“I’ll do my best,” she said, “given this primitive kitchen.”
He studied it. It didn’t look primitive to him. The stove alone was beyond anything he could handle. Five times the size of the stove in the mayor’s mansion, this one had cooling trays and heating units and an actual oven in the center, just like the old-fashioned stoves he’d seen from early colonial pictures.
Nicolae put her hands on her hips and studied the long, rectangular room as if she hadn’t seen it before. Her assistants set down the steel shelves, and one man leaned against a long steel table. Another leaned against the double doors leading into the refrigeration and freezer units.
The city had already spent a lot of money on this kitchen—the equipment in here was so high-class that the designer of the Center had had to defend his choices in a series of public speeches.
“This place is designed for cooks, not for chefs,” Nicolae said.
Soseki, at least, knew the difference between the two. “Yes. It’s a cafeteria kitchen.”
“I suppose I could work in my own kitchen and bring the items here. But they’d lose their freshness.”
“If you make changes here, I’ll have to authorize a new inspection,” Soseki said, hoping she wouldn’t take him up on the offer. “It’s not very convenient.”
“Neither is cooking in two different locations.” Her words were soft, as if she were speaking to herself instead of him. “Let me consider my options, and I’ll contact you.”
Then she turned toward him, a look of bemusement on her face.
“Although,” she said, “I suppose you are not the person I should be dealing with. I’m sure the mayor’s office has some sort of liaison for this?”
He nodded. “I’ll have her contact you.”
Nicolae smiled. “You’re just here because—?”
Because his entire career could rest on this one meeting, and the whole damn thing was out of his control. He wanted to cancel it; he wished it had never happened; he wished these outsiders would simply go away and leave him alone.
But he said none of that.
“I’m a hands-on mayor,” he said. “I like to know what my people have planned.”
“Hmm.” Her smile faded a bit. She was less interested in his answer than she was in fixing her kitchen. He almost felt as though he didn’t exist—something that hadn’t happened to him in years.
“I’ll leave you to your work,” he said, and went back through the press room to the great hall of the Cultural Center.
Many of the sculptures had been moved from their usual places in the center of the room to accommodate the large table that the diplomats had insisted on. He didn’t like that change either.
In fact, visiting the center had made him grumpier. He had thought it might calm him.
The last thing he wanted was for Armstrong to lose clout under his reign. This meeting was going to be about him and his city whether he liked it or not—most accords carried the names of the places in which they were made—and he wanted history to be kind to him. He did have ambitions that extended beyond this dome. He had to make certain they weren’t thwarted by an economic scandal, a political debacle, or a failed diplomatic event.
Somehow, he had to show himself to be a leader equal to or greater than the politicians and their minions who were coming to Armstrong.
He just had to figure out how.
Seven
Assistant Chief of Detectives Noelle DeRicci pulled up at the crime scene with a sense of anticipation. It had been nearly a year since she had worked a case—a real case, not just visiting a scene to rubberstamp what her subordinates had done. When she had accepted the promotion to assistant chief (and it really wasn’t a promotion; it was more like an elevation: she had flown over dozens of people who had gone up the ladder one rung at a time), she hadn’t expected a desk job.
After all, she wasn’t the only assistant chief. She was one of six, and at least four of them still worked in the field.
But DeRicci was a celebrity now. She had, in the words of her boss, Andrea Gumiela, “single-handedly saved the City of Armstrong from sheer disaster.” Only it hadn’t been single-handedly, and it really hadn’t been her.
The promotion had had its good and bad points. She got paid a lot more, so she had been able to move to an apartment that actually had windows. She also got a lot of free meals and some free travel, since she was going all over the Moon, talking to civic groups and other domed-community leaders about the crisis at the Moon Marathon.
She had become an authority on dome living and crime prevention in the enclosed city, and she rather liked it. She hadn’t realized how vain she was—she actually liked the nice clothes (provided by the city and purchased by a woman whose job it was to make sure city spokespeople reflected well on Armstrong), and the makeup, and even the expensive haircut.
Despite the perks, she missed the hands-on work, the way she had to think on her feet, the challenges that being in the field actually brought.
So when Gumiela poked her head into DeRicci’s office—a corner office with windows that had an excellent view of the entire city—and gave her the assignment, DeRicci’s heart did a little flip-flop, since she didn’t dare dance for joy.
She had gotten the assignment because two of the victims were respected members of the community, one a well-known doctor and the other a big-time judge. Gumiela wanted someone who would handle this with efficiency and aplomb—words that Gumiela would never have used about DeRicci eighteen months ago, but seemed to associate with her now.
I’d have taken the case myself, Gumiela said, but I really do believe you’re the better detective.
Which was true, but it was also a heads-up to DeRicci. This case could have problems associated with it, problems that might cause her to lose this lovely post with all its strange little perks.
She was parking one of the perks now, a state-of-the-art aircar, imported last month from Earth. Only senior officials got these things, and then only the senior officials who insisted on driving themselves. DeRicci always drove herself. She liked the solitude, and she really hated having to rely on someone else.
Which she would have to do anyway on this case. The moment the primary detective identified the victims, Gumiela informed him that he would have a new partner.
DeRicci knew that if she had received that message from Gumiela, she would have resented it. Had resented it, in fact, the two times Gumiela had done it to her in the past.
The parking protocol was programmed into the aircar. She just had to state aloud the name of the street, and the car found the best place for a person in her position to park. Apparently that was right in front of the sidewalk leading to the building’s main door.
The other police cars were parked a block away—no obvious official presence was allowed in this neighborhood—but apparently that didn’t include people of DeRicci’s rank.
The car landed with a bump. DeRicci waited until the engine shut off and the exhaust released, having learned from startling experience not to get out until the last of the air was discharged. She took this moment to study the neighborhood.
Upscale, but she’d known that when she got the assignment. She’d worked a few cases here before, but it had been a long time since she’d been in the area.
The neighborhood was known as the Edge, even though the name no longer applied. Once upon a time, the neighborhood had bumped up against the newest section of the dome—back when the city engineers had toyed with making the dome rectangular instead of circular. That experiment had failed rather spectacularly, if DeRicci recalled her history right, nearly causing a full-scale collapse of the dome itself.
The engineers had redesigned, the dome had gotten bigger, and the Edge moved closer and closer to the middle of the city, what would have been an unremarkable place if the neighborhood hadn’t been able to maintain its character.
But it had, partly because no one wanted to tear down these magnificent old apartment
buildings. They had been built more than a century ago, using imported Earth materials—brick made from Earth materials, not Moon regolith, so the color was an unusual white; stone taken from quarries, and even, DeRicci had heard, wood, which was the most expensive material of all.
Nothing in these buildings was fake; nothing was made of plastic. All of the materials were Earth-based and imported, expensive, and impossible to replicate.
DeRicci felt a sense of anticipation as she opened her car door and put one expensively booted foot onto the pavement. She wasn’t dressed for a crime scene; she was dressed for her desk job.
She adjusted the jacket over her shoulders, buttoned the top button so the damn thing wouldn’t fall off, and headed up the cobblestone sidewalk—another affectation, apparently, of the old neighborhood.
No one stood outside, but then again, she wasn’t sure if unis were allowed on the lawns of these grand old buildings. She hurried across the cobblestone, amazed that anyone would chose it to line a walkway, and reached for the brass handle on the larger-than-necessary front door.
The door swung open, somehow missing her, but not startling her. A tall, broad-shouldered woman wearing a bright red uniform that DeRicci didn’t recognize frowned.
“State your business.” The woman’s voice was low-pitched and filled with a subtle threat.
A doorman. DeRicci had never encountered one before. She had heard that there were buildings throughout Armstrong that still kept that affectation—usually a redundant system, since most expensive places had security that made Dome Security seem like they were amateurs.
“Assistant Chief of Detectives,” DeRicci said loudly enough to be heard by every busybody on the street. “I understand you allowed a murderer inside?”
The doorman blanched. She held the door open, and DeRicci stepped in.
The air was cooler here than Dome Standard, but the coolness had an odd edge to it, as if something other than the environmental systems caused it. The lobby itself was surprisingly small—about twice the size of DeRicci’s office—and had a row of metal rectangles on one wall with numbers marked in script along the top, and a large black desk that nearly hid a bank of elevators. Staircases curved upward on either side of the desk, flowing like a stream. They were the lobby’s most dominant feature, and built cleverly to hide the elevator banks. Artwork covered the walls on each stair, and gold-covered (or were they brass?) banisters ran along the inside edge.
The effect was breathtaking, partly because of the lobby’s close quarters, and DeRicci struggled not to show that she was impressed.
“Where do I go?” DeRicci asked the doorman, who seemed to be the only person manning this amazing room.
“Fourth floor.” The woman seemed to have recovered from DeRicci’s rudeness. “And on your way down, use the back exit. This entrance is for owners and guests only.”
“Owners and guests,” DeRicci repeated. “Guess you’ll have to count me as a guest of the deceased. I’m not using any servants’ exit just because you have to.”
The doorman’s rather expressive skin flushed this time. “I will be reporting this to your superior, Officer—?”
“See?” DeRicci said. “That’s where you fall down on your job. I am the superior, and I told you that first thing. I’m here to check on my subordinates. There will be a lot of police, and even more official types coming to do forensic analysis and crime-scene investigation. You will treat them kindly and you will not force them to use the back door. Otherwise, I will speak to your superior. Do you understand?”
The doorman nodded, the color fleeing again. She seemed smaller than she had when she had pushed that door open. DeRicci would have thought that a person like that would have been used to terrible treatment from the folks who lived here, but apparently not.
DeRicci skirted around the desk and headed for the elevator banks, which looked more imposing the closer she got. They had a cage in front, made of some kind of black wire twisted into a floral pattern. DeRicci had never seen anything so strange or useless before, but then she supposed that was what extreme wealth was all about—finding new and even more ridiculous ways to impress the neighbors.
As DeRicci stepped onto the shiny black area in front of the elevator, the cage door opened. Or rather, it folded against itself until it no longer blocked her way.
She shook her head slightly, sighed, and stepped inside, commanding the elevator to take her to the fourth floor.
The elevator bounced to a stop. The door on the fourth floor was not a cage (for which she was quite grateful), and it slid back the way elevator doors were supposed to, revealing a long, narrow hallway lit by globe-shaped artificial lights.
Half a dozen doors marked the hallway, like doors in a cheap hotel. Only the artwork on the walls—all of it original, none of it familiar—took away the hotel illusion.
To DeRicci’s surprise, none of the doors were open. Usually, in an investigation, the door to a crime scene remained open for hours, maybe even days, as the police and the techs filed their way through. But here, no one stood in the hallway and no door revealed which apartment she needed, giving DeRicci a moment of worry that she had gotten off on the wrong floor.
She blinked twice, checking the download that Gumiela had given her link. The information ran along the bottom of her vision, confirming that yes, indeed, DeRicci needed to be on the fourth floor. At apartment 4011, to be exact.
That apartment was at the very end of the hall, directly across from the elevator. The door was unlocked, but closed. Only the bolt from an old-fashioned (and, DeRicci guessed, mostly decorative) dead bolt kept the door from closing entirely.
She reached into the pockets of her skirt and removed the thin gloves she’d remembered to bring. That was the other problem with the new work clothes—now that she was back at the old job, she had to remember things she had once carried automatically—or that had been part of her daily outfit.
When she reached the door, she knocked once, then eased it open and stepped inside.
The smell hit her first—blood, feces, decay. The bodies had been here a while. Her eyes watered—she was out of practice—but her gorge didn’t rise.
The entry was as narrow as the door, and then opened into a wide living room. A plant had been knocked over onto what looked like a real wood floor, leaving a water trail that had whitened against the polish.
People crowded the interior, two backs she didn’t recognize, clothed in detective black, and several more wearing uniforms. A few techs had already arrived and they were standing near the wall, apparently waiting for someone to tell them it was their turn.
“Hey!” DeRicci called, amazed no one had heard her knock. “I’m looking for Detective Cabrera.”
All the people she could see turned toward her, their faces registering the same amount of surprise. She could have given them the same look in return—after all, she’d never seen such a lack of attention at a crime scene before.
A whip-thin man with a narrow face was the only person who turned all the way around. He took a step toward her. He was wearing detective black, clothing that wouldn’t show the wear from a crime scene.
“I’m Sergio Cabrera,” he said.
He had a deep voice with just a hint of an accent, something that suggested he wasn’t an Armstrong native. His eyes were a dark brown, and turned downward, as did his mouth. Lines that ran from his nose to his chin made him seem even sadder than he probably was.
“Noelle DeRicci.” She stuck out her gloved hand. “I’m the Assistant Chief assigned to this case.”
His expression cooled even more.
“The hero,” he said with just enough sarcasm for her to hear it, and yet still wonder if she had made a mistake.
She shrugged a single shoulder. “I’m supposed to partner with you on this.”
“I don’t need an overseer,” he said, and she heard echoes of her own voice in that.
“I agree.” She clasped her hands behind her back so
that she wouldn’t be tempted to touch anything. “However, Andrea Gumiela believes this one is going to be political, and she always likes to have a hand in when something is political. Be glad it’s my hand and not hers.”
Cabrera turned away from DeRicci, not even acknowledging her last statement. She suppressed a sigh, finally understanding what it was like to be on the receiving end of that treatment.
“Detective,” she snapped, “I am going to be primary on this case. You will have to partner with me, and we will work it together.”
He looked at her over his shoulder. “I already have a partner.”
“Who will assist,” DeRicci said.
He stared at her for the longest time. She knew the next sentence she’d have to utter, and it was one she didn’t want to speak. She’d have to relieve him if he was going to be difficult.
“All right then,” he said after a moment. “Let’s get to work.”
DeRicci pushed past Cabrera and into the ring of people looking at the mess in the living room. And it was a mess. Three bodies, a man and two women, sprawled on the polished real-wood floor. Blood had congealed everywhere. Spatter had hit the sofa, the antique chairs, the wall.
“The scene’s already been recorded,” a woman said beside her. “We’ve got all the angles and the layouts, as well as the trajectory analysis and the spatter patterns.”
DeRicci didn’t even look to see who was speaking. She didn’t care how many times the scene had been recorded, that was nothing like actually observing it, seeing what really happened through all of her senses.
“Everyone, vacate the room,” she said. “I need some time alone here.”
“Ionia already told you that the scene’s been recorded.”
DeRicci didn’t have to turn around to know who was talking to her. She already knew Cabrera’s accented sarcastic tones as if she’d been listening to them for months.
“I don’t like giving orders twice,” DeRicci said, without referring to Cabrera. “I’d like some time alone with the scene.”
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