by John Bowers
“I didn’t know that. Give me a statement and I’ll take care of it.”
“I’ll have it for you this evening.”
“Good. And open a new account for me?”
“Sure. If we can’t trust the Federation to pay, who can we trust?”
Nick grinned and put on his hat. It was starting to feel comfortable.
“Oh,” he said. “One more thing.”
“What?”
“Will you marry me?”
Suzanne laughed, reaching out to gently slap his face.
“No. But thanks for keeping my string going.”
Nick touched his hat and walked out of the Vega.
Back in his office, Nick continued with the computer for most of the morning, tying into the planetary database and searching for information that might lend a clue about what had happened to Ron Gates. He studied the forensic reports and the investigation conducted by Sheriff Blake. The investigation had been more professional than he might have expected from a small-town sheriff who was really little more than a company employee, in a place where sophisticated labs weren’t available. Still, he found nothing that pointed a finger at anyone. Nick would have liked to call in Federation experts, but over the years, as more and more of the planet had incorporated and formed local governments, the regions policed by the Federation had shrunk. Six hundred U.F. Marshals had once enforced law and order on Sirius, but now exactly nine were left, all of them staffing one- or two-man offices like his own.
He went back through Ron Gates’s arrest records, interviews, and other activities from the time Gates had first arrived in Kline Corners. He looked at personality profiles Gates had recorded, including not only Willard Kline but also his two sons, Willis and Jason. They were only impressions and opinions, but Gates hadn’t liked Willis Kline, though he had remained undecided about the younger brother.
But nowhere did Nick find any clue as to what might have got Gates killed. If he’d written anything down, it wasn’t in the computer.
As midday approached and the sky turned a chalk white with the heat, Nick leaned back in his chair and stared at the wall, lost in thought. Since arriving here twenty-five hours ago he’d been inundated with data of various kinds, had met a number of people, and was already immersed in their lives and problems. His primary mission was to solve the Gates killing, but now he was also aware of serious racial discrimination against a significant portion of the population, thirteen missing girls—and two teenaged lovers were looking to him to help solve their private dilemma.
At the moment he had no solutions for anyone, especially the two kids. But of the more serious issues, he had a lot to consider. He knew several things for sure:
* Ron Gates had been murdered sitting in this very chair, by person or persons unknown. The motive for the killing was still a mystery, but the logical assumption was that Gates had been working on something, or had known something about someone that made him a threat to the killer(s).
* Willard Kline was the most powerful man in the region, owning not only the town, but also hundreds of square miles around it. In a very real sense, Kline owned the people as well, and though he might be very generous to certain individuals—notably Suzanne Norgaard and her daughter—and though he obviously wanted Nick to think of him as a beneficent ruler, he had to be Nick’s number one suspect. Who else had as much to lose to the threat of a U.F. Marshal?
* Though Nick hadn’t met them, Willard Kline had two sons and an unstated number of foremen who presumably enforced Kline’s policies. Any one or any combination of them might have had a motive to kill Gates, for reasons as yet unknown.
* Roy Blake was the only other lawman in town, but he was on Kline’s payroll. With Kline as a suspect, Blake had a clear conflict of interest; even if he had reason to suspect his boss, he was in his sixties, nearing retirement, and might be reluctant to arrest the goose that laid his pension egg. Therefore, Blake couldn’t be trusted as a backup if Nick needed him, and might even prove a liability.
* Having stated all the above, Nick hadn’t discovered a shred of evidence of any kind against Willard Kline. Every data search he’d run had come up empty. Kline was so clean he squeaked, and given his position of money, power, and prestige, that in itself was suspicious. Powerful men usually made powerful enemies. Kline didn’t even have a lawsuit, not one in his forty-four years on Sirius.
Nick drained his coffee cup and set it down, shaking his head slowly. Something was going on here, but he had no idea what. So far he hadn’t caught anybody lying, but there was no reason to believe he was getting the whole truth, either. Ron Gates hadn’t been killed by accident; there had to be a motive, and someone had pulled the trigger. Since no one lives in a vacuum, somebody somewhere had to know something.
Nick would just have to find out who.
Chapter 7
“When you find a local who is willing to help, take advantage of the assistance. The worst thing you can do is try to play Yancy West. Doing so will only get someone killed—probably you.”
—Professor Milligan, U.F. Marshal Academy
The doctor’s office was located on B Street, one block south of the main street. It was a cozy, two-story frame house complete with a front porch, serving as both an office and residence. Nick opened the door and stepped into the waiting area. Half a dozen chairs sat empty; a middle aged Spanic woman sat behind a desk. She regarded him with curiosity, her eyes widening slightly as she saw his badge.
“Can I help you?” she asked softly.
“I’m Nick Walker, U. F. Marshal. Is the doctor in?”
“Certainly. If you’ll wait here, I’ll be right back.”
“Thanks.”
She disappeared around the corner into a hallway and Nick glanced around at holos hanging on the sitting room walls. Less than a minute later the receptionist was back, the doctor right behind her.
“Marshal Walker? I’m Alice Taylor. Welcome to Kline Corners.” The doctor stuck out a hand and he shook it.
“Thank you,” he said. “Nice to meet you. I didn’t realize you were a woman.”
Dr. Taylor smiled easily and gestured toward the hallway.
“My office is this way.”
Moments later Nick was seated in her office and she settled behind the desk, looking him over casually. She was in her forties, dark brown hair starting to grey, deeply tanned as if she spent a great deal of time outdoors. He estimated she was about five feet two and weighed a little over a hundred Terra pounds. Petite was the word, but she looked as tough as she had to be.
“Actually, there used to be two of us,” she said in response to his comment. “My husband was also a physician, but now it’s just me. I lost him a few years back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Natural causes?”
She laughed. “Always a lawman, huh? No, as a matter of fact. He died rather violently.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Murder?”
“Not officially. But I would call it murder, yes.”
Nick waited for her to expand on that, but she didn’t.
“I heard we had a new marshal in town,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
Nick crossed his legs and placed his hat on his knee.
“Constanza Valenzuela.”
The woman’s eyes softened and she nodded sadly.
“I figured your first priority would be to find out who killed Ron Gates.”
“It is. But I have a feeling the two may be connected. “
“They are,” she said quietly. “How can I help you?”
“I’d like to hear what you know. I understand the girl’s mother works for you?”
“Yes. You met her in the other room.”
“I noticed in the files that she reported her daughter’s disappearance to Sheriff Blake, but you reported it to Ron Gates.”
Alice Taylor’s eyes hardened noticeably.
“Yes. I didn’t trust Blake to tell him.”
“Normally, a missing per
son case would fall to local law enforcement, not Federation Marshals.”
“I understand that. But Constanza wasn’t the only one. There have been others.”
“How many?’
“Four that I’m aware of.”
“Did Blake know about those?”
“He did. I reported them as I heard about them.”
“And?”
“And nothing. So I told Marshal Gates. He actually seemed interested. When Constanza went missing, I made sure he was aware of it.”
Nick was silent a moment. She maintained eye contact, waiting expectantly.
“You seem very certain that the Gates murder is connected to the girl’s disappearance,” he said finally. “What’s going on around here?”
She smiled slowly. “I was hoping you’d ask me that.”
“I’ve only been here a day and already I’m getting a very ugly picture of life on a frontier planet. Where I come from, racial prejudice is pretty rare, but around here it seems to be the norm.”
Dr. Taylor got up and closed the office door, then took her chair again.
“How much do you know about Sirian history?”
“Before I came here, not much. But I’ve been taking a crash course.”
“Well, you probably know about the original settlers. White supremacists, Nazis, and other assholes. They wanted to establish a ‘pure white’ society free of what they consider ‘racial taint’. Unfortunately for them, the hard reality of economics forced them to import cheap labor, which they could only get from backward or depressed countries on Terra. But they maintained their racial arrogance, and created a world where white means right, and to hell with everyone else.”
“I think I have the picture.”
“To answer your question about what’s going on…white men still outnumber white women on this planet by a margin of five or six to one. It’s getting better, but will take time to even out. In the meantime, millions of white men have no wives. There are plenty of single serf women, even a surplus, but these men aren’t willing to marry into what they consider inferior races.”
Nick was frowning.
“Are you telling me we’re dealing with human trafficking?”
She stared at him with pursed lips.
“No. We’re dealing with outright slavery.”
Nick sat stunned. He had anticipated the possibility of kidnap and rape, and probably murder. But…slavery? Slavery had been obsolete for centuries!
“I feel certain that Constanza is still alive,” Dr. Taylor told him. “But if you ever find her, she’ll be far away from here, probably some remote settlement, or maybe one of the big cities up north.”
“Up north? Is slavery legal up there?”
“Not legal, but not illegal. Most of the states don’t recognize the problem at all. You won’t find a statute on any of their books that permits it, but by default, if there’s no law against it, then it’s legal.”
Nick sat in thought for a moment.
“Does anyone around here hold slaves?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Most of Willard Kline’s employees have wives and families, so they don’t need sex slaves.”
“Assuming the girl was taken for that purpose, where would be the closest settlement where she might have been taken? Aside from the cities.”
Dr. Taylor considered. “The cities are the closest, but there’s a region south of Missibama where slaves could be sold at premium prices. It’s a desolate region called the Outback. No cities, towns, or local law enforcement, but thousands of prospectors. Sort of like the gold rush days back on ancient Terra.”
“How far is it?”
“Close to two thousand miles, southwest of here. When Paul and I first came to Sirius we went down there, thinking we might set up a practice, but it was too primitive.” She leaned forward. “If you go down there, you’ll be taking your life in your hands. Those people won’t take kindly to Federation interference.”
“If it’s south of Missibama, that means it isn’t inside any of the charter states. So it’s Federation territory. Don’t they have a marshal there?”
She frowned. “Well, now that you say that, they might. I guess I don’t really know.”
Nick nodded, filing it away for consideration. He shifted mental gears.
“How well do you know Willard Kline?”
“I think I know him pretty well. He invited my husband and me to set up a practice here.”
“Tell me about him.”
She tilted her head.
“Are you thinking he might be involved in this somehow?”
“I’m thinking I’d like to know as much as possible about everyone in or out of town.”
“Well.” She nodded. “Mr. Kline is an interesting man. He owns everything from horizon to horizon, and miles beyond that. He can be very generous, but he’s also something of a politician.”
“Politician? How do you mean?”
“Like a politician, Mr. Kline is very charming. He’s your best friend every time you meet him, and he’ll tell you whatever you want to hear to keep you happy. Then, like a politician, he’ll go and do whatever the hell he wants, whether you like it or not.”
Nick was forced to smile. That explanation pretty well squared with his own impression of the man.
“Is he honest?”
“Yes, basically. At least as far as I know. But if he thought breaking the law was in his best interest, I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“He’s been fair with you?”
“Yes. There’s very little money in this practice, but Kline Corners needs a doctor, so Mr. Kline makes sure I have what I need. And he supplements my income with a salary.”
“Do you feel loyal to him?”
“I’m grateful, but my loyalty belongs to the people who have to live in this god-awful country.”
“What happened to your husband? You said it was murder.”
Her brow furrowed with the pain of memory. She didn’t answer at once, as if needing a moment to collect the courage.
“It was about six years ago. Paul interrupted a crime, and tried to stop it. It was late at night and there were no witnesses, except the cowboys who killed him.”
Nick leaned forward slightly.
“The cowboys claimed self defense. But my husband told me before he died that he was trying to stop them from attacking a young serf woman.” Her jaw clenched in anger. “He was a doctor! He didn’t attack people for no reason. There was no need for ‘self defense’.”
“Didn’t the girl back up his story?”
“When I got there the girl was gone. Paul didn’t know her identity so it was impossible to find her later, if she was even still alive.”
“What did Blake do?”
“He locked the men up until he could ‘investigate’—whatever that means to him—but after a couple of days he released them. Lack of evidence, he said.”
“No hearing, no magistrate?”
She shook her head emphatically. “Nothing of the sort.”
“Who were the cowboys? Are they still around?”
“Clarence Talbot and Gerald Graves.”
“Where can I find them?”
“Talbot was killed in an industrial accident last year. But Graves is a ranch foreman for Mr. Kline. He was the shooter.”
Nick chatted with the doctor for another ten minutes, then met with Julia Valenzuela, the receptionist. She was unable to tell him anything about her daughter’s disappearance that he hadn’t already seen in Gates’s files, but he assured her that he would do everything possible to locate her daughter. Leaving the office, he planted his hat on his head and turned toward the sheriff’s office.
“Mornin’, Marshal!” Roy Blake boomed. “Wondered when you were gonna show up.”
Nick walked around the counter and settled into a wooden chair facing Blake’s desk. The old sheriff seemed friendlier this morning. He dug in a desk drawer until he found a stained coffee mug, then poured
a cup of coffee and handed it to Nick.
“Thanks.” Nick took a sip. The coffee was blistering hot, and tasted old. It had probably been heating all morning. “I spent the morning going through the files,” Nick said, “trying to see if Gates was working on anything that might have got him killed.”
Blake nodded knowingly. “Any luck?”
“Nothing conclusive. Something like this could be caused by anything. Might have been a personal grudge as easily as something job related.”
Blake dug a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with his laser lighter, filling the room with blue smoke.
“So what’s your next step?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. I’ve been over your crime and forensic reports, but there wasn’t anything to go on. No blood, no fingerprints, no residual breath trace—nothing.”
Blake nodded, looking satisfied. “Same thing I found,” he said.
“So, all I can really do is just keep my eyes open and hope something will turn up.” Nick sipped his coffee, staring at nothing, peripherally aware of Blake’s body language. The man seemed to relax.
“You all settled in?” Blake asked.
“Pretty much. Still got a little warp lag, but I’ll catch up in a day or two. I’ve been meeting some interesting people.”
“Yeah? Like who?”
“Judy Norris. Turned up at my door last night. Had a hell of a time getting rid of her.”
Blake guffawed, locker room style.
“Hell, don’t try too hard to get rid of her. That girl’s in heat most of the time. She’s always ready.”
Nick grinned. “What’s her story? She denied being a prostitute, but she has to eat somehow.”
“She grew up on Mr. Kline’s ranch. By the time she was an adult her mother had died. Mr. Kline offered her a job but she wasn’t interested in normal work; seemed more inclined to whoring than anything else. Mr. Kline didn’t need his married men getting caught with her, so he moved her into the hotel and told her to set up shop. He pays her bills and she eats free at the Vega.”
“Why would he pay her bills? Prostitution is legal; she could just charge whatever she’s worth. Pay her own way.”
Blake shrugged. “It was his call. Every other town has a whore, I guess he thought this one should.”