A Dish Best Served Cold

Jessop 56 had seen this type of thing before; a body, a crime scene and absolutely no forensic evidence. It was yet another “perfect” crime placed on the Detectives Guild’s To-Do list. That was fine with the Guild. Perfect crimes were their specialty. In the one-hundred and eighty-five years of their existence, no crime placed before them had gone unsolved. This would certainly be no different.

The victim’s data-trace had been removed from its perch on the inner side of the woman’s sternum. They always did that. It was as if the perpetrators truly believed that there would be no other way to identify the body. There were ways…lots of them. If all else failed, they could always use the antiquated iris scans or the even more ancient finger-print search.

Method was everything when it came to investigating. Start with the body and then move on to MAST. All Guild detectives used MAST. This sentient-net driven software would create four databases of suspects. Those names that were common to all four databases would constitute the final list of suspects. Modern, non-invasive techniques would be used to extract the truth from this final group.

MAST always worked.

“Has she been moved since she was first discovered?” Jessop 56 asked; his first words since entering the room five minutes earlier.

“No sir. The med-techs wanted to do some checks but I told them to wait for you to get here,” replied the officer who had been first on the scene. He was visibly nervous in the presence of the Guild detective.

With a nod, Jessop 56 approached the body. Video-bots whirled aside as he leaned over to get a better look. There was something odd about the incision in the chest. He would have to ask the coroner about that later. The head had rolled over to a corner of the room; a trail of blood connected it to the rest of the body. Aside from the decapitation and exposed chest cavity, there were no other signs of trauma. He would have to wait for the full medical report before he could learn anything more.

In spite of the gruesome scene, Jessop 56 appeared to be completely unaffected. Guild training instilled the attitude of detachment. There was no room for emotion in the world of analytical investigations. This was not a body; it was a puzzle to be solved. Waving his hand, he called over the med-tech.

“I want a full battery of tests. Map the DNA for identification. While you are at it, check for engineered varietals.”

He was not sure why he asked for that last bit of information. His intuition had kicked in with the suggestion. Guild members were trained to heed their intuitive insights. They recognized the power of the subconscious mind. As they scanned a crime scene, they took in and processed billions of bits of data. Only some of that, a very small fraction of a percent, made it to conscious thought. The rest lay hidden just beneath the surface; a vast lake of processed information. When breaches occurred between the conscious and subconscious mind, great things were often revealed. Intuitive training taught the detectives to look for these breaches and seize the opportunities they represented.

His unmarked transport was waiting for him outside. He felt the eyes of the crowd on him as he passed out of the apartment. He ignored them; he always ignored them. It was not unusual for a crowd to be around when a Guild member was called in. Crime hobbyists tracked the moves of detectives the same way paparazzi tracked vidstars. His mere presence meant that someone inside was dead. It also meant that someone else would soon pay for that crime. Jessop 56 ducked into the transport and sped off towards the Guild Hall. There he would have access to all of the information he would need to solve the crime.

The medical report was ready for downloading by the time Jessop 56 walked into his office…the body first. He reviewed the data and was as surprised by what was not in the report as by what was. Perfect-Crimers typically used a bioblock to delay DNA mapping. This was similar to removing the data-trace; the longer it took to identify the body, the more lead they had. The fact that the data-trace was missing but no bioblock had been used led Jessop 56 to the conclusion that the data-trace removal had been a ruse. Whoever had done this didn’t really want to delay identification; they just wanted the investigator to think they did. Interesting.

Equally curious was the result from the search for engineered varietals. There had, in fact been a nano implant. Now, it was nowhere to be found. Jessop 56 concluded that there was a relationship between this and the chest incision anomaly. It turned out that the cut had been made from inside the body. Again…interesting.

A nano implant could be programmed to do just about anything. Jessop 56 slipped into a thought trance to enhance his focus on the facts. If the removal of the data-trace had been a ruse, what was it hiding? The data-trace had to have been removed by the nano implant which then exited the body through the chest incision it had made. This was only clear because they had looked for engineered varietals. Normally it would have gone completely undetected.

The rest of the case simply fell into place. The victim would be unconscious if not dead from the nano implant’s actions. The implant had then severed the head, another ruse, and fled the scene.

That provided the How. The crime would not be considered solved until he came up with the Who.

New results indicated that the body had been positively identified as Julia 934. This matched the information provided by the landlord. Jessop 56 wasn’t overly surprised by this. It was always good to be sure and the DNA map was conclusive. The good news was that since there was no misdirection with respect to identification, his victim was part of the grid. Data on her would be plentiful.

He used his Guild pass-code to access the sentient-net. MAST programming came online and Jessop 56 entered Julia 934’s data coding. It wouldn’t take long now.

MAST began with the Spatial database. Since a nano implant can be initiated electronically, the guilty party could have been anywhere on Earth. This database therefore contained the names of everyone on the planet.

The second database was Temporal. Engineered varietals don’t have shelf lives so this could have been implanted at any point in Julia 934’s twenty-five years of life. Another huge database was built containing the names of all humans at least twenty-five years old. In all probability, he could have tightened this up a bit since it was unlikely that an infant planted the varietal, but for now he would cast a broad net.

The Ability search took longer, nearly ten minutes. The sentient-net did a worldwide search for someone capable of either installing an engineered varietal or contracting someone who could. A new database was constructed of more than twenty-thousand names.

The Motive database took the longest to build. A search through the victim’s life would yield any person that could have had a reason to want her dead. Using the broad-net approach, Jessop 56 had the database builder to include everyone that had even a passing acquaintance with Julia 934.

Mast indicated that it had completed building the databases. Jessop 56 told it to proceed with the final step. It would now search for names common to all four data bases.

After a moment “No Matches Found” appeared on the screen.

This only occurred when the crime was random. The Guild did not take on random killings and this was clearly not random. The use of a varietal was proof of this. It took planning, money and direct intent to use these devices. No, this was not a random crime. MAST should have been able to solve this.

Jessop sat looking at the results. He was not prepared for this. Something had gone wrong.

There was only one thing to do; he was going to have to go interactive.

After donning his suit, he entered the electrostatic chamber and immediately, he found himself standing on the sentient-net’s visual interpretation of a database. Names floated in the air all around him. He began the troubleshooting process.

Twelve hours later, he emerged from the chamber with only one solid lead; the Motive database must be flawed. He didn’t know how, but the others had been validated beyond twenty decimal places of certainty. The Motive had only a ninety-nine point eight percent chance of being correct.

The clock was ticking. Guild standards dictated that every crime must be solved in under twenty-four hours. Jessop 56 had already used nearly eighteen of those hours, more than twice as much time as any other crime in his career. He had to find out why the Motive database was flawed and be quick about it.

Not solving the crime would mean the end of his life as a detective. The Guild held its members to the highest of standards. He assumed that they would not tolerate failure. No one knew for sure since it had never come up before.

The usually disciplined mind of Jessop 56 began to falter. Not only would he lose his job, he would be humiliated. His face would be on every vid around the world. No one would hire him; he would never work again. His mate would certainly leave as soon as their contract was up next year.

With his normally detached persona caught off guard by the situation, he felt an emotion for the first time in memory. He felt fear.

‘I am the real victim here,’ he thought to himself.

His intuition gave him a virtual nudge.

His training had caught the breach. He could feel it. Somewhere in his subconscious, he had solved something and it was trying to get through to him.

What had he been thinking at the time of the intuitive kick?

‘I am the victim here!’ He was certain that had been it; but what did that mean?

The breach opened wider and suddenly he knew.

He reentered the electrostatic chamber and went to work. He manipulated the seeker-compiler to include a subroutine that created an additional category for the Motive database. This new category was created to include all of those that were motivated to injure him rather than Julia 934.

Jessop 56 re-queried MAST and in less than ten seconds, the name Trevain 272 came up.

There was no one else.

The name was a familiar one. Trevain 272's wife had been sentenced to fifty years in a Stasis Chamber in large part due to Jessop 56’s investigation. That had been more than twenty years ago.

Apparently this had not set well with Trevain 272. He had spent the next several years planning his revenge. Julia 934 had been chosen at random from the population within Jessop 56’s district. That was why MAST had failed.

Her murder was random.

Fortunately for Jessop 56, the targeted act of revenge was not.

It looked like Trevain 272 would be joining his wife sooner than he had planned.

Jessop walked out to his unmarked transport amid the cheers of his fans. The news of his success had spread quickly though the sentient-net. Now, for the first time, Jessop 56 stopped and looked at the faces of his fans. A smile crossed his face as he acknowledged them for the first time.

At his wave, the stunned crowd went wild.

Word count 1,951