going on. That was something at least.

But she couldn’t rule out the people who Everen knew weren’t psychopaths. Perhaps the murderer really thought they were doing the right thing by killing those people. Everen couldn’t know for sure. She’d have to keep looking into the murders.

Everen suddenly sighed. She felt like she was getting nowhere. Sure, she’d maybe ruled out one third of the ship, but so had all of the investigation teams, and that hadn’t gotten them anywhere. Why did she think she could be doing anything different?

She did know one thing that maybe no one else knew: the measurements were different. She’d thought there was no one she could tell, but maybe, just maybe there was. There was safety in numbers after all. Maybe she could tell all of the people with alibis. Anonymously of course. And then she’d ask them all to attend a meeting together where as a whole, they could search for someone who… someone who…

Everen didn’t know. What kind of question could she ask to the murderer that only the murderer would answer in a certain way? She groaned. She was so close to a good idea, but there was always something stopping her from executing her plans. She’d have to bring up this idea with Janna. She knew she couldn’t trust anyone 100%, but now Everen also knew that she couldn’t do it alone.