by Sean Parsons
“What’s Rickard’s history? You talked about a vetting process; how did he get the job?”
“Background checks, that kind of thing. Rickard’s background is in the military, but he was discharged after an incident. After that he worked in private security.”
“Do you know what the incident was?”
“Yes,” she said, “he assaulted a civilian. Beat him quite badly, I’m told. But he spent a long time in military prison, and out of prison in rehabilitation. After that, he built a good reputation for himself in security. He was a shoe-in for the job, really. He had much more experience than the other applicants.”
“Who conducted the interviews for the job?”
“Director Grior, and a panel of project representatives.”
Erin sat back. That limited Grossman’s involvement until after Rickard had started at the station.
“This assault,” he said, “what was the outcome?”
“Mr. Rickard was rehabilitated, assessed and found to be mentally fit to work for the project administration in his role as employee of the security contractor.”
“What’s your opinion of him, from your interviews? You’ve been interviewing him every week for years. You must have some idea of his character. Is he stable?”
“Bob is a complex case,” Diane said, tracing a nonsense pattern on her notepad with her finger. “We’ve had dozens of complaints about him over the years, but nothing we could do anything about. Rudeness, abruptness, the odd episode of verbal abuse. But frankly, that isn’t taken seriously around here. He hasn’t hurt anyone, as far as I’m aware.”
“But he was angry about the riots? He wanted to do more?”
“Yes,” she said, still looking down. “He was very angry about the riots. Really, very angry, now that I think about it.”
She looked up and met his stare.
“Look,” she said. “I see where you’re going with this. Does he have the violent profile of a possible murderer? Yes, frankly, he does. He wanted to go down to the sublevels with his men and assert a kind of martial law. He was furious. I had to threaten him with restraint. But he calmed down, and he left, and it was never brought up again. Ever since then, he’s been fine in our interviews.”
She looked at him and waited for him to respond. He studied her face before replying, “Do you think he killed Susan?”
“What could possibly be his motive, detective?”
“I’m not sure,” Erin said. “Maybe he was trying to get at Grior, as punishment for the riots.”
“Two years later? What would prompt a sudden attack like that?”
“I don’t know. Something must have changed. He must have had access to new information, something that convinced him now was the time to act.”
“This is all very interesting, and, I’ll admit, plausible – in a way. But you don’t have any evidence, do you? Or you wouldn’t be here.”
“No I don’t,” Erin said, “Not really. But something happened that strongly points in his direction, and I need to have something over his head to make him talk. Otherwise, I won’t get anywhere. I know it.”
Diane was silent. She passively looked at him through her glasses. He couldn’t read her expression. Then she opened a draw in her desk, and took out a file. She passed it across to Erin, without taking her eyes off his.
“What is this?” Erin said, picking it up.
“Transcripts of some of the more interesting interviews I’ve had with Rickard. To be honest with you, I’ve been concerned about him for some time; but I never had enough to go on. He always back-tracked, whenever he saw me react negatively to what he said. But sometimes, it slipped out. There’s a lot of rhetoric in there, about the ‘scum of the sublevels’, and Grior’s incompetence. Nothing about Susan, though.”
She tapped her fingers on the desk, while Erin glanced at the file. He looked up and met her gaze. She looked worried.
Erin guessed what was on her mind.
“You’re concerned about malpractice?”
She nodded. “Yes. I will lose my job, if he’s the one.”
“I can’t guarantee that won’t happen, Diane. But it’s not your fault. I don’t think anybody could have seen this coming.”
She sighed. “No, I suppose not. That doesn’t make it any easier to think of poor Susan.”
Erin stood up. “Maybe seeing Rickard behind bars will. Thanks for your help.”
He went to the door, then turned back.
“Oh, by the way,” he said. “You’re going to want to leave Eden before 6pm. Just take it from me, you don’t want to be here after that. No matter how this thing turns out, either way I think you’re going to need to start looking for a new job.”
He left before she could respond, but she didn’t say anything. She just watched him go through the door, her face as impassive as ever.
13.
Erin rode up the elevator tubes to the flight deck on the top level of the station. A lot had happened since he had first visited it with Grossman, upon his arrival at the station the day before. Grossman was waiting for him by the door to the flight deck. He smiled when he saw Erin; a sleazy smile that made Erin feel like taking a shower.
“Ah, detective. Thanks for coming to meet me. How’s the investigation going?”
“It’s coming along,” Erin said, tersely.
“Good, good,” Grossman said, seeming not to notice. “I’m sure you’re going to find this very interesting. The captain rarely allows non-essential personnel into the flight deck. He’s made an exception in your case. I’m sure you can imagine why.”
Grossman swiped a security card through the door lock, and the door hissed open. They entered.
The flight deck had a wide layout, with a huge reinforced glass viewing window curving across it. There was a central path up to the window, and on either side of it rows of computer terminals, facing toward the window. Every terminal was occupied, the operators dressed in neat white shirts; men and women, with serious looks of concentration on their faces. Along the central path, Mark Offenheimer paced back and forth. He looked up immediately when he heard the air-pumps of the door. He didn’t look happy to see Grossman. He walked over to them and held out his hand to Erin.
“Captain Mark Offenheimer,” he said, in a short, military voice. “You’re the detective, I presume?”
“Yes sir,” Erin said, knowing the type. “Detective Erin Bradley, of the New York precinct.”
“Good. I know New York well. They have good people down there.”
“Yes sir.”
Grossman held out his hand to Offenheimer, who ignored it.
“There’s been a lot of activity on this station in the last two days that I’m not happy about,” Offenheimer said. “I might do things differently if I had the choice. But Alan here is actually in charge. My responsibility is purely flight control, like a commercial airline pilot. I have some authority, but only second to Acting Director Grossman and the head of security, Rickard.”
He stressed the word ‘acting’.
“The staff here are doing a very good job, considering the circumstances,” Grossman said. “The terrible death of poor Susan, I mean.”
Offenheimer grunted.
He walked along the path partway, and Erin and Grossman followed him, so that they stood amongst the terminals. Even now, Offenheimer’s eye was roving over the consoles and the operators faces, keeping alert for any kind of alarm.
“This must be quite a job,” Erin said.
“Yes,” Offenheimer said. “This station has more than a hundred thousand people aboard. That’s a hell of an accident waiting to happen.”
“And yet,” Grossman said, inserting himself into their conversation, “in a hundred years, there hasn’t been any accident. We’re very proud of our record.”
“That record was made by the previous flight captains, not us,” Offenheimer said. “I merely hope to maintain it, until I can retire to a better post.”
“Yes, of
course,” Grossman said.
“What exactly do you do, here?” Erin said to Offenheimer.
“We control all aspects of the station’s position in orbit. That includes object avoidance, controlled bursts to maintain altitude, evacuation of waste tanks, control of the dock, and a dozen other crucial things. The guys down on the furnace level are responsible for the human element; we’re responsible for the station itself.”
“Does it cause any problems, having a disjointed staff like that?”
“I wouldn’t call it disjointed. We communicate by terminal and phone, as you might expect. There’s an elaborate alarm system on every level of the station. If anything goes wrong, the alarms sound, we check the colour code, we react accordingly.”
“Are there alarms on the sublevels?”
“Of course. Not office-specific alarms, but they need to know just as much as the rest of us if anything is going wrong.”
“I went down to the sublevels myself,” Erin said, “and there seemed to be a constant red alarm. What was that?”
Offenheimer seemed taken aback.
“Yes,” Grossman said, “It was necessary for the investigation that Detective Bradley visit the sublevels. I counselled against it, but he waved our responsibility and went anyway. Very dedicated, wouldn’t you say?”
Offenheimer didn’t take his eyes off Erin the whole time Grossman spoke.
“Those alarms are a signal for general evacuation,” he said. “They’ve been going since the riot two years ago. I’m aware of it, as it displays on our terminals up here; but there’s nothing I can do about it. They can’t be shut off – they’re hard-wired into the station’s electrical system.”
“They’re not controlled by computer?”
“They are; but as an essential system the only way to turn them off would be to shut the whole system down, flight systems and all. I obviously don’t want to do that. I guess the designers of the station didn’t count on mass rebellion and the destruction of all the security systems on the sublevels. No one could have anticipated that.”
“No,” Erin said, “You’re probably right about that.”
“It isn’t a major issue,” Grossman said. “There are more pressing issues to be dealt with first. Like Susan’s death – right, detective?”
Erin said nothing, merely gave a half-nod.
“I believe they’ve learned to ignore the alarms,” Grossman continued, “And live with them.”
“Maybe,” Offenheimer said. “But I obviously don’t like it, and I’m trying to set up some kind of alternative pathway through the systems so I can fix it without shutting the whole damn station down. But it’s proving more difficult than I thought it would. We’re not trained engineers here, only pilots and operators.”
“Why hasn’t anyone sent to Earth for engineers?” Erin said.
“I did,” Offenheimer said, testily. “My request is still being processed. Welcome to the 25th century, detective. Billions of people have billions of problems. Some of them get precedence.”
“What about the security camera feed to the sublevels, and to Susan’s apartment area? Is anyone looking into those issues?”
“We are,” Offenheimer said. “But it’s taking a while. The security cameras on the sublevel are trashed, so there’s no fixing that without teams of engineers. The cameras on Susan’s level were shut down, and we’re still trying to work out how that happened. But it’s being handled by Rickard, as a security issue.”
“Rickard’s in control of the investigation into that?”
“Yes,” Offenheimer said. His expression was unreadable.
“Mr. Rickard is very competent, I can assure you,” Grossman said. “He’s moments away from getting to the bottom of the camera issue. That should help your case along, right detective?”
“Yeah, sure,” Erin said, half-ignoring him. “Listen, captain – there’s a lot of people on this station, like you said; what happens if something goes wrong?”
“Like what?” Offenheimer said.
“Let’s say a large scale accident, necessitating an evacuation of some kind.”
“The escape pods are kept for that purpose. There’s a thousand escape pods accessible from the sublevels; each one can hold a hundred people. There’s another ten distributed between the furnace level and the admin level. Should be more than enough, if anything necessitated an evacuation. However, it’s not likely that would happen. Any level of the station can be sealed off. Fires, flooding, riots, that kind of thing – can all be contained. Only a mass-scale event, such as an impact that threatened the integrity of the hull, would necessitate a full evac.”
“Right,” Erin said.
Offenheimer checked his watch. “Look, I have to wrap this up. I can’t spend any more time away from the monitors.”
He shook Erin’s hand.
“I hope this has been useful for you, detective.”
“Sure thing, captain,” Erin said.
He and Grossman left the flight deck, and Captain Mark Offenheimer resumed his endless, vigilant walk amongst the rows of computer terminals.
Outside the flight deck, Grossman turned to Erin and his face was tense. All pretence of helpfulness was dropped.
“What exactly is the status of your investigation, detective?” he said.
“I have some leads,” Erin said. “I’m still conducting interviews. But I’m getting close. Are you worried, acting director?”
“Of course,” Grossman said. “I don’t like you snooping around here and asking questions of all of my staff, when you and I both know who’s responsible for this. It’s that damn criminal, Sledgehammer. He’s the one who killed Susan. Or didn’t you notice the needle in her arm? He planted it specifically so we would know it was him. It was a message for Felix Grior. There’s bad blood between the two of them and I’m sure you know by now what it is.”
“You think he did it as a reprisal for the anti-drug action the director was taking?”
“Yes. It’s the only explanation that fits. Felix doesn’t want to consider it, because it means he was responsible for his poor wife’s death.”
“Maybe,” Erin said, pretending to mull this over. “But I’m still not finished my investigation.”
“See that you wrap it up quickly, detective,” Grossman said, heading to the elevator tubes. “We have important work to do here, and if it’s interrupted for much longer I will have to put in a complaint to New York.”
He got in an elevator and left. Erin watched him leave. So that was how it was going to be, Erin thought. Grossman clearly had something he didn’t want Erin to find out. Perhaps it was Rickard’s involvement in Susan’s death.
All signs pointed to Bob Rickard. Erin went to surprise him.
Bob Rickard was in the guard’s lunchroom, on the security level. It was past midday, and he was eating his lunch with a grizzled, pissed expression – like a bulldog. He looked up when Erin entered.
“Ah jeez,” he said, “look who’s here? What do you want, flatfoot?”
“Play nice, Bob,” Erin said, taking a seat across from him at the table. “I found something interesting today. I wondered if you might take a look?”
He slid the documents that Diane had given him across the table.
Rickard looked at them, looked at Erin, sighed, put down his sandwich, and picked them up. He glanced through them, and his face turned more sour, if that were possible.
“What the fuck is this?” he said.
“What does it look like?”
Rickard tossed the documents roughly back across to Erin. The other guards in the room got up and left without finishing their food.
“How dare you come in here with private files on me,” Rickard said. “I’m not the one being investigated here, fellah. You have a murderer to find.”
“I want to know something, Bob,” Erin said, “Perhaps you can enlighten me. Just how did Sledgehammer’s boys wreck the cameras outside Susan’s room?”
Ricka
rd’s eyes narrowed. “I told you, those cameras were hacked wirelessly. Sledgehammer’s men must have busted up the code. They interrupted the recording process during the murder, and then set it right again so we wouldn’t notice until after the body was found. What don’t you understand about that?”
“What I don’t understand is, I’ve been down to see old Sledgehammer, and his crew don’t have a single computer. Not a single one. How the hell do you suppose they hacked in to an encrypted, secure network, without two laptops to rub together?”
“He was hiding them from you. Wake up, dummy. You think he would let you see that shit? Of course not. He was hiding his equipment so you wouldn’t know. I bet he even told you this, planted the idea in your head.”
“Maybe. But you don’t have any other proof of an external attack, do you? Where’s your network guy, surely he can tell us if there was an attack?”
“He’s on holidays. Bermuda. Unreachable.”
“What timing.”
“That’s right, asshole,” Rickard said, leaning forward, “They planned it that way.”
He got up, went to the garbage bin and emptied his tray. He slammed the tray on the stack and went to the door.
“I have to do an inspection of the yeast plant. Are we done?”
“I’d like to come along, if I might,” Erin said, getting up and coming over to him. “I still have a few questions I want to run by you. That is, if you don’t mind.”
“Whatever,” Rickard said.
He opened the door and went out, his face dark. Erin followed him.
The ride in the elevator to the yeast plant was strained and uncomfortable. Rickard kept looking at Erin, shaking his head and looking away. He was agitated, and making no effort to hide it. That was fine by Erin. It all played into his hands.
The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. Immediately, Erin was hit by the strong smell of yeast. He followed Rickard out into the room beyond. It was a massive warehouse space, filled with the din of conveyer belts, lit by row upon row of bright fluorescents. And permeated by the smell of yeast.