Subject: Murder One part 2 (for alt.startrek.creative)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 94 10:16:12 EDT

A burst of raucous laughter filled the bar as the five Klingon officers
off the Gowron knocked back their glasses of prune juice.
 "Bartender!" shouted Captain Krinoth. "Another round!"
 Quark muttered something not very polite to himself and programmed the
replicator to produce yet another quintuple set of glasses of prune juice.
Damn Klingons, he thought. He stone a glance at the rest of the bar and the
few alcoholic denizens residing within. Most of his regulars had heard who
was stopping by and decided to visit a different watering hole for a few
hours.
 The hell of it was that there were no other watering holes on Deep Space
Nine. Quark lamented the lost latinum as he carried the tray of prune juice
through the din of laughter over to the table and plunked it down, jumping
back just fast enough to avoid losing a few fingers as the Klingons grabbed
the glasses.
 Please, the Ferengi prayed, let someone else come in here.
 He got his wish.
 Quark saw O'Brien thunder into the bar and grinned in utter relief. "Why,
Chief! This is an unexpected pleas-"
 His voice cut off as a furious O'Brien grabbed him by the neck, hauled him
clear off the floor and began to shake him like a rag doll. "Where is she?"
the human demanded.
 "Where's who?" Quark managed to squeak.
 "Where's my wife?"
 "Holosuite J," Quark rasped, and fell back gasping as O'Brien released him
and headed for the stairs at full speed.
 O'Brien ran up the stairs and barreled down the corridor holding the
holosuites. He stopped outside the last one - Holosuite J. He firmly
pressed the intercom button that would allow someone to communicate with
anyone inside the holosuite. "Keiko? Come out of there!"
 There was no answer, so O'Brien turned to the computer interface terminal
and said, "Computer, open Holosuite J. Command override O'Brien delta two
seven."
 The computer beeped and the door slid open, revealing Keiko O'Brien
sitting alone in the middle of a sunny meadow by a gurgling brook.
 O'Brien paused for a moment to make sure he was really seeing what his
eyes were conveying to his brain. No, Miles, he said to himself, you are
not seeing your wife enjoying herself carnally with a holographic
simulation.
 Keiko looked up at the sound of the opening door and smiled at her
husband. "Come in, Miles. You look silly standing there with your mouth
open."
 O'Brien tentatively made his way inside the suite, allowing the door to
close behind him. "I see you got my note," his wife said conversationally.
 "Your note," O'Brien said slowly. "I got it. I thought that you were..."
 Keiko looked at him curiously for a moment, then her eyes widened and she
blushed hard enough to heat up the entire room. "You thought that I was
running one of those programs?"
 Her husband stammered, "Well, since I got the call from Ops and left you
all alone...I thought that..."
 Keiko smiled, a bright and sunny smile. She stepped forward and took her
husband's face in her hands. "You were jealous."
 "Honey," said O'Brien, "I know my schedule isn't exactly easy on our
marriage. I just don't want to lose you because of it."
 She kissed him gently. "You can't lose me that easily, Miles. And I'd
still love you even if you were always off fixing something on this
station."
 But I am always fixing something on this station, O'Brien thought, and
wisely left that sentiment unsaid.
 As they began to kiss passionately, he thought of nothing except how
beautiful his wife was and how much he loved her.
 One of the attractions of Quark's holosuites was that they were totally
soundproof; sounds from the inside could not penetrate to the outside and
vice versa. This was why the station's chief of operations did not hear the
commotion outside, even if he had been in a mood to hear it.

 A quiet chime sounded from behind the bar, drawing Quark's attention to a
screen. TIME LIMIT ON HOLOSUITE G EXPIRED, it said. Finally, Quark thought
with relief, some diversion from the Klingons and their endless noise.
"Rom!" he shouted above the cacophony.
 His brother scuttled over from the Klingon table and came to a halt in
front of the bar. "Yes, brother?"
 "The time limit in Holosuite G is up," said Quark. "Go get her out of
there and let someone else take their turn."
 Rom paused as he thought this over for a moment. At times like this, Quark
could swear that he could actually see the sluggish chemical reactions
taking place in his brother's brain. Rom finally got the idea, grinned that
foolish grin of his, and shambled up the steps to the holosuites.
 He stopped in front of Holosuite G, which had automatically shut down when
the timer had counted down from three hours. Rom cleared his throat and
pressed the intercom button. "Ms. Jarvis," he stuttered, "I'm sorry, but
you'll have to leave now."
 There was no answer.
 Rom frowned. He was not particularly good with problems.
 So he pressed the button again, again bringing only silence.
 Thinking hard for a moment, he remembered the override code that only he
and Quark knew and punched it in. The computer beeped, acknowledging the
code, and the door slid open.
 Rom looked at what was inside and screamed.

 Odo heard the scream from his office and ran out, bumping into several
people on the Promenade who had also heard the Ferengi scream. He darted up
the stairs, followed by Quark and about a dozen other people.
 He stopped in front of the open holosuite door to find Rom, pale and
stammering and in shock. He turned, motioned to the others to stay back,
and stepped into the suite.
 Deborah Jarvis was sprawled out on the floor, very beautiful, very naked,
and very dead. Blood still trickled from a gaping wound in her chest.
 Odo tapped his combadge. "Odo to Bashir."
 "Bashir here," came the voice of the station's head doctor.
 "Doctor, we have - a problem at Holosuite G."
 Dr. Julian Bashir hesitated for only an instant. "On my way," he said
simply, and closed the channel.
 Odo took up position in the holosuite's doorway, solid as a rock (and with
the humor of one, as Quark would say). It was less than two minutes later
that Bashir and a medtech arrived with a crash cart and entered the suite.
Sisko and Kira were right behind them.
 Sisko's expression was dark and thunderous as he looked at Jarvis' body.
"Who did this?" he hissed as Bashir began to examine it.
 "Rest assured, Commander," said Odo, "I will find the killer."
 "Cause of death is pretty obvious," said Bashir as he straightened up.
"Massive coronary failure brought on by a stab wound to the chest. Looks
like the object went between her left ribs and hit her heart."
 "When did she die?" asked Kira.
 "My guess is anywhere from one to two hours ago. To get more specific than
that, I'd have to perform an autopsy."
 "Do it, Doctor," ordered Sisko. "In the meantime, Major, I want the
station sealed off. No one gets in or out."
 "Yes, sir," said Kira.
 "Where's Quark?" Sisko asked as he looked at the gaggle of heads peeping
in around Odo.
 "Here, Commander." The Ferengi ducked under Odo's arm and entered the
suite, glancing forlornly at Jarvis' body.
 "This holosuite is being closed for the duration of this inquiry," said
Sisko.
 Quark actually gasped. "You can't do that! I need this suite to stay
profitable!"
 "You have nine others," remarked Kira coolly.
 "Besides, she never paid me."
 Growling, Kira stepped forward and grabbed Quark by the collar much as
O'Brien had done shortly before. "Listen to me, you little frog. A woman
has been murdered, and the fact that all you can think of is your balance
sheet makes me very upset."
 If there was one thing Quark had learned in the eighteen months since the
station had been turned over to the Federation, it was never to make Major
Kira Nerys angry. Another thing Quark had learned was the Eighty-Ninth Rule
of Acquisition: Never make the authorities mad at you.
 "Of course I'm not totally insensitive," Quark said soothingly. "I just
talked before I thought, that's all."
 Kira nodded sarcastically. "Of course, Quark."
 Bashir and his medtech straightened up and the doctor tapped his badge.
"Bashir to Ops. Two people - and one other - to transport to the
infirmary." They were snatched away in a haze of red light, and Odo raised
his hands.
 "It's all over," he announced to the spectators. "Go back to whatever you
people were doing before this whole thing started."
 Muttering amongst themselves, the spectators left, not particularly happy
at the thought of being locked in the station along with a killer. Had they
known the past histories of, say, Quark's clientele, which had a not
insignificant number of killers to its name, they would not have felt so
apprehensive. At least they knew who those killers were.
 It was at this point that the door to Holosuite J opened and Miles and
Keiko O'Brien emerged, their arms wrapped around each other and both of
them glowing like the sun itself. O'Brien blinked at the sudden crowd in
the corridor. "What's up?" he asked Odo.
 Odo snorted. "Funny you should ask that..."

 Bashir took a deep breath and approached the lifeless body of Deborah
Jarvis as it lay in an anteroom of the infirmary. It was not like he had
never done an autopsy before. He had; he had done dozens in his medical
career. But he had never had to do one on someone murdered like this
before.
 He switched on the sterile field, thus ensuring that any microorganisms
still active in the corpse could not escape into the larger environment of
the station and wreak some havoc. He set the auto-scanner to examine every
inch of her body, especially the chest wound, and activated it. The scanner
would take several minutes to do the job, and Bashir took advantage of the
moment to look closely at the dead face.
 If he could assign a name to the emotion on that face, it would be
surprise. Whatever had happened to her had happened very quickly. Fear and
terror took time to be generated. The saving grace in all of this is that
she probably didn't have enough time to suffer.
 The scanner beeped and the results came up on a monitor screen. Bashir
tore himself away from the body and examined the data. He was especially
interested in the composition of the wound; it would tell his what kind of
weapon Jarvis had been killed with.
 The results were conclusive, and a very specific kind of weapon jumped out
from the dry on-screen language.
 It was a weapon that worried Bashir a great deal.