by Rachel Ford
“Thanks, Dave. I think.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Three days later, the hospital released Kor ark nikya. I learned of his release in much the same way I learned of everything those days: via the newscasts.
Watching them had become something of an unhealthy obsession for me, cataloguing all the conspiracies and innuendos, all the gossip and malicious commentary, that could fit into a segment, segment after segment.
Any thoughts that a little bit of passing time would dim Kudarian interest in the story faded as the days went by. Interest seemed to grow by leaps and bounds rather than diminishing. Rita warned that it was becoming “an incident” in Union diplomatic circles, which I took to mean a point of contention between human and Kudarian ambassadorial parties. She wouldn’t specify further, saying only, “We need to clear this up, before things get any messier. This is bigger than all of us now.”
“It’s not personal,” Maggie offered after a particularly scathing piece digging into my own backstory, and the disaster on Echo Prime, aired. Echo Prime was a terraforming project that I’d been called in to oversee at the last minute, and it had gone south quickly – spectacularly, horrifically south. Seven billion credits worth of going south, to be exact. It was certainly not my finest moment, and though there were extenuating circumstances, none of them seemed to make it onto the broadcast. I came across as almost criminally incompetent. My cheeks burned with humiliation and rage as I watched. “There’s a strong strain of xenophobia on Kudar, babe. There has been for a long time. It’s not about us so much as it is about humans in general.”
“I just get to be the embodiment of the stupid, dangerous human? It feels pretty personal.”
She hugged me. “I know. And I know it doesn’t really make much difference that it isn’t. But, for your own sake, Katherine, keep that in mind. They aren’t seeing you. They’re seeing an archetype that exists in their own imagination. That’s what they have problems with. Not you, baby.”
I got her point, but the truth was it didn’t help much. Whatever their reasons for hating me, they still did. They’d still dug up the biggest mistake of my career and ran it on every newscast on the planet. They still were using me as a posterchild for all that was wrong with humanity, as they saw it.
Where Kor was concerned, though, at least the casts had a little good to say. The doctors predicted a full recovery, and the young man was headed back to his family home. A particularly shameless newsman pursued Kor’s motorized medical chair from the hospital to his waiting transport. The concerned voice of an unseen woman intoned, “We can see Kor stepping, with some difficulty, into the vehicle. And just there inside, you can catch a glimpse of Kri.”
“And he,” a male voice added, “is clearly feeling the effects of these last few days. Although he seems relieved to see his son again.”
“Indeed.” The view switched back to the two vultures, who proceeded to expound on their readings of the Nikyas’ facial expressions and body language. I glared daggers at the screen, the words melding together after a space, lost to my silent rage. The sensationalism at play in every aspect of reporting on this case infuriated me.
It infuriated me to see my name, and Maggie’s and Frank’s, dragged through the mud.
It infuriated me to see Kor’s and Kri’s steps haunted by drones and cameramen, then picked apart by armchair analysts.
It infuriated me to think that the real killer, whoever he or she was, was out there still, free and happy, while we cowered inside. While Frank rots in jail.
“Hey,” Mags’ voice sounded beside me. “You’ve been watching this crap for hours, babe. Why don’t you shut it off?”
I hadn’t seen her come in, but I shook my head. “Kor’s out of the hospital.”
“Well that’s great. I’m happy for him. But you’re not going to learn anything from watching that trash.”
“I want to see what they say, though.”
She sighed. “Kay, you know what they’re going to say. Maybe not the exact words, but you know. It’ll be the same crap they’ve been saying for days.” She leaned across the chair wrapping her arms around me and resting her chin on my shoulder. Her voice was tender. “Let it be, darling. Please. There’s nothing you can do about it, and you’re just torturing yourself.”
For a moment, I sat in silence, considering her words. Then, switching off the box, I grumbled, “Dammit Mags, why do you always got to be right?”
She laughed softly. “We both know that’s malarkey.”
I grinned, pivoting in my seat to face her. “And there you go again.”
She smiled too, then planted a kiss on my cheek. “I actually came to find you. F’rok’s back. With J’kar. They want to talk to you.”
“Oh.” I brightened. The younger Inkaya had left three days ago, as soon as the coast was clear; and though he’d phoned in a few times, he hadn’t been home yet. He’d been pretty shaken by the targeting of J’kar’s family, and since his own didn’t need him at the moment, he’d stayed there, with them. It’d be good to see him again. “Alright. Let’s go then.”
J’kar was as friendly as usual, but his dark eyes were troubled. “Katherine,” he greeted. “It’s good to see you again. How are you holding up?”
“You know,” I said with a smile, “well enough, considering.”
He nodded. “Indeed.”
“And yourself?”
He shrugged. “About the same.”
“We keep getting crank callers,” F’rok put in. “Another window was smashed, this time on the house itself.”
“That’s awful. What are the police doing?”
“Not much. They can’t spare anyone to stake the place out. They have increased patrols in the area, which is something, I guess.”
“Kay,” F’rok said, “we have something we need to ask you. You and Magdalene.”
I nodded. “Okay. What?”
“I’m sorry. It’s going to sound crazy, but J’kar’s dad got a call earlier, from a friend of his at one of the city’s papers. He wanted to give them a head’s up. There’s a story going around that you guys are…well, that you guys are working with some kind of extremist group.”
I blinked, stunned by the statement. “What?”
Maggie crossed her arms. “That’s insane. But where’s the question, F’rok?”
He fidgeted nervously. “I know you’re not working with extremists. But…where the hell would they get that? Do you know anyone here? Other than F’er, I mean?”
“Of course not.”
“They said,” J’kar added, “you’d met with one of the leaders of the group.”
I laughed out loud. “Guys, this is insane. Extremists? I can’t even speak the language. I mean, what am I supposed to be a part of here anyway?”
“There’s a kind of open-borders advocacy group. They’re very fringe. Not that I don’t agree with them on a lot, but they’re considered very much outside the mainstream.”
“They want to waive the sponsor requirement for humans and other Union species. They want increased trade and cultural exchanges, more imports, more exports,” F’rok said. “They’re a popular movement among students and reformers, but…” He shook his head. “It’s not going to play out well in the press, Kay.”
I spread my hands, exasperated. “F’rok, I’m not lying. This is my first time on planet. Frank’s the only Kudarian I really knew before coming here. I mean, I don’t particularly care for them, but I have no vested interest in your politics.”
“I believe you,” he said. “Really, I do. We’re just trying to figure out how the hell they cooked this up.”
“They’re lying,” I decided. “They have to be. It’s another smear.”
“What did your dad’s friend say?” Maggie asked of J’kar. “Did he say why they thought we were in league with these ‘extremists’?”
J’kar shrugged equivocally. “Kind of. He couldn’t out his source, but someone in the department – one of th
e constables – leaked it to someone at his paper.”
“But leaked what?” Maggie wondered. “We’re not involved with any of this, so there’s got to be something that makes them think otherwise.”
He nodded. “Yes. They have the group under surveillance. For security reasons, apparently. And you…well, you were seen with one of the leaders. Meeting with one of the leaders.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
It seemed to me that F’rok might have led with this bit of news. It was preposterous, of course. Until a few moments before, I’d never even heard of this group. “Look,” I said, “I don’t care what they’re claiming to have, F’rok. We are not involved with anything. We weren’t meeting anyone.”
“Who is this leader?” Maggie asked. “What’s his name?”
“Her name,” J’kar corrected. “It’s Kaya arn Vulari.”
I frowned. The name was familiar, not as an extremist or a political outsider. I couldn’t place where I had heard it, but certainly it wasn’t in that context. Still, it rang a bell. “Who?”
He confirmed the name. “Do you know her?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “The name sounds familiar.”
“The woman at the stalls,” Maggie reminded me. “Who took us to Mother Ikyel’s. Remember?”
“For plum cake,” I gasped, the memory of that gregarious, middle-aged woman flooding back. “You mean…she’s the one they’re talking about?”
“Then you do know her?” The faintest trace of suspicion crept into J’kar’s tones.
“We met her,” I said, “but I didn’t know her politics. Honestly, J’kar. She just invited us to get some plum cake. It was Kriar’s specialty, she said.”
F’rok sighed. “Dammit. That was her?”
“That was who?” his fiancé wondered.
“That morning I visited you, back when F’er was first home? Kay and Magdalene told us about this woman they met, who was excited to meet humans. I just didn’t realize it was her.”
“So you mean we had plum cake with a kind of political persona non grata?” Maggie asked.
“That’s an understatement,” J’kar answered. “Pariah might be the better term.”
“Still. What does that prove? We didn’t know who the hell she was. Not that she sounds like she’s wrong anyway. But regardless: we didn’t know who she was. And she hasn’t broken any laws, right? I mean, we didn’t do anything wrong.”
“She’s not wrong,” F’rok agreed. “And nothing she does is illegal. But this will be bad. Very bad.”
“Why?”
“Because her message is…well, so fringe in most circles. A lot of people really hate her. And now that you’re linked to it, it’s another reason to hate you.”
As if they need another one. So far, they’d been perfectly adept at creating reasons to despise Mags and me. “What in the hell kind of luck is that?” I fumed. “Of all the people to run into on this planet, we just happen to meet someone like her?”
“It is unfortunate,” F’rok agreed.
I snorted. “That’s an understatement. Now your newspapers are going to be accusing us of – well, God only knows what.”
“And linking the open borders movement to you,” J’kar observed.
“What?”
“It won’t do them any favors in the public eye to be tied to suspected murderers.”
“Which explains why it was leaked,” Maggie nodded. “If they hate this group so much they’re surveilling them, they can take a swing at them at the same time they’re hitting us.”
“Two birds, one stone,” I agreed. “Well fuck.”
J’kar and F’rok spent most of the day. We talked about strategies to counter the story when it came out, but we came up with no great solutions. No one would believe the truth, and all we had to back it up was our word. Which, in the present circumstance, counted for less than nothing.
The bad news notwithstanding, it was good to see them again, though. J’kar’s parents, he told us, were keeping their chins up. “They’ve sent cease-and-desists to just about every station in the city. There’s been reporters chasing down everyone we’ve ever talked to, or dealt with; reporters combing through every bit of our family history. They contacted my professors. Hell, they even tracked my ex and tried to get him on record saying something.”
“Geez.”
“I know. He told them to go to – well, you know. But still, it’s crazy.”
“We can’t go anywhere without reporters trailing us, either,” F’rok added.
“I can tell,” I said wryly. “I’ve seen shots of the pair of you on the news. Lots and lots of them. You have a dedicated set of stalkers.”
They snorted. “Yes, they particularly love the holding-hands and kissing pictures, too. Like there’s something salacious in that, as opposed to the people following us around everywhere and taking pictures of everything we do.”
“We’ve got to do something,” Maggie declared suddenly.
We all glanced at her. She’d been quiet and thoughtful for a while, but now her eyes blazed. “We’ve got to stop sitting around waiting for the law to do its job.”
This was such a radical reversal of her earlier faith in the system that I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, they’re not trying to find the killer. They’re trying to pin it on us. On Frank, and by extension you and me. That’s what leaking those pictures was about: poisoning the public even further against us.”
I nodded. “Yeah. But what can we do?”
“What the cops should be doing now: figure out who the real killer is.”
I was at once intrigued and skeptical. “Okay. But how do we do that? I mean, we don’t have the resources to do any real investigations.”
“No. But if the police aren’t going to conduct a real one, we need to figure something out.” She turned to the two Kudarians now. “Do you have anything like private investigators here? Detectives for hire?”
The concept took a little explaining. “No,” J’kar declared once he understood. “That’s the job of the police.”
“Except when they refuse to do it.”
“Apparently.”
“But even if we can’t investigate, per se, we can still work the case. Figuring out who had the means to kill her is going to be almost impossible. There’s no real way to track the saffron.”
“But we can try to figure out who had the opportunity,” I piped up, excited by the prospect.
“Exactly. That should be a much smaller group, in a much smaller window of time. And, I know we didn’t know her very well, but we can at least try to figure out motive.”
F’rok was nodding slowly, and now he spoke, “It would have had to happen either right before or during dinner. Saffron only takes a few hours to start acting on the Kudarian constitution. That’s what they said in the autopsy hearing, anyway.”
“When did Kor say he started feeling the symptoms?” J’kar wondered.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“If we could find out, that’d help us figure out when he was poisoned – and, consequently, when she was poisoned.”
“We need his statement,” Maggie decided.
“Can your lawyer get us a copy?”
She nodded. “Yup. I’ll call her now.”
“And let’s get the autopsy, and anything else she’s got,” F’rok put in.
“I’d like a copy too,” J’kar said. “My dad’s friends with a retired Investigator. He’s not for hire, like one of the detectives you mention. But they’re good friends, they go back years. Maybe we can get him to take a look.”
Maggie nodded excitedly. “Perfect. That’s perfect, J’kar. That’s exactly what we need: someone with the skills who will give us a fair shot.”
“He’s still got connections on the force, too. He might be able to get information your advocate can’t. If he’ll do it, that is.”
Chapter Fifty
B’rek ark Zaldar was a
quiet, grim-faced Kudarian. He was middle-aged, though on the older side of middle-age, with a slow gait and quick eyes. He watched more than he talked, and always seemed to be listening.
He and Anton ark Kridar went back to middle school, and he told us as much when he met us. “I wouldn’t be here if Anton hadn’t asked. I’m here as a favor to him and his boy. But I’ll tell you what I told him: if you’re guilty, and it seems to me you probably are, I’ll find it out. And when I find it out, I’ll turn over my findings.”
“We’re not guilty,” I said.
“That remains to be seen.”
“Look, Investigator Zaldar, we’re not asking you to lie for us or construct a bogus case,” Maggie put in. “Right now, they’re trying to prove we did it. That’s it. They’re not looking at anything else.”
“And we didn’t do it,” I added.
He frowned at me, but said, “So J’kar tells me. He says you have files relating to the case?”
“Yes. Our lawyer, Rita Mallone, sent us everything she had.”
“Good. Get them to me.”
“Alright.”
“Do you have a place where I can read them?”
“Here?” I had assumed he’d want to take the files home, and pour over them at his own leisure.
“Yes. That’s not a problem, I assume?”
“Of course not. You’re free to go wherever you want.”
“I need somewhere quiet. Somewhere where people know not to disturb me.”
“Ah. Of course. Well, there’s a study.”
“Perfect.”
“I’ll get a tablet with the files now,” Maggie promised.
“Good. And can you get a fresh pot of coffee brewed? Extra strong?”
F’rok nodded. “I’ll get that sent up. Do you want creamer? Sweetener?”
“No. But F’rok?”
“Yes?”
“I mean strong. The kind of drink that’d separate the boys from the men.”
The younger Inkaya smiled. “Understood, sir.”
“Don’t you have questions for us?” I wondered.