Xenopath by Eric Brown Page B

examined the ghost's gaping rictus. The girl was still
in the shadows, peeping out.
    He restarted the
image. Kormier paced. Each time he reached the ghost train and
turned, Vaughan expected him to face his killer.
    So far, however,
there was no sign of the laser slayer.
    Then, at a
minute before midnight, Kormier came to a halt before the ghost
train. He turned, lifted his cuff again to glance at his watch. He
looked up, across the concourse, then lifted an arm as if in
greeting.
    It was the last
living movement he was to make.
    The dazzling
laser vector lasted barely half a second. It lanced from off-screen,
hit Kormier, then vanished. That was all it took: Kormier lay on the
concrete, head, arms, and torso sliced into four neat sections.
    Vaughan stilled
the image, sat back in his seat. He realised that he was sweating and
breathing hard. It was as if he had been there, had witnessed the
slaving in the flesh.
    For the next
hour he accessed other cameras in the vicinity of the amusement park,
attempting to get an image of the killer. Half a dozen other cameras
gave partial views of the park, but none had captured the murderer.
He'd been either very lucky, or had known the surveillance cams'
blind spots and had planned accordingly.
    Vaughan checked
all the cams in the vicinity of the park for anyone entering through
the boarded-up perimeter fence, but found nothing. The killer had
arrived and departed without allowing himself to be caught by a
single camera. Luck, it seemed, had had nothing to do with it. He was
obviously dealing with someone professional and meticulous.
    He returned to
the original scene of the concourse. He viewed the killing again, and
again, and then the minutes leading up to it, and after.
    At least he had
another valuable lead here: the girl cowering in the mouth of the
ghost had seen the killing. It was also possible that she had caught
sight of the killer.
    He viewed the
scene in the minutes after the killing. He watched the girl jump from
the mouth of the ghost, turn, and run down a narrow alley between the
ghost train and the neighbouring attraction.
    He rewound the
footage and looked for the best view of the girl. For the most part
she had her back to the camera. Only when she was emerging from the
ghost's mouth, preparatory to making her escape, did she present a
frontal image.
    He magnified the
scene, homing in on the girl.
    He
computer-enhanced the picture, cleaning up the granular pixels and
coming out with a sharp image of a young Thai girl, perhaps seven or
eight, in dirty red shorts and a white T-shirt.
    He printed the
image and sat back with it in his hand, staring.
    The legend
across the front of the kid's shirt was: Tigers.
    Years ago he had
known Sukara's kid sister, Tiger, before she'd overdosed on a
virulent off-world drug. Tiger, a big fan of the skyball team, had
worn a T-shirt just like this kid's.
    It was a day, he
thought, haunted by spectres of the past.
    He returned to
the screen and re-ran the minutes either side of Kormier's killing,
playing the images in slow motion to ensure he missed nothing.
    The laser hit—in
slow motion, he could make out the vector's minimal waver that
created the grisly loop effect—and winked out of existence.
    He played it
again, and again, and only on the third time did he notice something.
    He sat forward,
wondering if the effect had been the result of tired eyes.
    But there it was
again.
    In the split
second after the laser's impact, a light seemed to rebound at right
angles to Kormier and lance off towards where the kid crouched in the
ghost's open mouth.
    It hit her in
the centre of her forehead, sending her reeling backwards.
    Which, he told
himself, was insane. Lasers didn't ricochet.
    He replayed the
image perhaps twenty times. The rebounding light was not blue, like
the laser vector, but white. He wondered if it was some reflection of
the laser on the screen of the surveillance cam. But that was
ridiculous, and anyway the girl had