by John Bowers
“I’m prosecuting that case, and I need your help. I don’t know how familiar you are with the defendant, but a dozen years ago he was convicted on a Federation rap for smuggling illegal weapons. There are some things about that case that I don’t quite have a handle on, and the mere fact that I’m looking at them has raised a few eyebrows. That’s why I need an independent PI.”
She pulled another document from her case and pushed it across the table to him.
“At the time of his first arrest, Frie was working for a cargo company called North Continent Freight. This was twelve years ago—0432. I need to talk to people who worked with him back then, if they can still be found. I need you to track them down and set up a meet.”
“Oh. I thought this job was going to be hard.”
“Not for a bright young man like yourself, I’m sure.”
He pulled a pen from his pocket and made a notation on the document she’d given him. He looked up again.
“Okay. What else?”
“At Frie’s original trial, a man named Mickey Tullis testified against him. Tullis was a cellmate and claimed that Frie threatened to kill his arresting officer if he ever got the chance. I need to find Tullis and talk to him. That’s your second task.”
“Any starting point?”
“Probably the DOC. They should have records on him, if he’s still alive.”
He made another note.
“Okay.”
“Those two items are top priority. As soon as you finish with them, I need two more things. At the time of his second arrest last week, Frie was living in a halfway house for parolees and working for a sanitation company as a garbage collection assistant. I need to talk to people from both places—people at the halfway house who know him and people he worked with at the sanitation company.”
“How many people?”
“As many as you can find. I need to know if Frie made any other threats or confessions.”
Hitlin’s forehead wrinkled.
“Don’t your own investigators usually handle this sort of thing?”
“Yes, but mine is swamped.”
“What’s his name? Maybe I know him.”
“My investigator? None of your business. He’s one of those people you’re prohibited from talking to.”
“Um. Got it.”
Hitlin made a couple more notes, then glanced up at her again.
“What else?”
“That’s it for today. By the time you finish with these, I’ll have more for you.”
“You said you needed this fast. How fast?”
“My trial starts a week from Monday. I have to nail all this down no later than next Friday, so when can you get started?”
“Right now. The clock starts the minute I step outside this bar.”
“Good.” She handed him her business card. “Why are you still here?”
With a grin, Douglas Hitlin stood up and offered his hand.
“Nice to meet you, Victoria Cross. I’ll be in touch.”
“Soon.”
“Very soon.”
He turned and walked out the door.
Chapter 13
75th Floor, Federation Building – Lucaston, Alpha Centauri 2
Victoria returned to her desk a few minutes after eleven. She felt a little better about things—she had started the ball rolling with Hitlin, and if he was any good, she should have some answers within a day or two. In the meantime, she had a ton of work to do.
Tired of reading trial transcripts for the moment, she pulled up the crime scene evidence on her display. Lloyd Randal’s body had been digitalized from a dozen angles as he lay in his driveway, from long shots to extreme close-ups of the bullet wounds, shell casings, and blood pool. Randal had been a big man, one of those who remained fit until his mid-forties and then went to seed when metabolic changes made it increasingly harder to keep in shape.
The digitals were stereoscopic, which were so realistic they almost put her at the crime scene in person. She made a mental note to visit that scene in the next couple of days, just to put everything into perspective.
Next she pulled up digitals of the physical evidence.
The gun. A 9mm Sharps automatic (actually a semi-automatic, but she thought of such weapons as automatics). Except for the type and calibre, the weapon itself was unremarkable in most respects. It was a standard design with a ten-round clip that slid into the grip and fed automatically after each trigger pull. The grip itself was ridged to prevent a sweaty hand from dropping the weapon; the ridging prevented fingerprints from sticking or being easily lifted. But DNA could still be tested if any body oils remained on the weapon.
Victoria consulted the notes that accompanied the digitals: No fingerprints or DNA had been found on the grip, trigger, or trigger guard, suggesting that Frie had wiped the gun down after the murder.
Victoria made a note: If Frie was so concerned about leaving evidence on the gun, why had he kept the gun at all? It was found under his bed at the halfway house, so wiping it down was pointless.
She pulled up two more digitals.
The shell casings. These were close-ups of the empty brass casings ejected by the murder weapon. Forensics proved that both had been fired by Frie’s weapon, and Frie had apparently loaded the clip himself, as both casings had his fingerprint on them. The print was clearly visible in the photo. Victoria stared at them for a long time, her forehead creased, then made another note.
The slugs. She read the autopsy report again. Randal had been shot four times in the back, all in the upper torso. Death had occurred within a minute or two. The slugs had been recovered, but were little help. All four slugs were soft-nosed lead rounds and three were deformed on impact. Even so, enough evidence remained to indicate they had been fired by the weapon found in Frie’s room.
She stared at the digitals with narrowed eyes, an idea trying to form. What was she missing?
She was jarred out of her reverie when her desk comm rang. With a sigh, she answered it.
“This is Dillon. I found David Jones for you.”
“You did! Great! Where is he?”
“Runs a security company in South Lucaston. Dajo Security.”
“Dajo?”
“Yeah, looks like a contraction of his first and last name. David Jones, Dajo.”
“Okay, James, thanks. Is he willing to talk to me?”
“I guess so. I gave him your card and told him you might call.”
“Good. What’s his number?”
Dillon rattled it off and she wrote it down.
“Anything on those other issues?”
“Not yet. I just got started.”
“Right.” She grinned at his image on her comm. “Thanks, James. Talk to you soon, huh?”
“Yeah. Talk to you soon.”
He disconnected. She stared at the comm screen a moment, trying to decide if he was still upset at her. His manner varied from conversation to conversation, so she never knew exactly how to read him. He had seemed abrupt, but that might be her imagination. She decided to hold off giving him any more assignments for the moment—if Hitlin worked out, she wouldn’t need Dillon, but she couldn’t use Hitlin forever. Not at his rates.
She glanced at her watch.
Almost noon.
She called Dajo Security. An office assistant routed her call to David Jones.
“David Jones, can I help you?”
“Good morning, Mr. Jones. My name is Victoria Cross—”
“U.F. Attorney? I thought that might be you. James Dillon was here a little earlier.”
“Yes, this is me.” She smiled. “I wonder if I could borrow you for about thirty minutes after lunch? I can be in your office by one-thirty.”
“Sure, come on over. I’ll tell my secretary to watch for you.”
Next, she buzzed Nancy Swift.
“Hello?”
“Nancy, are you up for a little excursion this afternoon?”
“Sure.”
“
Good. Grab some lunch and meet me in my office at one.”
Dajo Security – Lucaston, Alpha Centauri 2
Dajo Security was located in an industrial zone on the south end of the city. The office was unremarkable—just a storefront with a cheap hand-painted sign above the door. Warehouses lined the street on both sides, and as Victoria exited the motor pool hovercar, a faint chemical smell tainted the air. Here and there she saw smoke or steam venting from exhaust ducts in some of the buildings. Everything on the street looked untidy, from haphazardly-parked vehicles to dirty gutters that looked as if they had never been swept. She also picked up a whiff of the Syracuse River, which flowed just two blocks away.
Victoria and Nancy approached the office door, two extremely hot women in what looked like an all-male neighborhood. They stepped inside and gazed at cheap wallpaper covered here and there by posters advertising security options. A dark-skinned girl with purple hair and facial tattoos sat at a desk by the door. When she glanced up at them, Victoria saw contempt in her eyes. Was this the secretary?
Without waiting to be acknowledged, she shoved a business card at the girl.
“I’m here to see Mr. Jones. I spoke to him earlier by comm.”
The girl gazed at the card. Without a word, she punched a button on her desk comm.
“You have a couple of visitors. Victoria Cross?”
“Send her on back,” a male voice replied.
The girl handed the card back and inclined her head toward the door behind her desk.
“Through there.”
“Thank you.”
Victoria and Nancy stepped through the door from the untidy lobby into an untidy office. A couple of old-fashioned file cabinets sat open with papers hanging out of them. Books were stacked on the floor, the single window was clouded by some kind of oily substance, and the carpet looked as if it might get cleaned once a year…maybe.
The man behind the desk stood up and came around to meet them.
He extended his hand. “David Jones.”
“Victoria Cross. This is my assistant, Nancy Swift.”
Jones looked from one woman to the other, as if they were so beautiful he couldn’t make up his mind which one to stare at.
“Take a chair. Pardon the mess. I could give you twenty excuses why it’s a mess, but you probably don’t care.”
Victoria laughed.
“I’ve seen a lot worse. Don’t worry about it.”
Both women settled into chairs facing the desk. Jones returned to his chair and sat down. He looked about forty, tall and muscular with sandy-brown hair and a smooth chin that, if one ignored the laugh lines around his eyes, made him look about nineteen. Victoria found him attractive, even handsome. More handsome than Nick Walker.
He clasped his hands together on the desk.
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m prosecuting Wallace Frie for murder. You remember Wallace Frie?”
Jones sagged slightly as he let out his breath.
“Yes, unfortunately. I heard he got arrested again.”
Victoria nodded.
“As prep for the trial, I’m looking into his previous arrest and conviction.”
“Oh? Are the two related?”
“They may be. Even if they’re not, I don’t want to be blindsided by his defense attorney.”
Jones nodded. “Don’t blame you.”
“You were there the night he was arrested, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me about that? How it went down?”
Jones nodded. His eyes narrowed as he remembered back.
“We’d been investigating North Continent Freight for several months. We had pretty good information they were transporting illegal weapons. This was around the time that the Rebel Coalition was forming and there was war talk in the air. The Coalition had no source of military arms that we were aware of, yet they were arming themselves. The weapons smuggling was a grave concern.
“We ran down every lead we had, and maybe even invented a couple. What we concluded was that NCF was probably being used by someone else—”
“Used?”
“Yeah, we deduced that they had no knowledge of the shipments, but a rogue pilot was using their equipment to run his own operation. Everything came down to Wallace Frie.”
“How did you arrive at that? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I don’t mind at all. We had surveilled the company and its cargo rigs for months, but without success. The weapons were still moving and we couldn’t seem to nail them down. Finally we confronted the owners of NCF and shared our suspicions with them. They were genuinely shocked. When we told them the weapons were being dropped off on the Trimmer Plain, they pointed us directly at Frie. He was the only cargo pilot who made deliveries to that region.”
Victoria made a notation on a paper pad in her lap. She looked up.
“So the company pointed you at their own employee?”
“Yes. They had a sterling reputation. Paid their taxes, were never late with fees or forms that needed to be filed, had no accidents or criminal activity on their record…they were the largest freight company on the continent, and nobody wanted them to be guilty. But we couldn’t ignore the evidence.
“Once we got Frie’s name, things began to click. He was something of a loner, we found out. He volunteered for all the cross-continent runs, even made runs to South Continent when they were available. His fellow pilots didn’t know him very well, but said he kept to himself when he was in the office. He always worked alone, never took a co-pilot with him. He was on the road more than he was home, and according to his employers, when he was home—in the office, actually—he was a source of conflict, always getting into it with his coworkers. Edgy, irritable, ready to fight.”
“So he was a loner, but he got into fights.”
“That’s what they told us. They had employee records that indicated he’d been disciplined several times for his inability to get along with others.”
“That sounds contradictory to me. Did you verify these claims with other employees?”
“You know, I don’t remember. I don’t think I did, but we had a team of agents working on the case and one of them may have confirmed it.”
Victoria nodded. “What happened the night of the arrest?”
“Through an informant, we had information that a certain shipment originating in Three Rivers contained some illegal weapons. We set up a roadblock a few miles north of town and waited for Frie to come through. It was a bad night weather-wise—practically a blizzard—and Frie’s visibility was limited. We managed to force him down without any trouble.”
“He didn’t try to run?”
“No. I guess when he saw us he knew the jig was up.”
“Who made the arrest?”
“Lloyd Randal. He was my partner. As soon as Frie’s rig was down, Lloyd charged into the blizzard and took him down.”
“Randal made the arrest himself? With no backup?’
“Oh, we had backup. Three CTP cops were on the scene, but by the time they caught up with Randal, he’d already made the arrest.”
“Did you see the actual arrest?”
“Not really. They had told us that Frie never used a copilot, but we couldn’t take the chance that he might have a partner, so I was on the passenger side of the rig. After I confirmed there was no copilot, I walked around the other side and saw that Randal already had Frie in cuffs.”
“You said it was snowing?”
“Yes. Bad.”
“So no one saw the actual arrest except for Randal.”
“Correct.” Jones tilted his head. “I’m a little surprised by these questions. Was there something wrong with that arrest?”
Victoria shook her head.
“I’m just very thorough. The only away to avoid looking stupid in a courtroom is to find problems before the defense finds them. If there’s anything here, I want to know it first.”
Jones nodde
d.
“Anything else?”
“Frie claimed he knew nothing about the weapons hidden in the shipment.”
“What else would he say? He was caught red-handed.”
“He also claimed the gun wasn’t his.”
“It was never registered to him. I don’t know where he got it, but he had it.”
“There’s no chance it was planted?”
“No. None.”
“Good.” Victoria made a note, then looked up. “Were you and Randal close?”
Jones stared at her a moment, then drew a deep, slow breath.
“Not…really. He was my partner for more than two years, but we never really bonded. He was a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but I think he and I just had different personalities.”
“In what way?”
“He was a gung-ho guy, what they call an alpha male. I’m a little more laid back, I think.”
“Can you be more specific than that?”
“Well, he was very competitive. When we had company picnics with the families, Lloyd was the loudest voice there. If we played some kind of pickup game, like solarball or something, he always had to win. It was more than just playing for fun. He had to dominate.”
“Was he like that at work, too?”
“Yeah. I remember a couple of times when I thought he was a bit overzealous with suspects we arrested. He never hesitated to slam someone against a wall or beat them down if they resisted even a little. I never felt like that was called for.”
“Did you report him?”
“No.” Jones made an ironic face. “He was my partner, and partners are like spouses. You put up with a lot. The only way I would have reported him would have been if he did something clearly illegal.”
“Like planting a weapon?”
Jones’s eyebrows arched.
“Are you sure you’re a U.F. Attorney? You sound more like Internal Affairs.”
Victoria smiled.
“Sorry. I guess I’m treating you like a hostile witness.”
He forgave her with a smile of his own.
“No need to be hostile here. We’re supposed to be on the same side.”
“I think we are. One last question, if you don’t mind?”