CRIME SCENE, SOUTHERN TROPICAL CANYON
WEDNESDAY, 1203 HOURS (EASTERN TIME)
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At one point, perhaps because of the heat or perhaps because it had been a long time since he had seen such a heinous, violent crime, Detective Colonel Rigel Beta had the need to refresh the air, so he walked around the clearing a bit.
He would have liked to take off and leave everything in the hands of his men, but since he couldn’t, he lost himself for a moment and wondered what Marie, his old girlfriend, would think of this place.
Maybe she likes it, he thought; after all, she tolerated hot weather better than him. He loved darkness and rain; she, the sun and the wind. To him, the Southern Tropical Canyon was nothing more than a heap of overgrown cliffs and humid jungles; a place he would never have come to of his own free will.
As sweat trickled down his cheeks, making his brown skin gleam, he frowned at the merciless midday sun. Neither his cap nor his dark glasses were opponents for such a brightness.
Wearing a heavy dark green uniform didn’t help make his experience of being here more tolerable, either. What tailoring genius had thought that it would be a good idea for Criminal Division’s officers to wear a sophisticated jumpsuit with thick fabric and suspenders—plus carrying a belt with pouches full of small tools that weighed more than a pile of rocks—when many times the nature of their work required them to visit inhospitable areas or travel through harsh climates like that?
However, Rigel had been serving in the army since he was sixteen and had already been in the field for around twenty-something; he had long ago learned to handle the rough edges of his craft. A little sun and humidity would not get under his skin. Or, at least, they shouldn’t.
Hoping against hope for the arrival of a magical stream of wind, he put his hands on his hips and finally looked back at the scene of the crime. First, he watched the mouth of a cave from which his officers were coming out, carrying away the bodies of the students—or what was left of them—inside black bags, while others took pictures of the entrance area or picked up samples of dried blood, footprints, and even a small iron grate that was being wrapped in a transparent bag as evidence at that moment. Then he continued with his visual tour, following a long line of irregular marks on the ground, marked with flags: footprints that came from the cave, crossed the camp that had not yet been dismantled, and entered the forest. Everything, from the cave on the cliff to the wilderness and beyond, was fenced off by a laser fence.
What the hell had happened there?
One of his men came up and handed him a pamphlet.
“We found it among the belongings of one of the students,” the officer informed.
The pamphlet said,
If you want the University of Geology to say ENOUGH! to the tyrannical regulations of the Markabian Imperial Army, help us gather signatures! We want a fascist-free university, and we want it NOW!
“You say that this year we won’t win the popularity contest among the citizens either?” Rigel said and had to force a smile to announce he was joking.
“I remember when I was that age,” the officer commented; “we were all idealists.”
“Yes, but—” Rigel pointed at the medal they both wore on their chest: a crimson coat of arms with the image of a white Pegasus in profile, standing on its hind legs, with its wings spread and portrayed as if they were laurel wreaths. “As my ex put it, we all like to dream, but the momma army here is the one who has the money to pay for our life insurance.”
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The officer nodded and left to continue his work.
Rigel reread the pamphlet and put it in his pocket. The message didn’t have value as evidence, it just certified that those murdered had been a group of students full of aspirations and eager to change the world; something that, by that time, his entire crew already knew.
“So many ideals to end like this,” he muttered.
Another of his comrades came out of the trees. Bill Serrano was an overweight man who endured the scourge of the sun with the help of black glasses; beyond that, he was having a thirty times worse experience than Rigel. Bill’s head was a red ball popping out from the overall collar like a cherry lollipop sticking out of his wrapper. No. That morning, more than a cherry lollipop, Bill’s head looked like a sausage about to burst on the grill. The potbelly man was panting, and Rigel thought that at any moment he would suffer a heart attack.
“We found the missing student three hundred feet into the woods,” Bill said, pointing to the footprints on the ground; “we only had to follow the path.”
Rigel Beta just nodded.
“You must see it, Detective. It’s terrible!” Serrano said. He took off his dark glasses, wiped the sweat that fogged them against his jumpsuit, and put them back on. He seemed distressed by the situation, or perhaps the heat had reduced his range of tolerance for certain tasks. “There are signs of a fight,” he added with disgust printed on his face. “Fallen leaves, broken branches… Lots of blood and… pieces of body everywhere. Oh, goodness!”
“Are you going to get sick, Bill?”
“No, no,” the officer denied, even though his gesture said otherwise. He coughed a little until he managed to compose himself.
Of course, Rigel wasn’t serious, Bill’s condition was understandable. It wasn’t every day they had to collect bodies in such a hideous state.
“As with the other victims inside the cave...” Bill said. “Well, no traces of strangers, nor of animals, not even a hair that didn’t belong to the victim. It’s like someone came down from the sky to detonate a grenade in front of the kid and then went back up.”
“An unlikely scenario if we think that the rest of the victims were inside a ravine when that grenade exploded,” said Rigel. But he turned in the direction of the cave to see how the paramedics took out, wrapped in a large black bag, the last of the bodies that had been found there, and he gave Serrano’s theory a chance. He knew it sounded ridiculous, but maybe it was time to consider that perhaps the students had come under attack from something and not someone, as they had originally assumed. “No human body simply falls apart without a trigger, much less several bodies at the same time,” the detective thought out loud.
“—Unless you think that spontaneous dismemberment is a thing,” Serrano added. “Poor kids... Who would have been capable of such an atrocity?”
“And for what reason?” Rigel wondered. “There’s no civilization for miles around; nobody lives around here. They didn’t loot the stores; they didn’t take anything. It’s as if whoever killed the students had come to this place solely for that.”
“Perhaps it is revenge against the University or against the students,” Bill guessed. “Could the Rowdy Ones have done it?”
Rigel looked at him somewhat rudely.
Serrano sensed the change in his colonel’s mood, shrugged, and defended his point. “The University responds to the Empire, and the Rowdy Ones oppose the Empire,” he said as if that explained everything. “Freedom fighters, some call them. Ha! Troublemakers, I’d say. Have you seen the pamphlet? Maybe the students were in cahoots with those spineless sons of—”
“Bill, the Rowdy Ones are a paramilitary group of subversives. Why would they murder a group of students in a place as remote as this and in such a heinous way? The theory of the man falling from the sky with the grenade has more logic than that.”
Serrano had begun to sweat more than before.
“I know, I know…”
“And if they were in cahoots, why kill them?” Rigel pointed out. “The Rowdy Ones would have stolen the tents and the equipment, rather than blow them to pieces.”
“Well, yeah. If you look at it from that perspective…”
“—Colonel!”
And just as Rigel was losing his patience, someone demanded his attention. He turned and found one of his men beckoning to him from the cave entrance.
“Colonel, come quickly!”
The tone of that call, that slight agitation in the voice; they had found something important.