Asteroid Outpost (Nick Walker, U.F. Marshal Book 1) Read online

  “What do you want with me?” she demanded in a strained voice.

  He sat back against the couch cushion and placed both hands flat at his sides, trying for a nonthreatening pose. He smiled tentatively.

  “I’m investigating possible prisoner abuse at Farrington lockup. I understand you were a prisoner there for a while.”

  She stared at him as if he were crazy. Her face twisted into a sneer.

  “Possible prisoner abuse! Did you say possible?”

  He nodded, watching her closely. The gun in her hand trembled slightly, but he was gratified to see that the charge light was amber, indicating standby mode—if she decided to fire she would need to flick the safety off, which would give him about three seconds before the light turned green. But she made no move toward the safety; the look in her eyes fluctuated between normal and demented.

  “That’s right. I’m trying to build a case, but I need more information. I was hoping you might tell me about your experience.”

  She shook her head decisively.

  “I’m not testifying! I already talked to Captain Zima; I told him and I’m telling you—no way. Those people almost killed me, and if I take the witness stand they will kill me!”

  Nick held up both hands in a calming gesture.

  “I’m not asking you to testify. Eyewitness testimony isn’t enough. If you take the stand they’ll just call you a liar. I need hard evidence.”

  “Then what do you need from me?”

  “Just tell me your story. Give me an idea of what I’m dealing with.” He waited for her response, but all he got was tears sliding down her cheeks.

  “Mrs. Garner, I’m sorry to have to involve you in this, but I’m pretty sure you’ve been through something no human being should ever have to endure, and I’d like to nail the bastards who did it to you. Maybe if we—”

  “Nail them?” She laughed scornfully. “What are you going to do to them, all by yourself? You can’t touch them! Nobody can touch them.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “They’re all in on it! They have two hundred men, maybe more! They’re all part of it.”

  “Can you give me some names?”

  She shook her head again.

  “No. I’m not accusing anyone. You can’t use anything I say, or I’ll be dead. You should never have come here!”

  “Well,” he said reasonably, “I am here, so it’s too late to change that. Just tell me what you can, whatever you feel safe telling, and I’ll take it from there. Your name will never come up, I promise.”

  She stared at him for a long time, her eyes searching his face, perhaps looking for clues to his integrity. He studied her as well, and was impressed with what he saw. She was in her late twenties, slender and brunette, with long silky hair down to her shoulders. She was quite pretty; compared to most of the women he’d seen on Ceres, she was an absolute beauty—but he saw a madness in her eyes that shouldn’t be there. From what he’d seen in her record, he had a pretty good idea where she’d acquired it.

  “I was only supposed to be in there for three months,” she said. “I was convicted of assault, a simple misdemeanor. The judge gave me a choice—pay a fine or spend three months in lockup. I didn’t have three thousand terros, so I had no choice. I went to jail.”

  “Who did you assault?”

  “Nobody! It was self defense. My boss tried to rape me, and I fought him off.”

  “Who was your boss?”

  She shook her head. “I told you, no names!”

  “Okay. Where did you work?”

  “Farrington Industries. In the corporate office. I was a file clerk there.”

  Nick nodded. He already knew part of the story, from the file Zima had given him. He just needed her to keep talking.

  “You were sentenced to three months, but how long were you actually in there?”

  “Two years and two months.” Her eyes lost their focus as she gazed into space, remembering. “They sent me to the women’s wing. It was supposed to be short time; they even assigned me a job, working in the laundry.” She shook her head slowly. “The night I got there I went into a private cell. I figured it was only temporary, because I arrived after lights out. But they never took me out of that cell. I never saw the main cellblock.”

  Her eyes focused again and she looked straight at him.

  “It was a women’s lockup, Marshal! But I was in there two fucking years and I never worked in the laundry! I never once saw another woman!”

  Nick felt his scalp tingle as he frowned at her.

  “Jesus!”

  She laughed, half hysterically.

  “Jesus wasn’t there either. I called out to him plenty of times, begging him to save me, to help me, to do something!”

  Fresh tears coursed down her cheeks.

  “They started raping me that first night. The two who locked me in there, and five or six others. The next day there were even more, and more after that. Every day—every goddamn day—”

  “How many?”

  She shook her head slowly from side to side, her long hair swinging. Tears sluiced down her cheeks.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know. All of them?” She phrased it as a question.

  Nick sat silent for a time, giving her time to deal with the memory. He hated himself for putting her through this, but he needed to know.

  “How did three months become two years? They had to have some kind of excuse to hold you past the term of your sentence.”

  “I tried to defend myself. It wasn’t just rape, Marshal. It wasn’t just sodomy. They played games with me. They would come in at night, six or eight at a time, and take turns. They placed bets on how many times they could do it before I passed out. And when I did pass out, they would bring me around with electrodes. They put gator clips on my nipples and turned on the power. Anything to make me suffer. And then they would start all over again.”

  She laid the laser pistol down and wiped her eyes with her wrists. Nick figured that was all he would get out of her, but now the dam had burst, and she kept going.

  “I tried to obey the rules at first. I did everything they told me to, hoping they would get tired and leave me alone. But nothing I did satisfied them. They weren’t men, they were monsters. It gave them pleasure to cause me pain! Sometimes they came at me for hours. Other times they just left me tied up, suspended from the ceiling, for days at a time. No food, no water. I would pass out eventually, then I would wake up and someone was raping me.

  “So finally…I tried to fight back. One of them forced his dick into my mouth, and I bit down. I sent him to the hospital, but that didn’t end it. They beat me half to death for that, and filed a criminal charge that I had assaulted a guard. That got me another year.”

  “Did you go to court on that charge?”

  “No. They told the judge that I was incapacitated, that they had to beat me into submission to save the guard. So I was tried in absentia.”

  “You weren’t allowed to testify in your own defense?”

  “No.”

  “Did someone take a deposition?”

  “No.”

  Nick frowned. He would have to check with Monica Maynard on that. He was no expert on legal matters, but that didn’t sound quite kosher.

  “Who was your defense attorney?”

  “I don’t think I had one.”

  “Who defended you against the original charge?”

  “Geraldine Gabbard.”

  She wiped her eyes again, then gave him a slightly bizarre smile.

  “You want to know the worst part? My old boss, the one who tried to rape me in the first place—he actually did rape me, after I was in lockup.”

  Nick stared at her in horror. She nodded, still smiling. More tears stained her cheeks.

  “The bastard came in twice a week, like clockwork. They even tied me down so I couldn’t hurt him.”

  Nick rubbed his face with both hands, wondering if it could get any worse.

/>   “How did you finally get out of there?” he asked quietly.

  She smiled again, half sad, half mad.

  “My original sentence was three months. Then they added twelve more for assaulting a guard—that’s fifteen. The end came and went, and I was still there. They no longer had any legal authority to hold me, but they did.”

  “Where was your husband? Why didn’t he petition the court for your release?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? They murdered him while I was in prison. It was listed as an industrial accident, but they killed him.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Read the accident report. You’ll see for yourself.”

  Nick nodded, letting it go at that. She continued her story.

  “Eleven months after I was supposed to be released, they brought in another woman, younger and prettier than me. They needed my cell, so they said they would release me if I signed a document attesting to fair and equal treatment while in lockup.”

  “And you signed it?”

  “Goddamn right I did. I was out of there the next day. Homeless, jobless, single, and broke. I weighed eighty-nine Terra pounds, but I was alive.”

  “And when was that?”

  “A little over two years ago.”

  “Where do you work now?”

  “I don’t work. I hide out here. Farrington owns this building and they offered me this apartment.” She swept a hand toward the door. “That’s why I have such a spectacular view—solid rock. But I’m not complaining. I haven’t been outside this building for two years. I have groceries delivered; Farrington pays for that, too.”

  Nick stared at her for a moment, wondering… Why would Farrington pay for her support? Were they saving her for something?

  “With no money and no job, how do you plan to get off the asteroid?”

  “I don’t know. I live from day to day, minute to minute. I have no plans, no future. Marshal, I went into that place a human being, but I came out a mutilated…thing! I’ll probably die here in this apartment, but I don’t know what else I can do.”

  Chapter 14

  Government Annex - Ceres

  It was midafternoon when Nick headed back to the office, and he realized he hadn’t eaten. He stopped at a sandwich shop in Ceres North and grabbed a hotdog, then drove back to Government Annex. Milligan glanced up from his holo-screen when he came in.

  “Having a productive day?”

  “Very.”

  “Have you slept since you’ve been here?”

  Nick thought about that a moment. He hadn’t spent a single night in his hotel room.

  “I don’t remember.”

  He dragged a chair into the middle of the room and sat down facing Milligan’s desk. The aging marshal watched him without a word.

  “Where’s the morgue around here? I couldn’t find it on my ‘puter map.”

  Milligan looked surprised. “The morgue? You chasing dead bodies now?”

  When Nick didn’t answer, he pointed vaguely.

  “Two blocks over, in the hospital basement.”

  “And who’s the medical examiner?”

  “Shirley Chin.”

  “Who pays her salary?”

  “The Federation. What the hell is this about?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Just running down some leads.”

  “What kind of leads?”

  Nick shrugged. “I told you I was going to investigate—I’m investigating. If I find something, I’ll let you know.”

  Milligan sniffed. “Before you get buried too deep, how about writing that report for Caribou Lake? Before you forget the details.”

  Nick groaned. He’d all but forgotten that report, and hated the idea of losing his momentum on this new angle, but he knew the old marshal was right. He nodded grimly.

  “Okay. I’ll have it to you by 1800.”

  He spent the rest of the afternoon working on the report. He was amazed at how many details were already fading, and had to think hard to get some of them back. He actually had the report done by five-thirty, sent a copy to Milligan’s terminal, and stood up to stretch. Milligan perused it on his screen and nodded approvingly.

  “Good job,” he said. “That’s more detail than I’m used to seeing.”

  “Is that bad? I can always summarize it in the future.”

  “If you do, I’ll have to shoot you. Don’t ever change a good habit, no matter what other people do.”

  Milligan continued reading, absorbed by the report. Finally he looked up.

  “Whatever happened to Bobbie the bartender? Did you stand her up?”

  Nick shook his head. “By the time her shift was over everything had gone to hell. I looked her up the next day and gave her fifty terros for lying to her.”

  “How did she take that…being lied to?”

  “She didn’t seem to care. I think she’s used to being lied to by men.”

  Milligan smiled. “That was a pretty thin ruse, you know.”

  “What was?”

  “The line you used about being horny. Did you seriously think she knew anything about the kidnapping?”

  Nick shrugged. “She’s a bartender. Bartenders hear things. She’s also a woman, and women are generally sympathetic to other women, so if she knew about the girls, and felt sorry for them, she might tell me something.”

  Milligan frowned. “Why would she do that? She would have thought you wanted to fuck them.”

  Nick laughed. “I was gonna come clean with her,” he said.

  “Come clean?”

  “About being a lawman. Later, in private.”

  “In the bedroom?” Milligan’s eyes widened. “You were actually going to sleep with her?”

  “Well…yeah, if it came down to that. Why not?”

  “Walker, she was twice your age!”

  “Well…if it would have got me closer to the girls… Hey, I’m not prejudiced. She’s a good looking woman.”

  Milligan shook his head in wonder. “God! Walker, you have no scruples.”

  “Of course I do.” Nick looked offended.

  But Milligan was chuckling. “Don’t get me wrong—that’s a good thing. Sometimes you have to take a few steps on the dark side to get the job done. The trick is knowing how many steps to take, and when to step back.”

  Nick frowned as he tried to digest that. Before he got very far his porta-phone rang. He pulled it off his belt and answered it.

  “Nick Walker.”

  “Nick, this is Judge Maynard.”

  Nick was a little surprised to hear her voice. His senses were instantly alert.

  “Yes, Ma’am!” he said abruptly.

  She laughed. “You can call me Monica, remember?

  Nick glanced at Milligan, who was pretending not to listen.

  “Yes, Ma’am, I understand.”

  Maynard hesitated briefly. “Is someone there with you?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Someone you don’t want to overhear our conversation?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  She sighed. “Well, it’s no big secret. I just wondered if you’re open for dinner tonight.”

  “Of course. Just tell me the time and place.”

  “My suite in the Centerville Hotel. Room 419. Eight o’clock?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Maynard hung up and Nick checked his watch. It wasn’t quite six yet.

  “What did Judge Maynard want?”

  Nick’s eyes snapped around; his mouth dropped open in surprise.

  “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. But now I do.”

  Nick blushed in spite of himself. He shook his head and laughed.

  “You watch your ass, Nick. She’s a very sexy lady, but she’ll eat you alive.”

  The Open Airlock - Ceres

  Nick walked into the Open Airlock at a quarter past six and looked around. The place was already jumping, though the music wasn’t quite as loud as the first time he’d be
en there.

  If Fred Ferguson’s information was correct, Turd Murdoch should have been there almost two hours already, and hopefully was pleasantly plastered. Not that it mattered—men like Murdoch could drink the place dry and still function soberly. Some men had a tolerance for alcohol that defied belief.

  This time Nick was wearing his badge on his shirt, and as he walked slowly through the room people turned to stare. Conversation dwindled, then faded completely as those in his path made way, watching expectantly. Nick spotted Turd at a pool table toward the back and strolled directly toward him. Someone pulled the plug on the music generator and the room became silent except for the click of a few billiard balls and some heavy breathing.

  Murdoch was bent over the velvet lining up a shot when he saw Nick’s approach. He straightened up ominously, his beefy face flushing red. He stood there holding the cue stick with the handle resting on the floor. Nick stopped two feet in front of him, and placed both hands on his hips.

  “I hear you’ve been looking for me,” he said loudly enough for everyone in the joint to hear. “So here I am.”

  Turd gazed down at him as if contemplating a mouse, his shaggy face breaking into a contemptuous grin.

  “Well, well, well. If it ain’t the boy marshal and his toy laser pistol.”

  Nick didn’t rise to the taunt.

  “Are you looking for me, or not? Word around the ‘roid is that you plan to kill me. Since I’d hate to give you a chance at an ambush, I’m making it easy for you. Here I am, right now, in front of god and everybody.”

  Turd’s eyes betrayed surprise as he tried to maintain his overbearing demeanor. He stared at Nick a couple of seconds, then laughed derisively.

  “Fuck you! You think I’m gonna kill you in front of fifty witnesses? You got your badge, you got your toy pistol…I ain’t goin’ down for killin’ a U.F. Marshal.”

  Nick unbuckled the gun belt, rolled it up, and handed it to the nearest bystander, who looked startled but took it. Nick never took his eyes off Murdoch. He unpinned the badge and threw it on the pool table, where it lay face up, shining like a jewel.

  “No laser pistol. No badge—no U.F. Marshal. You think you’re man enough to take me?”