Paloma

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “You have information on the will?” Wagner asked.

  “I’ve got some,” Nyquist lied. “But most of it is being looked at by our forensic information team.”

  Wagner winced. “From the Dove, I assume.”

  Nyquist nodded, lying again.

  “You haven’t gotten anything from the Lost Seas? Flint used some kind of legal trick to take all of my mother’s information and—”

  “That’s between you and Flint,” Nyquist said.

  “Well.” Wagner smiled. The look was still too oily for Nyquist’s tastes. “At least we have the warrant now. Since he’s a criminal, he won’t have a lot of standing in court.”

  Nyquist didn’t mention that the warrant had been canceled and that Flint was, for all intents and purposes, cleared. He wanted Wagner to cooperate. “I actually came to talk with you about your family.”

  Wagner pointedly looked at the door. “I told you all you need to know last night.”

  “You told me a lot,” Nyquist said, doing his best to suck up. Sucking up wasn’t his natural tendency. He was bad at it, and even worse when he tried hard. So he had to pretend that he liked this guy. Which he most decidedly did not. “But we’ve run across a few things in our investigation—”

  “I’m sure my brother can deal with anything new that you might have,” Wagner said. “I’ll page Ignatius. He’d be able to give you the family history and how we believe Miles Flint insinuated himself into our mother’s lives.”

  “You did a fine job of that last night,” Nyquist said. “What I really need to know is how come your mother’s ship the Lost Seas and your father’s space yacht Xendor’s Folly have both been cursed by the Bixian Government.”

  Wagner gave him such a look of surprise that Nyquist wished he had pressed the photochip on his hand. No one ever blindsided Wagner, apparently, and yet Nyquist had.

  “Your mother legally changed her name shortly thereafter,” Nyquist said. “It’s a trick some people use instead of disappearing, particularly when they’re dealing with aliens who don’t understand our laws.”

  Wagner’s face had frozen, almost as if he couldn’t decide which emotion to assign it.

  “As for your father, I can’t find any record of him at all after the Bixian Government cursed Xendor’s Folly. Who is Xendor, by the way?”

  Wagner waved a hand in dismissal. “He was only part of the firm in the beginning. His heirs, who live off-Moon, get a small share of the profits.”

  Nyquist shivered at the word profits. He knew law offices made money; he even knew some of them got spectacularly rich, but he never really thought of them as profit-making machines, like most other businesses.

  “Xendor’s Folly is an interesting name for a ship,” Nyquist said.

  “My father is an interesting man,” Wagner said, and Nyquist noted the present tense. Good. Old Man Wagner was still alive. Nyquist just had to find him.

  “Did your father disappear?” Nyquist asked.

  Wagner laughed. “Wagners can’t disappear. We have too many enemies. Most of the Disappearance Services wouldn’t work with us, and we couldn’t trust those who did.”

  “Is that why your mother tried the low-rent version of disappearing?” Nyquist asked.

  Wagner stiffened his shoulders, as if an insult to his mother was an insult to him. “My mother continued to work at the firm. If she really wanted to vanish, she wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Unless she was being threatened by assassins who paid less attention to looks and legal dodges, and more attention to jobs, habits, and places of residence.”

  “Are you saying the Bixians do that?” Wagner asked.

  “You know they do,” Nyquist said. “Where’s your father? He hasn’t had a case in more than a decade. We have no record of him speaking to the press, going to fundraisers, or even golfing on that out-dome course he likes so much. His condo hasn’t been used in a long, long time, yet he has an escrow account that all his… profits… from the firm go to. He’s changed his name, just like Paloma did, hasn’t he?”

  Wagner finally decided on an emotion. It was disgust. He walked back to his desk. The lighting in the room seemed to have notched down a bit. Maybe the lights were set to respond to whatever fake emotion he generated.

  “My parents had a case that I can’t access,” Wagner said. “It was before my time. The files are missing. I’m pretty sure your Mr. Flint has them. Which is illegal, by the way.”

  “How would he get them?” Nyquist asked.

  “He took them last night from the Lost Seas. If you people had acted quicker on that warrant of yours, my firm’s files would be back in my hands.”

  Interesting, Nyquist thought. But he didn’t say anything. “This case got them in trouble?”

  “It was my mother’s. We were told that was why she had to stay away from us. Because someone wanted to kill her and would find her if she came near us.”

  Wagner spoke with such sarcasm that it almost sounded real. Maybe he was bitter about this.

  “And your father?” Nyquist asked.

  “Wasn’t involved, so far as I can tell, since I haven’t seen the files.” Wagner splayed his hands across the surface of his desk. Nyquist wondered if that was a command to record or an instruction for someone else to listen in. It didn’t seem like a smooth enough movement to be a habit.

  “But he disappeared too.”

  “It’s not disappearing.” Wagner took his hands off the surface, then leaned back and folded those hands over his stomach. “He’s still here. Just not visible.”

  Maybe the movement hadn’t turned anything on. Maybe it had shut things off. Maybe the staff didn’t know what happened to the senior Wagner.

  “One day, he calls me into his office, which was a big deal. I wasn’t even a junior partner then, just a flunky lawyer with the boss’s last name and a lot of potential.” Once again, Wagner used sarcasm. Nyquist had an even stronger sense that Wagner was being truthful.

  But Nyquist was in Wagner’s office. There could be mood elevators and sincerity-altering scents filtered through the place. They weren’t exactly illegal, just ill-advised.

  “My father told me that he had to step away from the firm, and he didn’t trust the junior partners to take it over. He was going to give me his voting shares, make me an equal partner, and then he was going to behave like Mother did. I had to swear not to say anything to anyone, not even my brother. My father claimed he would tell my brother.”

  “Did he?” Nyquist asked.

  Wagner shrugged. “I have no idea. I saw my father only twice after that, and both times he spent downloading information into my personal systems so that I would understand how the firm worked. Even then, I ended up being the dumb man in the partners’ meetings for nearly a year.”

  It seems like he hated that. It probably humiliated him, the man who liked to be on top of everything.

  “Do you know where your father is?” Nyquist asked.

  Wagner studied him for a moment. “How important is this?”

  “It may mean the difference between solving your mother’s murder and not,” Nyquist said.

  Wagner tilted his head back as if he were considering it.

  “Particularly given what you just told me,” Nyquist said. “That Flint has those files and your father is the only other person who knows what’s in them.”

  “I didn’t say that last,” Wagner said.

  “But you implied it,’ Nyquist said.

  Wagner nodded. “You’ll find my father’s apartment one floor up from my mother’s. My mother chose to name herself after the dove, a bird most Terrans associate with peace. My father calls himself Hawke. I assume that’s to spite her.”

  Such a lovely relationship those two had. Nyquist shook his head slightly. “Will he talk to me?”

  Wagner shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care. I think you’re better served finding Flint, and getting my inheritance back to me. I can tell you what’s going
on then.”

  “Knowing what Flint is searching for will help me just as much,” Nyquist said.

  Wagner nodded.

  “You don’t have any ideas, do you?” Nyquist asked.

  “I’d check Flint’s finances,” Wagner said. “Flint’s supposed to have money, but maybe he doesn’t. I can’t think of any other reason for the man to be so eager to get Mother’s things.”

  “You think he’d blackmail you?”

  “Mother always threatened to do that,” Wagner said, “If the firm ever revealed who and where she was.”

  “So there’s something important in those files,” Nyquist said.

  “Why else would she go to the trouble of hiding them?” Wagner asked.

  To keep them away from you, Nyquist thought, but made sure those words never came out of his mouth. “Did she take those files after you became head of the firm?”

  Wagner’s lips thinned, then he shook his head. “Why?”

  “It just seems odd to me,” Nyquist said. “You claim your father knew what was in them. There’s no real reason to hide the files, then, is there?”

  “She needed leverage against the firm,” Wagner said.

  “Yet she continued to work here.”

  “My mother was a duplicitous, difficult woman who clearly did not care for niceties like loyalty and confidentiality. I’m sure she planned to divulge the contents of those files to outsiders if the firm betrayed her in any way,” Wagner said.

  “Outsiders,” Nyquist said. “Like the press?”

  Wagner shrugged, and this time it looked deliberate. “I have no idea. I rarely spoke to her, I never saw the files, and the genesis of all this happened when I was a child.”

  “And your father never told you.”

  “Why should he?” Wagner snapped.

  “Because he gave you control over his firm,” Nyquist said. “You say that Xendor’s no longer involved. Neither was your mother. Your father was the only senior partner left, right?”

  “So?” Wagner asked.

  “If he wanted the firm to survive, wouldn’t he have told you how to defend it?” Nyquist asked.

  Wagner’s eyes narrowed. They glinted with a malevolence that made Nyquist want to step backward, away from this man.

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Wagner said.

  “Looks like I’ll have to,” Nyquist said. “I’m going to have to tell him how I found him.”

  Wagner’s smile was cruel. “I think he’ll figure that one out on his own.”

  Fifty-six

  “Disappear?” Van Alen said. “A thousand different Disappearance Services all over the known universe can help you disappear.”

  Ignatius Wagner crossed his arms. Van Alen hadn’t moved from the front of her desk, but her body had tensed. Flint wondered if Ignatius had noted the change. The man didn’t seem observant, but sometimes people who didn’t seem to be watching saw the most.

  Ignatius’s entire body was shaking. Lightly, so that it was barely visible. His hands quivered and he kept them clasped together, finally pinning them between his knees so that they wouldn’t inspire the rest of his body to shake.

  “Obviously, I know about Disappearance Services,” Ignatius said, “since my family’s firm has tried to destroy a few of them.”

  “And succeeded, I might add,” Van Alen said.

  “All the while, protecting a few Disappeareds,” Flint added, thinking of one in particular who had caused deaths all over the Moon the year he met Ignatius.

  “We’re not very consistent,” Ignatius said. “Just ruthless.”

  Flint studied him. This kind of nervousness would be hard to fake.

  “Well,” Van Alen said, “if you’re familiar with the services, why not use one?”

  “You think one of them would help a Wagner?” Ignatius asked. “They’d probably think it was a setup.”

  “Isn’t it?” Van Alen asked.

  Ignatius didn’t answer.

  Flint leaned forward and draped his hands over the edges of his knees in a relaxed version of Ignatius’s posture. The movement was deliberate, a subtle way to let Ignatius know that Flint had noted the shaking. “Why not get Environmental Systems Incorporated to let you use their Disappearance Service?”

  Ignatius literally jumped. Flint had never seen anyone do that before. Ignatius turned toward Flint, almost as if he were going to caution him, then thought the better of it.

  “ESI is my brother’s account,” Ignatius said.

  Van Alen didn’t understand what Flint was getting at, obviously, since she hadn’t been privy to the files, but she was quick enough to realize something was going on.

  “If we decide to help you,” she said, “what would our role be?”

  “It’s not just me,” Ignatius said. “It’s my wife and my sons, too. We have to get out of here. I can’t approach a service myself, not one that has any connection to the firm, and the others are just going to suspect me. I was hoping you could go to them in confidence, get all the legal documents, transfer the funds—all acting as my lawyer, and then help me get to wherever it is they take you when you do disappear.”

  Flint leaned even farther forward, as if by doing so he could see inside Ignatius’s mind.

  “I can do some of that,” Van Alen said. “But they’d want to meet with you. That’s how it’s done.”

  “I know,” Ignatius said. “Could we do it in your office? As a confidential thing?”

  Van Alen looked at Flint. He shrugged. Ignatius seemed sincere, but there was no way to tell. Everything about this moment seemed off-kilter.

  “Why do you need to disappear?” Flint asked.

  “You asked about ESI,” Ignatius said. “You’ve read the files.”

  “I know a few things,” Flint said, “mostly about why your mother changed her name decades ago. I saw nothing pertaining to you.”

  That last was a lie. The recent files had all come from Ignatius, but Flint had yet to determine what they meant and why Ignatius had given them to her.

  “Don’t you see?” Ignatius said. “Mom’s dead.”

  Flint nodded. “She was killed by Bixian assassins. I figured that much out.”

  Van Alen looked at him sharply.

  “Someone had to hire them,” Flint said. “I know who that was, too, not that it matters. All of this was decades ago.”

  “But they never found her. They didn’t know how to go through the legal walls she set up. The assassins stake their targets, the buildings, the life patterns, but they’re not detectives. They don’t know how to go into a culture and figure it out the way Retrieval Artists and Trackers can.”

  Ignatius sounded almost desperate. He clasped his hands tighter, as if they held him together.

  “I still am not sure what you’re driving at,” Flint said.

  “Oh for God’s sake,” Ignatius said. “Someone had to tell those bastards where Mother was.”

  “I’m sure a lot of people knew,” Flint said.

  “But only a few knew about the Bixian assassins, the curse, and Mother,” Ignatius said. “And only one had a reason to send them after her.”

  Van Alen was frowning. “I’m even more lost than Miles,” she said. “Who had reason to kill your mother?”

  Ignatius ran a hand over his mouth. He was shaking so badly that he looked like he would come apart.

  “Justinian,” he whispered. “Justinian told those bastards where Mom was. And I know it’s only a matter of time before he comes after me.”

  Fifty-seven

  Paloma’s building looked different than it had the day of her murder. People were scattered all over the main lobby, talking or heading either to the elevators or out of the building. The black floor and the spectacular view didn’t dominate quite as much when the building was full as they had when it was empty.

  Nyquist did find himself looking for people trailing ‘bots with shopping bags, like Paloma had done the day she died. Had she known those things could b
e used to secret her murderers away? Had the escape route—the bags—been one of opportunity, which prevented McKinnon from searching her apartment for something more suitable?

  Nyquist would have to check. But not yet. First, he wanted to meet Claudius Wagner.

  Nyquist didn’t take the elevators. They still had an association with Paloma’s murder. Instead, he took the stairs all the way to the ninth floor. He requested that the building not announce him or his purpose for coming here, and he made that request official, so building protocol couldn’t override him.

  As he left the stairwell, he was struck at how different this floor was from Paloma’s. The black marble that seemed ubiquitous downstairs had been replaced here with Moon-made tile. The tile was set in a pattern he’d seen in adobe buildings in Tycho Crater, and never associated with Armstrong.

  Maybe Paloma hadn’t been the one who had placed the WSX building in the old City Center. Maybe it had been Claudius Wagner.

  The only door besides the elevators and the stairwell had a carved moon pattern on its brown surface. Nyquist reached up to knock, and the door knocked for him—the little moon rose and made a clacking sound that simulated the sound of fists rapping on permaplastic.

  “State your business.” The voice was male, deep, and sounded annoyed.

  “Detective Bartholomew Nyquist.” Nyquist placed his hand up so that the door could read his standard identification from his palm chip. “I’m here about the murder of a woman downstairs. She died yesterday. Her name was Paloma.”

  “Proceed,” the voice said.

  “Regulations state that all official interviews must be conducted face-to-face.”

  “Why is this official?” the voice asked.

  “Because I’m interviewing everyone in the building,” Nyquist said.

  “I hadn’t heard that,” the voice responded.

  “We’ve just gotten to this phase,” Nyquist said.

  “And you’re starting here?” the voice asked.

  “There’s evidence that the killer waited on an upper floor,” Nyquist said. “It makes sense to start with the nearest floor above the murder site.”