Shadow Maze

By Lee Killough

Detectives Janna Brill and Mama Maxwell are chasing shadows. They have an attempted robbery of a political fund-raiser, another of a society bash, and a dead billionaire businessman. All under the eyes of state-of-the-art security. The brass want the case solved fast, but there are no fast answers.

There are plenty of witnesses and security footage. Plenty of suspects, too: politicians, drag queens, spies, industrialists, scientists, even robots. But nothing helps identify the assailants, and all the clues only say the crimes were impossible to commit...

Editorial Review
Grittily realistic police procedural ... recommended heartily.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BWL Publishing Inc.
• Release date: Jul 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228613947

Lee Killough

Lee Killough has been storytelling since the age of four or five, when she started making up her own bedtime stories, then later, her own episodes of her favorite radio and TV shows. Because she loves both SF and mysteries, her work combines the two genres. Although published as SF, most of her novels are actually mysteries with SF or fantasy elements...with a preference--thanks to a childhood hooked on TV cop shows--for cop protagonists.

Book preview

Shadow Maze

Brill/Maxwell #3

Lee Killough

Digital ISBNs:

EPUB 978-0-2286-1394-7

Kindle 978-0-2286-1395-4

PDF 978-0-2286-1396-1

Print ISBNs

LSI Print 978-0-2286-1398-5

B&N Print 978-0-2286-1399-2

Amazon Print 978-0-2286-1397-8

Copyright 2020 by Lee Killough

Cover art Michelle Lee

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any for, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Chapter One

Saturday morning

It had to be the most tensely awaited case assignment of the year . . . with every detective on the Saturday day-watch of the Shawnee County PD’s Crimes Against Persons unit praying to be given some other incident from Friday night’s mayhem . . . a murder, rape, assault, robbery. Anything.

Those who failed to catch the news last night or on the way into headquarters that dawn received the details at the unit door from their hears-all tells-all clerk Pass-the-Word Morello. Leaving everyone tense when their commander Lieutenant Hari Vradel began the briefing on overnight cases.

Four armed males had entered the Rotunda Ballroom of the Capitol Sheraton Hotel with the intent — aided by a waiter and another accomplice outside the ballroom — of robbing the three hundred rich and socially prominent guests attending a Democratic Party dinner. Though security officers prevented the crime itself, the social status of the intended victims meant pressure for fast apprehension of the perpetrators . . . who had escaped. Pressure all the more intense because two of those would-be victims were related to the SCPD’s Director Thomas Paget, his father-in-law and mother-in-law, ex-Governor Hadley Jubelt and wife.

Detective Janna Brill gloomily reviewed her current cases. She and partner Mama Maxwell had just two, the Maguiers rape and the Cobb hit-and-run. Which their burly commander well knew, standing up there, slate in hand. Drawing this case would make a hat trick of the day’s wretched beginning — the gloom of continuing April monsoons on top of sleep lost to Witch and Bitch, the fem couple upstairs who had spent yet another night shrieking insults and hurling household objects at each other. Breaking off finally about five am. Just in time for Janna to roll out and be at the office by six. If only the two would make up or move out.

For that matter, she reflected . . . when would Mama? It had been months since she offered him temporary use of her spare bedroom after his cohab kicked him out.

Vradel’s voice jerked her attention back to him. Cruz and Singer, you’re it. Hand your current cases to Roth and Calabrese. Cruz, you have the lead.

Emile Cruz — grey-eyed and blond as Janna despite his name — took a breath and nodded. Daniel Singer played it for drama, face sagging in dismay, so his sandy mustache drooped around the corners of his mouth, followed by dropping his head to his desk.

While the rest of the unit laughed, they also sighed in relief. Janna included.

The rest of the unit but one. Mama. Through the transparent crime board rising between the backs of her and Mama’s L-shaped desks, Janna read his disappointment in every bony line of the body even longer than her own lanky six feet. Count on Madman Maxwell to be different. He marched not just to a different drummer but a whole alternative band. An oddball, from the cue ball gleam of his Dutch chocolate scalp to his blinding choice in fashion. Today, a cyberskein tunic and pants programmed for a harlequin pattern in neon orange and green. It made her own khaki cargos, maroon tee, and tan jacket dull by comparison.

Vradel did not laugh. You done? I don’t need to tell you the scrutiny we’ll be under in this case. We need to look strictly professional at all times. And exercise tact.

Singer straightened.

For the rest of you, you relaxed too soon. To demonstrate due diligence to the Tenth floor, two teams will work this case. The second is . . . He appeared to study his slate, but Janna suspected he did it to drag out the suspense. Brill and Maxwell. Give your cases to Frost and Desch.

She groaned inwardly. Crap. Shit.

But Mama lit up, grin gleaming in the darkness of his face.

All the guests closest to the rippers gave statements, but others were released last night without doing so. Statements taken have been uploaded, also vids of the rip recorded by vigraphers the county committee had there to immortalize the dinner. Interview Room One is yours for conferencing. Wrap these rags as fast as possible.

Hell, yes. Janna started between her fellow detectives’ desks toward the interview room.

Mama strode ahead to tap on Cruz’s shoulder harness. Let’s use the tank.

Cruz frowned back at him. Why?

Janna’s question, too. The Scene Investigation team had made a holo of the scene, of course, but what did they record, other than the aftermath debris? Unlike that of a murder scene, which gave them a victim to re-examine on playback.

Brows rose around the room. Vradel’s highest of all, though he said nothing.

Mama said, I promise you, it’s worth it.

Janna eyed him. However brainbent Mama could be, sometimes he bent useful directions. Sometimes.

Cruz must consider it worth a try. After a moment, he changed direction past Morello’s desk to the holo tank. Then, as the tank door slid closed behind them, said, All right, why come here?

To see the rip.

Cruz’s brows rose. Okay. But why look at the vids here?

Mama grinned. Because Vivid had three vigraphers there, and an ace new night tech in Cyber, Lakshmi Chadda, has stitched those together into a quasi-holo.

The three of them stared at him.

Is that possible? Singer said. How do you know about it?

A gleam in Mama’s eyes brought Janna a hunch. Because he was there, weren’t you, Mama. Why? When had he left the apartment? After she went to bed with her head under the pillow?

He shrugged. I caught a late news flash about the rip, but when I logged into Data on my slate, nothing had been uploaded yet. So, I came in to learn what I could.

No need to ask why. She narrowed her eyes. You hoped we might catch the case. No wonder he looked so disappointed when Vradel named Cruz and Singer, thinking he had been denied the drama of pulling this vid rabbit out of his hat. She bared her teeth. Something you never thought worth mentioning to your partner on the way in this morning?

Cruz thrust an arm between them. Save his black and blue for somewhere private. How did you end up in Cyber?

The Chang Gang were here giving Lt. Drexel a quick review of the case before writing their report.

Night-watch team Peter and Jules Chang, no relation despite their last names.

The lieutenant asked if they had any lead on the rippers that would let them wrap them tonight, she hoped, and they told her no, but Cyber was currently running facial recognition on vid images from the ballroom. So, I went to see possible results and met Shmee.

Who was stitching vids together? Cruz fished his slate spindle out of the scabbard pocket in his cargos and pulled open the screen. Imaginative thing to do.

Mama still had that gleam. Janna said, I’m thinking someone inspired her.

He gave a modest shrug. She had the vids from the vigraphers running on three screens, to pull images of the rippers for FR. With the action getting caught from three angles, I said wouldn’t it be interesting if it were possible to bodge those into a 3D image. It might tell us more than the straight vids. The idea excited Shmee. So, while I read witness statements, she gave it a try . . . and succeeded. Nothing against your favorite cybermaestro Musa Reyal, Bibi, but I have to say she is an almega cybermage in her own right. Mama reached for the wall controls. Up to the rip, the vigraphers were all over the ballroom, so to set the scene we start with a straight vid.

The far wall lit up, showing the Rotunda Ballroom, large enough to divide into four still-generous spaces. Round tables set for the dinner occupied half of it. Affluent party members filled the other half with color, the glitter of jewelry, and a deafening babble. A female bartender mixed drinks behind a cash bar in the happy hour half of the ballroom. Her partner — male, with a curly mop of auburn hair and a matching mustache like great wings — filled the shelves of two waitrons — six-foot brass-colored columns girdled with shelves and the top quarter pierced by sensor openings — with glasses of red and white wine. They cruised the room distributing wine, returning to the bar when sensors registered their shelves either empty or containing just empties.

Quite a fashion show, Mama said.

Janna shook her head. Trust him to focus on the clothes, though he was right. The males all wore tuxedos, of course. Tunics divided diagonally on the front, the upper panel a metallic color or opalescent white in contrast to the rest of the tux. Bittersweet, turquoise, iridescent green, and burgundy appeared to be the popular colors this year. A few older style tuxes had decorative buttons down the diagonal. The women wore a whole spectrum of colors and fabrics in all styles and lengths, from layered veils, bodysuits, and skin dresses with skirts so tight Janna wondered how the wearers managed to walk.

Cruz, she noticed, divided his attention between the vid and his slate screen. At one point, he grimaced. Those other guests Vradel mentioned being released without making statements? Looks like it’s nearly half, on orders of Paget, who showed up at the scene.

Probably to be expected . . . responding to a call from his father-in-law. So today would include tracking down high muckies in offices — or more likely at home or country clubs — for their statements, rather than expecting them to come in here. Could she talk Mama into turning off the pattern in his suit?

Guests slid sideways out of view as the vigrapher moved between them . . . making sure to record close-ups of notables. Ex-Governor Jubelt smiled for the camera. Also Senator Andrew Docking, identifiable even before he turned around by the jug-handle ears voters found endearing. Two fems accompanied him, the sharp, roving gaze of the younger one, a Nordic blonde, identifying her as personal security.

The vid caught glimpses of two other vigraphers, the Mohawk ridge of their skullcap cameras, and lens over one eye, giving them the look of cyborgs.

Janna started assessing the room for possible entry points the rippers used. The wall design replicated one level of the Statehouse rotunda, showing historical scenes between pillars, corridor entrances, and statuary. In the image, she identified four sets of real double doors down one side of the ballroom — one for each section when divided — and a service door in the opposite wall of each, presumably opening into a service hall. One double door stood open, revealing a scan arch decorated with bunting and tended by two guards in Beria Security’s dark green bodysuits and red B shoulder patch.

The scan arch verified that invitation names matched not only the guards’ list but the individuals’ scibs — the social care-ID-bank/debit chip embedded in everyone’s forearm — and would identify and keep out potentially dangerous items. Such as weapons.

When the door by the bar opened for the male waiter to push out a cart of empty glasses and return with more bottles of wine, Janna glimpsed another Beria uniform in the service hall.

Presently the mustached waiter closed the mezzanine doors, giving an I’m-just-following-orders shrug when the guards outside frowned, then crossed the room and went out the service door.

Mama said, His name is Aristo Frederik Salmas.

And he’s giving Dan ’stache envy. Cruz nudged his partner.

Singer grunted. Think how much time he has to spend grooming it every day.

Cruz grinned. That sounds like sour grapes.

The rip’s coming up, Mama said.

Seconds later, at eighteen-fifty-six, a crash of glassware and human exclamations — male cursing, feminine cries — rose above the babble of conversations. The view blurred as the vigrapher spun toward the commotion.

Then, the image leaped from the wall to fill the tank with a scene reduced a fourth from life-sized, letting them see over the crowd to the source of the commotion — a waitron turned whirling dervish near the tables, sending the city’s elite fleeing glassware flung from the shelves.

Not a true holo. The stitched vids turned humans and waitron into angular columns of joined flat surfaces, all with holos’ giveaway edge translucency. Still, an impressive projection.

The waitron stopped spinning. As it did, four walrus-mustached males in scarlet tuxes backed from the retreating guests into the space around the waitron. Hands came from behind their backs, holding boxy black firearms with a red-tipped muzzle and a folding stock they tucked against their shoulders.

Janna swore. BDF66’s. Mexico’s equivalent to a mini Uzi. Popularly called the Beso, beso de fuego, kiss of fire. A current favorite of bodyguards, paramilitaries, gangs, and serious felons. Capable of firing anything short of incendiaries. Only an inch of magazine protruded below these pistol grips, but even that small a load of segs could inflict horrific damage in a two or three-second spray.

The guests froze. Curses and squeals turned to gasps as the grinning rippers waved the weapons at them.

In a raspy mechanical voice, the waitron began, Lay all cells and vicorders—

Only to be interrupted by two guards — one male, one female — charging in from the service hall with weapons drawn. The nearest ripper turned, and the female folded, dropping to her knees.

SI found a miniseg in her vest, according to the Changs.

Janna sucked in a sympathetic breath. Even protected by a vest, getting hit with a seg hurt like hell.

Simultaneously, something crashed in the rear of the room.

Abort, the waitron yelled.

Mama said, Here our holo collapses because we lost a vigrapher, who turned to see what happened.

While still projected into the tank, the remaining recording flattened the images into animated paper dolls.

Rolling faster than Janna had ever seen a waitron move, this one shoved the guards aside and shot out the service door — held open by the mustached waiter — with the rippers backing through to cover their retreat. The guards threw themselves at the closing door as the female staggered to her feet. After pushing through with difficulty, they disappeared into the hall.

Cruz said, Stop there, back up to before the guard is shot, and freeze. After Mama did so, Cruz waded through the guest images to the rippers. What was that noise?

Senator Docking’s bodyguard took him and his wife out the far set of mezzanine doors, followed by other guests at the rear. That comes from a statement by one of the guests who went out with them.

Cruz nodded. If not them, someone else would have escaped. He shook his head. These rags are zipwits not to realize the group is too big to rip like this. Too big to control, even surrounding them the way pros would have — you know 911s went out from cells as soon as the rippers appeared — and too big under the best of circumstances for scooping the glitter and escaping before security and law enforcement arrived.

The question, Janna said, is how they entered in the first place. There are just the four service doors, and the scan arch from the mezzanine. The other mezzanine doors will have been locked from the outside. But they wouldn’t have gotten past the scan with weapons, and in the service hall, been spotted by the guards there.

Cruz said, The waiter accomplice probably brought the weapons earlier that day and hid them in the ballroom.

Speaking of the scan arch . . . Singer pointed at the double door image on the tank wall. The guards there must have heard the commotion. Why weren’t they trying to break in?

Roy Bingham and Lou Hefley, Mama said. They’d been put into orbit. Hotel surveillance recorded a jon in vigrapher gear approaching the guards after the waiter closed the doors, and apparently he sprayed the guards with something. Tests in Charter’s ER determined he used a nebulized mixture of Percurare, Nirvana, and Lotus. Possibly delivered via something rigged in the supposed camera.

Janna grimaced. Crap. A triple punch . . . Nirvana and Lotus to send them to fairyland after being paralyzed by the Percurare. The latter once touted by bleeding heart groups as law enforcement’s non-lethal alternative to bullets. Until banned because sometimes doses paralyzed more than muscles, turning Percurare lethal as bullets. Deadly for officers, too, when the five to ten seconds before it took effect let aggressors continue an attack.

Percurare? Cruz shook his head. Christ. We’re lucky it didn’t paralyze their lungs and suffocate them. Do we know how the guards are doing?

The Changs told Drexel the drugs had been counteracted, but it seems the antagonists for Nirvana and Lotus don’t play well together, so the guards have been sedated to sleep off those effects.

Then, we’ll interview them once they’re awake. Cruz blew out his breath. If the Lotus will let them remember anything. He eyed the rippers. So back to the question of these rags’ entry. Thoughts?

Singer said, They’re wearing tuxes and appeared out of the crowd. They couldn’t have faked invites and let themselves be scanned, so maybe the waiter unlocked one of the other mezzanine doors for them to sneak in and mingle.

Mama shook his head. It’s a good thought except for hotel security surveillance, and the scan arch guards would have spotted anyone trying that. Also, in the statements I read, they weren’t noticed before they appeared up front. That’s hard to believe. Look at them. A touch on the wall control enlarged the holo to life-size. Forget the mustaches they obviously slapped on at the last minute — Mr. Eyebrow Ring’s mustache is barely clinging on — you can tell they’re not used to wearing tuxes. The jon with the dimpled chin looks comfortable, but even his tux doesn’t really fit. For this crowd, posers and crashers might as well be wearing signs.

Along with Singer, Janna waded through the guest images to the rippers. Mama was right. The tuxes lacked the tailoring of those on other males in the room. Obvious rentals.

So were the rippers, she suspected. Aside from a few individual distinguishing characteristics — freckles, the eyebrow ring, that dimpled chin, a scarred left hand — they looked almost interchangeable. All in their twenties and a uniformly thin five-eight to five-nine, with brown hair, gathered identically at the neck. Wigs in addition to their mustaches? Faces so ordinary — except for the freckles, dimpled chin, and eyebrow ring — they faded from memory in seconds. However, with only the rental tuxes to make them stand out, and the legitimate guests no doubt more focused on meeting the attending pooh-bahs, perhaps it was unsurprising no one remembered them.

Four unremarkable jons, yet something about them struck Janna as familiar.

Their expressions distracted her from a mental search for where she’d met them before. Expressions of malicious enjoyment at intimidating the high muckies before them. Not what she expected of professionals. Amateurs, then, as well as zipwits?

Singer said, You think there’s any chance facial recognition can identify them?

Dillon Wygnanski’s trying. Mama joined the rest of them up by the rippers. He did a reconstruct to remove the mustaches, guessing at their mouths, and is running them through civilian, criminal, military, and school databases. When I checked on the way up this morning, he reported — sounding very frustrated — to having four hundred fifty-eight possibles already, with none higher than a sixty-one percent probable match.

Janna frowned. The criminal databases had given them no good possibilities so far? Damn. Amateurs or not, she would have expected at least some minor offenses. Otherwise, how did the rip tickman find them? Did he, or she, advertise on social media, offering a part-time, non-specified job for individuals of a certain physical description, and picked those of the right moral flexibility from the responders? They needed to check that out.

Singer said, Maybe the waiter let them in a far service door at the last minute. The guards and guests didn’t notice them with everyone focused on the waitron.

Janna said, They were already up around the waitron when the guards ran in.

So maybe the guards collaborated. That could also explain why the rippers escaped.

Janna read scepticism in Mama’s furrowed scalp and Cruz’s frown. She felt it, too. Beria, the area’s top security company providing guards as well as security systems, had the reputation of rigorously vetting personnel before hiring and bonding them. Still, the guards were human and needed to be questioned. Even being shot did not eliminate them, since they knew their vests protected them.

Did you read their statements, too, Maxwell?

Mama nodded. Tyra Siskin and Lars Tarney. If they were complicit, they wouldn’t admit it, of course. According to them, when the waiter, Salmas, came into the hall before the waitron malfunctioned, he locked open the door of the elevator to the kitchen. When glass began breaking in the ballroom, he started back through the service door with a stack of gift shop bags from a tray cart in the hall. Siskin and Tarney pushed past him into the ballroom, where Siskin was shot, then the waitron shoved them aside to get itself and the rippers into the hall. When Tarney and Siskin forced their way back into the hall, they found the cart had been tipped over to block the door. That had delayed them five seconds, so Tarney estimated, by which time the hallway was empty. But they saw the elevator doors closing, leading them to believe the rippers were taking it to the kitchen. So they ran back through the ballroom, down the mezzanine stairs to the lobby, and then through the restaurant to the kitchen.

Why that route? Maybe deliberately to delay arriving in the kitchen? Singer said.

Cruz said, We’ll check it out at the hotel.

Mama said, According to their statements, they arrived to find kitchen staff yelling about jons with weapons and pointing at a door. That led to a supply receiving area, where regular hotel security also arrived and found the receiving door open and the bottom section of the waitron sitting inside.

Bottom section of the waitron? Singer said.

Mama said, In tall ones like that, the section with the electronics above the shelves is a separate piece that bayonets on. Taking it makes sense, keeping us from examining the remote control that had to be installed there.

Waitron, but no sign of the rippers? Cruz said.

So Tarney and Siskin say.

And no help from surveillance. Cruz frowned at his slate. Peter Chang reports that the cam at the door went out shortly after the rippers retreated. So did all the surveillance in the south parking area. The rippers must have had a vehicle waiting for them, but we don’t know what kind.

Singer said, We ought to be able to identify something in Traffic’s images from intersections by the hotel.

Janna said, We need to learn about the waitron. If it was the hotel’s, who foxed its electronics?

Maybe the waiter, Cruz said.

Mama shook his head. Salmas doesn’t have that skill. I ran him while I was in Cyber. He pulled out his slate and opened it. Aristo Frederik Salmas. Age 29, born in Alma, Kansas, to Anton and Victoria Salmas, dairy farmers. Two older male siblings and a younger female sibling. No criminal record. Studied Business Administration one year here at Washburn, then switched to Fine Arts for another year, taking drawing and sculpture classes before dropping out and going to work at the Sheraton. No mention of any comp tech training.

Then whoever goes to the hotel needs to learn what they can about him there.

What about the jon who drugged the mezzanine guards? Janna said. He just walked away?

Cruz consulted his slate. Chang says no one knew to stop him then. A review of surveillance later caught him heading past the restaurant to a hallway that would take him to the receiving area but lost him when the cams went out. The vigrapher disguise obscured most of his face as well. We’ll have to see what kind of description we can get from Bingham and Hefley. He took a breath. "All right. Let’s