by Homer Hickam
“You would steal my invention?”
“I just told you it’s mine, not yours.”
Crater tried a different tack. “What if I proved Crescent didn’t kill the deputy? That somebody else did?”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“I will look for evidence.”
“Evidence is lawyerly talk.”
“Can’t you bend just once in your life?”
The Colonel made a long ponder of Crater, then grunted and shook his head. “I can see you’re not going to be happy until I give a little in this matter. Never it let be said that Colonel John H. E. Medaris lets his employees go around being unhappy. Go find your evidence, if it exists, and I will consider it. You have a week. Now, go away. I have work to do and so do you.”
It was as good a deal as Crater was likely to get. Before the Colonel could change his mind, he left. The Colonel soon followed him, strolling out into the anteroom. “Abigail, that boy is going to drive me crazy someday.”
“He seems like a nice boy, sir.”
“That’s his entire problem,” the Colonel said. “And yours too. Before Crater ever got close to my door, you should have tackled him. I hope you enjoy your new job as a company store clerk.”
::: NINETEEN
How to prove Crescent was innocent? Crater called Riley and told her he would be gone for the rest of the day, then headed for the kitchen to see Q-Bess. He found her making ice cream in an old-fashioned churn.
“I’ve just come from the Colonel. He’s given me a week to prove Crescent innocent.”
Q-Bess took her hand off the churn crank and extended it. “Oh, bless you, child!”
Crater took her hand. “I’m just getting started. I’ve never been a detective before.”
“You are the smartest person in Moontown,” Q-Bess said. “You will fix this. I know you will.”
Crater wished he had the same confidence. “I need to ask you something,” he said. “How did you find out the sheriff had arrested Crescent?”
Q-Bess took her hand back and rested it on the churn. “Well, let me see. It was Kurto who told me. He was up late, baking pies for the morning. He knocked on my door and told me the sheriff had Crescent in the cafeteria. I dressed, went to see about it, and then came after you.”
“How did the sheriff know Jones was killed?”
Q-Bess looked thoughtful, then said, “I have no idea.”
“Did Crescent say anything to you at all about this?”
“Well, she knew the deputy was stalking her. I know she was afraid of him. It took that Phenolune to get her down into the biovats. Otherwise, she’d have never gone willingly.”
“Was there any evidence of anybody cleaning up biogoop on the steps or anywhere else?”
“Not a bit. It’s really sticky. I went down there before they carried the deputy away. There was not a drop to be seen on the steps. It would have taken a dozen maids and lots of soap and water to get it that clean. There just wasn’t time to do it.”
Crater gave that some thought, then said, “I think the deputy was dumped into the biovat after he was unconscious, maybe even after he was dead. Crescent was under the influence of Phenolune. She’s strong, but I don’t think she could have picked up the deputy and slid him into that tank without causing at least a little goop slopping out.”
Q-Bess shook her head. “Of course, there had to be more to it than what the sheriff said. But why didn’t Crescent just tell us she didn’t do it?”
“I don’t know. I hope to be able to visit her and ask her that.”
Q-Bess dabbed her eyes with her apron. “Oh, Crater, I’ve tried to see her but they’ve got her locked away.”
Crater walked to the hatch. “Don’t give up hope.”
“Where are you going?”
“To interrogate the sheriff.”
“Be careful. He’s dangerous.”
“So am I.”
Crater went to see the sheriff. After checking at his office and finding it empty, Crater walked along the main tubeway until he spotted the sheriff coming out of the company dentist’s office. He did not look happy. He was rubbing his jaw and carrying a small black bag. “Could I ask you a question, sheriff?”
The sheriff held up the bag. “You know what this is, Crater? It’s a sonic machine. I’m losing bone in my jaw because of the moon’s low gravity and I’m supposed to vibrate it an hour every day with this contraption. What a nuisance this low gravity is. What do you want?”
“How did you find out about Deputy Jones?”
“I heard your creature got a few extra days for you to play detective. I wouldn’t waste my time. She’s guilty and that’s it.” The sheriff moved his jaw a few times, then said, “Deputy Zageev told me about Deputy Jones.”
“How did he know about Jones?”
The sheriff scratched up under his cap. “Now that you mention it, I never asked him. Perhaps he received an anonymous call. You should ask Zageev.”
“Shouldn’t you ask him?”
“I should if I cared but I don’t. Look, Crater, what does it matter? Your monster’s confessed.”
“No, she didn’t. She just said Jones deserved what he got.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“You know it isn’t.”
The sheriff rubbed his jaw again, then shrugged. “I’m walking to my office now. Alone.”
Crater didn’t follow the sheriff but sought out Deputy Zageev. He found him on guard duty, sitting on a stool at the company bank. “How did you find out Jones was murdered?” Crater asked.
Zageev regarded Crater nonchalantly. “Do you have any concept how foolish it is to guard this bank?”
“How did you find out Deputy Jones was murdered?” Crater asked again.
“It’s not as if anybody in this town would try to rob their own bank,” Zageev said, shaking his head. “Did you ask how I found out Jones was murdered?”
“Yes, the sheriff said you told him. How did you know?”
Zageev looked up at the bank tube ceiling, apparently forming his thoughts or perhaps putting together his lie, then brought his eyes back to Crater and said, “Deputy Jones was supposed to work the overnight watch in the main tube. I had the evening watch. When he didn’t come to replace me, I tried to call him but got no answer. So I went looking for him in his tube but he wasn’t there. I kept looking, then I saw Chef Kurto at the company store. He has his own key so he can pick up supplies for late-night baking. I asked him if he’d seen Deputy Jones and he said he had passed him not far from the Dust Palace. I tried to call Jones again, still got no answer, so I went to the Dust Palace and saw the door to the biovats ajar. I went down and found Jones afloat in biovat number twelve. I called the sheriff straightaway.”
Crater thought the deputy’s story sounded plausible but a little too perfect. “Did you notice Jones had a broken nose and scrapes on his knuckles?”
“He was facedown, so no, I didn’t. By the way, you know who Jones was, don’t you?”
When Crater’s frown provided the answer, Zageev smiled. “You’re a pretty poor detective. Deputy Jones was Josef Warto, the former president of the Democratic Republic of Centropia.”
A faint bell rang in Crater’s mind. “Didn’t he kill about half the people in his country?”
“Yes, the half that were the ethnic nationality known as Tovars. He nationalized all businesses and the economy completely collapsed. Then he nationalized the farms. The famines were extensive. He also sponsored gladiator games.”
“Gladiators? Like in Rome?”
“Yes, except Warto had thousands of Tovars with rifles up against tanks, machine guns, and artillery. It was one massacre after another. He put the battles on live vid.”
“How did he end up on the moon?”
“His own people tried to assassinate him, but he escaped and ran down here. The Colonel gave him a job as a scragline picker, but the sheriff apparently saw his potential and made him a deputy
.”
“His potential?”
“Likely his Franco-Swiss bank account.”
“So the sheriff had a reason to see Jones dead.”
“Barking up the wrong tree on that one,” Zageev said. “If I know the sheriff, he squeezed Jones dry long ago.”
“How about you, Deputy? How’d you get this job? Were you also the dictator of a small country?”
“Hardly!” Zageev chuckled. “I was just a lowly cop back on Earth. When I lost my job—the result of a small bribe from the wrong person at the wrong time—I came here. As a law enforcement officer who’s done some investigating in my time, let me give you some advice. If I were you, I would track Jones’s movements the evening of his death and I’d start with the Earthrise Bar & Grill. He was almost always there when he was off duty. But listen, Crater, why bother? Your monster’s confessed.”
“No, she hasn’t. She only said Jones deserved killing. The Colonel said if I could prove she didn’t do it, he would let her go.”
“You are a trusting lad,” Zageev said.
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
Crater headed to the Earthrise. It was misnamed, of course, because the Earth never rose on the moon but stayed pretty much at the same point in the sky. The original owner of the bar, however, liked the name and didn’t let the facts get in his way. The barkeep on duty, a retired miner who called himself Simply Will, remembered Deputy Jones very well from the evening prior to his death, mainly because he had broken a pool cue over the deputy’s head. “He got in a fight with some fellow about something. Jones was a hothead. To slow him down, I smacked him with the pool cue. He was also a hardhead because the cue broke in two.”
Crater recalled the deputy’s wounds—skinned knuckles, a broken nose, bumps and a scab on his head. A cue stick certainly could have provided one of the bumps and probably some bleeding too. “Did you also bust his nose?” Crater asked.
“I don’t know anything about a busted nose.”
“Who was he fighting with?”
“Viking Val.”
Viking Val was a sundancer, a miner who worked with the solar arrays, shakers, and furnaces that separated the Helium-3 from the dust. Crater thanked Simply Will and went outside to find Val. He found him monitoring the shaker pan on array number eighteen. He was a big fellow—jutting jaw, blue eyes, and blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Ya, we had a bit of a knockdown that evening,” Viking Val acknowledged. “Deputy Jones, he was a very bad man. He said t’ings I could not abide. So I hit him and then he tried to hit me but I ducked and he struck the wall with his fist instead. Then he tried to butt me and I stepped aside and he hit the bar with his head. The bar is made out of mooncrete, you know.”
All this explains the scrapes on the deputy’s knuckles, Crater thought, and the head bumps and the scab on his scalp. “What things did he say that you couldn’t abide?” he asked.
“He say Viking men is stupid, Viking women is more stupid and also ugly. So I hit him hard.”
“Did you break his nose?”
“No, I knock him side of his head, not nose. The barkeep, he broke a pool cue over the deputy’s head and then we stopped fighting.”
“Where did he go after that?”
“Go? He go nowhere. He sit down and we drink. We both get very drunk.”
“Did you talk about anything?”
“Shovelball. He loved shovelball. He also went on about how much he wanted a wife. Said no woman in Moontown liked him and he didn’t like them either, except for maybe one.”
“Did he say which one?”
“Sure. That ugly little crowhopper what killed him.”
“We don’t know who killed him,” Crater said. “Do you know who broke his nose?”
“I only know it wasn’t me.”
Crater got little else from Viking Val so he went looking for Deputy Zageev again, finding him this time loitering at the company store. He looked unhappy. “What’s wrong?” Crater asked.
“Everybody’s too honest around here. I haven’t pinched anybody in ages.”
“I’m sorry,” Crater said, then told him what he’d discovered from Viking Val. “I still don’t know how he got his nose broken,” Crater added. “Wonder where he went after the Earthrise?”
“Probably to his tube,” the deputy said.
“Could I visit it?”
“I don’t see why not. I’ll even take you there. Doesn’t look like this crowd’s going to do anything criminal.”
Crater noticed Abigail, the Colonel’s executive assistant, standing forlornly behind a counter that contained work gloves. “Why are you here?” he asked.
Her eyes went hard. “Because of you.”
“Because I barged in? You couldn’t have stopped me. Ten scrag pickers couldn’t have stopped me.”
“That was not the opinion of the Colonel. But you know what? I’m glad I got fired. It was going to happen eventually anyway. The lifespan of his executive assistants is only about six weeks. I calculated it. Here at the store, I have much nicer people to talk to.”
“Well, I’m sorry for what happened. I sincerely apologize.”
“That’s nice of you. The Colonel said that was your entire problem, that you were too nice.”
Crater frowned. “I’m not all that nice.”
She shrugged. “Let me know if you need a new pair of work gloves.”
“What was that all about?” Zageev asked as he and Crater walked out of the store into the main tube.
“I got that woman fired.”
“Let’s see. One girl—and I use that term loosely—you brought here is going to be executed. Another, you got fired. You’re not exactly good with women, are you?”
“No,” Crater confessed.
“Well, most men aren’t,” Zageev said. “Including me and every manjack you see walking these tubes.”
Deputy Jones’s tube was not far from the edge of the commercial sector so it was a short walk from the company store. Zageev opened the hatch, stepped in, and turned on the lights. Crater followed. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes. Clothing was strewn everywhere. The furniture was grimy. “This place is a mess,” Crater said.
“Yeah, looks like somebody turned it over, don’t it? But this is just the way Jones lived. With five million people as his personal servants, I guess he wasn’t used to picking up after himself.”
“Puter, turn on the wall vid,” Crater said to the tube computer and the shovelball channel came up.
“Jones loved his shovelball,” Zageev said.
“That’s what Viking Val said too.” Crater spotted the corner of a reader protruding from beneath a pile of dirty clothes on the couch. “Is this his reader?”
“See if his name’s on it,” Zageev said.
Crater drew the reader from beneath the laundry. It had Deputy C. L. Jones lettered on its cover. Crater checked its history, finding several disreputable sites Jones had recently visited. He’d also looked up the Moontown Scrapers shovelball practice schedule. Crater showed it to Zageev. “Guess you should visit the shovelball practice field,” Zageev said.
“You’re not going with me?”
Zageev was into Jones’s refrigerator, loading a plaston bag with beers. “This is your investigation, not mine,” he said over his shoulder. “But have fun, Detective Trueblood.”
The Moontown shovelball practice field was in an abandoned maintenance facility on the south side of town. When Crater walked on the field, the coach was overjoyed. “You come to join the team? We’ll win the trophy if you do.”
Crater hated to disappoint the coach but he did anyway. “Sorry, no. Wish I had time but I don’t. I’m investigating something for, um, the Colonel. Did you know the late Deputy Jones?”
“President-for-life Warto? Yeah, I knew him. He was always trying to get my guys to throw games or shave points.”
“Did he succeed?”
“Probably. That’s why when he s
tuck his big nose in the huddle night before last, I hit him with a shovel. Oh, I made it look like an accident, but I got him good and down he went.”
“Did you break his nose?”
“Naw. I walloped him on the back of the head. That old man was tough, I’ll give him that. He walked off on his own power.”
Crater was beginning to wonder how the deputy had lived long enough to be murdered. “Anything else you remember?”
“I remember what a good shovelball player you are. Sure you won’t join the team?”
“Not now, but thanks, Coach.”
“How about giving these clodhoppers a demonstration?”
Crater didn’t have time for it but he couldn’t resist. “Give me a shovel and serve it up,” he said.
“I’ll pick four of my scrubs to be on your team.”
“I don’t need them. Put your best five out there and I’ll take them all on.”
The rules for shovelball were simple. The shovels were replicas of normal scrape shovels except made stronger around the neck. The ball was four inches in diameter. Goals were nets six feet in diameter halfway up the end walls. Full pipe ramps led to the roof. The ball could be advanced by either hitting the ball with the shovel or bounced on the shovel while running. The coach served up the ball and Crater leaped high, caught the ball on his shovel, then looped it toward the roof. While the team reacted to the ball, jumping for it, Crater ran up a pipe and emerged upside down on the roof, his momentum carrying him forward. He caught the ball before any other player could reach it and swatted it. In a blur, the ball zoomed to the goal. When the goalie tipped it with his shovel, Crater barged through the other players and knocked it in for the score.
He handed the coach the borrowed shovel. “Thanks. That was fun.”
The coach and the Moontown team, their jaws slack, watched him as he walked from the field.
“Coach?” one of the players asked. “Who is that?”