Paloma

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  The door slid open, and the faint scent of incense wafted out. Nyquist stepped inside an apartment as dark as Paloma’s had been light. The walls on either side contained more Moon tile, but the pattern was hard to see. Lights, recessed into the ceiling, probably brought the pattern to life, but no one had turned them on.

  Nyquist rounded the corner and stepped into the living room. This apartment had no view of the dome and the Moon landscape beyond, at least from the main room. Maybe the bedrooms had it, or maybe this was one of the cheaper apartments, built to make the building “accessible” to all income levels.

  A single chair dominated the main room, with screens, ‘bots and high-end entertainment equipment all around that chair. Suddenly, the darkness made sense. Claudius Wagner spent most of his time in that chair, looking at imaginary landscapes, living an unreal life.

  The man himself came out of the kitchen, wiping his hand on a towel. He was tall, with a mane of silver hair and a nose that suggested another explanation for the last name he’d adopted.

  “Charles Hawke,” he said, extending his hand.

  Nyquist stared at it for a moment, then took it. “Bartholomew Nyquist.”

  “I was sorry to hear about the murder,” Claudius said.

  “Let’s not play games, Mr. Wagner,” Nyquist said. “Your son told me where you were.”

  Claudius let his hand drop. He studied Nyquist for a moment. Claudius’s face had none of the enhanced emotionality of his son’s. Instead, he seemed like an athletic man content to live alone, enjoying his entertainments and solitude.

  He seemed to consider whether to continue lying about who he was. Then he shook his head slightly.

  “Ignatius talked to you?” he said with a bit of disbelief.

  “Justinian.”

  Claudius let out a small breath, then turned away. He walked back into the kitchen. Nyquist followed and was surprised to find an elaborate room filled with all the best cooking equipment and some old-fashioned features, like a presettlement camp stove mounted against the wall.

  “What does he want?” Claudius asked, his back to Nyquist.

  “Justinian? I’m not sure,” Nyquist said. “I want to know why your ship Xendor’s Folly was cursed by the Bixian Government, and why you’ve changed your name.”

  Claudius pressed a button on the far wall, and watched as an orange liquid mixed with ice filled a nearby glass. His hand shook as he brought the glass to his lips. “Someone told the Bixians where to find my wife.”

  The word choice interested Nyquist. “I never knew you and Paloma married.”

  Claudius’s lips twisted, then he shrugged. “We had our own arrangement.”

  “But not a legal one,” Nyquist said.

  “She wouldn’t,” Claudius said. “She didn’t want to tie her fortunes to mine.”

  “Even though you ran a business together.”

  Claudius turned, leaned against the counter, and tilted his head slightly. His expression had gone flat. Maybe he had been as good an attorney as his son, after all.

  “You’ve done your homework, haven’t you?” Claudius said.

  Nyquist waited. He thought it interesting that Claudius stopped here. “I thought you and Paloma hated each other.”

  Claudius laughed. “You don’t handle divorce cases, do you?”

  “Only street cops do, and usually before anyone has spoken to a lawyer.”

  Claudius nodded. “Well, the passion that starts the relationship can sometimes turn dark. People are unwilling to let go of each other, so they hang on and use anger to substitute for all that raw sexuality.”

  Nyquist didn’t move. Claudius was revealing a lot, and Nyquist had to think that was on purpose. This man didn’t seem like someone who did anything by accident.

  “So you two were angry at each other,” Nyquist said.

  “We had quite a feud.” Claudius took that glass and had another sip, then poured the rest of the beverage into a recycler. “We would make up occasionally. The boys don’t know that.”

  Nyquist would never think of Justinian as a boy. “You’d made up before she died.”

  Claudius nodded. “That’s why she moved here after she got all that money. It was an easy way to see each other.”

  And it would be easy to confirm, with vid records from the building and eyewitness accounts from other neighbors. Claudius had to know that as well.

  “Your sons didn’t know that, either?”

  “My sons thought my wife was moving here to keep an eye on me.”

  “Is that true as well?”

  Claudius’s smile was sad. He set the glass near the recycler, and then walked to the only visible chair.

  “Lucianna didn’t need to keep an eye on me,” he said. “She knew what I was up to. She helped me years ago.”

  “When you did your modified disappearance.”

  Claudius nodded. He pushed a few mechanical items—games? Nyquist wasn’t close enough to tell—aside and sat down heavily, like a man who knew extreme exhaustion.

  That was the sense Nyquist was getting. This man had a bland expression that covered deep emotion. He wasn’t more emotional than his son, nor was he any less tricky. But he was mourning Paloma’s death.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” Nyquist said. “Why did you and your wife have to vanish?”

  Claudius sighed. “I can’t answer you, detective. I swore an oath.”

  “What kind?” Nyquist asked, not willing to make any assumptions.

  “Client confidentiality. I will tell you that we had the same client—I took over the account when she had to leave—and believe me, I was surprised at what I found. Then a few things happened, some information leaked, old cases resurfaced, old angers did, as well, and suddenly I found myself subjected to the same treatment as Lucianna. We figured the name changes and the habit changes would be enough. And you know, they were, until yesterday.”

  “What do you think changed?” Nyquist asked.

  “I think someone offered my son the same deal I got offered.” Claudius spoke with great bitterness.

  “What would that be?”

  Claudius shook his head. “I can’t go into detail.”

  “Be vague.”

  “This client is a long-term client, and this case is one of many. Lucianna kept most of her records and she didn’t let me see the files, although she told me what was in them when I asked that year before I moved here.”

  Nyquist nodded. He hoped he’d be able to pull the details out later.

  “The client took some of Lucianna’s advice, but not all of it. The circumstances happened again, in a different environment, but with the same results, and the client acted in the same way. Only the new case brought the old one up again, and stirred up anger….” he paused. “This can’t be making sense to you.”

  “I’ll figure it out,” Nyquist said.

  “We managed to get some of it calmed, using extralegal means, very similar to what we had done before. And the result was the same as the ones before,” Claudius said. “The hurt party hired the Bixians at the advice of the previous hurt party.”

  “And that’s how you ended up here,” Nyquist said.

  Claudius nodded. “It’s not so bad, really. I can see my children. I can live my life. I find I don’t miss the firm at all.”

  But the implication hung between them. He would miss Paloma.

  “You said you were offered a deal,” Nyquist said.

  “Yeah.” Claudius pressed the armrest on the chair and it reclined. Even though the position was more relaxed, he seemed less so. His body was too taut to be look comfortable.

  “What was it?”

  “That I give up the client’s files. Say that I advised them to take those extralegal measures. Admit my and the firm’s culpability—not in public, mind you, just to the families—and pay a steep fine.”

  “Steep?”

  “More money than you can earn in a lifetime, Detective. More money than
everyone on your force can.”

  “So you disappeared rather than pay out money.”

  “First of all,” Claudius said, putting his hands behind his head, “I haven’t completely disappeared. Secondly, I was supposed to admit to both cases. I couldn’t. I only knew the one, and what little I knew of the other came from a discussion with my wife. I’d have to allocute to the details of both cases, and I couldn’t, not without the files—”

  “Which your wife had,” Nyquist said.

  “Which she wouldn’t relinquish,” Claudius said. “She thought the allocution a very bad idea, even if it were supposedly confidential.”

  “She didn’t think it would be?” Nyquist said.

  “She said we had an obligation to our client,” Claudius said. “She was right about that.”

  “But?”

  Claudius closed his eyes. He looked even tenser than before.

  “Mr. Wagner?”

  He sighed, touched the armrest again, and let the chair come back to an upright position. Then he stood and walked to the kitchen again. He stopped for a moment, then came back into the main room. It was a slow-motion version of pacing, and Nyquist suspected Wagner had been doing it since he heard of Paloma’s murder.

  “We’d have to admit guilt,” Claudius said. “I would have had to admit guilt. And culpability in a bunch of—”

  He stopped just in time, which showed how upset he really was. Nyquist suspected that Claudius would never have made a slip like that if he had been thinking clearly.

  “Culpability in a major crime,” Claudius said. “A horrible crime, if the truth be told. And what’s worse is that these bastards hadn’t learned from it. They did it again. So my guilt is compounded by the fact that they should have known better.”

  He touched the chair, but didn’t sit. Nyquist let him talk.

  “Isn’t it funny?” Claudius said, looking down at the chair. “I would rather have given up my life and risk a hideous death than admit that I had anything to do with those cases.”

  “You no longer feel that way?”

  Claudius ran his hand over the top of the chair, almost as if he were caressing it. “I guess I never believed anyone would find us. I guess I never really believed we’d be called to account. And here we are.”

  “You said that your son received the same deal.”

  “Either they’ve done it again, which I doubt. I haven’t heard news about it, and believe me, I watch. Or my son was told he could bring us in, pay the fine, and betray the client. Rumor has it that the client is looking for new attorneys. So my son had to be considering it.”

  “Your son was looking for a way out, one that didn’t include vanishing.” Nyquist guessed, hoping he was right.

  Claudius nodded. “I think he was going for a half measure. I think he wanted the files. He’d hand them over, and maybe some money, and not admit anything. After all, he wasn’t involved.”

  “But you and your wife were,” Nyquist said.

  “It can be argued by a good attorney that the real culprit here is my wife. There is no proof in my files that I suggested anything other than the client do exactly as my wife advised them years ago. And if I had no records of what she advised them, then all that the attorney would have to say is that I added the sentence ‘Because it seemed to work the first time.’ I had no liability. The firm had no liability. We’d gotten rid of the trouble-maker.”

  “Your wife,” Nyquist said.

  “By firing her, not killing her,” Claudius said.

  “But you didn’t fire her,” Nyquist said.

  “It looked like we did.”

  “Only she’d contradict that,” Nyquist said.

  “She might have.” His hand clenched into a fist. “My son is a good attorney.

  “Meaning what?” Nyquist asked.

  “Meaning,” Claudius said, speaking very slowly, “it’s better to have the files without the witness than the witness without the files.”

  “You think your son killed your wife,” Nyquist said.

  “I think my son covered his ass.” Claudius pounded once on the seat back, then rested his fist again.

  “But he didn’t get the files,” Nyquist said.

  “He will.” Claudius looked up, his gaze empty. “He’s a good attorney. He’ll get what he wants.”

  Fifty-eight

  Van Alen led Flint out of her office. She sent two assistants inside to sit with Ignatius. Her excuse was that the assistants had to give him a new-client questionnaire, but that rationale fooled no one, least of all Ignatius. He knew, as well as everyone else, that Van Alen wanted to talk about him to Flint.

  A few employees, scattered in the main area, seemed surprised to see Flint. Either they hadn’t known he was there, or they had forgotten. The area was bathed in Dome Daylight, filtering through the windows on either side.

  Van Alen pulled him into a small conference room. It had paneled walls and a small wood table in the center. Blinds covered the window here, making it seem like night again.

  “Do you believe him?” she asked.

  “Ignatius?” Flint sat in one of the chairs. The upholstery was thick but hard, a kind of leathery material built for looks and not comfort. “I don’t know.”

  “We have to figure it out,” she said. “Because if I help him and they use it against me somehow….”

  Flint rubbed a hand over his face. He had trusted her, and so far she had come through. He thought of the files, and of Paloma’s body, crumpled against the wall of her apartment. Then he thought of those experts, sent into a dome that no one could save, on Paloma’s suggestion.

  But Paloma had trusted him for reasons he hadn’t yet understood, and he—not Justinian—was the one who had custody of all those files.

  Which gave a lot of credence to Ignatius’s story.

  “I’d trust him,” Flint said. “But only so far. I’d keep him in your office, where he can’t link up to anyone, send for his family and have them come here, and then bring in whatever Disappearance Service you’re going to use. I’d use the best one you know, but I’d bring in the leaders of three or four and pay all of them for their time. That way, if there’s a leak from your office, no one will know which Disappearance Service helped Ignatius.”

  “And Justinian will have to go after all of them to get to his brother.” Van Alen smiled. “I know three services that have never had a leak or a bad employee. I’ll bring them all in.”

  “Bring five in, two that have leaks, and describe Ignatius’s appearance to them. Have them prepare a false identity for him, and then have him back out. Do not include the family.”

  Van Alen smiled at him. “You’re devious.”

  Flint shrugged.

  “I can do you one better. I can send another client in his place. A double disappearance, if you will.”

  “No,” Flint said. “If Ignatius is right and Justinian is willing to turn these assassins on his own family, he might send them after Ignatius’s new identity. You’ve seen how poorly these assassins research. You could be dooming your own client.”

  Van Alen actually shuddered. “All right. It’ll take me a while to set this up.”

  She got up, and waited for him to stand. Then she put her hand on the door, but didn’t open it.

  “Should I worry about planning someone’s disappearance with a Retrieval Artist in the room?”

  Flint smiled. “Some day, I’ll tell you how I got all my money.”

  “Hmm?” She asked.

  He patted her on the shoulder, surprised to find that the suit she wore was silk. “No,” he said. “You have my word. I will never retrieve anyone from Ignatius’s immediate family.”

  “I note that you didn’t mention his whole family,” Van Alen said.

  “I reserve the right to hunt down Justinian if he decides to flee,” Flint said.

  “And Claudius,” Van Alen said. “Don’t forget him.”

  Flint started, surprised that he had forgotten Old Man
Wagner. “And Claudius,” he said, realizing what he had to do next.

  Fifty-nine

  The security system rang. Nyquist started, amazed he’d heard it too. Most of these systems were internally linked—only the owner of the apartment could hear the alarms.

  Claudius looked surprised. He frowned at Nyquist as if the security alarm was Nyquist’s fault. Claudius moved away from the chair, headed toward the door, and then stopped.

  “What?” he said.

  The system translated that rude question into the same who-are-you-and-what-do-you-want message that Nyquist heard.

  “Building security, sir,” a male voice said. “We understand you have an unexpected visitor.”

  Slowly, an image of the man outside the door appeared on the inside of the door. He was short and round, a bit greasy-looking to be security in such a high-end building, but Nyquist had seen worse. He had two packets of tools on either hip—a style Nyquist hadn’t seen in decades. Usually, the maintenance team carried tools on their hips, and security simply had a visible weapon.

  “I do have an unexpected visitor,” Claudius said, giving Nyquist an odd look.

  “Would you like us to remove him for you, sir?”

  Nyquist shook his head. Claudius didn’t seem to notice. He headed toward the door.

  Nyquist grabbed his arm and made a motion to cut off all sound to the security system. Claudius pressed a chip on his forefinger, then stared at him.

  “I’ll leave if you have trouble with me,” Nyquist said. “Just don’t let someone else you don’t know into your apartment.”

  Claudius’s eyes went flat. “You think my son’ll come after me?”

  “I’m sorry,” Nyquist said, “but you did just accuse him of killing your wife.”

  “She didn’t raise him. I did. Justinian has a relationship with me.”

  That meant nothing, Nyquist knew. From the beginning of the profession, detectives looked to family members first if one of their own was murdered.

  “Besides,” Claudius said. “I’m no threat. I’m not a witness or a participant in any of the so-called crimes.”

  In theory, and only if you wanted to argue technicalities. But Nyquist didn’t say that, either.