Forty-eight
Van Alen’s office building had grown quiet. Apparently, the sources of some of the noises were other attorneys working late. Or maybe cleaning ‘bots, making certain the office was tidy for the following day.
One cleaning ʼbot—an upscale model with actual eyes—peeked into Van Alen’s office, startling Flint. In a voice that sounded like grating Moon dust, the ʼbot apologized, said it had no idea that Ms. Van Alen was holding a meeting, and quietly eased out.
Flint didn’t even try to correct the little machine. Instead, he forced himself to continue reading the files on Paloma’s last case as a lawyer. Buried beneath the images of the dead, beneath the legal arguments meant to hide Environmental Systems Incorporated’s very real liability in all of this, was a single note: the families of the dead engineers had decided to sue ESI.
When that case got thrown out because “no sane management would send a hundred of its best people inside a dome that they knew would collapse,” the families nearly gave up. Then someone inside ESI leaked a vid of the meeting with Lucianna Stuart, the one in which she established those very words as a defense.
The families tried for a new lawsuit, but the evidence got suppressed due to attorney-client privilege. The rumors started, but no one could track down the truth behind the statements that ESI had deliberately sent in its own people to die.
But the families, most of whom had seen the vid, made their own decision. If they were going to pay by losing a loved one, then the architect of that policy would pay too.
They went to one of the most efficient assassin’s guilds in the known universe. The families put out a permanent death warrant on Lucianna Stuart. The assassins, part of the Bixian Government, issued a curse on everything she owned. The curse was a signal to everyone in the assassin’s guild that Lucianna Stuart was a target. If any of them should find her, they should kill her and collect the very large fee.
Flint let out a small sigh. The curse that had been on the Lost Seas. It had come out as a quarantine in the registers, but now it finally made sense, since he could find no record of the Lost Seas ever going near Bixian territory.
Lucianna Stuart learned about the curse. For a reason that Flint couldn’t figure out from the files, she didn’t disappear. She stayed in plain sight, going so far as to legally change her name. The maneuver wasn’t as silly as it sounded. Local laws weren’t something that other races and other governments easily understood.
Something obvious like a legal name change kept Paloma in Armstrong’s system—she still owned everything, including her part of the law firm—but she didn’t collect on what she owned. She put the records in storage on the Lost Seas and vanished into her new identity as Paloma, independent Tracker, a woman who eventually became a Retrieval Artist.
The deception was enough to keep the Bixian assassins away from her, and to let her continue her life in Armstrong.
And to retain her ties to WSX.
Flint stood. He walked to the window and stared at the city. The windows had some kind of tint on them that made it impossible to see in. The tint also spoiled the view, although there were those in Armstrong who felt that the city had no views.
Paloma hadn’t agreed with that. She had taken an apartment with a spectacular view, bought with Flint’s money, because she hadn’t had any money of her own.
But that had to be a lie, just like everything else had been. She had to have been accruing funds, any profits the firm had made.
He’d have to trace that money, as well. She probably had it paid to some escrow account somewhere, under the name Lucianna Stuart, and she probably hadn’t touched the funds for fear of the very thing that had happened to her this morning.
He felt an odd mix of pity and revulsion. She had let so many people die, and she hadn’t cared. All she had done was protect herself, ESI, and her law firm.
Nothing more.
And he had studied with her. Let her tell him things about ethics and the way that Retrieval Artists should behave.
Had she been laughing at him the entire time? Had she seen him as a dumb little puppet who hung onto her every word?
If that was the case, why had she trusted him with all of this?
He had no answers. So he went back to the files because he could do nothing else. And as he passed the section about the curse, he froze.
He hadn’t heard of the Bixians before today. He had no idea how they killed. Some species used ritual killings so that the act could be traced back to them. The Disty had a distinctive, and messy, method of retribution called a Vengeance Killing.
Perhaps the Bixians had the same thing.
He tapped into the computer on the desk next to the one he was using. Van Alen hadn’t given him permission to use any other system, but she wasn’t here. He’d leave tracks, so that she would know he never touched confidential files.
Instead, he had the elaborate network system she paid extra for search for information on Bixian assassinations. He particularly had the system look for things the Bixian murders had in common.
He was sure he would find them. And he had a hunch he’d recognize them from the crime scene he’d been to that morning.
The scene of Paloma’s death.
Forty-nine
Nyquist’s office looked less welcoming than it had an hour ago. The light from the screen on his desk illuminated the darkness, glowing upward, making the entire place seem eerie. He had shut off the main lights when he left to interview Bowles, but he had kept the computer screen up because he knew he’d be back to further examine the security vid.
He wasn’t sure it would tell him much.
The interior lights slowly rose as he stepped into the office. He shoved the door closed, not wanting any interruptions. He needed to do more research, and he needed to do some thinking.
He wasn’t getting anywhere by this scattered approach.
He had just settled at his desk, reviewing the port’s security vid from the moment Bowles left, when someone knocked on his door.
“What?” he said in a tone designed to discourage anyone from ever knocking again.
Noelle DeRicci peeked her head around the door. She grinned at him. “Thought you wouldn’t see me again tonight, didn’t you?”
He blinked, wondering if he was having a flashback. Their dinner had seemed like it had taken place days ago.
“Shouldn’t you be at home, relaxing?” he asked, hoping that he didn’t sound too harsh.
She slipped inside, apparently taking his words as an invitation to enter. She carried a bag that smelled faintly of bread. His stomach rumbled. To think he’d believed he’d never be able to eat again. He barely made it a few hours after the explosion before his traitorous stomach developed a mind of its own.
“You looked a bit frazzled earlier,” she said. “I thought I’d bring a midnight snack.”
“You’re too kind,” he said.
She pulled two cups from the bag. The rich aroma of expensive coffee filled the room, and he felt a shiver of pleasure go through him. How had she known that he needed real coffee right now?
“I’m not kind,” she said. “I have some news for you that I thought I’d deliver in person before I go home and relax.”
She said the words with enough bite that he knew she had heard his bitterness. Then she opened the bag and pulled out some croissants, and something that looked like real butter.
Late-night snack food, just like she had promised. Expensive late-night snack food. Just a little bit of heaven. Lord knew he could use it right now.
“I’m sorry if I was rude,” he said. “It’s been a very bad night. I should have gone home after dinner.”
She smiled, setting the food on cloth napkins that also came out of the bag. She slipped two croissants toward him, then handed him a butter knife.
“You’re on a case,” she said. “It’s a nasty one. And I’m about to give you a few answers, and create even more questions.”
She
was still standing, apparently waiting for an invitation to sit. He waved at her, indicating the only other chair in the room.
“What’ve you got?” he asked.
She told him about the Bixian Government, the assassinations, and the meaning of the curses. She explained everything the professor had told her, and when she finished, he sent a message to the techs who’d worked Paloma’s apartment. He asked them to check the evidence for traces of a Bixian presence, either in the DNA, the goo that the system had initially thought was biochemical, or in the blood spatter. He also tapped his own system for information on Bixian assassinations, patterns, and methodology.
“There’s more,” DeRicci said. “Remember the other ships under quarantine? I found one that might interest you.”
She sent an image to his link of a ship that looked like a midlevel space yacht, one built maybe three decades before. It had been top-of-the-line then, but was little more than a derelict now.
“Is this one of the quarantined ships?” he asked.
She nodded. “It’s got a curse on it from the Bixian Government. The only other ship in Armstrong’s port, at least that I could find, that has this curse.”
He waited.
And she smiled. “It’s owned by Claudius Wagner.”
“What the hell did they do?” Nyquist asked. “How did they get assassins after them?”
“Good question,” DeRicci said. “And I’ve got a better one.”
“What?” he asked.
“Have you seen Claudius Wagner in the past few years?”
“I’ve never seen any Wagner before tonight,” Nyquist said.
DeRicci shook her head. “On vids, in the news, making speeches. These lawyers aren’t invisible. Justinian’s all over the nets, pontificating about this or that, used as an expert here or a well-placed source there.”
“But his brother isn’t,” Nyquist said. He knew that about Justinian.
“His brother isn’t The Wagner of Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor,” DeRicci said. “He’s the lesser Wagner.”
Nyquist blinked. “Are you saying Justinian should be a lesser Wagner?”
“Have you seen notification of Claudius’s death? How come Justinian is running the firm? Did Daddy step down? And if he did, how come no one’s ever reported it?”
“I suppose you’ve looked,” Nyquist said.
“Curiosity.” She picked up a croissant. “It’s one of my biggest vices.”
“Do you think he disappeared?” Nyquist asked.
DeRicci shrugged. “He’s still getting paid. He has active accounts all over Armstrong. But curiously, no funds are ever withdrawn.”
“So he’s alive,” Nyquist muttered. “Just missing.”
“Or underground somewhere.”
“Or hiding in plain sight,” Nyquist said. “Like Paloma.”
DeRicci raised her eyebrows. “There’s no name change on file. Nothing from Claudius Wagner in years. I haven’t had a chance to go back too far, but it looks like the man just stopped spending money, going to work, visiting his family, and pursuing his once-public career.”
“I suppose this happened about the time the ship got cursed,” Nyquist said.
DeRicci nodded.
He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t. Instead, he took one of the cups of coffee. “You don’t know how much this means,” he said.
She tapped the cup, apparently thinking he was referring to the food. “Believe me, I do.”
But she didn’t. He’d been feeling angry and alone ever since the blast. Now he felt like someone supported him. Someone was helping him, even though she didn’t have to.
And it revived him, more than the information had. More than the croissant had.
“Still,” he said, wishing the urge to kiss her would go so that he could think again. “Thanks.”
She smiled. “You’re welcome,” she said. Then she leaned across the desk, kissed his cheek, waggled her fingers in a good-bye wave, and left, all before he could say anything else.
Not that he knew what to say.
He almost went after her, but he didn’t.
He had a case to finish, a crime to solve, a murderer—probably her closest friend—to catch.
When it was over, she might not like Nyquist any more.
But he wouldn’t worry about that now. He’d worry later, when he was done, and then, if she still liked him, if she still supported him (and she had, hadn’t she, even knowing that Flint might be the culprit? She had come to Nyquist), then he would go to her office and kiss her.
Not on the cheek. But like he’d imagined—and would continue imagining all night long.
Fifty
Flint stumbled on the file nearly an hour later. He’d been about to give up and take a nap on Van Alen’s sofa. The sofa had been calling to him, looking more and more comfortable each time he glanced at it. He wondered if it had actually been programmed to look softer at night to encourage the late-night worker to take a much-needed rest.
He avoided the thing. He wouldn’t let himself leave his desk, except to glance at the system on the desk next to him, to see what kind of information it had found. It was still trolling through files and notes and vids from all over the known universe. There had to be a lot of information on Bixian assassinations, since this machine was taking its own sweet time.
He wasn’t taking any time at all. He was barely looking at the files he opened, just glancing enough to see how old they were. But he did look at subfiles.
And it was in his glance at the subfiles that he found what he’d been looking for.
An updated file, one that had last been accessed a week ago.
He opened that file only to discover that millions of subfiles existed within it. These files didn’t use the WSX numbering system. Instead, they had a simpler system—a name and a date. Sometimes the name was the client’s name; sometimes it was a case name. But the dates were always accurate.
Flint had the system sort the entire modern file by date, so that the most recent floated to the top. It contained dozens of Justinian Wagner’s case files. They appeared to have been dumped into the file on the same date, and that file had a cryptic notation on its header—IG in place of the name.
As he scrolled through the information, Flint found the IG signature several times, but all of the cases within differed. Most of them had been handled by Justinian or a minor lawyer, and all of them involved different cases.
The files were grouped by month or year, however, and it became clear to Flint that this latter notation simply acknowledged when the files were dumped into the folders, not when they originated.
He looked at files not marked IG. They were older—five years or more—and they seemed familiar.
It took him a while to remember he’d seen ghosts of some of them in the system that he had bought from Paloma when he bought the office. At the time, he had thought Paloma had been careless when she cleaned out the office before she left.
Now he wasn’t so certain.
Had she left them for him to find?
If so, why?
He frowned at the machine, then double-checked the Lost Seas logs. No one had accessed the ship since the curse had been placed on it, before Paloma’s name change.
So she had sent files wirelessly into the vessel, hoping, apparently, that they’d go into storage and no one would find them.
She had used the Lost Seas as a kind of backup, and also as a secure storage site.
Flint glanced at the couch. It no longer beckoned. He wanted to see what these modern files had in common, why Paloma felt all of this was worth saving.
Justinian had acted like they were the only existing copies.
Which was plain odd. Data duplicated. Just taking it from one office to another made an extra copy. To have only a single copy of a piece of information was almost impossible.
Unless someone deliberately wiped it out.
Flint frowned at the file names scrolling in front of him.
But she hadn’t. She had just left him the files.
As if that would be enough.
Fifty-one
Nyquist ate the last of the croissant. His fingers were covered with buttery grease, and flakes of food had fallen down the front of his shirt, but he didn’t care.
The treat had been wonderful, reviving, and the visit from DeRicci had buoyed his spirits.
He had gone back to the security vid with renewed confidence, feeling like he might have a shot at solving this thing.
He was going over the vid moment by moment, when he got a message from the techs. It was long and complicated, and as he opened it, he felt his breath catch.
The information he’d requested while DeRicci was here had come back. Mixed in the so-called biochemical goo, there was Bixian DNA. The assassins had killed Paloma, and, given the amount of Bixian biological material mixed in with her blood, she had probably managed to kill the Bixian, as well.
Which begged the question: where had the body gone?
Of course, he didn’t know what a Bixian looked like, so maybe he had passed the thing and not even noticed. He used the police database to find an image of a Bixian, then had it projected across the room as a hologram.
Bixians were long and thin, like a rope or a snake, with grayish-green skin. There were no distinguishing characteristics that he could see, no fingers or eyes. He couldn’t even see a mouth or any sexual organs.
He asked the system to show the mouth, and a suckerlike object protruded from the middle of the rope. Then he asked for sexual characteristics, and slices of silver appeared in a zigzag pattern along one side of the rope. The zigzags went in slightly different patterns for all five genders.
Nyquist had never understood cultures with more than three genders—if truth be told, he had trouble thinking of the nonreproductive third that so many species had as a gender at all.
He asked the system to show him other appendages—he knew better than to ask for arms or legs—and got a few mystery parts—things protruding from the center of the rope or the bottom of the rope or the top. One of those mystery parts had something labeled filaments, which apparently allowed Bixians to develop tools the way humans had when they started using their opposable thumbs.
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