The Unknown Chase

Beneath the colony’s artificial dawn, a weary, scruffy-faced man lay with his eyes closed and pretended the alarm was not sounding. Beyond his sealed window, crews in pressure suits crossed a surface no unprotected human could survive. On the nightstand, dim light caught a bottle of brown liquor, a pack of contraband cigarettes, and a metallic semi-automatic pistol. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. It felt far too early, but exhaustion—not the hour—was the problem. 

He slapped at the clock until the alarm died, then found the cigarettes and lighter he had abandoned before passing out. His hands fumbled before he freed one, lit it, and inhaled. Filthy, illegal, necessary. After several drags, he checked the phone on the nightstand: just after zero-six-hundred, with thirteen messages already waiting. 

He pushed himself upright and stared at the badge beside the phone. The identification beneath it read Chase Rogers, tactical commander and lead investigator for Colony Three—a jurisdiction that had never recorded a murder. 

Chase found a pair of jeans on the floor, pulled them on, and looked through the bedroom window. The pressurized city wore its usual blue-gray pall beneath the simulated sky. Nothing looked better than it had yesterday. He dragged a clean T-shirt over his head and left the room carrying his gun, badge, and identification. 

An hour later, red and blue emergency lights pulsed across a residential corridor built for a crime no colony planner had expected. Chase lifted the caution tape with coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, then stepped past the officers and into the residence. 

"You do know that if we had another qualified investigator, or someone with your instincts, you'd be suspended for smoking at a crime scene."   

Callie Andrews was right. Chase ground the cigarette beneath his heel without being asked, then crossed the room. The division tolerated his habits because he solved problems no one else could—and because the people above him preferred not to explain why his record from the last war remained sealed. 

“You’re welcome,” he said. 

“For disposing of contraband at my crime scene? Let me guess: one of your red-zone contacts supplied it. Turk?” 

Damn. Turk supplied the whiskey, cigarettes, and occasional pharmaceutical the colony rationed or prohibited. He and Chase had survived the last war together, which made the arrangement personal—and, as far as Chase was concerned, untouchable. 

“He asks about you,” Chase said. “Still carries a torch.” 

Callie walked to the other side of the room, kneeling next to the covered body between them. She raised the sheet, uncovering the face of the victim, and looked up at Chase.   

“Is this why I’m here?” he asked. 

"Do you know her?"   

He asked, "Should I?"  

Callie drew a business card from her shirt pocket. Chase’s name was printed on the front; his private number, in his own handwriting, filled the back. She held it between them and watched recognition fail to reach his face. 

"I'm guessing it's not a personal connection," she admitted.   

Chase knelt beside the body and compared the writing to memory. It was his. He did not remember the woman, but someone had expected investigators to find his name on her. 

"So, what happened?" Chase asked.   

He pulled back the sheet. Slashes crossed her torso, and a deeper wound had opened her neck. A crimson trail led toward the next room. The killing had been prolonged, intimate, and unlike anything in the colony’s clean institutional history. 

“A delivery person knocked, and the door opened,” Callie said. “The security system was disabled, the locks disengaged. He called it in.” 

“Driver’s clean?” 

“Student, no known connection to the victim. We have him in lockdown for interview. The examiner puts death near twelve hours ago, pending autopsy.” Chase studied the body once more, then rose. “Make the transfer.” 

"Let the examiner know I'll be down to get the results as soon as they're done," he told Callie.   

Chase abruptly picked up his coffee and walked out of the room, leaving Callie to quarterback the scene. She wondered what the hurry was, then looked back at the business card in her shirt pocket. There was a connection between them somewhere. She stood up, wondering to herself what Chase was hiding.  

Chase wandered away from the scene and made his way back to the office. As he sat there, staring blankly at the charcoal gray walls, his hands folded in front of him, he tried to focus on the victim’s face. If they had met, he didn’t remember when. So, why was her face sticking in his memory?  

At his desk, Chase loaded the scene record and scrubbed through the technicians’ video frame by frame. He searched the entrance for pry marks, scratches, residue—anything that could explain how a killer breached a sealed residence. 

There was nothing. The door could open only from within unless someone possessed a passkey or the security codes. In a premium residential sector built around controlled access, that absence mattered more than any broken lock: Allison had admitted her killer, or the killer belonged there. 

A buzzing on his desk alerted him to someone at the door. He summoned them to enter. As the door opened, he saw Callie standing there. She didn’t have a look of promise on her face, nor her usual smile.  

“What is it?”  

“The sweep is complete,” Callie said. “No useful trace on the weapon or entry point. The victim was Allison Taylor, thirty-five, a low-level Bureau of Identification employee. No record, no obvious enemies, no pattern of risky behavior.” 

“Her routine was work, the theater, weekly dinner with colleagues, and the library,” Callie continued. “Everyone we found liked her.” 

Allison’s apartment confirmed it: crowded bookshelves, four library loans in her den, and no sign of a hidden life. The librarians knew her by name and described her as kind, punctual, and unremarkable. 

“Was she involved with anyone?”  

“No partner we can identify,” Callie said. Her fingers worried the edge of a tablet. Chase let the silence press until she met his eyes. 

“Ask me,” instructed Chase.  

“Hm, sir?”  

“You want to know whether I knew her.” 

“Did you?” 

“No.” He held her gaze. “But the card means she knew how to reach me, and until we know why, I stay on the suspect board with everyone else.” 

Callie’s expression tightened; he had said aloud what protocol required and pride resisted. “Maybe she got it from someone else.” 

Chase turned the card over. “Then we identify the first recipient and reconstruct the chain.” 

His phone rang, and when he answered, it was the medical examiner’s office. The victim's full exam was completed. Chase nodded, hearing the examiner tell him he could come down to the office whenever he was ready.  

“Thanks,” he replied, “I’ll be there in a while.”  

“What was that?” asked Callie as he hung up.  

He explained that it was the examiner and the autopsy report was ready. Chase knew he’d have to face that duty sooner rather than later. It wasn’t how he wanted to spend his day, but any day spent in the guts of some poor woman was going to be rough.  

“I’m going to head down to the examiner’s office. I want you to follow up on the canvas, see what we come up with.”  

Callie nodded and left the office. Chase logged off his computer and grabbed his tape recorder. It was easier than keeping up with Sharon’s briefing on the autopsy results.  

The medical examiner’s office was four levels below the investigative unit. Chase took the stairs down, annoyed by the same blue-gray wall colors that were everywhere he went. As a member of the division, even his personal quarters were that dull, lifeless, blue-gray color. And good luck getting paint authorized in government housing. He’d requested a change of décor more than a month ago, and the request was still in the queue.  

He walked down the metal halls toward the medical examiner’s office, the smell of chemicals and bodily secretions noticeable from a distance. As he got to the office, Sharon was standing in the exam room, her arms folded, and her chin in hand. She still wore her gown, booties, and mask, but her hair was down. In this light, she looked like one of the gang.  

“Knock, knock,” he said, announcing himself.  

Sharon turned. Seeing it was Chase, she motioned for him to come in. Chase put on a mask and approached the table.  

“So, I hear you might know our victim,” she admitted.  

“Not that I can recall,” he advised. “But I get why people would say that” he said, running his pen over her personal effects and his business card with his personal number.  

“So, what’s cause of death?”  

Sharon explained the cause of death was blood loss. The wound to her neck had severed the carotid artery, causing her to bleed out in seconds. At the time of that wound, she’d already been through an ordeal.  

“These happened before the injuries to her throat. The attack likely started in the back bedroom, and from there, she got free at one point, heading for the front door, and was caught.” 

Chase realized she had suffered. He wondered how long the assault went on for. What was she feeling as her attacker brutalized her body, opening wounds in her flesh, and leaving her for dead?  

“Any idea what kind of a weapon we should be looking for?” asked Chase.  

Sharon was silent. This was her specialty, but she had nothing to offer him. The assailant’s weapon wasn’t something she could pick from memory. She’d never seen anything like this victim and had been an examiner for twenty-two years. As she explained, feeling somewhat of a failure, Sharon apologized.  

“I know, I let you down on this one, but this isn’t like any other victim I’ve ever had on my table. The wounds are…” she hesitated.  

Chase waited patiently for her to catch up with herself, expecting that she’d have something more to offer. However, she didn’t have anything definitive. Sharon was stuck for answers as to what was used.  

“Honestly,” she sighed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was attacked by an animal. But unless a wild dog of unusual size got into her apartment, it’s unlikely the answer.”  

“Alright doc,” surrendered Chase. “If you do think of anything, please call me.”  

Chase left the office and started back up the stairs. The lack of sleep exhausted him more today than on a normal day. He decided to get another cup of coffee and start shaking some trees. Somebody had to have heard something about the woman. Why anybody would want to kill a lower-level employee from the Bureau of Identification still hadn’t been answered. There wasn’t a motive, and he didn’t like that. People always had motives for killing someone, and so far, this was the last person he could see ruffling enough feathers to get killed for it.  

By the time he'd shaken the usual trees, Chase was treated to several rounds of shock. Everybody who knew her liked Allison Taylor. The shadier trees he checked with hadn't heard of the woman. After nine hours of rustling the crowds, checking with informants, and getting nowhere, Chase knew he wasn't going to have a fast turnaround with this one. He needed to unwind, get a good night's sleep, and hopefully they'd uncover more tomorrow.  

Returning to his apartment, Chase kicked off his boots as he entered. His neighbor Miranda told him to enjoy his evening as she passed, causing Chase to throw her an eye. Kicking off his second boot, he moved away from the entrance to his apartment, securing the door behind him. The next point of order was to set his gun, badge, and ID aside. With that done, he could enjoy a shower, put on his favorite robe, and have a drink.  

Chase preferred whiskey over ice. Tonight, it was double. He desperately needed to get some sleep. As he poured, his mind was still on the day behind him. He thought about Allison Taylor. She was beautiful, from what he could tell with her insides exposed. She had so many more years of this life in front of her.  

"Why her?"  

He stood at the window, watching pressure-suited crews cross the surface in the weak gravity beyond the dome. Humanity had fled Earth, built three colonies, and spent a decade congratulating itself for leaving old violence behind. Allison Taylor’s murder ended that fiction. Chase lifted the glass but did not drink. Somewhere inside this sealed city, a killer had crossed every safeguard and chosen a victim carrying his name.