CHAPTER 024
CRACK AT THE SEAMS
Michelle and I each kept a shoulder to the wall as we made our way to the Northstar Lounge, limiting our angles of exposure as best we could. An attack out in the open did not seem likely, considering the killer’s modus operandi so far, but we could not rule it out entirely. An animal was always more dangerous when cornered. With word of the situation currently spreading throughout the staff members, it was only a matter of time before they were forced to make their next move.
“Are you sure he’s going to be there?” Michelle asked.
“Vatel’s been working out of the prep kitchen the whole time. He’s the hands-on type, so I don’t see him skipping out on one of the last meal services of the trip. Besides, it’ll give us a chance to speak with him away from the rest of his brigade, in case he has any suspicions he’d rather not be overheard.”
Being chosen personally by Boiardo to replace him lent Vatel a significant degree of credibility in my mind. He might not have had the same bond with the other kitchen workers that the head chef did, but that also meant that he didn’t have the same blind loyalty to them. If there was anyone in a position to pick out a black sheep, it was Vatel.
“What if the killer isn’t a member of the staff? What do we do then?”
“There’s a good possibility that’s the case. Fox said that the flight crew and the security team were clean. If nothing turns up with the domestics then at least we have full control of the ship. With all of the Lunar Express personnel on high alert, it’ll just be a matter of smoking out our offender. It’s not like they’ve got anywhere to run.”
“It’s not them running that I’m worried about.”
The faux neon sign above the door to the Northstar Lounge came into view. Given the early hour, it was not illuminated. Between that, the lack of other passengers, and the tarped-off form of the violated fountain beside the door, there was an eerie sense of decay to the area. It was as if this section of the Express had been quarantined from the rest of the glamorous craft. A miniaturized ghetto for those of us who didn’t belong beside the chosen clientele. Oddly enough, that brought me a sense of comfort. Sharing strong drinks with Vatel to the anarchic tunes of the house band was the closest I’d felt to fitting in since I’d checked in on Friday. I was confident he’d be able to get us a lot closer to the truth.
The lounge door swung open at a push. I’d attended my share of first calls in my day, showing up to bars between the front doors being unlocked and the employees actually being prepared for service. Now, like then, there was a surreal sense of calm in the air. It was strange how much more peaceful a place could be when there weren’t a hundred other idiots sucking all the air from it. The tables, redressed in clean cloths, each supported their own allotment of chairs inverted on top of them. The floorboards, having been swept and mopped immaculately, gleamed. While most venues counted on the powerful smells of an active kitchen and a present clientele to counteract the residual stench of food and drink ground underfoot, the rejuvenated Lunar Express avoided it entirely. The sickly sweet bouquet blooming from the collected liquor bottles barely distracted from the heady fumes of frying bacon and roasting potatoes emanating from the open kitchen.
“I don’t see anyone,” Michelle noted, squinting from a distance at the window to the open kitchen.
“Well, that food isn’t cooking itself.”
She had a point. It was unusual for a head chef to handle the less dignified tasks of a brunch service on his own. Certainly he would have had his sous or his comms close at hand. If they were, we could not hear them. Perhaps he had dispatched them to the main kitchen attached to the dining room in hopes of enjoying the final few moments of solitude before the rush. Once again, here I was to ruin his privacy.
“Chef Vatel,” I called out. “Are you back there?” The last thing I wanted to do was surprise a man skilled with a knife.
There was no response.
“Should we go back there and—”
I cut Michelle off by holding a finger up to my lips, then nodded. We crossed the dining room to the service corridor connecting it to the kitchen and entered through the swinging door.
The kitchen was as pristine as I remembered it, a sterile wonderland of stainless steel and scrubbed tile. Industrial-sized stock pots bubbled on the stovetop turned the room into a makeshift sauna. At the end of a cutting table sat a square plastic cambro piled high with onions, peeled but waiting to be cut. Vatel’s knife roll laid unfurled next to them. The slot where his santoku should have been was still empty. All of the other tools seemed to be in their place. Michelle and I peeked around the various equipment racks and pantry shelving that partitioned the rear of the kitchen off into a number of smaller aisles, but Vatel was nowhere to be found. Out of an abundance of caution, I scanned the floor. No blood, no body.
Returning from the dish pit at the far end of the kitchen, Michelle shrugged to tell me she found nothing. I shook my head to tell her I’d found the same. I looked around, trying to figure out how to best proceed. One of the pots on the oven had started to boil over, spilling starchy foam into the open flame beneath the burner. Out of habit I cut the heat down to a simmer, then jammed a wooden spoon into the pot and gave it a good stir. After ruining as many spaghetti nights as I had, it was pretty much muscle memory.
“Chef Vatel, it’s Max Miller.” My words echoed back to me from the spotless walls of the empty kitchen, exaggerating the volume of my voice. Michelle stared at me as if I were shouting into a limitless void. “I was hoping to have a word with you about a security problem we were having on board, something I thought you might be able to help us with.”
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“Oui, detective,” came a thin voice from the other side of the rear wall. “I’m back here.”
“Are you all right?” I blurted out. “We’ve been calling out for you.”
“Sorry, it’s hard to hear inside the walk-in. Please come in if you’d like to talk.”
Michelle and I exchanged glances. Neither of us had noticed a door when we came in. A second look around turned up a door seamlessly integrated into the wall, noticeable only by the dull spot worn into its metallic push panel. Apparently the Lunar Express’s flawless aesthetic extended to the back of the house areas as well.
A rush of cold air greeted me as I nudged the door open. We immediately found ourselves in a maze of floor-to-ceiling shelving not unlike library stacks. The walk-in refrigerator was almost as big as the kitchen and stocked to the brim with high-end ingredients. Glass jars of caviar were lined up alongside fatty slabs of foie gras in vacuum-sealed wrappers. Whole pigs and sides of decadently marbled beef hung from hooks, swaying gently in a breeze of recirculated air. If Michelle was as impressed as I was, she was doing a much better job of hiding it. The only thing spoiling the remarkable array was the pervasive reek of onions that seemed to issue from every surface.
“Chef Vatel?” I called out again.
“Over here,” came the voice from behind the curtain of suspended meats. “Trying to get a head start on my butchery for this evening. You said you wanted to speak with me about a security issue? Not another passenger I hope.”
“Unfortunately, it looks that way. Do you mind if I come back there?”
“Be my guest. Just mind your step. I haven’t had a chance to mop yet.”
I slid around the rack of carcasses to discover a surgical steel table dripping with blood. Several pounds of precisely trimmed steaks—ribeyes, strips, filets—were piled into low, flat storage bins, with each layer separated by a sheet of butcher’s paper. A smaller container held the scraps deemed too useful for the wastebasket on the floor.
Vatel was nowhere to be seen. I turned to ask Michelle a question, but as I did, her eyes widened in terror. Before I could rephrase my query, I felt the blunt force of a pistol grip crashing into my head, landing right in the sweet spot where my neck met my skull with surgical accuracy. The world around me went dark, and I crumpled to the ground in a heap.
Was G messing with the gravity generators again? I had the strangest sensation of weightlessness. I blinked, trying to rid myself of the pitch black shroud that consumed my entire field of visibility. A few pinpricks of light appeared, but not enough to help me identify where I was. The only things I knew for sure were that I was floating and that I was absolutely alone. I reached back to assess the damage to my head but felt nothing. It was like my fingers passed straight through skin and bone. I shook my head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a metallic object. A piece of kitchen equipment I hadn’t noticed before? No, far too large, but also much further away. It was another ship—a commuter shuttle, by the looks of it. That was when I realized I must have been drifting through space.
I panicked and sucked in a lungful of air, positive that none would come. I heard the breath, felt my ribs expand, yet still didn’t believe it until I took a second. Had I somehow wound up in a spacesuit? No, I could see my bare hands and suit jacket in front of me, and there was no sign of a helmet in my peripheral vision. There was only one explanation: I was dreaming. Had it really been so long since I slept that I’d forgotten what that was like?
When none of the usual tricks to wake myself up work, I turned my attention back toward the shuttle. Apart from distant starlight, it was the only thing I could see in any direction. There must have been some significance to it. Relying on the convenience of dream logic, I willed myself into motion. My approach was agonizingly slow, in no way improved by my best efforts to streamline my body shape for better aerodynamics. A flailing attempt at a doggy paddle proved equally useless. The only option left was to wait.
The commuter shuttle spun lazily throughout my approach, totally indifferent to my presence. At first I thought that the generic cylindrical shape and lack of distinguishing features suggested it was a placeholder cobbled together by my subconscious brain out of what little I knew about spacecrafts in general. The only exception was that the entire exterior was perfectly smooth except for one passenger window. Once I got close enough to read the call sign emblazoned on its hull, I realized I was terribly mistaken. I’d seen that combination of numbers and letters a thousand times, in the headlines and in my nightmares alike. BT12-7HL of the Interstellar Journeys fleet, offering direct service to Titan. My family was on board.
I kicked at nothing and reached in vain as I tried to get closer. If only I could somehow warn them then maybe I wouldn’t end up in this mess to begin with. We could be at home in the old apartment together. It was almost breakfast time. I could make us all pancakes. No, waffles. From scratch. I wouldn’t even bitch about cleaning the griddle afterward.
The shuttle turned over again to reveal the single window making another revolution. Despite the distance, I could make out a shock of auburn hair rising slightly above two smaller toe-headed seatmates. “Hazel!” I screamed. My mouth moved, but no sound came out.
It took three more full rotations for me to reach the shuttle. No matter how much I yelled or gestured, there was no way to get my wife or girls to notice me. Finally I was within reach. While waiting for the craft to turn over on its axis again I maintained proximity with alternating palm presses, not unlike a lumberjack running atop a spinning log. Eventually the window appeared, rolling over the top of the craft like a log on a waterfall. As it passed by, I dug my fingernails into the tiny edge created where the window was recessed. I pressed myself against the craft and tumbled with it, trying to get my bearings.
Once my grip was secure, I freed up a hand to knock at the window. It took a couple of tries, but finally Hazel turned her head.
She smiled sweetly, not looking particularly surprised to see me. “Hi Max,” she mouthed through the glass.
“You need to get out of there!” I shouted, fully aware that it was impossible for her to hear me. “It’s not safe!”
“I know,” she responded, a sudden sadness welling up in her eyes. She’d always done her best to keep a stiff upper lip.
“What about the girls?” Tracy’s nose remained buried in a chapter book. As usual, it appeared advanced for her age. Fiona colored across the pages of her book in bright bold streaks, joyfully indifferent to the suggested lines.
“They know too.”
A feeling like a rusted anchor dragged across the pit of my stomach. “You can’t just sit there!” I insisted, frantic. “Let me in!” I dug my fingers harder into the side of the shuttle, my nails cracking against the strain.
“Not yet. You still have work to do.”
“But I miss you.” The shuttle kept spinning at the same speed, but I could feel my grip failing. I scrabbled for purchase but couldn’t find a handhold on the smooth surface.
“We miss you, too, honey,” Hazel mouthed as I floated away.
“Please, just let me—”
A gust rocketed me backward, sending me spiraling into the distance. Unable to right myself, I watched in horror through a series of brief glimpses as the shuttle appeared to crack at the seams before dissolving into a blinding flash of white.