He sat back down and went through the files again. No information tags. Not a one. No hint of anyone looking up these files before the coroner’s office did that afternoon.
The hair rose on the back of his neck. He searched for ghosts in the files, to see if someone had been tampering with them, or overlaying these files on older ones. Nothing.
These files looked new.
He started to look for origin dates on the files then took his hands off the screen as if he’d been burned. To do that work properly, he’d need permission from the creator of each bit of information—the hospitals where these three had been born, Stanford University, even the Division of Motor Vehicles in their various hometowns to verify their aircar permits. That would be the only way for anything he discovered to hold up in court.
But he was beginning to suspect he wouldn’t need court.
Still, he didn’t dare risk blowing an investigation on a hunch. He’d have to use a different system to hack through the protective walls, and then, if he found something he needed, he’d have to recreate his research—legally—on his own system.
DeRicci wouldn’t approve, but she wasn’t there. For the first time, he got to investigate something on his own, using his methods. And he had a hunch about what he was going to find.
Eight
Ekaterina had strapped herself into the pilot’s chair, and she was glad she had. She was having trouble with attitude control. It took all of her training just to keep the yacht from spinning. It kept wobbling, which the computer—on audio now that she had finally found the controls—kept telling her would be resolved if she traveled at a slower speed.
The computer also told her that the fastest the ship could go on autopilot was two-thirds of maximum, and she needed maximum right now.
At least the pilot hadn’t lied to her about that.
She kept checking the ship’s flight plan. She had plugged it into the computer, and set the course on automatic, hoping that the ship would steer itself in that direction—and it seemed to be doing so. But, with as many controls as she was pushing, she was afraid she would knock it off-line and not notice.
The worst thing she could do would be to overshoot the Moon and head out into the bright nowhere. She hadn’t checked the fuel beyond a cursory request to the computer, asking if there was enough to take her at maximum speed to the Moon. There was.
But how much would there be if she missed? She had no idea.
She had forgotten how complicated piloting was, even with computerized help. And the computer on this yacht wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as the computer she had used decades ago, when she’d been an orbital pilot.
Granted, those ships had to fall under government regulations, and any mistakes she made could be corrected by the computer, so that no tourists would be lost. No one wanted a scandal. But she would have thought that a newer yacht would have a more sophisticated system.
All she could figure was that this one had been stripped down, either so that no one would know what the hell the pilot did, or so that the ship cost less.
She kept looking at the portals, although the blackness outside told her nothing. She expected to see the orange and blue stripes of the Rev ship, knowing that it had found her after all.
The yacht had no weapons. All she had to defend herself was a silly little laser pistol and a lot of moxie. She couldn’t even risk getting out of the pilot’s chair to search the cabins, to see if the crew had brought their own weaponry.
Not that it mattered. The moment the Rev boarded the yacht, they won. She had to keep them away from her, and that meant speeding to the Moon.
Maybe she could throw herself on the mercy of one of the Moon’s governments and hope that it would protect her. But she knew the chances of that were slim.
The chances of survival were slim.
But there was a chance. And that was all that mattered.
* * *
The neighborhood had always seemed run-down to Jamal. Run-down for Gagarin Dome standards, which meant the houses were small and the Moon clay adobe was flaking. Some of the yards had the typical desert plants found throughout this part of the Moon, but most of those plants were dying. Only a few seemed to survive, in houses that looked a little less decrepit than the others, and those were the houses that he felt most comfortable in approaching.
The others made him nervous.
Such a come-down from those heady days before he went to Korsve. He’d owned two houses of his own and a vacation condo, all in different outlying colonies. He even had use of the company’s various space yachts so that he could go back and forth between his homes.
His stomach twisted. He’d been through the neighborhood three times, searching, asking questions. A handful of friends were helping him, as were some of the local cops. They all had different theories on what had happened to Ennis.
Some of his friends believed that Ennis, who was just learning to walk, had gotten out on his own. Dylani fiercely denied that as if, somehow, it reflected badly on them as parents. She had no idea that Jamal’s own decision to become a parent was worse.
Why had he thought he was safe?
Denial. He had been warned about it in that short psych session he’d had before his Disappearance, and he had figured he would never experience it. He was a smart man. He knew the risks.
But he also remembered the service telling him that if no one found him in ten years, they probably wouldn’t find him. At that point, he could risk starting a life again. Not returning to his old life—he could never do that. But he could start over, as if the past had never happened.
And he had.
Ennis was proof that he had.
And proof that the service had been wrong.
The cops, on the other hand, believed him when he said he thought someone took the child. The problem was, that placed some of the suspicion squarely on him. A lot of parents said children were kidnapped, only to have the kid’s body turn up under some cactus plant years later.
He didn’t dare tell them the truth, that under multicultural law, he had no right to Ennis, to his own child. His first-born.
Jamal trudged past the last house on the makeshift block. The thin light of day, bolstered by additional lights built into the Dome, had long since faded into the darkness of night. Soon the Earth would become visible through the Dome, and he would see the place his people came from, the place he had never visited and had always meant to back in the days when he had money and believed he could travel.
Before Ennis. Before Dylani. Before the Moon and all of this.
The worst part would be telling her. She would never forgive him, not entirely. Even if she stayed with him. She loved him, he knew that. But her love for Ennis was something else entirely, something fierce and protective. Something he’d always slightly feared.
And this was why.
There were still some police-issue aircars in front of his home. It looked strange to see vehicles parked on the narrow street. In this part of Gagarin, people didn’t own vehicles. They used public transport.
The cars were empty, though, the police out searching, like they had been since they’d been called. The only person in the house would be Dylani. A policewoman had offered to stay with her, as had a few of their friends, but Dylani would have none of it.
She wanted to face this alone, without sympathy or pity.
The only reason she stayed home was the slim chance that Ennis would come back on his own. Or someone would call the house system instead of contacting her or Jamal directly. Jamal knew she was expecting a ransom demand—not that they could do anything about that. They barely had enough money to buy groceries every week. He had no idea who they would raise money to ransom their son.
But, of course, the Wygnin would never demand ransom. It was a non-issue, something else he would have to tell her.
The small patch of dirt that passed for their yard bore the marks of dozens of footprints. He hadn’t planted anything there, no
t because he felt he couldn’t maintain a desert garden—he could—but because most of the plants in such a garden were sharp, and not recommended for children.
Jamal walked up the single step and pushed open the front door. It hadn’t been latched.
The house still smelled of reconstituted meat, garlic, and tomato sauce. The table was still set, the wine glasses looking sad now, the reminder of a quiet night that had never happened, a normal life that might never be normal again.
He heard a choking sound, faint and indistinct. Hope rose inside him—Ennis?—and then he realized that the sound was adult.
Jamal ran through the living room until he reached his bedroom. Dylani sat on the bed. She was sobbing and trying to suppress the sound by keeping her mouth closed, her hands over her entire face.
He stopped in the door, afraid to go farther. Afraid of what she knew, of what might have been discovered.
Maybe the police had found Ennis and Dylani knew and she had shooed them all out of there so she could be alone.
“Dylani?” he asked.
She looked up at him, her face swollen and red, her skin streaked with tears. “Jamal.”
She stood and nearly collapsed. He went to her, caught her halfway, and had to hold her up.
“They found him.”
His breath caught in his throat. They found Ennis and she was crying. It was worse than he thought. Worse than he had imagined it could be. At least if the Wygnin took him, Ennis would have been alive somewhere. He wouldn’t be entirely human any more, but he would have been alive.
“Where?” He was amazed the word came out.
“Armstrong Dome,” she said. “They called.”
He hadn’t expected that. He had been so braced for the worst that it took a moment for her words to register. “Armstrong Dome. How’d he get there?”
“Border patrol pulled over a Wygnin ship.” Her body trembled. “What would the Wygnin want with Ennis?”
He was glad he wasn’t looking at her, that he had her in his arms so that she couldn’t see his face. “They took Ennis away from the Wygnin?”
“For now. But we have to hurry. We have to get there soon because there’s some kind of mix-up.” She stepped back, wiped her hand over her face. “Sorry. Sorry about the tears. The relief—”
“What kind of mix-up?” Jamal’s voice sounded harsher than it ever had. He couldn’t control that. He could barely control himself.
She wiped her hand on the side of her pants, an absentminded gesture. She was studying him, clearly astonished at his reaction. “I don’t understand all of it. They wouldn’t explain much. Not over a link. We have to go, Jamal. Now.”
He nodded, still feeling cold. It wasn’t over. All they’d had was a reprieve.
And even that might have been a curse in disguise.
Nine
Flint walked around the floor, seeing who else was working in house. Normally detectives did very little of their work in the Unit. They left memos for the assistants to track things down, and then passed on the assistants’ work as their own.
Six detectives were filing reports and using the system to work on something. Flint nodded to them as he passed. Six detectives was a large percentage of the evening shift, something he hadn’t expected.
Still, most of them were working far enough away from him. They wouldn’t notice anything he did, and if they did, they probably wouldn’t think anything of it.
He went to an assistant’s desk not far from his office. He’d learned as a space cop that if he was going to misuse a system, the best way to do it was with someone else’s password in a third person’s station. That way, if someone felt the need to double-check the work (and not too many people did), he’d find the password of someone who was not in the building on the station of someone else who was not in the building—at least according to the palm records at the Unit’s door.
Flint wouldn’t be getting them in trouble, and he’d be protecting his own ass while getting information he needed for his investigation.
He tapped the screen, then added the password of one of the junior assistants, a woman who was dumb enough to use her initials—all five of them. He liked her password the best because it was easy to remember, but most of the assistants had simple passwords. They used birthdates or middle names or the names of children. Those assistants who did follow departmental regulations and used a randomly generated number often kept that number hidden inside their desk. Neither system protected the assistants well, but Flint had used it to his advantage more than once—and had never told DeRicci.
He knew what the forensic file said on those three bodies, so he didn’t even call it up again. One of the many things the forensic report had deemed classified was the DNA of the victims.
Law enforcement couldn’t use DNA as a source of identification if other sources of identification were present. Even if there weren’t other sources of identification, the series of legal twists and turns it took to get DNA I.D. were tremendous. It would take Flint nearly a week to get permission to use DNA I.D. on these three victims if forensics hadn’t been able to get a file on them.
But forensics had a file, so he was blocked from using the DNA I.D.—at least, legally.
However, that I.D. would probably tell him a lot more than the identity chips. The Disty didn’t have such rules against DNA I.D. It probably hadn’t even occurred to them that such rules existed on the Moon.
Flint was going to ignore the legal part of it for the moment.
He opened the HazMat report, which had also been filed that afternoon. HazMat had to report on all substances found inside a potentially contaminated environment—including DNA. In this case, they had used the blood from all three victims, searching for contaminants, viruses, bacteriological agents, microorganisms, and other things that could spread rapidly throughout domed cities like those on the Moon.
Flint skipped most of the bloodwork information, going instead to that most important information, the DNA I.D. He copied all three of those I.D.s and put them into the Earth Alliance DNA database.
Theoretically, all humans kept their DNA on file with Earth Alliance. Some people could opt to use DNA as a permanent I.D. Others chose identity numbers and some chose to use their names and addresses only. But no matter what people chose, their DNA was on file with the Earth Alliance database.
It only took a moment for the DNA database to kick out these I.D.s —and they were different than the hard-copy I.D.s found with the bodies.
Flint was not surprised.
All three of the victims had been outside the solar system, and all of them had been in Disty-occupied space. He took the names the system had kicked back—Ruth Stern, Sara Zaetl, and Isaac Rothman—and plugged them into the law enforcement database.
He was surprised to get an immediate hit. He had expected it to take some time.
Apparently there were outstanding warrants for Stern, Zaetl, and Rothman, warrants issued by the Disty fifteen years before. Flint frowned at the dates. Fifteen years was a long time to be on the run. Usually victims of vengeance killings died shortly after the warrants were issued, before they could become Disappeareds.
The hit came from Amoma, the fourth planet in the Disty home solar system. Amoma had had human colonies for more than 100 years. Those humans had managed, for the most part, to co-exist peacefully with the Disty, the way humans and Disty did on Mars.
But the court documents were very clear. Sara Zaetl had murdered a Disty security guard. She had claimed that she did so because he had attacked her and she was acting in self-defense. But anyone who saw a full-grown human woman next to a full-grown Disty male knew who was physically in charge of that encounter.
The Disty were tiny and weak compared with humans. Whenever the Disty exacted punishments against the humans, like vengeance killings, the Disty overwhelmed the humans with large numbers and superior weapons.
There had been only one Disty attacking Sara Zaetl who was, at the time, eight
een years old. She had killed him, leaving behind his family of seven, his employer (which to the Disty was like leaving family), and a network of friends larger than the population of Armstrong Dome.
The Disty had been killed outside his place of employment —an entertainment center often frequented by human teenagers. Zaetl had a history of petty larceny and breaking and entering. She might indeed have felt threatened by the Disty security guard, who was carrying a weapon, but somehow she managed to disarm him and use the weapon on him.
If she had killed him in self defense, which, given the circumstances as he read them, Flint doubted, Sara Zaetl handled the aftermath wrong. She should have contacted the authorities herself and waited for them, explaining the situation.
Instead, she fled the scene. She asked for and got the help of her three cousins, who then hid her until they found a Disappearance service for her. The service insisted on Disappearing all of them, and they vanished.
The trials, first on Amoma, and then before the Third Multicultural Tribunal which issued the warrants, were held in absentia. Sara Zaetl’s self-defense claim came from a court appointed attorney who may or may not have been telling her story. She was no longer around to defend herself.
Flint leaned back and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He could guess who two of the cousins were—Ruth Stern and Isaac Rothman—but he didn’t know who the third was. He sighed. He hadn’t liked what he found so far. He couldn’t imagine that he would like the next part either.
There was nothing else in the record under those names—because the four had Disappeared, successfully, it seemed. He did search the indictments that landed before the Third Multicultural Tribunal at that time, and found the third cousin: Ilana Rothman. He also noted that someone had marked that case closed.
It took a bit more searching to learn why. A few weeks ago, Ilana Rothman had been killed in the New Orleans, Louisiana. She had been living in an apartment building in the French Quarter along with three friends who weren’t home at the time of her death. The friends, two women and a man, weren’t seen again.
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