“Yes, but not for that reason. Our platforms are equipped with emergency hyperlink systems for just such situations. His son never attempted to use it—disabled it in order to commit the theft, in fact—and I believe his lack of intent to do so would have outweighed the equipment’s misalignment in court.”
“Go on,” Bragg urged.
“We’re getting into technical areas here,” St. Germain apologized. “Sorenson requested, as was his right, a detailed evaluation of the station’s damage and operating systems. Apparently something was wrong with the addressing in the hyperlink transmitter. There is a copy of the report in the file.”
“I’d like to read it,” Bragg said. “Just out of curiosity, why did the university drop its claim?”
St. Germain smiled ruefully. “Mister Sorenson learned that Mister Reilly’s arrest of his son would involve action by Commonwealth authorities. He offered the governing board three yearly donations, each of an amount equal to our original claim. No court proceedings, no publicity, and no admission of wrongdoing or liability, official or otherwise. Neatly swept under the rug.”
Bragg spent two hours gleaning the pertinent information from the volume of legalese that arrived in his e-mail a few minutes later. Everything appeared unassuming until he reached Philip Sorenson’s statement and the evaluation of the platform’s condition.
Bragg sat back, working a wad of tree gum in his jaws. Neil Sorenson was the largest exporter of raw materials and natural foodstuffs on Nivia, a man successful in a business nearly as vilified as poaching. The bad press of a criminal trial, not to mention the liability, might be enough reason to take a stab at Reilly through his wife—a warning that went wrong.
Sergeant Dwin appeared in the open doorway. “That stolen vehicle is legit. I found the report in the archives. Negative on the fingerprints, though.”
“Thanks. I got some material from Malone, and I want to bounce something off you.”
“Sure.”
“Philip Sorenson fancies himself a baffle-rider,” Bragg began. “Most baffle-riders know where the big ships are going beforehand, but sometimes they hook a blind ride. According to young Sorenson’s statement, that’s exactly what he did with an unidentified private starship. Imagine his surprise when they drop out in the middle of interstellar space and his unwitting host leaves him in the dust.
“Sorenson tracks the ship as long as he can, figuring it has to be going somewhere. A few days later he finds Malone’s training platform with no starship in sight. We’ll assume it just kept going and jumped again.”
“That happens,” Dwin agreed. Some captains went out of their way to strand baffle-riders if they got the chance.
“So Sorenson docks at the platform,” Bragg continued, “goes aboard and uses parts of the communication unit to hot wire the fuel system instead of calling for help. He figures another ship is bound to show up sooner or later.”
“And it turned out to be later,” Dwin grinned. “Reilly and Vondelis arrive, but he didn’t leave enough fuel on the platform for them to get back.”
“Wrong!” Bragg exclaimed. “The platform’s fuel cell was already empty when Sorenson got there. His ship has a high-pressure storage system and he only got a few hundred kilos before the pressure equalized and he couldn’t draw any more.
“If Sorenson had managed a full load, he would have had plenty to give Reilly and still had enough to make his getaway. The fuel Reilly drew was basically just the fumes left in the cell. What he got from Sorenson’s ship included some of Sorenson’s own fuel, or he still wouldn’t have made it back. Those little T-108’s are a lot less efficient than a fusion drive.”
“Bad luck,” Dwin said. “The starship he followed in stole the fuel. It’s known to happen.”
“It looked that way to me, too, until I read this,” Bragg said. He handed Dwin a hard copy of the platform’s analysis. “The hyperlink addressing was wrong. If Sorenson hadn’t been there, Reilly and Vondelis would have had to call for help. Only the message would have gone to an account that doesn’t exist—at least, not anymore.”
Dwin let it sink in a moment. “That’s crazy. If this were all intentional they would have grabbed Sorenson right off. They couldn’t assume he wouldn’t call for help first.”
Bragg shook his head. “Stealth is a baffle-rider’s stock in trade. That starship lit off after the platform as soon as it dropped out of jump and never knew he was there.”
“So they showed up at the port to grab Reilly,” Dwin ventured. “But why grab the wife?”
“It went wrong,” Bragg shrugged. “Now—guess who owned the majority of the cargo that went in the drink in front of Reilly and his wife a few weeks ago?” He paused dramatically before answering his own question: “Sorenson Exports.”
“Circumstantial,” Dwin commented, “but plausible. The Colonel will have a fit you got involved.”
“That’s why you’re going to say it was your idea.”
Terson went to school the morning after his release from the hospital but couldn’t muster enough motivation to keep his mind on Multiple Engine Theory. His mind drifted to the empty, aching absence of his wife and the overwhelming details of arrangements that shouldn’t have been needed for decades.
That afternoon he ate a large supper and got drunk with Zarn.
The night after that he got drunk with someone he didn’t know.
On the third night Terson got drunk by himself.
THIRTEEN
Saint Anatone: 2709:07:15 Standard
Bragg scanned the faces in the waiting room; he wasn’t surprised that the one he was looking for wasn’t present. “Has Terson Reilly checked in?” he asked the receptionist.
“No, sir. Hasn’t called, either, that I’m aware of.”
“Thanks. Cancel my next appointment.” He stepped into the elevator and jabbed the button for the garage. Reilly had shown up for his previous appointment hung over. None of the patrol officers, who all remembered him very well, reported seeing him around the clubs and he hadn’t gotten himself arrested yet, but Bragg’s experience told him that it was only a matter of time until he reverted to his old habits—or worse. One thing Bragg was certain of: he could count on Terson Reilly to lean toward extremes. The only question was whether he would strike out at himself or others.
The elevator doors parted to reveal a dim, concrete cavern broken up by shadowed support columns and vehicles. Illumination from inside the cab spilled through the opening onto the stained concrete surface on the other side. The gloom sucked the vitality from the light; Bragg’s feet rooted to the floor in reaction to a deep, visceral dread. His heart slammed against his ribs like a jackhammer as sweat beaded his forehead. He couldn’t bring himself to step out, as if doing so would permanently cut him off from the comfort and safety of the orderly world a few floors above. He fought the compulsion to back into the corner, to retreat from the void and return to the well-lit offices where he could make up some excuse to have one of his subordinates drive his car around to the front for him.
The elevator chimed, the final notice that his time was up and began to close, threatening to crush the shadow he cast across the threshold. Bragg watched the passage shrink with dismay and shame at his unreasoning cowardice. An arm shot out of the darkness at the last moment to block the converging panels. Bragg uttered a startled exclamation as he stumbled back, hands raised to fend off the intruder. A patrolman stepped through as the doors reversed themselves, watching Bragg with evident concern.
“Everything all right, sir?”
“Yes, of course,” Bragg replied shortly, angry with himself and embarrassed by another incident sure to generate gossip around the water cooler. He strode out, heart in his throat, as the elevator doors swished shut again. Echoes followed him through the garage accompanied by the tic…tic of cooling metal in the distance. His hand sought the butt of his service pistol—not, thankfully, the same one Reilly used to kill three men—but the weapon’s presence did not c
omfort him.
Not much did, these days.
He attended the compulsory counseling session as required for any officer involved in a shooting, whether as shooter, victim, or witness and came out certified to return to full duty. He was glad to get that out of the way and put his minor part in the incident behind him; as a police officer he accepted the risks inherent to his position and it wasn’t appropriate to waste time with psychobabble when it should be put to better use tracking down the criminals responsible for Virene Reilly’s murder.
A few days later he awoke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, convinced that someone had attempted to break into his house. He found nothing amiss after checking each door and window, but checked again, sure that he’d missed something. He hadn’t, of course, but couldn’t remember for certain if he’d locked them all and checked a third time, and a fourth, and a fifth, and lost track after that. The compulsion didn’t fade until the sun finally came up the next morning and he realized that he’d been at it for nearly five hours.
Bragg shrugged it off as a curious but minor anomaly not worth reporting, especially since the department shrinks would attribute more significance to it than it deserved. The “episodes,” as he came to think of them, never struck quite the same way twice, occurring without any pattern that he could discern, and each passed as quickly as it came.
Just like this one would.
He slid behind the wheel of his car and immediately locked the door. His uniform clung to him as if he’d jogged half a kilometer at noontime, sticky and damp. He backed out and headed for the exit, determined to make a more graceful egress from the tomb of a garage than he had the elevator.
The anxiety did not fade when he reached the street. He noted every seedy alley, every loitering pedestrian and every passenger van and delivery truck as potential threats. There were more now than he would have thought possible a few days earlier, before the event that reordered his universe drew them to the forefront of his perception.
Try as he might, Bragg could not look at Saint Anatone the same way as before. The assault proved that the security he’d taken for granted for so long was an illusion; nothing could protect anyone from a determined perpetrator. He’d always acknowledged that fact, intellectually, and delivered dozens of conciliatory speeches intended to restore the confidence of traumatized crime victims over the years. It was ironic that he didn’t understand how hollow those speeches were until he was the victim.
His shoulders ached from clutching the steering wheel by the time he arrived at the complex housing Reilly’s third-floor condominium. Virene’s roadster still sat where the tow truck dropped it, covered by the thick layer of dust that invariably gravitated to immobile cars. The faded parking ticket languished under the wiper next to a bright orange notice from the homeowner’s association warning that hulks stored on the premises were a violation of the covenants and subject to removal at the owner’s expense.
Bragg parked next to the wreck and climbed the stairs to the third floor terrace. He recognized the subtle signs of abandonment as he approached Reilly’s door: grime on the front window, a slight accumulation of dust on the front walk and a single, water-stained envelope laying on the threshold. The envelope was inconsequential in and of itself—junk mail—but the last rainstorm had been over a week earlier.
Bragg rang the doorbell for several seconds and knocked when there was no response. He cupped his hands around his face to peer through the window but the curtains inside were drawn. He couldn’t simply force his way in without sufficient cause, leaving no option but to contact the homeowners association to gain entry. He slapped the door handle in mild irritation as he turned away.
The handle turned; the front door swung inward a few centimeters.
The hair rose on the back of his neck and his mouth went dry. The narrow, dark space between the door and jamb swelled like the maw of a predator. Bragg swallowed his heart as he drew his pistol and thumbed off the safety. He eased the door open with his toe, allowing sunlight to spill into the room. The illuminated patch of floor was covered with bottles and fast food containers, many holding remnants of half-eaten meals. The sickly-sweet stench drifting out suggested that there might be more than food rotting somewhere inside.
As unpleasant as it was to find a days-old corpse inside a residence, Bragg had experienced it often enough to know what was coming. The knowledge was enough to unseat the phobic anxiety gnawing at his brain. He holstered his weapon and stepped inside expecting to find Terson Reilly’s remains slumped over the kitchen table with a gun in one hand and a bottle in the other.
He was half right: Reilly was holding a bottle, but the drunken snort that drew Bragg’s attention to the couch where he’d passed out halfway through it proved not only that the stench was rotting food after all, but that Terson Reilly was very much alive.
“Jesus.” Bragg kicked a path to the sofa and shook him. The bottle fell from his hand and spilled liquor across a pile of missed counseling appointments and other mail before coming to rest against an empty trashcan. Bragg dug his thumbnail into Reilly’s earlobe. The young man’s eyes fluttered and he turned his head, exhibiting enough consciousness to convince the officer that he hadn’t suffered alcohol poisoning. Bragg rolled him on his side so he couldn’t aspirate his vomit. A dark, fast-growing stain appeared at his crotch accompanied by the fetid reek of urine. Serves him right to lay in his own piss!
Bragg scooped handfuls of garbage into the trash and dumped it down the recycling chute in the kitchen. It took four trips to clear the living room; he gathered up the mail piled at the corner of the couch and swiftly separated it into stacks on the kitchen table.
The unanswered correspondence reflected a life falling apart: bills unopened and presumably unpaid; a rambling form letter regretfully informing one Mr. Terson Reilly of his expulsion from Malone’s commercial pilot program due to a medical disqualification; a copy of a legal form from a lawyer acting on behalf of the Van Strahlen family demanding release of Virene Van Strahlen’s body to their custody. Terson Reilly’s name was scrawled sloppily across the bottom without regard for the confines of the signature block, leading Bragg to conclude that the kid was drunk when he signed, drunk when he mailed it and obviously drunk ever since. He stared at the pitiful figure on the couch.
Not my business. If ever there was a time to walk away, it’s now. Instead, he let his wife know that he wouldn’t be home for dinner and dumped every bottle of booze he could find down the sink.
Terson’s body metabolized the alcohol through the night, depleting its reserves of moisture and setting the stage for the only form of revenge available to it—the hangover. Eventually his blood-alcohol level dropped below the threshold necessary to keep him senseless and he immediately sprang to near-full consciousness.
He sat up woozily, blinking rapidly at the unfocused double images swirling before his eyes, disoriented by the darkness and a pounding headache. He felt around for the bottle he knew had to be close by, growing increasingly frustrated at his inability to locate it. The dim ribbon of light from the fixture next to the door outside that penetrated a gap in the living room curtains and struck his face was just enough to destroy his night vision. He fumbled around for the lamp on the end table next to him.
The commotion stirred a figure in the recliner across the living room, which stood and approached to help. Terson was simultaneously ashamed and elated; ashamed that Virene had to witness his weakness of character, but elated that the nightmare was nothing more than a drunken hallucination.
“Welcome back,” Bragg said as the lamp came on.
The elation sprouting within Terson’s heart withered, replaced with bitter disappointment and anger. “What are you doing here?” he croaked.
“You missed your appointment yesterday.”
“It’s not ‘till the day after tomorrow!”
“Do you even know what day it is?”
Terson struggled to his feet. His odds of making i
t across the room were in doubt but he was loath to exhibit weakness in front of the officer. “Get out.”
“Make me.”
Terson started for him but the floor went rubbery; his head swam and his innards threatened to go uncontrollably liquid. He veered toward the bathroom with as much dignity as he could muster where he leaned over the sink waiting to vomit while thick ropes of drool dripped from his open mouth. It passed after a few moments and he turned on the light over the mirror.
A stranger’s pallid, gaunt face stared back. Lusterless hair lay flat against his skull. Uneven patches of beard sprouted from his neck and chin. He turned away and stripped off his urine-soaked clothing, choosing to ignore the emaciated body beneath.
The exertion of undressing left him exhausted. He sat cross-legged in the bottom of the tub and let the water spray over him, scrubbing feebly at the shell of filth encasing his body. Overcome by uncontrollable thirst, he turned his face into the spray and gulped warm water only to spew it up again moments later. He doubled over in agony, gagging on bile when his stomach had nothing else to expel.
Bragg came in and lifted him back into a sitting position by his shoulders. “Swallow this.” Terson’s mouth filled with a thick lemon-flavored liquid. He tried to push the officer’s hand and the squeeze bulb it held away, but wasn’t strong enough. His swallow reflex finally betrayed him and the substance went down. The nausea vanished almost instantly. “Now eat this, slowly.” The officer forced a few pieces of crushed ice into his mouth.
“Why are you still here?” Terson mumbled around the cold slush.
“We need to talk,” Bragg said, “if you can pull yourself together.”
“Fine. How about some goddamned privacy?” Bragg left the bowl of ice with him. Terson nibbled at it sedately despite his craving for fluids. The hot spray worked at the sick lethargy in his body, easing him toward a more natural, recuperative drowse. He fell fully asleep for a while, only to snap awake from the cold spray when the hot water ran out.
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