When it came time for him to retire, there was only one place he could think of filled with such happy memories. Seeing Jan and Stopper race to the beach and frolic in the fizzing surf…yes, this was the place he wanted to end his days. But that conversation was for another time.
Kyra strolled out from the tree-line waving a couple of empty glasses in one hand and gripping a bottle of something celebratory in the other. She was wearing short shorts, a thin shawl over her bikini top, and clearly hadn’t taken any advice about protecting herself from the intense equatorial UV rays. Her neck and shoulders were as red as a lobster; they shone with salve ointment for the treatment of sunburnt skin. At least her wide-brimmed hat now afforded her the shade she’d unwisely spurned on her first day.
She was leggier than Jan, paler by far. She moved with a self-conscious slinkiness that Vaughn hadn’t seen before. It struck him as fake, manipulative. If it was her way of making an impression on Jan, she’d misheard everything Vaughn had told her about Hesperidia’s most eminent ranger. It reminded him that Kyra Stone, despite being his niece and under his protection, brokered semi-legal and illegal business deals for a living. She handled people, whether they knew they were being handled or not.
“I take back everything I said, Agent Vaughn,” she shouted, her breather comm switched off – smart, she’d remembered his warning about staying radio dark. “You really undersold this place, you know.”
“Did I undersell the UV, too?” He motioned to his neck.
“Nah, I just got carried away with the whole sunbed thing. It’s been a while since I—but hey, you brought Jan! Hey, Jan!”
Jan’s friendly wave from the surf brought the others onto the beach as well. Joyce Horrigan and Ricky Melekhin, hand-in-hand, wore matching White Water bathrobes and not much else, their wet hair and dripping breathers suggesting either a lagoon dive or a shared outdoor shower, or both. Melekhin’s skin had bronzed a little, but wasn’t burned. Nor was Cleeve, the only one sensibly dressed in a bushwhacker hat, collared polo shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals. He stood a fold-out table in the shade, and set four more glasses on it.
The six of them convened at the table. Jan had her work cut out preventing Stopper from jumping up at each of them in turn. It wasn’t his usual antic – around the tourists, for example, he tended to be on his best behavior – but he was excited to be back here on his favorite beach, and they would all share his excitement whether they liked it or not.
“You’ve settled in okay? No allergic reactions?” Jan asked Kyra and Cleeve, while wistfully scanning the woodland – many of those trees she’d planted as saplings and saved from blight.
“All good so far,” answered Cleeve. “Joy has brought us up to speed. But I don’t think I’ll ever get used to breathing bottled air for half of every day.”
“You’d be surprised how many people say that and then forget to take their breathers off for the shuttle ride home,” said Jan. “All rhythms become second nature in time. And breathing’s the most unconscious rhythm of them all. Unless the dentist is giving you a filling and that sucking pipe is spreading fluid all over the back of your mouth. Then you’re counting breaths, and willing yourself not to swallow, not to gag, for fear of moving your jaw in a way that might make the drill miss its target.”
“Oh, that’s gross.” Kyra pretended to spit something small and stubborn, with rapid rolls of her tongue. “I was going to propose a toast, but now I’m not swallowing a drop of anything ever again.”
Vaughn picked up an empty glass. “To Jan,” he said, “whose tact knows no bounds, and whose anecdotes horrify us daily.”
He dodged her slap upside his head. Then Joy Horrigan picked up an empty glass, and bade the others do likewise. She began, “To Jan…”
“…whose glass is always half empty, even when it’s full,” finished Vaughn. No sooner had they all tipped their glasses for a pretend toast than Jan, grinning, shaking her head, lunged for Vaughn. He was ready for it, and sidestepped her attempt. But she had the bit between her teeth now; he wasn’t going to get away with it so easily. Glass in hand, taunting her in ever more uproarious ways that made the others laugh, he evaded her tireless chase up and down the beach. Finally, as he ventured into the surf for one mock sip too many, he was surprised from the side by an ebullient Boxer dog, who reared up onto his hind legs and toppled the playful lawman, just like old times. Jan seized her advantage. She snatched his glass, filled it with seawater, and, standing victorious with one foot on his submerged chest, poured the contents onto his arrogant head.
It proved the perfect icebreaker for an afternoon of lively conversation, with the whole group together at first, and then, as the chat splintered, they drifted into private one-on-ones in different locales. Jan had an atlas of Hesperidia and was giving Melekhin a geography lesson on the veranda. Joy and Cleeve were engaged in animated debate over by the jetty. Meanwhile, Kyra, perhaps to deflect from any interrogation into her own illegal practices, was showing unlikely concern for the smuggling taking place on Hesperidia. Manufactured commodities were one thing, she maintained to Vaughn; raping a natural biosphere for profit was something else entirely, and she didn’t hold with any part of that.
“Look, I might be a hypocrite, but there are all kinds of traffickers. Scruples don’t just belong to your side of the law, Vaughn.”
“Um, yeah, they kinda do.”
“I mean there are lines some smuggling outfits won’t cross,” she said. “Trafficking kids, for instance. The people in my organization would rather die than be involved in that shit.”
“I get what you’re saying, but it’s a slippery slope. And in my job, divining a criminal’s scruples is a fool’s errand. Once you knowingly cross the line that matters, the one the law tells you not to cross, I have to assume you’re capable of crossing others. So while I believe you, personally, my badge demands I dig as deep as I can into what you’ve done outside the law. To put it bluntly, you don’t get a little bit pregnant. And you don’t sort of break the law – if you cross that line, all the king’s men can’t put Humpty back together again.”
“Oh, Jesus, you do talk in nursery rhymes. Mom does that whenever she moralizes. Is that a Vaughn family trait or something?”
He scoffed. “It’s either that or I put you in cuffs right now.”
“God, I’d prefer the cuffs. Just no more metaphors or fortune cookies or nursery rhymes, okay?”
“Okay.”
She leaned over to pet Stopper. He and Kyra had taken in instant liking to one another. The poor boy had gotten fed up with Jan keep leaving him to fetch things from inside the hostel, where he wasn’t allowed, so he’d come to snooze between Vaughn and Kyra in the shade of a lympipus tree instead.
“So is this Carlisle guy involved, do you think?” she asked. “You know what they say about the one who raises the alarm in the first place.”
“No, no,” he assured her. “He had nothing to gain by doing that. If he was involved, he’d be calling attention to himself and the whole enterprise. Plus he’d have lost his own cut of a fortune in smuggled materials.”
“So he’s a boy scout, like you.”
“You could put it that way.”
“Is there like a straight-arrow epiphany or something you guys experience when you’re growing up, that points you to the moral high ground and says, thou shalt do no wrong from now on? I’ve always wondered.”
“No more than there’s one pointing the other way telling you to shit on innocent people for a career.”
“Touché.”
“But I tell you what – if I can find one permanent staffer involved in this thing, I’ll unravel the whole operation in no time,” he boasted. “You know how quickly the dominoes fall when just one key operative wobbles.”
“So what are you waiting for? You’ve done this a hundred times, right?”
“Not exactly. I’m coming at it slantwise, cold, no prep. It’s not even my case, officially.”
“So
it’s, what, a hobby?”
“More like a side inquiry.”
“You’re never not working, are you,” she said rhetorically.
Vaughn saw an opening. “We’re just talking. One professional to another. If what happened to your organization hadn’t happened, I might be asking these same things about the people you work with. To try to figure out how the dominoes stack.”
“I guess.”
“So how would you go about finding someone involved?” He asked, watching her askance. After massaging Stopper’s ears, she replied, “I’d figure the price of his secrets.”
“Come again?”
“You speak in terms of what’s legal and what’s not,” explained Kyra. “To your smugglers, it’s all a game, I’m telling you. They’ve already crossed your legal line a while back, so the rules of their game now boil down to two things and two things only: making as much profit as possible…without getting caught. And to ensure he or she stays in the game, your smuggler stakes his position with the price of his secrets.”
“I’m still not sure—”
She sighed. “Think of it like this, Vaughn. No matter how careful he is, he’s doing something he shouldn’t be doing at some point in the process. Whether that’s turning a blind eye to couriers passing checkpoints, or accepting undeclared funds into his back account, he’s exposing himself somewhere. That’s his secret, that’s the risk he’s putting a price on as long as he’s in the game. And trust me, the price goes up, never down. The stakes of the game always rise. So what I would do is figure out who’s good at keeping secrets. Who’s left himself open to bribery or blackmail? And who’s got the most to lose if he gets caught? Figure the price of his secrets and you’ll know what he’s willing to do to not get caught. That’s my advice anyway.”
“Is it free?”
“Haha! No. In fact it’s not for sale. At any price.”
“Too late. I was buying it.”
“You were?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow. “For real?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, well. Wonders never cease. The great Ferrix Vaughn revealing a flash of humility.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
“What would you say?” she asked.
“Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey…”
Kyra’s playful exasperated scream ensured the proverbial spider didn’t make his appearance. But something did crawl out from beneath the dried clump of seaweed near where her hand rested. She didn’t see it, but Stopper did. He growled, leapt upright, and started scrabbling where it had dug in. Despite her efforts to escape, Kyra wasn’t quick enough; she bore the full brunt of the sand shower he kicked up. It stuck to her sweaty, salved skin, put highlights in her hair, and otherwise made her miserable.
It also gave Vaughn an idea – digging where he knew for a fact a transgression had occurred. The more he thought back over the insights he’d been given – from Kyra, from Lacey, even from Kirsten Zeller – the more convinced he was that he could break this smuggling case wide open with a single question. One he could only ask in person at Miramar. And the sooner the better.
To his surprise, Jan decided to stay with the others. Having seen how much Stopper enjoyed being back on his island, and rather liking the nostalgia trip herself, not to mention the friendly company, she agreed to stay overnight. Vaughn promised to pick her up the following morning. Then he piloted his bird eastward under a flock of navy longneck geese, breaking the sound barrier as he left them behind.
Chapter Thirteen
The downpour and the clouds had passed; the early evening sun now cast its low but livid glare across Miramar, steaming the flooded glade and the surrounding rainforest. Several solitary bay skimmers reveled in their acrobatic swoops and rolls into the insect-and-infusoria-rich mist – not so much their staple diet, more a luxurious delicacy after each heavy rainfall. The entire landing zone was awash, though its guiding lights pulsed to assist pilots landing in the fog. Isherwood’s crater gurgled as the water filling it struggled to drain out through cracks in the damaged, porous bedrock. Vaughn set his bird down in the usual reserved space for VIPs and emergency services, and waded out through the dirty floodwater.
He made his way to the laboratory building, where he found Carlisle in one of the bunker labs, alone at an electron microscope. The ranger looked up, blinked. “Hey, Detective.”
“Carlisle.”
“Anything the matter?”
“No. Just a routine question. I know you’re busy.”
“By all means, fire away.”
“It’s about those arrests you made – the two smugglers.”
“The ‘dispshits’.”
“Yeah. I was wondering – and I might be wrong on this – were you by any chance covering someone else’s shift that day? The mainframe rota record lists you as the scheduled tour guide for that group, but when I checked, you’d already worked your contracted hours for that week. Did you fill in as a favor for someone?”
“That’s right. One of the rangers called in sick. It wasn’t a personal favor – Control just asked me to fill in, that was all.”
“Do you happen to know who it was who called in sick?”
“Ruben Intaglio.”
With a pensive nod, Vaughn said, “Thank you. That’s all I wanted to know.”
“Any time. Say, is Doctor Hopper back?”
“Oh, no. Sorry. She asked me to tell you, she won’t be in till tomorrow morning.”
The steely-eyed ranger tutted through his teeth. “That’s too bad. I was kinda hoping…” He smiled, shook the disappointment from his face. “Don’t mind me, Detective. I’ll just show her when she comes in.”
“You’ve found something out…about the creature?”
“Maybe. Nothing certain. I just need to run it by someone who knows amphibious Hesp biology more intimately than I do.”
“Yeah, well, she literally wrote the book on that, I gather.”
“And everything else,” said Carlisle. “She’d be First Ranger in a heartbeat, if it was up to me.”
“So why are you applying, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Precisely because it isn’t up to me. I understand she isn’t their type.”
“Too independent?” asked Vaughn.
“Too well-connected. Her friends in congress give her more reach than COVEX likes.”
“Trust me, she’s the least political person I know.”
“And the least diplomatic, from what I hear.”
Vaughn twitched a smile. “Well, you’re not wrong. Have a good evening, Doctor.”
“You too, Detective.”
From there he went to the hospital, where he spied Ruben, still using the pure oxygen mix from his breather, typing up a storm on his digipad, with his ankle suspended in a pressurized cylindrical splint half-filled with blue liquid. Vaughn sneaked out without saying a word, but noted that Doc Cochran was alone in his office, with his back to the door, cycling through a digital photo album on his touchscreen. His fingerprint was wet where he’d touched the cycle icon, as though he’d just dried his eyes.
Vaughn made his way to the HQ lounge and, not seeing Tynedale there, asked if anyone knew his whereabouts. “He’s with Isherwood and the COVEX people,” came the reply from somebody in admin. Vaughn went upstairs, rapped urgently on the acting governor’s office door, received a bellowed “Come in” and marched inside.
“Mister Tynedale?” he said, and, ignoring all the others in attendance – half a dozen, all dour-faced – walked up to the COVEX man and shook his hand. With his other hand he gave Tynedale’s forearm a friendly squeeze – enough purchase to transfer a bug about the size of a beauty spot from his fingertip onto the underside of the man’s sleeve. “I’ve just come from the hospital, and there’s something you should know about one of your candidates. There’s been a complication with Ruben Intaglio. Something to do with his pulmonary system not reacting well to treatment. Doc Cochran’
s had to sedate him, and he’s thinking of taking him off standard oxygen for a while, to see how he responds to a different mix. He said he’ll almost certainly be out of the running for this contest you’ve got going.” He paused for effect. “That’s it. I just thought you ought to know, seeing as this First Ranger thing is such a big deal.”
“I see. Well, thank you for letting me know…Detective. I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Don’t mention it.” Vaughn delayed his exit, and already Tynedale’s eyes were betraying his consternation – the white parts bulged, the pupils danced, and he had to fight to appear aloof.
“Anything else I can do for you, Detective Vaughn?” The man shifted his weight, tilted his head – more giveaway signals that he was desperate for the lawman to leave the room.
Vaughn would give him his wish in a moment, but first wanted to make a squirm a little more. “Nope. I was just wondering how the probe went?”
“It went offline. We’re sending another – it’s on its way as we speak.”
“Okay. Well, fingers crossed for this one.”
“Indeed. Thank you for stopping by, Detective.”
“Don’t mention it. I’ll stop by again if there’s any more news about Ruben.” Then he turned and left without saying a word to the others. Outside, he immediately switched on his discreet audio uplink and auto-tuned the transmission. Tynedale’s low but adamant voice rose above a light crackle:
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