Linnea Sinclair - Rhapsody In The Key of Death.pdf - Linnea Sinclair - margozap

Rhapsody In The Key of Death:

From the Case Files of Dr. Jynx San’Janeiro

by Linnea Sinclair

Psychic Investigator Jynx San’Janeiro lives for the dead. But when the dead stop communicating

with her, Jynx faces heartbreak… and her greatest fear. Is it exhaustion, or something far worse,

that causes her revenant talents to fail in the midst of a murder investigation at an exclusive

resort and casino on the rim world of Lunazula?

This wasn’t supposed to happen. The EIIs—Emotionally Intensified

Images—were as fresh as the warm blood pooling beneath the dead man’s

shoulders.

And just as lifeless.

I opened my eyes. In the shadows of the opulent hotel suite, a few feet from

where I knelt beside the body, Kieran watched, waited—unofficially, of course.

He’d insisted on accompanying me. Said it was because he hated having his best

laid plans—he’s annoyingly fond of puns—interrupted. We’d been more undressed

than dressed in our suite’s bedroom, doing what lovers often did after a night in

Lunazula’s glittering casinos and an excellent bottle of champagne, when every

pleasurable sensation had been violently wrenched from my existence. Consciously

I’d known I was safe in our suite, in Kieran’s arms. Yet all I could feel was a Racker

750 pressed hard against my breastbone. Then an excruciatingly intense flare of pain

as my killer sent three discharges of illegal Z-4 ammo tumbling through my body,

clawing, raking, stripping my insides as they spun. Whoever I was, I died, slowly it

seemed. In truth it had been less than nine minutes.

I know how long it took because I’d stared at the clock when the first

sickening chill of fear and psychic pain had flashed through me. And I was staring at

the clock now.

Nine minutes. It had taken nine minutes for me to throw on the clothes Kieran

had thrust into my hands, shove my feet into my soft boots and secure my stunner

into the waistband of my pants. I’d hesitated only long enough to snatch my

Intergalactic Conclave-issue I.D. from the dresser. The one with my holo, badge and

official title: Dr. Jynx San’Janeiro, PI.

A hotel security officer exited the elevator only seconds after I’d stepped into

the corridor. Security had responded promptly to Kieran’s call to the front desk

because Kieran was Lord Kieran Risardas, after all. The wiry, amber skinned man in

the dark blue uniform evidently hadn’t expected me as well.

“M’Lord.” He’d nodded respectfully to Kieran. His dark gaze had lingered a

bit on my hastily clothed form. The oversize v-necked sweater and leggings were

hardly seduction fare but in his mind I had no other obvious purpose. This was

Lunazula and Kieran’s name was, these days, synonymous with nobility. It had felt

good to thrust my badge in the security officer’s face, watch him recoil, choke

slightly. Play-toy , he’d mentally labeled me . Rich man’s play-toy. Hot little redhead .

Only the last two adjectives—little and redhead—were correct. The first was

about as far from fact as you could get. I was anything but hot. I’d been shivering,

my skin chilled. Death—fresh, stark, invasive—does that to most Psychic

Investigators. As I’d been a mere hotel hallway-width away from the murder, it felt

as if it were doing it double time to me.

The officer’s name tag, replete with the casino’s blue crescent moon-shaped

logo, read: V. Granville, Security Chief. His tone when he’d acknowledged my

introduction had been pure skeptic. Corpse cop , he’d tagged me, amending his initial

observation. I’ve been called worse.

“You’re sure someone's been shot?” He’d already pushed his master keycard in

the slot on the suite’s double doors as he’d asked the question, so I hadn’t bothered

to answer him. Hadn’t bother telling him, yes, I was sure there was a dead man on

the other side of the doors. A man very recently murdered. Which meant V.

Granville had a bigger problem than his squeamishness at having a Psychic

Investigator at his side.

He had a murderer on the loose in his exclusive hotel.

Now he had that same PI kneeling before the sprawled, bloodied form of the

man’s body, reliving again and again—through the Emotionally Intensified

Images—the spike of fear, the hard feel of the gun, the low ugly growl of a man’s

voice, then pain. Searing, ripping, clawing pain.

But nothing else.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. More than feel, more than hear, I was

supposed to be able to see what the dead man, one Pavin Truedell according to

Granville, had witnessed in his last minutes alive.

I saw nothing. Fear of a different kind gripped my gut.

Granville hovered. “Stand by,” he said for the second time into his comm

badge. It crackled with questions, information and demands : “All exits sealed.

Security on every floor. We need that damned description!”

Yes, they did. I couldn’t give them one.

I sat back on my haunches, sucked in a long breath. Forced a word, a medical

term I never wanted to hear from my mind. Went into the EIIs again, listened instead

to two male voices that were becoming as familiar to me as my own:

… “Who’s there?”

A rustle of fabric, a sound in the quiet of my bedroom startled me awake. I

leaned up on my elbows, the sheet sliding part way down my chest. I could feel a

slight movement of air against my skin; heard a small hush of a sound. But no

answer to my question.

How many drinks had I had? More than I’d wanted to, but the music in the

bar had been so nice and the song, Blue Moon Rhapsody , my favorite. I hadn’t

heard someone play the piano like that in years. Musical ability was not one of my

talents.

“Why not, you’ve got good hands?” Dionosio used to tease, then laugh that

grinding laugh of his. He knew why.

But he was right. I had good hands. I flexed my fingers against the soft bed

sheets. Long ago I’d discovered that a good way to identify the distance of an

unknown sound is to make a known sound of your own. The bed sheets were an

arm’s length from my ears. I heard the scrunch of the fabric clearly.

Not so the soft, smooth noise that woke me. Not so the hush of a sound that

had disappeared into the corner of my bedroom. Perhaps I was wrong, and it was

only a dream that had awakened me. I tilted my face, listening again...

“The lights were off in his suite when the murderer came in,” I told Granville,

then glanced at Kieran. His concern washed over me. He knew I was struggling. And

had known me long enough to know that wasn’t routine.

It had been a little more than a year and a half since his first wife had been

murdered, and I’d been called in, four days late, on the case. The EIIs had been

fading, but they’d been intact enough for me to see Vandora’s murderer through her

own eyes.

And see other things, as well. Things I’d picked up telepathically, or by using

just plain common sense. Things that had told me Lord Kieran Risardas was

someone as out of place in this life as I was, though for different reasons.

His reasons didn’t bother me any more than my being a PI and a revenant

bothered him. A duo of the damned, we often joked.

Granville wasn’t as forgiving. “You can’t get a description? I thought you

people could tell everything.”

“I can tell you,” I said, running one hand through my hair, snagging a few

knots as if that could clear the blankness in my mind, “that the murderer was male,

about the same height as the victim.”

… Something hard shoved against my chest as I swung my feet off the edge

of the bed. A callused hand grasped my elbow, yanked me up.

“What the—!” I stumbled forward, cracked my forehead against my

attacker’s. But the hard cold metal against my skin stopped any further movement.

“Quiet!” a harsh voice rumbled in my ear. Something pungent on the

man’s breath reached my nose. It was a smell I couldn’t identify, not yet. I knew it,

but...

The gun in my chest was of greater concern. I had more than just good

hands. I had good ears, too. I’d heard the low, distinct humming noise of a fully

charged Racker 750. Small, easily concealed, very expensive. I’d often thought

about carrying one, but my marksmanship skills were worse than my nonexistent

musical abilities. Good hands notwithstanding.

“What do you want?” I managed to whisper. Quietly. When a man points a

Racker 750 at you and demands quiet, you comply...

The information on the Racker wasn’t new. I’d told Granville about the

weapon when we’d first spotted the body lying in front of the living room’s large

window. Through the gauzy drapery drawn across it, the lights of the moon’s

spaceport twinkled dimly in the distance. Not the commercial spaceport, but the

private one for the use of the casino’s privileged guests. Like Pavin Truedell, whose

good hands hadn’t been able to prevent his own death.

“The murderer had an odor.” I thought again of Truedell’s sensation of

disgust, yet familiarity. “It was unpleasant. Probably from something he ate, or

drank. Or perhaps a medical condition.” Though I couldn’t think of what, given the

advances in medical science in the past century.

“But what did he look like?”

“I haven’t found that out yet.”

Granville’s lip curled but any further comment was stopped by Kieran’s

forward movement—the firmness of his step and the hard set of his shoulders

clearly sending a message. Granville blanked his face and I could feel a trickle of

apprehension shoot through him. Whatever high society nobles he’d catered to

before hadn’t prepared him for Kieran Risardas. But then, unbeknownst to Granville,

this wasn’t just Lord Kieran who glared down at him. It was Captain Risardas, the

Butcher of Sinder Station, dead now, as far as Granville was concerned, for over

five hundred years. A man vilified by corrupt historians.

Not the noble now lauded for his generosity.

Sometimes I envied his chance at metamorphosis, courtesy of a temporal

anomaly that no longer existed. It was the one way we’re very different: he’d

escaped the past. I lived in it.

The doors of the suite slid open, pulling me back to the present. A silvery

med ’droid with the emblem of the coroner’s office on its chest-plate glided in. A

dark-haired woman in a tailored brown suit hurried behind the ’droid, her wrist

comm raised to her mouth. She had the high cheekbones, exotic features of a

Chi’ann princess. But her voice and demeanor were one hundred per cent street-cop

in command. “Yeah, yeah. I’m on site now. Coroner’s here too. Tell Alby he’d

better have the report in my files when I return. Or he’ll be back in uniform,

scrounging for doughnuts by noon tomorrow. Today,” she corrected herself, tapped

her unit off with her thumb.

Today. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning. I’d been working Truedell’s

EIIs for almost an hour.

“Lieutenant Iago, Homicide.” She switched a look from Granville to Kieran to

me.

I rose. She extended her hand.

“Dr. San’Janeiro, Psychic Investigation Division 1.” I reached for my badge

tucked into the waistband of my pants so I could pretend not to see how quickly

she’d withdrawn her hand. “I was across the hall when the murder took place.”

Granville’s name tag proclaimed his identity. Iago thrust her chin towards

Kieran. “And you?” Her eyes narrowed slightly but not in a negative way. She’d

probably recognize Kieran in a moment from the society vids or the political ones or,

if she were really savvy, some very old historicals. Then there’d be the usual offhand

comment about family resemblances to a certain infamous pirate captain—a

handsome bastard, even if he had been the devil incarnate. And Kieran could charm

her with his smile and slightly arched eyebrow, and defer knowledge of his ill-famed

ancestor. But for now he was simply unknown male. Tall, dark and gorgeous, but

unknown male.

He inclined his head slightly as he answered her question. “Kieran Risardas.”

I felt recognition hit her. Tall, dark, gorgeous and incredibly wealthy. A smile

played across her mouth. “Acquainted with the deceased, Lord Kieran?”

“I’m Dr. San’Janeiro’s husband. Neither one of us knew the deceased. We

had the misfortune of being in the room across the hall.”

Her smile thinned, turned professional. “What do you have?” she asked me.

I told her. Her professional smile turned to puzzlement, then a frown. “You

felt the whole murder happen and you can’t give me a description?”

“I’m still working on that.”

“You said you’re Division 1.”

“Yes.” Division 1 was the top PI outfit in the Conclave.

“You’re new, then. Who’s your chief?”

“I am.” I’d received two promotions since the Vandora Mar-Risardas murder.

Which was why Kieran now felt angry and more than overprotective at Lieutenant

Iago’s insinuations, and Lieutenant Iago stared at me in disbelief. Granville, evidently

bolstered by Iago’s presence, had returned to smirking.

“The lights were off in the room.” I motioned to the gauzy curtain covering

the large window. “Other than the spaceport, there’s nothing but forest out there. No

good light source.”

Two ’droids appeared in the doorway with an anti-grav gurney, a forensic

tech in white overalls behind them. The tech holoed the suite, then scanned for prints

while Iago and the coroner examined the body.

I stepped back, giving them room to work.

Kieran lightly touched my shoulder, his mouth inches from my ear. “I need to

check messages. Be back in a few minutes.” Then he was striding for the open

doorway. I wondered only briefly how many millions of credits would move at his

command in those few minutes. Or was he simply uncomfortable with so much

police presence? Old habits…

“Can they take him?” Iago’s question drew my attention back to her.

I nodded. The ’droids zipped Truedell’s remains in a body bag and headed

back to the morgue.

Maybe the autopsy could tell them something. I sure as couldn’t.

Granville however, offered Iago the hotel’s records on Truedell. She’d pick

those up on her way downstairs, run his ID through CCIC for priors while the rest

of her squad searched the hotel for a man with a Racker 750.

“I want to stay here a bit longer, go through his things,” I told Iago as Kieran

returned. She shrugged diffidently, her low opinions of PIs dropping lower due to

my lack of usable information, and barked out an order to a uniformed officer in the

hallway. She handed Kieran her card. “I’ll be downstairs. Comm me if she gets

anything.”

Or comm me, anyway? That was unspoken, but I felt it, heard it. Saw her

undressing my husband in her mind.

Which was more than I’d been able to get from Pavin Truedell’s EIIs.

Why? I sat on the silk-covered sofa after she left, scrubbed at my eyes with

the heels of my hands. All the useless platitudes drifted by. I’d been working too

hard. Taking too many cases. Kieran had been commenting, no, complaining about

that for several months now. You need some time off, he’d said. But the usual

vacation spots didn’t interest me. I hated crowds, hated the close packed density of

humanity that I could never totally shut out of my mind. It was why I’d finally agreed

to come to Lunazula. The playground of the mega-wealthy who could afford the

rarity of privacy in this overcrowded quadrant of the galaxy. Only four large suites to

a floor. Private dining rooms, gaming rooms.

And a murder, for the first time, I couldn’t solve. Might never be able to solve

again. Once in a lifetime. Because with something like this, there were no second

chances.

There are things worse than death. Being born not only psychic but also a

revenant means I exist in both worlds: that of the living and of the dead. It’s why

Linnea Sinclair - Rhapsody In The Key of Death.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: