by C.S. Stinton
* *
‘How was dinner?’ Harrigan raised an eyebrow as Ramirez stepped into the small office Lieutenant Navarro had lent to the Marshals‘ purpose. He was pressing an ice pack to the left side of his head and she didn’t ask why.
‘Oh, you know. Great food, great music, great wine. Shame about the company, though.’
‘Boring and sanctimonious?’
‘Charming and murderous.’
Harrigan’s expression went stony. ‘You reckon Locke was setting you up for a trap?’
‘He offered me a lift home. He could have dropped me off anywhere, but innocently happened to set me up for a walk home along the route where the shooter was waiting?’ Ramirez shook her head, pulling up a chair and accepting the mug of so-called coffee Tycho pushed into her hands. ‘No. No way. That gunman knew where I was going to be.’
‘Do we have an ID on the shooter yet?’ asked Tycho.
‘HCPD were heading over when I left the scene. They should have him soon enough. It’s night-shift, though. Let’s not expect miracles.’ She took a sip of the coffee and wished she hadn’t. ‘Where are we with Jovak?’
‘He’s cooling his heels in an interrogation room,’ said Tycho. ‘I took his pad when I searched him and broke the encryption on the way back; the Fair Prospect’s under a false name and reg in the main spaceport. Navarro’s dispatching officers to go impound the thing right now. But we‘re lucky; it looks like he only got into town tonight.’
‘How’d you find him?’
‘I have my ways,’ said Harrigan, at the same time as Tycho said, ‘luck.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘All right, I was looking for an informant and we found him instead. I didn’t expect he’d be lying quite as low as he was. But let’s face it - you two wouldn’t have gone crawling around those kinds of places if it weren’t for me.’
It smarted for Ramirez to concede he was correct; Harrigan knew the local scene and culture and knew exactly where someone like Jovak might be. Then again, that was why he was with them. ‘What kind of state’s he in?’
‘I punched him a few times. So did the bouncer. Tych here wounded his pride with some mean words.’
‘I did; they were cutting. He might cry.’
‘Has he spoken yet?’
‘I was leaving that to you, Chief. If nothing else, you‘re the one he hasn’t been spooked by yet.’
Ramirez looked at Harrigan. ‘You say you know him?’
‘Yeah, he’s a little piece of work. Lean on him and he’ll break. He’ll be working for Ragnarok because they‘re bigger than him and he’s a downright coward. He don’t look well. They must keep him scared.’
‘And he doesn’t like you?’
Harrigan gave a smirk. ‘I know, can you imagine that?’
There was a knock on the door and Navarro stepped in, looking grave. His gaze landed on Ramirez. ‘The officers on the scene have picked up your shooter, Commander, and ID’d him.’ He turned his pad over to show them the file bearing the picture of a man in his late thirties, clean-shaven, respectable enough in attire and appearance. ‘His name was Stephen Wainwright, he was a Corporal in the Confederate Marines until ten years ago. He had no pad on him, just a basic earpiece and though the last and only conversation did come in about five minutes before your attack it was on a withheld frequency. On something that low-tech it’ll be difficult to trace.’
‘Give it to Lieutenant Tycho, if you please,’ said Ramirez with her boundless confidence in her partner’s technical capabilities. ‘Who did he work for?’
Navarro grimaced. ‘He was a technical specialist, which I reckon was a fancy job title for the guy who does the heavy lifting of lighting rigs and the like... for Mister Locke’s movement.’
‘Shit,’ hissed Tycho.
‘That’s not a smoking gun,’ said Ramirez, and rubbed her temples. ‘All right, thank you very much, Lieutenant. Do you have anything on the Fair Prospect just yet?’
Navarro checked his pad and she took advantage of the moment’s silence to let out a deep breath. She hadn’t known for sure that the gunman was dead. It was a curious sensation. Wainwright would not be the first man she had killed in the line of duty, but he was the first as a Marshal.
She hadn’t thought about it at the time. She never did. Hesitation would mean death, so she’d tapped into the part of her mind which went cold under fire and clung to it as she’d made her plan. Then there’d been Jovak to think about. Now realisation was sinking in, and with it came mild nausea.
She kept it under control but didn’t dismiss it. It was good that taking a life still knocked her off-balance. The day she did it lightly was the day she became just a thug with a badge.
‘Report’s just in,’ said Navarro, and now he grinned. ‘The freighter’s impounded and its cargo’s been seized. You’ll like this one: a crate of military-grade assault rifles.’
Harrigan let out a low whistle. ‘Enough for a fire team,’ he mused. ‘That ain’t no pea-shooter.’
‘And that’s on top of what they already have,’ said Ramirez, then a thought occurred. ‘Backtrack a moment, Lieutenant - what kind of gun did Wainwright have?’
Navarro looked abashed. ‘I didn’t check. I’ll put word out. But that’s all they found on the Prospect; under the fake reg he’s pretending to be putting in to Hardveur to pick up an agricultural shipment. We’ll be taking the Prospect to the police yard at the spaceport.’
Ramirez turned to the others as Navarro left. ‘So. Smuggling stolen military ordnance. That’s one hell of a prison sentence.’
Tycho nodded. ‘A man might be persuaded to talk if he doesn’t want to go be put away for ten years. Do you want to go and be all charming at him, Chief?’
‘I can do that, so long as you do something important for me, Tych. I mean it.’ Her expression sobered. ‘Get me some real coffee.’
Tycho laughed, but Harrigan looked confused as Ramirez left. ‘So how does that work?’ he said. ‘She goes in, then you’ll be there a few minutes later to play bad cop?’
‘What?’ Tycho grinned and shook her head. ‘No. Oh, no, sweetie. The Chief doesn’t need me to make someone like him sing. Come on. By the time we‘re back with coffee he should be on the second verse of Copacabana.’