by Dan Stout
Dammit!
I was about to leave a message about returning phone calls, but Ajax was making his way across the Bullpen.
“They’re here,” he said.
* * *
We received our first guest in one of our nicer interrogation rooms, the kind with no mystery stains on the floor. We even provided a box of donuts. Envoy Cordray looked them over but didn’t take one. He was a wiry man sporting a scraggly mustache with a bald spot over his right incisor. He spoke with an extending of the nasal vowels, dragging out words like “need” and “see.” I couldn’t place the accent, and it bugged me.
“Where are you from, Mr. Cordray?”
“The west coast. You wouldn’t know it.”
“Right on the coast?” That didn’t seem right.
“No. Farther in. A small town no one’s heard of, so it’s easier to simply say the coast. Most people don’t bother to ask.” He favored me with a weasely smile that exposed his top teeth.
If that was his idea of a charming grin, it was no wonder he had to frequent the candies.
“Turns out asking questions is my job,” I said. “Where exactly is that town?”
“To the east of the Inland Ocean, but not all the way to the salt plains. It’s called Alyria.”
Jax chimed in. “Alyria? Robeson was from there. The poet.”
Cordray blinked. “Yes.”
“Beautiful imagery in his work,” said Jax.
I tapped my notebook, and he gave me a small shrug as if to say It’s not my fault I’m more cultured than you.
“Mr. Cordray,” I said, “do you know why we’re speaking with you?”
“Gellica said you wanted to know more about the Squib delegation. Goals, key personnel, and so forth.”
Gellica was proving to be more useful by the day. I gave Cordray an encouraging nod.
“That’s true, and that’s all helpful information. But we also wanted to follow up on a bit of intelligence that came to light about the victim’s sexual predilections.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that, Officer.”
“Detective,” I corrected. “And no, of course you wouldn’t. We were just wondering if perhaps you’d ever seen Mr. Haberdine with any of these individuals.”
I slid three photos out of a manila folder. Two were of the candies from the surveillance photos, and one of Flanagan’s mug shot. Two more photos stayed in the folder. One of those was of Talena.
Cordray studied them, fingers running over his mustache. I tracked his eyes, which darted between the two girls and barely landed on Flanagan. Finally he shook his head.
“I do not recognize these people.”
I pulled the photos back and opened the manila folder again. “Oh. Sorry, there was one more in here. I missed it before.” I handed him another mug shot, this one of a candy whose name we’d gotten from Gellica’s file on Cordray. In the mug shot, the candy’s face was exposed, though the rubber material of her suit was still visible on her shoulders.
“Does she ring any bells, Envoy?”
The color drained from his face as he shoved the photo back at me. “No, I’m afraid not. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of help—”
“Oh, you’re being most helpful. We’ve already detained this young lady. Quite the experience for her. I’m not sure she’s worn a lot of handcuffs before. I’ll be honest, though, my partner—Detective Ajax here, I think I introduced him already—anyway, my partner and I don’t think she has anything to do with the case. You understand how these go . . . we round up everyone with even a partial connection, lean on them in the interrogation room until they throw out a name, hoping that’ll make us leave them alone.”
Ajax nodded solemnly, letting his biting jaw clack slightly as he did so.
“I was really hoping you’d recognize one of these others, since that’s who we’re more interested in. But”—I slid the photo in a gentle circular motion before him—“sometimes we need to throw fresh meat to the press. I’m sure she can provide us a sacrificial lamb or two.”
Cordray folded his hands. When he spoke, his voice squeaked. “Perhaps—perhaps I could have another look at the earlier photos?”
I widened my eyes in mock surprise and shuffled the photos back over to him.
“Anything to be of help to the police,” he said.
I nodded to Ajax, who stood and apologized for having to leave early.
He was off to a second interrogation room, where our other interviewee was already waiting. We wanted to make sure that Cordray wasn’t able to circumvent our tactics by getting advance warning to his colleague. I didn’t know if they were friendly enough to do so, but it’s always better to divide and conquer.
Cordray didn’t need to study the photos so long this time. He dropped a finger on one of the candies. Stacie, Talena’s friend who’d turned up dead.
“This girl,” he said. “I saw her in the lobby of the Armistice.”
Very posh. The Armistice made the Eagle Crest look like an hourly rate joint.
“What was she doing?”
“Attending a gala. Lots of the alternative energy executives stayed there and they like to throw events. I saw this girl speaking with Envoy Haberdine. I’m sure of it.”
“Who else was there?”
“Oh . . .” He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I couldn’t say exactly. The usual crowd. Envoy Gellica, Ambassador Paulus, the Squib delegation, Harlan Cedrow, Alma Johnson, and a few of the other oil landholders. The big players and their support teams.”
Anyone else at that party would have seen Haberdine with her as well.
“Where are the Squibs staying during the talks?” I asked.
“The Armistice. They have an entire floor booked there.”
“Expensive.”
“Very. They’re trying to make a statement about how much cash they could bring to the table.”
“Nothing like conspicuous spending to get the locals fired up with greed.” I retrieved the photos of the candies, but left Flanagan’s sitting on the table. “Are you certain that you’ve never seen this man before?”
Cordray chewed his lip. “Would it . . . help your investigation if perhaps I had?”
It was tempting. With a witness putting Flanagan at the Eagle Crest at the time that Haberdine was killed, I’d have the go-ahead to hunt him down.
“Only if you’re sure you really saw him,” I said. “Truly sure.”
He shook his head.
I sighed and gathered the photos into the manila folder. “If we need anything else, we’ll be in touch.”
“I’ll be glad to help, Officer.”
“Detective.”
Cordray dropped his gaze and studied the table in front of him.
“Of course. My apologies.”
I left Cordray sweating in the conference room and stepped into the hall to gather my thoughts. There was a pause in the coming and going down the hallway, so I pulled a small aluminum-wrapped packet from my wallet and shook free two painkillers. I’d left the prescription bottle at home, in an attempt to be more subtle. I bent at a drinking fountain and washed the pills down to quiet the pain in my bones. Then I went to find my partner.
Ajax had already begun warming up Lowell, the other envoy whose name Gellica had given us.
This man was the polar opposite of Cordray. A big man in a small man’s body, Lowell looked like ten gallons of shit stuffed in a five-gallon bag. Wide as he was tall, he didn’t show signs of either fat or excess muscle, but rather thick slabs of meat. His face was broad and flat, and a muscle along his jaw twitched as he glared at me. For a moment I wondered if all the science books had been wrong, and it was possible for a human and Mollenkampi to breed. From the look on Lowell’s face, if Ajax reminded him of any distant relatives, he’d prefer to take a chainsaw to that branch of the
family tree.
The envoy’s nostrils were flared and his jaw set. For his part, Ajax sat pleasantly across the table, the sliding tones of his voice trilling away as he chatted about one nonsensical thing after another. It was burning Lowell up to listen to him go on. I turned my back to them as I shut the door to keep from laughing.
Biting the side of my cheek, I turned around and held out my hand.
“Mr. Lowell, I’m Detective Carter, Titanshade PD. My apologies for being late.”
He let my hand hang in the air, then with an unwilling jerk leaned forward for a handshake. “It’s about time,” he grumbled.
I could imagine him grinning widely and nodding in sympathy with a political or business connection, and just as easily see him howling with rage at a hired lover who’d displeased him. I’d been in the room thirty seconds and I already hated him.
“Well, I do apologize. But your colleague Mr. Cordray ended up being a much greater source of information than we expected.”
He clearly didn’t know how to take that, and remained silent.
I reached into the manila folder and set the photos of the two candies and Flanagan on the table. I dropped the folder on the table as well, near Ajax’s notebook, and remained standing.
Lowell glanced over the photos and frowned.
“I came here as a courtesy,” he said. “Am I going to regret not having an attorney present?”
“Do you need one?”
Before he could answer I leaned in. “Because we’re not charging you with anything. Yet. And it was your boss who suggested you come speak to us. So you might have to explain to Gellica why you lawyered up.”
He harrumphed, his cheeks puffing and deflating. I felt the expulsion of his breath move across my face from across the table. Powerful lungs.
“Is this off the record?” he asked.
“Absolutely not. But we can be on the record here in relative comfort, or on the record after you’ve been booked. It’s really up to you.”
His lips curled back. “You just said you’re not charging me.”
“I said yet.” I crossed my arms. “Mr. Cordray was extremely cooperative.”
Lowell hesitated, but eventually his distrust of Cordray overrode his desire to frustrate us. He dropped his gaze to the photos laid out on the desk.
“Her.” He slapped the photo of a candy, sending her spinning across the table toward us. I caught the photo before it fell to the floor. “And him.” The photo of Flanagan shot toward us as well, and my adrenaline surged. “This other girl I’ve never seen.”
“And how do you know these individuals?”
He pursed his lips, jutting them at the photo of the candy, a young girl with blond curls and an upturned nose. Stacie again.
“I bought her. For the duration of my stay in Titanshade.” He glared at each of us in turn, as if daring us to judge him. But by then I’d long since made my judgment about the esteemed Mr. Lowell. Ajax put pencil to notepad.
“When?” he asked.
“Shortly after I arrived.”
According to Gellica’s file, that would have been just over a year ago.
“How many times did you see her?” I asked.
“A number of occasions. I favored her.”
“And the agency?”
He scowled and said nothing.
I sat down with a sigh. “Who did you book her through? Some would say ‘who is her pimp,’ but that word’s probably too base for a man of your refined tastes.”
There was a pause while he decided how much offense to take at that crack. He seemed to lean toward not taking as much offense as I’d like, so I decided to insult his bravery while I was at it.
“I understand that you’re afraid of what the pimp will do—”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He spread his legs, as if assuming a battle stance. “I’m an official of the Assembly of Free States. I’m not about to be bullied by some frontier town madame with shit on her boots.” He still paused before answering, giving lie to his bravado. “Carrington Placements.”
I held up Stacie’s photo. “Did you ever see this young woman in the company of Garson Haberdine?”
“I never saw her in the company of anyone but myself. If I did, I would hardly consort with her again. I prefer my commitments to be exclusive.”
The man was in for a rude awakening when he learned how prostitution worked.
“Wait a minute,” said Ajax. “You said you ‘bought’ her. Do you mean—”
“I mean that I have an exclusive contract for her attention while I am in this town. I have been assured that she has spent no intimate time with anyone else since I acquired her. The girl is mine alone.”
My skin crawled.
“When was the last time you saw Stacie?”
“Stacie?”
I twitched the photo back and forth.
“Oh,” he said with a snort. “I named her Kellen.”
Jax leaned forward, fists held below the table. “You named her?”
Lowell frowned. “I bought her, I can call her what I like.”
I had to change the topic before one of us lost our composure. I held up the photo of Flanagan. “And this man? Where have you seen him?”
“That one I did see talking to Haberdine. About a week ago, he was outside the Armistice.”
“You’re sure it was him?”
“He stood out. He was dressed for cold weather and was obviously uncomfortable that close to the mountain.”
That sounded like it could be true. If Flanagan had come in quickly, especially if he’d been called in unexpectedly, then he wouldn’t have had time to change from warmer clothes to something more appropriate for the center of Titanshade.
“How would you describe the conversation between him and Haberdine?”
“It didn’t seem heated, if that’s what you’re implying. It only stuck in my mind because of what the man was wearing.”
“Winter gear?”
“That’s what I said. But it was the type of gear. Antiquated. Simple. Like your religious folk here.”
“Therreau?”
“Yes, them. But the man hadn’t plucked his face. He still had hair on his head, eyebrows, everything. It stood out, you see, because it was unusual.”
“Did you ask Haberdine about him?”
“I am trying to facilitate the Squibs’ visit,” he said. “It would have been disrespectful to interrogate him. Something you wouldn’t understand.” He swiveled his neck and stared above our heads.
Jax shot me a look. If Flanagan was living on a Therreau farm but not shaving his hair, he ought to be as easy to track down as a polar bear in a mud field. And if Lowell was the connection between Garson Haberdine and the mysterious Stacie, then the malignant lump of a man across the table had turned out to be our first real step forward.
13
WITH MYRIS AND HEMINGWAY ON the hunt for Flanagan, Jax decided to cozy up to an AV cart and review the Eagle Crest security tapes. That was fine by me. I had a personal errand to run. I took the Hasam down to the Borderlands and parked outside the eight-story walkup that Talena called home.
The building’s bottom floor was commercial space, small shops that announced they were open for business by rolling their overhead gates up. From tiny storefronts wares spilled out onto the sidewalk, racks of T-shirts and poorly made electronics fought for space alongside small tables and junior-sized chairs that allowed customers to eat without being so comfortable that they lingered.
A couple of the food stalls were cranking out meals for the late breakfast crowd, and the scents mingled in the air. First I caught the smell of broiled cracklefin fillets, probably caught in Blacknall Bay. From frozen, of course. With transportation costs what they were, fresh fish was a luxury only the very wealthy or very finicky enjoyed. Behind
the fish came the rich, mossy scent of proilers, a hearty fungus that grew easily on the cool and misty fringes of the city. They grilled up nicely and made good stew stock.
My stomach growled, reminding me how long it had been since my last meal. I considered grabbing an open-face proiler sandwich, until the cook threw a healthy dash of cinnamon across it. My appetite quickly faded.
I headed inside, where the smells were distinctly less pleasant. The narrow stairwell was lined with trash and the occasional sprawled form of someone who thought the stairs were as good a place as any to pass out. Skyrocketing real estate prices meant buildings like this one were crammed with more tenants than they’d ever been designed for. Somewhere a city inspector was enjoying a nice meal bought with bribe money. But griping about corruption wouldn’t make my hike any easier. I eyed the stairs and flexed each leg in turn, warming the muscles and hoping to lessen the aches. Then I stepped around the first sleeping figure and began my climb to the seventh floor.
As a rule of thumb in Titanshade, the higher the floor the more affordable the rent. The thermal vents that made the city an oasis in a frozen desert didn’t have the pressure to rise more than a couple of floors. As a result, upper levels were never as comfortable without the expensive installation of booster fans.
The pain built as I climbed, an ongoing burning that wrapped around the bones of my legs and hips. Before long I was gritting my teeth and mumbling curses with each step. Seeking a distraction, I busied myself with studying the doors I passed and conjecturing on the lives hidden behind them.
Every third or fourth door on the march upward was decrepit or showed signs of repaired kick-ins from burglaries or domestic disputes, but the rest were well maintained, and probably cozy beyond their threshold. Struggling neighborhoods aren’t as unpleasant as you see on the news. Politicians and the media have a vested interest in keeping people afraid of each other. I try not to think about whether that’s true of cops as well.
When I reached unit 7A I rapped my knuckles on the door and stepped back so that I could be identified through the peephole. She opened it anyway, which I appreciated.