Story Excerpt

The Return of Tom Dillion
by Harry Lang

Characters from this story previously appeared in “Hothouse Orchids” (January/February 2023).

*   *   *

Police detective Hector Kovack couldn’t take the bullet back.

He lay in the gray, predawn ooze of a hungover Martian Tuesday morning, twisting the thought with all his might. Or trying. Drunk, hungover or sober, the truth wouldn’t twist. No matter how many questions he answered for Internal Affairs or how long they kept him chained to a desk or how much bootleg gin he drank, Hector Kovack would always be the cop that blew his brother’s face to smithereens with a .45. Big gun, especially for a scrawny native Martian trained solely in the use of nonlethal shock weapons.

He investigated a murder, the first ever in the history of human-settled Mars. He discovered the Jane Doe victim was his mother. She was tortured to death and buried in the desert by his brother Victor. He got a good, hard grip and pursued his brother with all restraint, discipline, and professionalism. It wasn’t enough. On a dark street with no good options, Victor shot him in the chest. He grabbed the wrong weapon and shot back. . . .

Pale sunlight beamed through Hector’s bedroom window, hit his eyes like missiles and woke up the snakes in his belly. He made it to the bathroom, counted out the pills to return him to the human race, washed his face, looked in the mirror.

Victor looked back. Sometimes he was in a pool of blood with a smoking hole between his eyes. Sometimes he was the little brother, laughing at a dumb dad joke or singing happy birthday.

Hector couldn’t stand to go to bed at night because he knew what waited in his dreams, so he drank himself into a stupor and hoped it would turn into dreamless sleep. He couldn’t stand to wake up in the morning or go in to the precinct because he knew what waited in the dull, dirty sunlight of rusty old Mars.

Hector Kovack couldn’t stand it.

*   *   *

“How about some lunch?”

Lieutenant Ray McGill never stopped trying to feed his former partner. The stocky, gray crew-cut Earthling theorized that Martians were skinny because they were too stubborn to eat right. Mrs. McGill would be proud of her boy’s efforts to spread health and happiness through food.

“I’m not hungry,” Kovack said, busily pushing pixels across columns of reports nobody would ever read because that was his job. That and picking lint from the black-and-gray uniform he’d hung up when he made detective, then brushed off when he was put on probation.

“So what? You’re never hungry. Stretch your legs, then. I’m going to the D-ville. Come with me.”

He was a lieutenant, after all. Officer Kovack signed out, locked the computer, and grabbed his stick and crown. An empty holster was strapped securely to his thigh. Cops called that a dunce cap.

Kovack’s cozy cubby was neatly tucked into a corner of the precinct’s basement, around the corner from IT and down the corridor from the evidence lockers. A dark, nasty place, no matter how many lights were turned on, with the same musty smell that haunted basements since the first humans dug the first holes to store extra stuff they didn’t want cluttering the rest of the house. One of those lockers held a 3D-printed .45 caliber handgun with his fingerprints and a .32 with his brother Victor’s.

McGill ignored the Emergency Exit Only! sign glowing above the airtight hatch opposite Kovack’s dusty desk. The hatch opened onto the Underground Main, the broad tunnel providing access to the buried 75 percent of Planet Four Corporate Settlement D, one of eight settlements spreading themselves across the southern end of Chryse Planitia. If he wanted to, Kovack could scurry to and from his apartment without ever poking his head above ground. He usually wanted to.

It was a ten-minute walk along the Main to the D-ville Café. Now that he was back in uniform, Kovack strode proud and fierce, showing all the would-be Dillingers and Lex Luthors who was who and what was what. The very image of security, justice, and swift retribution. With an empty holster.

McGill made small talk about riding the mag-rail through the tunnels under the neighborhoods of Southwest Philadelphia or patrolling the transit platforms and access ways of his old beat in the ever-churning section called the Meadows. White noise for listening ears. There were things on McGill’s mind. Roving surveillance was taken for granted in the streets above and the corridors below but was prohibited in places of business.

A healthy lunch crowd filled the small underground D-ville Café, but Margie Bulack, the energetic owner and barista, made sure McGill and Kovack had peace and quiet. She’d had some difficulties with the handsome but icy Detective Kovack in the past, but seeing him reduced to a uniform gave her no satisfaction. Margie wasn’t above slipping him some bootleg gin when he seemed to need it. But never in front of the lieutenant.

“Here’s the latest,” said McGill after the drone flew away with their order. He leaned forward, speaking low, like he was leaking classified information. “We found the remains of Janice Dupree and Ralph Jones. Same MO as the rest. They had to bust up a concrete pad under some new switchgear at the North 2 substation to dig them up. That makes twenty-three victims, which matches the number of cognizant avatars found by the Regional Attorney’s net search. God willing, there won’t be more.”

“As if God was willing there should be any,” said Kovack. Something tweaked his antenna. He scanned the upstanding faces of hardworking Martians and Earthlings on assignment chowing down on Bulack’s fine vegetarian fare. “It’s not my problem.”

“Snap out of it, Hector,” said McGill.

“I’ll do that, Lieutenant. A week from next Tuesday. Excuse me.”

McGill watched tall, dark, and morose Officer Kovack thread his way across the crowded floor with the same spidery gait as all the native Martians. The young man had been through a lot. Until a few months ago, Hector Kovack was just a good detective keeping order in a small town on the Martian frontier, investigating halfhearted financial crimes, identity manipulation scams, and the occasional bootleg gin distillery. Thanks to solid social engineering, the population virtually policed itself.

Then a long, black box got dug up at a construction site. The box contained a dead, mutilated Earthling. It was the first murder on Mars, and Detective Kovack happened to get the call.

Kovack quickly discovered that the body in the box was a victim of native Martian malcontents known as Hothouse Orchids. Their complaint was simple. They resented being born as weaklings confined to domes and tunnels, with no possibility of ever breathing the free air of Mother Earth. They were the oppressed residue of humanity’s obsession with planetary expansion. They would suffer in silence but not in idleness.

Their options were limited, but their imaginations recognized no boundaries. They developed cognizant avatars as convincing online replacements for carefully chosen victims and elaborate narratives to cover up the physical absence of said victims. They were obsessed with twentieth-century American Earth, source of the madness behind their predicament, so they adopted the colorful patois of old gangsters and equipped themselves with the monstrous firearms of the time.

They fell upon their victims, tortured them to death, ripped out teeth, cut off fingertips and toes, and gouged microchips from heads and hands. Then they hid their unidentifiable remains under the frozen, irradiated dirt of their hateful little world.

All of this was uncovered by Hector Kovack, a cop doing his duty. He discovered these things just in time to stop an outbreak of general mayhem, the next step in the Orchids’ unhinged program.

But not in time to save the people who mattered most. The Earthling in the box turned out to be his mother. Her killer was his brother. By the time the case was closed and his family destroyed, Kovack had been beaten once and shot twice. But all he could feel was guilt, failure, and more guilt.

Ray McGill understood all of it. His partner was reeling and only time could straighten him out. But there was no time. The Orchids were just warming up. Kovack was the world’s leading expert on the what, how, and why of their operations. He would be needed, regardless of his emotional state or the petty antagonism of the political parasites infesting the command structure. McGill tried to keep him primed, but it was uphill all the way.

Kovack stopped at a table with a sole occupant, a sharp dresser with a pricey gray jacket and tie from Earth, a fat, jeweled ring on his left hand, slick black hair, smooth, moon-white complexion, and a physique of spun glass. The cane dangling from the edge of the table identified him as a visitor from Luna.

Kovack stood straight and glared.

“Is there a problem officer . . . Hector!”

Kovack did not smile at his childhood friend Tom Dillon, but he did hold out his hand. Dillon took the hand with a warm grip that was stronger than the average Lunie.

“Sit down, sit down! Tell me everything!”

“I’m here with my lieutenant,” Kovack said. “He can’t be left alone in a public place. When did you get back to Mars?”

“About three and a half months ago. I’ve been busy. I meant to look you up . . .” He let the thought evaporate. “I’m sorry Hector. Sorry about your mom and sorry about Victor. I should’ve called.”

“It’s okay. You back for good?”

“Maybe,” said Dillon. “I’m here on business. I’m a political campaign consultant. I was hired by Ozzie Gilchrist for the D-ville representative’s race.”

“Gilchrist?”

“Don’t tell me you’re voting for Barney Hobbs?”

“I haven’t given politics much thought,” said Kovack.

“I guess not. So, how’re you doing?”

“They kicked me back into uniform till they decide what to do with me. Internal Affairs is investigating me. The Commissioner wants me fired, maybe prosecuted for manslaughter, but my captain doesn’t. She has an in with the Regional Attorney. We’ll see how that plays out.”

“How do you want it to play out?”

“Damned if I know.”

“They owe you a medal, pal,” said Dillon. “Your Orchids are sprouting on Luna, too. I guess the great minds behind planetary expansion didn’t figure on resentment from humans who could never live on Earth. Not everybody wants to be drafted for the Grand Enterprise. Go figure. They may look you up for advice.”

“I haven’t heard about that. Same MO?”

“MO?”

“Modis Operandi,” Kovack clarified. “Mode of operating.”

“I don’t . . . I’m not familiar enough with details,” said Dillon. “But people are scared.” A molecule of a smile curled the left corner of his thin-lipped mouth. Kovack tried to remember if that signaled fear, nervousness, or something else.

McGill’s get-back-to-work stare beamed like a beacon. “Time’s up,” Kovack said. “We should catch up. You free tonight?”

Dillon pulled his appointments up on his Dick Tracy device. “No,” he said. “I have some campaign business tonight. Beam me your number. We’ll figure something out. Really good to see you, Hector.”

“You know him?” asked McGill, who had already massacred a bowl of minestrone and was now zeroed in on a plate of linguine.

“Tom Dillon. I grew up with him. His family moved to Luna eight or nine years ago. He’s a political consultant. He’s here to get Ozzie Gilchrist elected to the Big Eight.”

“You don’t like Gilchrist?”

“That SOB’ll get us all killed.”

A spark of interest at last. “Do tell,” McGill prodded.

“Don’t play dumb, Lieutenant. Gilchrist is loud and proud for independence.”

“You’re not for independence?”

“Sure I am,” said Kovack. “But we’re already on our way. We’ll get there in one piece if we just let it play out. Gilchrist is on record with stupid statements about ‘understanding’ the Orchids.”

“What’s wrong with that? You understand the Orchids.”

Kovack gave him an inscrutable Martian stare. “You can have my pilaf,” he said. He stood up and shoved his chair under the table. “I’m on the clock.”

*   *   *

At 2:45 a.m., Kovack’s Tracy screamed like the stupid girl in a horror vid. Whatever was at the other end of the call had to be better than the dream he was having.

It was McGill.

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“Get down to the precinct. Leave the uniform in the closet. You’re back in clothes.”

Kovack jumped. A call in the middle of the night meant something big. Getting his shield back without a fuss meant something bigger.

He stopped on his way out the door, opened a panel in the living room wall, and found the illegal gin stashed all the way in the back. He poured a hefty dose into a tumbler and sent it on its way. No questions asked, none answered.

*   *   *

“Who found it?” asked Kovack, with a yawn that carried clearly over the radio. One of these days some genius would get a street named after him for figuring out how to get coffee to a man in an environmental suit.

It was a busy crime scene, way out in the low, moaning wind of the desert, with vehicles parked at an evidence-preserving distance and white, drone-borne lights blazing down on the victim at the center of it all. Officers and technicians made their careful sweeps, recorded their findings, then hung around until there were enough of them to fill a vehicle and head back to D-ville’s air and warmth. Others awaited the arrival of the Medical Examiner and her order to begin the gruesome work of packing up the frozen body and getting it to the morgue without breaking it.

McGill looked to the distant, comfortable glow of the domes, suspended between the black, featureless desert and the starry India ink sky. Away from the purplish-gray, glaringly lit naked woman buried to her midriff in the dull red regolith, colder than anything physics could account for. “PHASE 2” was branded across her chest, centered over her heart. Not the worst thing McGill had seen lately, but it filled him past his limit.

“Trucker,” he said. “Hauling a load of beans from H-burg. He had to go off-road to get around a sinkhole.”

“Not far off-road,” noted Kovack. “They weren’t trying to hide this one. Do we know who she is?”

“Brenda Hobbs,” answered McGill. “Representative Hobbs’ daughter, twenty years old Terrestrial.”

“They didn’t take her chip? That’s odd. Cause of death?”

“Bruises on the throat. The ME will have to make it official but she was obviously strangled. What else do you want to know?”

“Why you’re acting like a detective and reporting to me like I’m a lieutenant.”

“Don’t get used to it, Junior,” said McGill. “I got the call so I beat it out here posthaste. Once I saw what this was, I woke up the captain so she could authorize your return to duty. Now that you’re oriented, you’re just a plain old detective again.”

“Suits me,” said Kovack. Which it did. He felt like an old machine warming up after sitting idle. It was good to be back at real work. “Anything underground?”

“Hey, Hal,” called McGill with a wave of his arm. A technician in a black suit and a Mobility Assist Unit marched over like a robot in an old 2D. “You finish that depth sweep?”

“Yeah,” said the tech, bringing the report up on his sleeve screen. “She’s wearing an anklet on her left leg. She’s intact; no mutilation apart from the brand. No clothing. As far as we can tell, no wounds of any kind.”

“What about the surrounding area?” asked Kovack.

There was a brief pause, like Technician Hal was required to wonder why the disgraceful Detective Kovack was allowed to ask him questions. “Nothing but dirt, Detective,” he answered.

“You’re sure about that?”

“Read it yourself.” The tech beamed him the underground scans.

Kovack took a quick look then said, “Run it again. Take it down another four or five feet, especially under the body.”

“Why?”

“Because he said so,” explained McGill. “That’s why.”

Ten minutes later, Technician Hal was back with his new and improved report.

“You called it, Detective,” he said. “There’s a bundle of stuff, clothing and personal affects, four and a half feet directly under the body. How did you know?”

“She didn’t walk out of the dome in her birthday suit,” Kovack answered smoothly. “Once she was out here, they had to do something with her stuff. Burying it under her was the easiest thing. A lot of evidence. Almost worked, right Hal?”

After the technician quietly went back to his work, McGill said, “That was some quick-thinking BS, Hector. The rest of the Orchids’ victims didn’t walk out in birthday suits either. You didn’t like his attitude so you wanted to show him who was boss, am I right?”

“Paid off, didn’t it?”

Another police rover pulled up. Dr. Wanda Stoltz, D-ville’s Medical Examiner, climbed out, gave Lieutenant McGill a go-to-hell apology for taking so long to get there, then began her preliminary examination. Dr. Stoltz was a fairly typical middle-aged second gen, with the proportions of a pencil, tough, wiry limbs, ever-present spectacles because eyes had a hard time evolving, and a super-analytical mind that would be the envy of any thinking human.

Most of all she had a truly bad attitude, for which Kovack adored her. She could be heard swearing fluently in two languages over the open channel.

“Due to the condition of the body, I can’t estimate the time of death without tests, but it was definitely under twenty-four hours,” Stoltz reported to McGill. “She’s frozen stiff. Hard to assess how far rigor has advanced. She was strangled, all right. I’d say she was still warm when they planted her. They may have had under a minute to set up this display before she lost all flexibility. Somebody may have held her erect while somebody else filled in the hole. Abrasions under the arms are an indication. Some defensive cuts on the arms. . . .”

“Which could mean DNA from the killer?” Kovack asked hopefully.

“Which could mean DNA from the killer,” affirmed Stoltz. “But won’t. From the configuration of the bruises around the throat and the small window to get her into the ground, I assume the killer was in a suit, wearing pressure gloves, probably the size conforming, maximum dexterity ones they use for working outdoors. He didn’t bleed or leave skin or sweat on her, if that’s what you’re after. I’m guessing they brought her here in a rover, stripped her, buried her belongings, then killed her. They could have killed her before they went EVA to bury her stuff, but I figure they’d want her alive and terrified as long as possible. Given the Orchids’ MO I assume she wasn’t molested but I’ll check. We’ll have to excavate her like she’s made of glass and wrap the sections of the body as they’re uncovered. It’ll take hours.”

“What about the brand?” Kovack asked. “Before or after she was dead?”

“Before.”

“Chemical burn?” asked McGill. “Laser?”

“Far as I can tell, good old hot metal,” answered Stoltz. “Like she was cattle.”

“That checks all the boxes,” McGill said to Kovack.

“Vehicle tracks?”

“Obliterated by the bean truck. We scanned the area, back up to the road, which is fused regolith. Analysis may distinguish another set of tracks, but nobody’s holding their breath. Anything else you need to see?”

“Not till forensics goes through her stuff,” said Kovack. He stood looking at the young woman, dead for no good reason, her face twisted into a purple atrocity. He couldn’t help thinking what it was like for her to be going about her bright young life right up till the instant a monster dragged her out to the desert and wrapped his big filthy hands around her throat. “I guess God wasn’t willing.”

“Now it’s your problem,” McGill said.

*   *   *

Regional Representative Barnett Hobbs was a rugged specimen, tough where it was good to be tough, tender and unspoiled at the center. The kind who would hit you over the head if it meant knocking real sense into you and fixing your life. Having come from an engineering background, he had no taste for the game of politics but stayed up nights thinking about dome maintenance and how to keep all the water fresh and all the people safe, happy, and productive. Running for office was the last thing he wanted to do. That’s why he got the votes in the last two elections for Chryse Regional Representative for Planet Four Corporate Settlement D.

For his trouble, he got a murdered daughter.

Hobbs sat like an empty suit in his cozy square living room. An extravagant fire crackled on the big screen, throwing heatless light and shadows around the small, orderly space. Belonging to the most consequential legislative body on Mars did not get him a mansion; there weren’t any. He’d managed to get dressed and pull a comb through his fine, brown hair and wash the streaks of salt from his face before the second wave of police came. His wife lay in the bedroom sleeping off tranquilizers, dreaming about the darling girl she’d never see again.

“Everybody loved Brenda,” Hobbs told McGill and Kovack helplessly, as if saying it might make her a little less dead.

“What about you, sir?” asked Kovack. “Any enemies?”

“I didn’t think so. Opponents, obviously. Some don’t mind playing rough. But this . . . Do you think it was the Orchids?”

“It’s too early to tell,” answered McGill. “What can you tell us about her movements last night?”

“We were all here, the campaign staff, that is, planning events until 6:00. She left here to get dinner with friends.”

“Did she come home?” asked McGill after taking down names.

“No, but that wasn’t unusual. She frequently stays with her friend Sharon Delancey, just for a change. She’s on the waiting list for new digs. In the meantime, we treat . . . treated her as an adult.”

“Can you think of anything that might help us?” McGill said. “Had she made new friends lately? Met any new people, possibly dated anybody you don’t know? New activities?”

“She was a real butterfly,” Hobbs said. “Interested in everybody and everything. Including my campaign. She was excited about being on staff. I don’t know how I can go on after this . . .”

The two detectives looked at each other. One of them had to say it.

Kovack spoke up. “Do you intend to drop out of the race?”

“Well, I . . . That is . . .” His limp eyes were flat on the floor. His hands were empty, threadbare gloves draped over the arms of the chair. The world couldn’t end soon enough.

Then power was restored. His head came up, with eyes sharp and clear, catching the glare of the digital fire, adding the missing heat. He gripped the arms of the chair like Arthur drawing the sword, John Henry lifting his hammer.

“No,” he said. “Hell no! If she died for politics . . . God help them!”

The eastern sky was hazy steel blue when the two detectives left the ragged shadows of the residential block and started down the cold, empty street. Kovack hadn’t taken a good look at the sky in weeks, not since the night he’d chased his brother down a dark alley and did what he did. The wound in his chest was as healed as it would get, but the damp morning air made it radiate a dull, throbbing ache. He sidestepped the recurring wish that his brother had aimed more to the left. Those thoughts were wearing themselves out, but Victor would never leave him alone.

“6:45,” noted McGill. “I’ll alert Chryse Central so they can tell the precincts to beat the bushes for Orchids, then I’ll get IT started analyzing safety and security videos. With a little luck we can reconstruct most of Ms. Hobbs’ movements. Irene Acuna can track down the friends and get their statements.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Solve the case,” McGill said. “Hopefully before any more candidates’ daughters get it.”

“The link between the Orchids and politicians is pretty tentative at this point, don’t you think?” said Kovack, his breath curling in fine white puffs of mist. Primary humidity control was down for preventative maintenance, and the secondaries were due for an upgrade. “The MO is radically different. It doesn’t seem likely they’d go from ‘burn it all down’ to partisan dogfights in just a few weeks.”

“Orchids are the only killers we’ve seen so far,” McGill said. “It’s all we have to go on. We know they plan big and move fast. Go to Angel of Mercy and see what you can get out of them. Then have a talk with that friend of yours . . . Dutton?”

“Dillon.”

“Dillon. See if he knows just how well Ozzie Gilchrist ‘understands’ the Orchids.”

“That’s a big jump, Lieutenant.”

“Not where I come from, sonny.”

*   *   *

The psychiatric unit of the Angel of Mercy Hospital was located on the building’s top floor, which stuck up out of the ground like the roof of an ancient tomb waiting to be looted by eager archeologists. Planet Four had come up short of funding at a critical point in the hospital’s construction. They made a deal with the Catholic church, who ended up with a plaque in the lobby and the right to name the place but nothing else, not even a statue of St. Whatsisname. The walls were smooth, glassy black on the outside, transparent on the inside, with a clear dome on top. It was hoped that the sight of sky, sand, and sun would inspire patients in their struggle for sound minds and happy hearts. No exterior doors above ground. Freedom was to be earned, not seized by a mad dash or insane plan.

Hector Kovack had done a stretch in the unit while recovering from the gunshot and all that went with it. Psychiatric triage, with strict orders for continued treatment, which Kovack blew off. Maybe someday he’d want to be well, but for now, crippling guilt and diminished self-confidence felt right. With or without help, nobody would get him back on his feet but him.

There was no such thing as crime on Mars, only the unmutual actions of unbalanced minds in need of adjustment. That meant no prisons, leaving the psychiatric unit of the Angel of Mercy Hospital as the only place in D-ville secure enough to confine killers.

Kovack spent his morning interviewing Orchids awaiting trial. Or trying to. Some wouldn’t talk, some couldn’t. One, former police IT Director Joel Osterhaus, just laughed at every single thing Kovack said. Joel was convinced he had not actually been caught. Such a thing could not happen to a man of his brilliance and resourcefulness. They were working him over with a mind game, probably a deep simulation. Detective Kovack was an avatar and he could go process himself right back to the memory bank they’d built him from.

Next was Frank Dupree, a psycho who beat up Kovack before getting beaten up harder by Kovack. He’d done a lot of the nastier work in the Orchids’ quest for vengeance or justice or whatever they told themselves they were after. Dupree had plenty to say before his arrest but had not said one word since. He was useless.

That left Judy Jones.

Jones was a special case, kept under extra-special lock and key. She was under the care of Dr. Adrian Galt, an Earthling more interested in studying his Martian subjects than helping them. Someday he would publish his grand, seminal work on the inevitable cognitive degradation endemic to long-term, deep-space colonization. As soon as he could make the facts fit the theory.

“The answer is no, Detective,” Galt said with emphasis. When he said “no,” his head bobbed like it was a hammer and the word was a nail. He meant to be forceful but his round, smooth face, twinkling eyes, and bald, egg-shaped head reminded Kovack of a baby. “Ms. Jones is at a critical stage in her treatment. A lot of good work could be undone by a visit at this time. She goes to trial in a month. That’s not much time to bring her into compliance with competency requirements.”

“Not my problem, Doctor,” said Kovack. He was in no mood to negotiate. News of Brenda Hobbs’ murder was now public. Clocks were ticking. “Ms. Jones has information essential to our investigation. I could get a court order.” He could not get a court order. The threat was empty as an android’s heart.

Whether moved by civic duty or sheer lack of stamina, Dr. Galt relented. “Follow me,” he said, heaving a masterfully performed sigh. Through a secure door they went, into a big, round room flooded with amplified sunlight, furnished with tables, comfortable chairs, plush sofas, broad-leafed potted plants. A happy place for souls who neither knew nor cared what happiness was. Patients in pastel pajamas and therapists in lab coats sat at the tables playing therapeutic games or lounged in the sunlight, keeping their voices down.

Dr. Galt passed quickly through the dayroom, ignoring greetings from the patients. “Ms. Jones is halfway through calibration,” he explained. “We have to observe the operation of the implants over a period of weeks and make adjustments, which is why stimulation is tightly controlled.”

“I’ll try to keep it dull,” cracked Kovack.

The doctor led him to a small, comfortable consultation room with a transparent wall looking out on a peaceful, well-kept garden. Sunlight lay like dust on lacy Japanese maples, clumps of maiden grass and purple flowers.

Judy Jones, self-styled mastermind of the D-ville Hothouse Orchids, sat at a small table like a cold lump of clay. Her head, which had been completely shaved, sprouted ugly patches of mousey stubble. There were Frankenstein stitches on either side. Her eyes were dark, dry wells, with all the luster of sandblasted concrete. The sharp odor of disinfectant soap was faint but inescapable.

Kovack did his best not to recall their first meeting during the investigation. It was a fool’s errand. Jones had taken the initiative and dropped by his apartment one night to size him up. He couldn’t recall much of what was said. He only remembered the breezy sweep of coppery hair across her shoulders, the unnerving fragrance of exotic flowers from a distant world, and the ice-and-fire that glittered in her hard, sapphire eyes.

Dr. Galt made a grand show of instructing the detective how to speak to his patient and insisting Ms. Jones’ nurse remain present. Kovack insisted back that he had to talk to Jones alone. Doctor and nurse huffed out of the room.

Kovack sat down across the table from her, figuring how to play it. He was nothing to her but a cop. Even that wasn’t simple.

“Hello, Ms. Jones.”

She responded like a statue.

“Remember me? I’m Victor’s big brother.”

She inhaled, a little more than a statue would. Maybe hell began to smolder at the bottom of the well of her eyes.

“The cop who shot your boyfriend.”

Her killer eyes snapped onto his, and they were hot. Hot enough to shake him.

“Judy,” she croaked, starting just above a whisper but gaining force like an approaching eruption. Her voice was like a rusty nail being pulled from a rotting old plank. “My name is Judy! Nobody in this rathole calls me by my damn name! It’s JUDY!”

“Hello, Judy. I’m Detective . . . I’m Hector.”

“Go to hell, Inspector Hector.”

“I have to do some things first,” said Kovack. “You have to help me.”

“You killed your brother, Cain,” she said, like that explained everything. She spoke with the force of a run-down battery. Her energy came and went.

“You killed your mother and father.”

“That’s different,” she said, supremely convinced that it mattered. “Everybody has to kill somebody. Victor killed his mother. Frank killed his mother. Moms take it on the chin, huh? Joel Osterhaus . . .”

“The cell leader,” Kovack clarified, knowing the effect it would have.

“Technically accurate,” she said, through clenched teeth, “but the capers were all my ideas. They all followed me. Good old Joel killed his boyfriend. Yeah, we got those here. Got special permission. His parents went back to Earth, out of reach. He had to make do . . .”

“To join the club, right? Pass the test and fight for Mars, right Judy?”

“You betcha, Quisling. I told you to look up Quisling, remember? You ever look it up?”

“You weren’t around to help me spell it.”

Her eyes started to shine, like flowers watered just in time. Maybe hell was cooling off. Maybe he’d moved her to a different hell, one closer to his.

“Can you answer a few questions?” he asked. “Strictly business?”

“Don’t ask if I forgive you,” she said, two glittering beads evaporating at the corners of her eyes. “That’s not business.”

“What did we miss?” Kovack asked. “How many Orchids are there in D-ville?”

“You got us all, copper.”

“But you know where to get more, right? You must have recruiters in G-boro or F-town?”

She gave him a weak but cagey smile. That was good. Kovack wanted her to feel cagey.

“That scare you?”

“Not much. But it does make me wonder. What if somebody wanted to look like an Orchid without being one?”

“What . . . ? Oh, I get it,” she said. “You want to know how to infiltrate. Forget it. Nobody gets into the inner sanctum without taking the big step.”

“Killing somebody?”

“Observed and verified,” she said. Now she was wide awake.

“Somebody close?”

“Flesh and blood. Then replace them with a cognizant avatar so nobody knows they’re gone. It takes . . .” She had to think about what it takes. “It takes a kind of strategic thinking to pull it off. You know all about that, right Mr. Big Bro?”

Kovack had been fooled by his own mother’s cog for months. Jones could take all the punishment the system could dish out and hit back twice as hard. He had to give her that.

“And after the big step?” asked Kovack.

“Strictly business, like you said. No departures from the plan, not never. Oh, we’ll tweak the cogs, all right. Make them untraceable. Always room to maneuver in cyber-land. We’ll make clones, too, for physical presence where needed. We’re taking the planet from the inside, Junior. No stopping it. . . .”

“What’s Phase Two?”

“Never heard of it.”

“A fallback plan?” suggested Kovack. “An adjustment, now that the Orchids have been cracked?”

“Still never heard of it,” insisted Jones. “We’re deep and on course. We don’t panic just because some flatfoot gets lucky.”

“Maybe it’s something new,” Kovack said. “The Orchids are under new management. Maybe you’re just not in the know.”

“Could be.” She was drained. “But I’ll always know more than you.”

“What’s the endgame, Judy? The ultimate aim of the big tantrum?”

Judy laughed. Her drugged-out laughter sounded like a bullfrog with asthma.

“To raise hell,” she said. “As long as Earthlings and stooges wipe their big feet on our planet.”

“Then what? What happens after you chase them all away?”

“Nothing happens. We lose our last reason to live. Eventually, the Earthlings come back and it starts all over again. The end.”

She closed her mouth and kept it closed.

Dr. Galt was waiting for him outside the consulting room. “Did you get what you wanted?” he asked, staging one last hissy fit to communicate his pitiful disdain.

“Does anybody?” said Kovack. “Listen, Doctor.” He paused, looking at the closed door like he had X-ray vision. “Take care of her, would you?”

“That’s what I’m paid for,” the doctor said. Under his breath he added, “Keep all the animals clothed and in their right minds.”

Kovack picked up some coffee at a kiosk and took it back to his desk at the precinct. His real desk in the big office with the big windows, cops and managers, not the one down in the dungeon.

His computer was bursting at the seams with information on the Hobbs investigation. Detective Irene Acuna had filed a number of statements and was out collecting more. Preliminary report from Dr. Stoltz. As expected, the victim had not been sexually assaulted. There were marks not detected at the scene, maybe significant, maybe not. More information to follow. Forensics had a list of the articles buried at the scene. A quick scan piqued his interest, but he left it for later, when he could give it his full attention. There were acknowledgements from all precincts but no leads. Safety and security monitors had a good, strong track on Brenda Hobbs until 8:22 p.m., when she got lost in a crowd in the recreational section and vanished into thin air. Nothing yet about suspicious vehicles leaving or entering the dome.

He was setting up a report correlating all the collected data so far when his Tracy peeped. A message from Tom Dillon.

Free tonight. D-ville, 6:15. Ok?

Ok Kovack responded. It was not okay. He’d been detecting and investigating since 2 a.m. He was tired, like an old man. Time served on his backside in the dungeon made him flabby, and it took more than a few weeks of goofing off to truly recover from a hole in the chest. And he didn’t look forward to welcoming his childhood friend home with an interrogation.

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Copyright © 2025. The Return of Tom Dillion by Harry Lang