“I don’t know—” Then she broke off and gave a small laugh. “You’re just going to keep after me on this until I say yes, aren’t you?”
“Something like that,” Creel admitted.
She tapped the stylus of her tablet against the desk. Her nails were unpolished, cut short. Creel liked that. “All right,” she said at length. “We’ll go after this one together. Besides, if I tell Lonegar that you’re working on it with me, I won’t get saddled with Janson.” Jessa threw a significant look past Creel’s shoulder in the direction of one of the other Homicide officers’ desks.
He grinned. Janson did all right, but he could see why Jessa wouldn’t want to get stuck with him on a case—the man seemed to have serious difficulty in focusing his attention on something other than Inspector Kodd’s chest. Creel had to admit that certain portions of her anatomy were somewhat distracting, but he had more self-control than Janson.
At least, he hoped he did.
“So,” he said, forcing his mind off Jessa Kodd’s more spectacular assets, “what have we got so far?”
The “we” elicited an amused glance in his direction. “The coroner’s report seems to indicate that both officers were killed by pulse bolts to the upper torso, and not smoke inhalation or other fire-induced trauma.” Jessa shuffled through the stacks of paper on her desk, then drew out a multi-page document that had been perma-sealed together along the top edges. She flipped past the top two pages and then looked down at the document for a few seconds, frowning slightly. “The evidence mechs haven’t been able to turn up much beyond what we already knew. The fire was started in the larger of the two downstairs salons, and spectrographic analysis seems to bear out the theory that it was started by a stray pulse bolt. Obviously Rhyse and Korr got into something they hadn’t quite expected. But as to who was shooting at them, and why—?” A lift of her shoulders under the plain synth-silk shirt. “I haven’t a clue. Care to contribute anything to my useless theorizing?”
“I’ve got a little more.” Creel drew out his tablet and scrolled to the file he’d been compiling on the case. “I just got authorization to tap into both Rhyse’s and Korr’s computers. The guys in C.S. were able to crack their access codes for me.”
“Nice.”
Occasionally the Computing Services people could be helpful. On the other hand, if you needed a password reset or your files shifted to a new server, you could be left cooling your heels for days. Ah, bureaucracy. He went on, “According to some files I found on Korr’s tablet, he’s had Mia Felaris’ residence under surveillance for a little more than a standard month. And it was about the same time that he set up the bank account I found on Gaia’s moon. He opened it with 75,000 units, then added another seventy-five about two standard weeks later.”
Jessa Kodd’s full lips pursed as she gave a small whistle. “Not bad for someone who has to work almost a full year to earn even half that.”
“Exactly.”
“Any indication as to where the funds came from?”
Creel shook his head. “Not yet. The deposits were made in Gaian units—hard cash, untraceable. Same with Rhyse—although he was stupid enough to open his account just over on New Chicago, and he couldn’t resist buying some fancy toys with it.”
She settled back in her chair, frowning slightly. “So someone was throwing money at them to at least surveil Mia Felaris, and probably more. Why her?”
Why her, precisely, Creel thought. He had a feeling that Mia Felaris formed the crux of the whole matter, even if he didn’t yet know the reason. “Hard to say. I’ve been doing some digging. Had to sweet-talk the records clerk at the University, but eventually she let slip that Mia Felaris had come here from Iradia—and that her birth name was actually Miala Fels.”
“Iradia, huh?” Jessa tapped her fingers on the battered synth-hide arm of her chair. “Not exactly a garden spot, right?”
“Hardly.” Oh, sure, Iradia was famous for producing the moth silk used the galaxy over for all sorts of luxury goods, but that didn’t prevent it from being one of the more spectacular armpits in the Consortium, a hangout for crime lords, slavers, smugglers, and a whole bunch of other types you probably wouldn’t want to invite to a cocktail party. “You can see why she’d want to keep that part of her background quiet. Not that anyone should discriminate against her because of where she came from,” he added quickly.
“Of course not,” Jessa replied, the wryness of her tone indicating she didn’t buy that for one second.
Neither did he. Oh, he was sure Mia Felaris was an upstanding citizen, but Nova Angeles had been populated too long and was too hidebound not to turn up its collective nose at refugees from scrubby worlds such as Iradia. Quite possibly that was the only reason Ms. Fels/Felaris had changed her name and her identity. Or had she been running from something...or someone?
Apparently Jessa had made the same leap of logic. “Do you think it could be someone from Iradia who’s after her, who hired Rhyse and Korr?”
“Possibly.” Creel rubbed his forefinger against his chin, considering. “Makes more sense than anyone here wanting to do her harm. She’s got no record, no civil actions filed against her—and for someone running her own security firm, that says a lot right there. Usually someone who’s been in business as long as she has would have gotten sued at least once by now.”
“Such faith in our judicial system,” Jessa mocked, and he flashed her a quick grin.
“Are you calling me jaded?” he asked.
“You?” The laughing gleam in her eyes faded. “So…Iradia. Any suspects?”
“Are you kidding? They barely keep records over there—I was able to find one notation that showed a Miala Fels had attended some sort of secondary school for a few years, but that’s about it. No birth record. No known residence.” The frustration at dealing with such a backward planet resurfaced easily; he’d been fighting with balky information relays and incomplete databases all morning. “The place really went to hell for a few years following an insurrection about eight years ago. I’m guessing a lot of data was deliberately destroyed to piss off what they saw as their Gaian overlords. Never mind that almost all their ancestors had come from Gaia in the first place. Anyway, there isn’t much left to find.”
“Dead end, then?”
“You think I’d let them beat me that easily?”
Jessa looked at him for a long moment, giving him a cool, appraising stare out of those lush green eyes. Then she smiled. “No,” she said. “They’re not going to know what hit them.”
One thing about standing on your hands—it gives you an entirely different perspective on the world. After the meager lunch the rat-faced kidnapper brought him, Jerem had resumed his practice, partly because it seemed to irritate his captor far beyond what it actually should, and also because he couldn’t think of anything better to do.
He’d had to wait a bit after he ate; he tried right after lunch, but it felt as if the heavy noodle soup was sliding right back up his esophagus, so Jerem sat down for a while until he thought he’d probably digested enough so he could turn his stomach upside-down without risking any unpleasant side effects. Maybe it was like swimming. His mother was always harping on the fact that he wasn’t supposed to go in the water until at least a half-hour after he’d eaten.
But now he felt as if he could get back on his hands without barfing up his lunch, so he sprang into action once more. And it was while he staggered around upside-down next to the bed that he spotted something interesting, something the dragging bedclothes couldn’t quite hide.
There was some sort of opening in the wall behind the bed.
Oh, it wasn’t much—just a hairline crack in the smooth mud-board walls. The bed had been pushed up against it, and it ended a little more than half a meter above the floor, so if Jerem hadn’t been looking at it upside-down, there was a very good chance he wouldn’t have seen it at all. And as soon as he noticed the opening, he realized he had to act as if he hadn’t seen it. After a
ll, those stupid cameras were still in place. If he displayed too much curiosity, the kidnappers would notice and come to investigate.
So he turned and made a few staggering hand-steps back into the center of the room before vaulting onto his feet and standing upright. His head pounded a little, and his hands felt tingly, but Jerem didn’t know if that was because of the extended time he’d just spent upside-down, or because he might have just found a way to escape.
The hole wasn’t very big. He’d have to find some way to pry the mud-board loose, and even then he’d have to wriggle flat on his stomach to get inside. There was no way of knowing where it went, or if he’d even be able to get out of the building through the opening. Maybe it went nowhere. But maybe—just maybe—it was a blocked ventilation chute or something that linked up to an air circulation system or something like that. He remembered an episode of Moon of Syrinara where the hoverchair hero’s sidekick had to do much the same thing in order to defuse a bomb before it went off. And Jerem was a lot smaller than the sidekick. He should fit in the shaft or vent or whatever it was a lot more easily than an adult ever could. The trick would be getting in there before anyone else noticed.
Frowning, Jerem walked over to the bed as casually as he could and sat down, leaning up against the wall and pretending to shut his eyes as if he had tired himself out with all the hand-walking. In reality, he was pushing against it with his upper back to see whether he’d be able to move the bed away from the wall without anyone noticing. He felt it shift an inch, but it also made a horrible scraping noise against the faded linoleum floor, so he stopped immediately, heart racing as he tried to decide whether the sound had been loud enough for the cameras’ microphones to pick up.
No one burst into the room, demanding to know what he had been doing. Jerem still remained that way for a few minutes, though, eyes shut as his mind worked furiously. What would his father have done in such a situation? Not gotten himself kidnapped in the first place, Jerem thought in disgust. He would have shot their butts off the second they came in the bedroom window.
But he’d already beaten himself up enough about what he should or shouldn’t have done. All that accomplished was to waste more time. Instead, he clenched his hands, feeling the rough blanket and thin sheets ball up between his fingers. Then he opened his eyes and looked down at the bedclothes as if seeing them for the very first time. He thought for a moment, then glanced casually at the cameras. Once was mounted in the corner right above his bed, and the other one sat perched in the far corner, over by the door. He couldn’t tell by looking at them whether they were just regular video devices or whether they shot other spectrums like infrared. His mother knew all about that stuff, because of her business, and Jerem had picked up some of it, but he had to admit he wasn’t a huge expert on surveillance cameras. Too bad, because if they weren’t infrared-equipped, then there might be a chance to render both of them useless by tossing a sheet or blanket over them. The kidnappers would notice, of course, but all Jerem really needed was about a minute or so.
Of course, that would only work if he were able to get the sheets to stay on the cameras. He’d have to weight them down somehow, probably. And then of course there was the problem of even prying the mud-board out of the wall without their noticing...
Every problem has a solution, his mother always told him. You just have to give it time.
Well, time was something he had plenty of. Closing his eyes once more, Jerem leaned his head up against the wall and began to plot.
XXIV
Miala walked out of the main branch office of New Chicago Central Trust, a plain synth-hide satchel clutched in her right hand. She had the feeling she should have a sign blinking on and off over her head that screamed, Rob me—I’m carrying ten million units!
But even if she’d had such a sign floating above her, and even if someone had been foolhardy enough to attack her, the robber would have had to go through Eryk Thorn first. Miala knew the plainly dressed man striding beside her offered better security than anything her firm could have provided. He walked with an air of casual unconcern, but she could see the way his gaze drifted through the crowds, pausing occasionally on those who might present a threat, and then moving on after any anomaly had been noted and filed for future reference.
Not that there seemed to be anyone or anything remotely threatening here on New Chicago. A sister planet to Nova Angeles, it had long been civilized, its urban areas dedicated to centers of higher learning and commerce. The crowds around them were a mirror to the people Miala saw on her way in to work every day in Rilsport—neatly dressed, preoccupied. Probably she would have had to turn cartwheels naked down the street while throwing units into the air for anyone to take any particular notice of her.
A cab whooshed to a stop at the curb in answer to Thorn’s hail, and Miala slid into the back seat, followed by the mercenary. Not until the door shut behind the two of them did she realize how on edge she had been. She forced herself to exhale, but she still retained her death grip on the satchel she carried.
Once they were back on Nova Angeles, she would have to pull five million out of her own accounts to supply the fifteen the kidnappers had demanded, but that would be a slightly simpler process. Miala had used cash in several large transactions previously, most notably the purchase of her home. The managers at her bank had given her sideways glances over that particular deal, muttering things about “irregularities” and “escrow,” but in the end the previous owners of the house had told the bank officials to get stuffed, because not even a native of Nova Angeles would turn up his nose at a few million in shiny hard Gaian currency. So while the withdrawal of such a large amount from her personal accounts might raise a few eyebrows, at least it wasn’t without precedent.
Eryk Thorn was watching her with an oddly speculative expression on his face.
She asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he replied. “That went smoothly enough. But I’ve been thinking—”
Here we go, she thought. He’s suddenly decided he doesn’t want to chip in quite that much cash. Or maybe none at all. “What?” God, that sounded accusatory even to her.
“About what we’re going to do afterward.”
“Afterward?”
The dark eyes narrowed slightly. “After Jerem is safe. After we’re all together again.”
Relief coursed through her. When was she going to stop expecting the worst of people? Oh, her early life had certainly done nothing to engender a trust in others, and this latest incident with Murgan and now the kidnappers had brought her estimation of sentient life to an all-time low, but if she couldn’t trust Eryk Thorn, who in the galaxy could she trust? Not sure she could speak without letting slip a revealing tremor in her voice, she settled for nodding.
Thorn spoke slowly, as if gathering together thoughts he’d been turning over in his mind for some time. “You’ve made a good place for Jerem on Nova Angeles. But it’s not really his home world, is it?”
“Well, he was born there,” Miala pointed out. “But you’re right—it’s just sort of the place I ended up. It’s not as if his roots go back very far.”
“Then let me take him—take you—home.”
“‘Home’?” Miala echoed. “Sorry, Thorn, but you seem about the most rootless person I’ve ever met—not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
He didn’t appear to take offense. For a few seconds he watched her with that familiar unreadable expression, then said, “Until now I had no reason to go there, to have anything to do with my heritage. But my son should know where his people come from.”
“And where is that?”
“A place on Gaia called New Zealand.”
She tried not to let her shock reveal itself in her eyes. That a man who had spent his life on the edges of the galaxy would want to go to Gaia, the center of the Consortium, seemed strange enough. That anyone would want to repatriate to a world that had almost slipped into ecological oblivion was even
stranger. It didn’t sound particularly inviting, especially compared to the comfortable life she had built up for herself and her son on Nova Angeles.
Still, Thorn was offering far more than she had expected. He would not be mentioning Gaia to her if he didn’t visualize some long-term future with her and Jerem. Wasn’t that what she had always dreamed of and thought she would never have—a chance for them to be a real family? Miala realized suddenly she would go to the wildest frontier planet if it meant that Eryk Thorn would stay in hers and Jerem’s lives, and whatever its current shortcomings, Gaia was hardly the frontier. Besides, she’d grown up on Iradia and certainly knew how to fend for herself in a rough environment. She might have spent the last eight years living soft on Nova Angeles, but once a person has been toughened in a crucible such as her home world, the lessons learned there were indelibly etched in the psyche.
“What sort of a place is New Zealand?” Miala asked, hoping her tone was neutral enough, even though she thought, Please, God, not more desert...
When he replied, Eryk Thorn sounded almost amused, as if he had known exactly what was preying on her mind. “It’s a temperate country—it has forests and open land. And it’s an island. Lots of water. No desert. It escaped a lot of the damage Gaia suffered during the environmental breakdowns of the twenty-first century.”
“And that’s where your mother is from?”
He nodded. “Both my parents, actually. I think that’s why she kept me. There are far too few of us left in this day and age. Guess she wanted the bloodline to continue.”
There was so much Miala wanted to ask, but she also knew that Thorn had already revealed far more to her than he probably had to any other living being. She pushed most of the other questions aside, but felt compelled to inquire, “Have you ever been to New Zealand?”
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