Nick Spool

Nick Spool Private Eye

Chauncy sat at her desk preparing letters and invoices while I modified my nimrod pulse gun.  The office smelled like smoke and mildew but the rent was cheap.  I had started out here twenty years ago when I couldn’t have afforded anything else.  Inertia kept me here.

The knock on the door was barely audible but Chauncy yelled, Come in.  Why they didn’t use the ringer, I don’t know. 

In steps this beautiful blonde in a red dress.  Those are always the most dangerous.  In my years as a private investigator the only time I was in real danger is when working for beautiful women.  I braced myself for what she might say.

Are you Nick Spool? she asked as she looked across Chauncey’s desk to mine.

Yes, and who might you be?

I hear that you are the best private investigator in town. She ignored my question and piled on the flattery.  Some guys who had not been in the business long would have enjoyed the compliment, but I found that flattery was only meant to soften the hard blow that was to come next. Yes, I’m cynical, but you don’t stay long in this business if you aren’t.  The bad guys will get you or the cops harass you until you go find an easy job behind a desk.

How can I help you, Ma’am?  It felt good ignoring her compliment. Now we were on even footing.

My boyfriend was murdered! she blurted out.

That sounds like a job for the police, down on 8th Street. Just go out of the front of the building and turn...

"He was a Gaululite, she said, interrupting me.

That changed everything. It should not have changed anything, but it did, and she knew that I knew it.  The room sat quite for a minute while I contemplated my next step.

Who did it? I asked, knowing that she didn’t know. Gaululites were not considered an enlightened species. If someone kills one, the police just take down the time of death and photograph the body and assign the case to the guy who does nothing but drink coffee and smoke cigarettes.  He gets all the cases like that but has never solved one yet.

I don’t know. No surprise there.

Okay, let’s start by you giving your name and address and everything you know about the case to Chauncy here.  We will go from there. My normal fee is 400 kronor plus expenses. Half now and half when the job is done. It was double my normal rate but I knew already that it was going to be a tough case. Chauncy looked over at me with a sudden flash of surprise at the price. But she regained her composure just as quickly, and turned around to take down notes.

350 and not an ounce more, said the blonde.

Fine, I said through my clenched teeth.  It sounded like I was giving in, but I was dancing inside. 

Patsy Lawless gave her name and address to Chauncy and all of the information she had on the murder. I will still tinkering with the nimrod. I had been able to get two more energy units out of it. I was a master at modifying the gun.  All of my modifications were illegal of course, but the worst thing they could do to me was confiscate the pulse gun.  The police liked my modifications. It seemed to me that half to force was using guns that I had modified and that they had confiscated.

The underground arms dealers had offered me a lot of money for the secrets of my modifications, but I didn’t want any connections to them. That would cause more problems than just getting a gun confiscated every once in a while.

When the two of them finished with the information gathering, I said, So, what I provide is the name of the killer and the reason why they did it. I don’t take revenge for you.  If you want me to turn my evidence over to the police, I can do that.

I don’t want the police involved, just give me a who and why, I’ll take care of the rest. Patsy flashed me a wicked smile, I knew what she meant. With that we said our goodbyes and she left.

I decided to go down to the station to see the body.  I knew it was pointless, but I always wanted to see the victim so I could picture the face when I went after their killers. I left out of the front door of my three-story office building.  It was the only building left on the block.  All of the others had been torn down and turned back into farmland.  This was the planet revitalization program. Since the anti-gravity devices had been invented they could build cities in the clouds and were slowly tearing down the old ones and turning them back into pasture, forest, or fields. Hovercraft replaced automobiles as the preferred means of travel, so they were tearing up a lot of the old roadways too.

There was a law that they couldn’t tear down an old building until all of the tenants left.  I was the last diehard in my building and they had been after me to leave for ten years.  I frankly didn’t want to go live in the clouds.

The old police precinct was in the area of town that was declared exempt.  Every town had an old area that did not have to be torn down.  They were mostly tourist attractions at this point, but the police liked it there.  The morgue is right next to the station, so I went in and talked to the officer in charge. He led me downstairs to where they keep the recently departed and I looked they guy in the face. The mortician mumbled something about him being a Gaululite as if that mattered. I wouldn’t have known the difference between him and a human had I not been told.  Some people claim they can spot alien bipeds a mile away but they all look human to me.

After that I went next door to visit Detective Stark.  He is drinking his coffee and smoking his cigarette. With all of the taxes on cigarettes, no one can afford the habit expect for the very rich or the police.  A lot of people try to get around the taxes by smuggling the smokes in from other planets.  The cigarettes get confiscated, but the smugglers are rarely convicted. Seems most of the evidence disappears before the smugglers can be brought to trial.

Do you have the file on the Zafir Ermen case? I asked Stark, he was fat and lazy with a ketchup stain on his blue uniform.

You trying to do my job again, Spool? He almost sounded indignant.

Someone’s got to do it, I said, and to my surprise he just printed out the file and handed it to me.

Knock yourself out.  I started to leave. He knew I was on to him but he simply didn’t care. He lit up another cigarette as I walked out the door.

The file was small, had three photographs of the crime scene and the coroner’s report.  There was a blast of a nimrod to the chest. Heart and lung damage. The victim died instantly. 

The nimrod had many benefits over the powder and lead bullets of the past. It was an energy weapon and would cauterize the wound as went through so there was no blood.  The police didn’t have to rush to get wounded suspects to the hospital because there is no danger of them bleeding to death. The only drawback was that the gun left an open hole in whatever it hit.  When it hit a person, the doctors would have to scrape off the burnt part before they could stitch it back together.

When scientist found that an imported metal called zitham could stop a low yield blast from a nimrod, they started legalizing the use of the pulse gun but limiting its yield.  The made zitham illegal to own, except for the police.  So now the officers that are out on patrol have zitham woven into their shirts and pants. Zitham helmets and chest plates.  Zithim is as shiny as chrome. That is where they got they name ‘Chrome Domes,’ even though few people dare call them that to their face. The number of dead police officers has gone down dramatically, while the number of dead bad guys has increased tenfold.  That is why the gun dealers wanted my modifications. For my part, I modify my guns so that if, for any reason, I have to get into a firefight with a police officer, I want to make sure that my blast will go through his armor. It’s always better to be on equal footing.

It was time to get a look at the crime scene for myself. I walked to the monorail station and rode it up to the spaceport. The monorail was supposed to connect all of the sky cities, but local governments spent the money on other pet projects so the monorail only goes between the surface and the spaceport.

The port is always bustling with people coming and going, ships docking and customs officials checking manifests. The sky cities are a mass of metal and glass.  Most of the metal had to be imported, so there were exotic types that turned green and blue as they weathered. There were hovercraft buzzing to and from the other cities when I went over to where the report said that he was killed.  It was a back alley area and delivery crafts are usually the only occupants.

I had started looking for clues when I heard the unmistakable sound of a blaster charging up. I had only heard the sound in documentaries but there was no sound quite like it.  Before I could react, there were two large explosions five feet from my head. Blue liquid started gushing out one of the new holes. Smoke came from the other one.  I had instinctively jumped to the side.  It would have been too late if the shooter been able to aim.  That’s the benefit of a blaster is that it has a two-foot kill area. Anything that is within two feet of where it hits is dead.  The shooter was a very poor shot. 

I pulled out my nimrod and aimed it at the retreating figure, but right when I was about to pull the trigger I changed my mind.  This was my only link to the dead man, and if I killed him I couldn’t question him.  I know that the weapon fire detection grid would be lit up already by the blasts that had missed me. I didn’t want to alert the police to the fact that I had a modified weapon.  So I stood up and tossed my gun into the nearest trash receptacle and waited for the police to arrive.

I didn’t have long to wait as three police hovercraft descended on me in a matter of minutes. They jumped out with their weapons drawn.  I recognized an officer’s gun as having once been mine. The chrome domes relaxed when they saw that the threat was gone.

Well, Spool, looks like someone doesn’t like you, one of the policemen said when he recognized me. You don’t have a weapon on you, do you?

Are you kidding, the guy that shot at me is still alive, I responded.

The chrome dome looked disappointed. He frisked me anyway. He’s clean, he told the others.

The blue liquid was still pouring out of the hole in the building. The police looked for clues but they were the customs officer kind and were bungling the whole operation. Two had chased after the retreating figure, but he had gotten away clean. The police are never in a hurry to chase after someone with superior weapons than theirs. They gave up after a few minutes and left.  As soon as they did, I jumped headfirst into the trash receptacle to get my gun back. I didn’t want it getting recycled.  It was my most powerful yet; I had spent a lot of time on it. On the way back to the office, there wasn’t anyone on the monorail that was willing to sit by me, even though