Goddammit, Surgical.
Wecks nods. “Do you know about what time you got back to your room?”
I could tell him exactly when she got back. But we’re not in the business of volunteering information here at the agency. We collect information, and we control it. We don’t talk unless we know why we’re talking.
Jessica shrugs. “It was still dark out.”
Wecks gives her a funny look. “Sun only rises once a month up here.”
“Oh?” Jessica bats her eyelashes. “I’m sorry. It’s my first time on the Moon. And we’re mostly underground, it seems.”
“What’s your friend’s name?” Gurley asks with a challenging tone. Bad cop, I guess.
“Jeremiah Burgess,” Jessica says. “He works for municipal power.”
Wecks holds up his tablet. The display shows a photo of the redhead from the bar last night. “Is this your friend?”
Jessica nods. “Yes.”
Wecks stands up and puts the tablet away. “Dr. Chu, we’d like you to come back to the outpost and answer a few more questions, if you don’t mind.”
“What’s going on here?” I say, stepping forward decisively but not suddenly. I want the marshals to notice me, but I don’t want to make them nervous by thinking I’m going to attack them in any way. “We’re in the middle of some very important business.”
“More important than homicide?” Gurley asks.
“Excuse me?” I say.
“We’re still working on determining cause of death,” Wecks says. “But it does appear that you, Dr. Chu, were the last person to see Jeremiah Burgess alive.”
“Some tour company workers at the Apollo 15 site found his body in Hadley Rille last night,” Gurley says. “He wasn’t wearing a pressure suit.”
“Right near the Fallen Astronaut memorial,” Wecks adds. “Somebody’s got a sick sense of humor.”
Jessica turns to Breyella. “Sorry, Miss Wilgus. We’ll have to finish our tour later.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Moon—nearside—Tycho Crater
1 hour after our nursing home tour was interrupted by murder
The United States Marshal Service outpost looks like a lot of the older buildings on the Moon: a somewhat haphazard mishmash of prefab habitat modules with generic docking collars and airlock tunnels. Some parts were clearly imported, and others look like they were manufactured on site from Lunar regolith. There are just a few newer facades of transparent panels. Transductile display crystal, I’m guessing.
I wonder what this place used to be, before USMS got a hold of it. The center of the building is actually an open area, a courtyard between four different hab modules, that’s been partitioned with honeycombed walls to make holding cells, but only covered on top with a thin sheet of ceramic to keep radiation out and atmosphere in. I suspect that’s to discourage the prisoners from getting too rowdy in their cells, or attempting to escape.
Wecks and Gurley won’t allow me in the interview room while they interrogate Jessica. Wecks goes inside to talk to her while Gurley stays outside with me.
“I’m her personal assistant,” I say again as the door closes behind Wecks. “I’m with her pretty much all the time. I could help answer any questions—”
“Oh, we’re going to talk to you later,” Gurley says. “Just sit tight.”
Of course they’re going to interview us separately. Just in case I’m an accomplice.
I still can’t believe Jessica would kill someone. I mean, I can believe she would, but not under these circumstances. And why this guy?
A familiar sound chimes in my ear, and an alert lights up in my eye. I surreptitiously texted Oliver an urgent update as soon as we came out of the tube and I had satellite reception again, and now he wants to talk. I hope it’s good news.
“Could I use your restroom?” I ask Gurley.
She leads me down the hallway and pushes open the restroom door for me. “I’ll be right outside if you need any help with anything.”
“Thanks.”
I check the bathroom to make sure nobody else is in here and there are no unexpected recording devices, then duck into a toilet stall and pull the door closed before dialing my shoulder-phone to the secure line back to the office. It takes several agonizing seconds before Oliver answers.
“What have you got?” I ask.
“Not much,” Oliver says. “Jeremiah Burgess was a maintenance supervisor for the municipal power utility, as you said. No criminal record, either on Earth or on Luna. He’s been up there for just under a year.”
“Any connection to Surgical? He’s on the agency’s asset list.”
“None that I’ve uncovered,” Oliver says. “Burgess was a low-level source for Intel—he had connections to Lunar gray market data brokers. No direct contact with anyone in OUTBACK.” That’s the code tag for our department, because Paul has a weird sense of humor. “This could just be a coincidence.”
“Right,” I say. “Surgical ditches me on the first night after we arrive here, and the guy she picks up at the hotel bar—an agency asset—just happens to die shortly after she takes a trip with him out and about on the Lunar surface. Must be a coincidence. Not suspicious at all.”
“I don’t appreciate the sarcasm,” Oliver says. “My point is, in the absence of any other information, I am inclined to believe that Surgical is innocent of any wrongdoing. Perhaps she’s being set up. Have you noticed any signs that you’re being surveilled?”
“No,” I say. “And I’ve been running my mission recorder on full-spectrum scans the whole time. We uploaded the raw data to you last night. Anything there?”
“I haven’t done any manual analysis yet, but no red flags on the automated processing. I could look into some of the people you’ve interacted with up there. You said there were several doctors, and some kind of tour guide?”
“I’ll send you their names,” I say. “But I doubt it’s any of them. That would be too obvious. We’ve seen their faces. We would have noticed if they were acting weaselly.”
“It won’t hurt to check.”
“Okay, I need to get out of here.” I flush the toilet and go to the sink to wash my hands. “I’ll call again when we’re back at the hotel.”
“Right.” Oliver ends the call.
Gurley eyes me suspiciously when I walk out of the bathroom. “You talk to yourself a lot, Mr. McDrona?”
“Only when I’m nervous, Marshal,” I reply.
She gives me a very fake smile. “No need to be nervous, Mr. McDrona. We just want to get to the bottom of this unfortunate situation.”
“I’m sorry, are you the good cop now?”
The smile disappears. “Let’s go back to the waiting area.”
* * *
Gurley walks me into a different interview room before Wecks brings Jessica out of hers. Then Wecks comes in to talk to me, and Gurley leaves—maybe going to follow up with Jessica, see if she tells the same story twice.
“So how’s the Hotel Tranquility?” Wecks asks, sitting down across the table from me.
“It’s nice enough,” I say. “Crowded, though. Lots of tourists.”
“Yeah,” Wecks grumbles. “It’s going to get worse before the end of the summer.”
“Bet you folks are going to have your hands full with crowd control.”
“Most of the tour companies are hiring private security to help with that,” Wecks says. “But yeah, we’re all going to be on call for the main event.”
That would be the actual, precise anniversary of the very first manned Moon landing. I’m not sure how accurately the Lunar authorities are going to re-create the original timeline—from what I understand, it was several hours between the time the capsule landed and when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the surface. It was our first time putting humans on another world, and nobody knew what it was going to be like, so caution was the order of the day.
It’s going to be crazy out there on the surface. Huge crowds. Lots of people from
all over the Solar System. A perfect place for someone to hide who doesn’t want to be found.
Still, killing a municipal employee days before your big escape—or your big act of terror—isn’t exactly smart. The authorities are already on guard, anticipating people wanting to cause trouble around the occasion of this big celebration. Wouldn’t you want to lie low until the time comes for you to strike?
Unless you actually wanted to frame someone else for the crime. But I’m never going to convince the police of that without evidence.
“Well,” I say, “I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than investigate the wrong suspect for a murder. I can tell you, without a doubt, that Dr. Chu is not responsible for this crime.”
“Can you, now.”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
Wecks looks at his tablet. “So you were with her all night, last night?”
I focus on not shifting in my chair or otherwise making fidgety movements. That’s the first thing interrogators look for when questioning someone: physical signs of discomfort often indicate psychic unease. “Well, not all night. But pretty late. We were both in the bar up until around midnight. There was a big event there, lots of people in costume. You can ask the bartender. I’m sure he remembers her.”
“He did,” Wecks says. “He also remembered who she was talking to.” He holds up the tablet, showing a picture of the redhead. “Did you see this man at the bar?”
I make a show of squinting at the image. “Yes. Well, it looks like him. It was dark, and I wasn’t exactly invited to the conversation.”
Wecks raises an eyebrow. “So you weren’t at the bar with your employer?”
“No,” I say. “She doesn’t really like to socialize when we’re not on the clock. You know doctors.”
“If you say so.”
“But it’s not like there were many other bars nearby,” I say. “Hotels, am I right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Wecks says. “I don’t travel much. Did you see your boss leaving the bar with this man?”
“I didn’t see exactly the moment they walked out,” I say. “But I did notice they were gone at some point after midnight.”
“So you weren’t watching her.”
I give him my best puzzled frown. “Officer, I’m not sure what you’re implying about my relationship with Dr. Chu—”
“How long have you been her assistant?”
“A few years.”
“A few years,” Wecks repeats, nodding. “And you’ve been doing pretty much the same job that whole time?”
“My responsibilities have expanded over time,” I say. “I wouldn’t say it’s the exact same job—”
“But you’ve been her personal assistant for the last several years,” Wecks says. “Same job title. No promotion. Is that right?”
“It’s a good job,” I say, doing my best not to sound too defensive. Or should I? No, I think that would be suspicious. Does that matter? Crap. We weren’t prepped for this contingency. “And our relationship is purely professional.”
“Still,” Wecks says. “You happen to be in the same bar, you see that she’s there, and you’re not keeping an eye on her?”
“I respect her privacy.”
“Is Dr. Chu married?”
“No.”
“Divorced?” Wecks asks. “Widowed? Is she in a relationship? Does she go on a lot of dates?”
“These are all very personal questions,” I say. “I think you should ask Dr. Chu instead of me. I’m not really comfortable discussing her personal life in this setting.”
This is not good. I don’t believe Jessica killed anyone, but if someone’s trying to frame her, that means another player knows we’re here, and they’re targeting us. We need to figure this out ourselves and keep the marshals out of it.
Wecks spreads his hands on the table, palms up, and hunches his shoulders in a shrug. “Hey, I understand. I’m not looking for gossip. I’m not asking you to divulge anything more than what someone meeting her for the first time might learn. Just basic information.”
“I think I would like to talk to a lawyer at this point,” I say.
“Whoa there, slow down, Eddie—”
“Edwin.” I’ve decided that’s part of my character. He doesn’t like nicknames.
“Mr. McDrona,” Wecks says. “You’re not under arrest.”
“Then I can leave any time I want.” I push my chair back from the table and stand.
“That is true,” Wecks says, closing his tablet cover and standing up slowly. “But we would very much appreciate your cooperation in this matter. I understand you’re going to be on the Moon for a few more days, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“It’s going to get very busy around here,” Wecks says. “And I don’t know if you’re aware, but there can be jurisdictional issues depending on where you are on the Moon. If you’re visiting an Apollo landing site, that was an American space mission, so you’re protected by the U.S. Marshal Service. But any of the Russian or Chinese sites, or the international museums?” He shrugs. “It could take a long time to extradite you from the care of another nation, if anything untoward were to happen in those areas.”
“Are you threatening us, Marshal?” Please don’t threaten us. We’ve already got enough to untangle without getting local law enforcement into the mix. Cops always get too excited when they sense the opportunity to make a bigger arrest. An off-world murder is basically a white whale if you’re any kind of police. And we all know how obsessed people can get about white whales.
Wecks shrugs and gives me a hard stare. “I’m just stating some basic facts, Edwin.”
“Thank you for the information, Deputy U.S. Marshal Wecks, badge number 6712,” I say. “I hope we won’t be seeing you again.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Moon—nearside—Hotel Tranquility
1 hour after I discovered I don’t like U.S. marshals very much
I really hope Jessica wasn’t as antagonistic as I was during my interview. If the marshals like her better than they like me, they’ll be more inclined to scrutinize my behavior rather than hers. And I didn’t go off the grid for several hours last night while a man was being killed.
We don’t say anything to each other until we get back to the hotel and into our rooms. I follow Jessica into hers and wait for her to set up one of Oliver’s “pesticide” devices on the wall—a noisemaker to defeat any nearby eavesdropping bugs. The horrible irritating sound actually seems rather soothing now. It means we can talk in private.
“Did you kill that guy?” I ask.
Jessica gives me a look that would probably stop a lesser man’s heart. “No.”
“Are you telling the truth?”
Now the look could probably melt steel. “Just who the hell do you think I am?”
“I don’t know who the dead guy was,” I say. “I don’t know what happened between you and him last night. I do know that you would be willing to do just about anything for the right reasons. What I don’t know is why you wouldn’t tell me. I’m not judging you, Surge, I just need to know. What happened?”
“I’m a doctor,” Jessica says. “I save lives. I don’t kill people.”
“Okay, fine. Do you know why your date last night ended up dead?”
She frowns. “You followed me?”
“Not out of the hotel, which is why I’m asking all these stupid questions. I saw you at the bar with what’s-his-name.”
“Jeremiah.” She doesn’t say the name like it means much to her. That’s a relief. Probably not a crime of passion, then.
“Right. I saw the two of you at the bar, and then I saw you leave with him. I didn’t follow because I respect your privacy.” She doesn’t need to know the truth about that. “If I had known he would end up dead in the morning—”
“He was alive when I left him,” Jessica says, sliding open the door to her closet and pulling out her suitcase.
“What are you doing?”
“Packing,” she says, yanking open drawers and pulling out clothes and tossing them into her suitcase. “I suggest you do the same. We need to leave.”
I step into her path before she can put anything else in her suitcase. “If you didn’t kill that guy, we have nothing to worry about. Right?”
“The marshals are going to be watching us day and night now,” she says. “They’ll probably even get the hospital and nursing home to cooperate. They can pull security camera vid from anywhere on the Moon. We’re compromised. We can’t complete our mission.”
“They won’t have cameras inside patient rooms at the nursing home,” I say. “All we need to do is talk to Clementine. It won’t take more than a few minutes. We’re here already.”
Jessica glares at me. “It’s not safe.”
“You understand what’s at stake, right? That data could help us catch Terman Sakraida.”
“Could,” she says. “It’s still a long shot. And there are other things at stake here.”
I study her expression, but she’s very good at hiding all her thoughts and feelings. Years of practice, I suppose. “What are you not telling me?”
“I’ve told you everything you need to know,” she says. “I’m the primary on this mission, and I say we abort.”
“You’re not a field agent,” I say. “And during an active operation, the senior field operative has the ultimate authority over mission continuance.”
She squints at me. “Since when do you care about regulations?”
“Since they started helping me win arguments like this.”
“Fine.” She walks around me and continues packing. “You stay here if you want. I’m going home.”
“Um, pretty sure I can get you court-martialed for that,” I say.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she mutters. I step in front of her again, and she glares up at me. “Get out of my way, Kangaroo.”
“Let’s call Lasher,” I say, “and see what he thinks.”
There’s that look again. “Your behavior has become very erratic.”
I take a step back. “What?”
She reaches into her suitcase and pulls out a medkit. “You want to play rules lawyer? Fine. I am your Surgical officer, and I can decide whether you’re physically and mentally fit to be on duty. If I determine that you are not, I’m authorized to provide whatever treatment I deem necessary to protect your health. Including sedation for transport back to an appropriate medical facility.”
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