Spider Play

by Lee Killough

  “Yes.”

  An angry flush replace the pallor. “I suppose you think I did it!”

  “Why would we?”

  “You leos always suspect family and spouses.” Titus clutched the glass. “But I don’t know anything about a weird wax.”

  Saleem had spread word about that at least.

  “I didn’t kill Paul!” His voice cracked. “Why would I? I loved him. We loved each other.”

  “Well, friends and lovers fall out, and you have a temper,” Janna said. “You assaulted a member of the hospital staff for access to the morgue.”

  “I had to see Paul. I couldn’t believe he was dead!”

  “When they let you it in it took eight minutes to be convinced?”

  “How—” His jaw tightened. “If you watched a recording of me you know I was mourning.”

  “You also tried to assault Officer Utley later,” Mama said.

  Color purpled Titus’s face. “That bastard was throwing Paul’s naked body around the morgue! He hit me in the face!”

  “Then you made a third visit to the morgue with Director Fontana.”

  Titus blinked. “What?” He sank back on the sofa. “That was for the St. Christopher medal.”

  “St. Christopher medal?” Janna remembered Kolb’s mention of a medal shoved into one of Chenoweth’s chest wounds. “The one I can see around your neck?”

  “This is a copy I had printed by Maintenance. The original went back with Paul’s body. That’s why I was at the morgue, to return it.”

  “He’d given it to you?”

  Titus shook his head. “He never took it off. The suit techs found it while they were testing the suit and Janeece Roda knows Paul and me, so she thought I’d like to have it. But Fontana came and said Paul’s family wanted it back. It’s an heirloom. Fontana sympathized with me wanting to put it on Paul myself. Ask him. He’ll tell you.”

  “We will.”

  After letting him finish his drink and sending him on his way, they eyed each other.

  “Kolb did find a St. Christopher medal,” Mama said.

  “If Fontana confirms the story . . .”

  “And we believe him.”

  “It’ll drop them both down the suspect list.”

  Mama leaned toward the screen in the middle of the table. “Athena, where is Director Fontana? Authorization sigma-two-delta-zero-three-gamma-eight.”

  “Invalid authorization.”

  Mama frowned. “We used that same code earlier.”

  “In the Security office,” Janna said. “Maybe that’s the difference.” She pulled out her cell. “Doubrava said we can call anyone whose name we know. Let’s try Fontana.” She activated the speaker setting. “Link to Leonard Fontana.” And held up crossed fingers.

  The screen showed the cell ringing.

  After five and the message Answering, the screen switched to the image of her SCPD badge. Fontana, slightly out of breath, said, “Detective Brill. How may I help you?”

  Behind him Janna heard echoing reports that sounded like a handball game.

  “Detective Maxwell and I have a couple of questions if you have time to answer them.”

  “Of course.” His voice rose. “We’ll finish the game another time, Andy. You were going to win anyway.” He took a couple of deep breaths. “All right. Ask away, Detective.”

  “We’d rather talk face-to-face.”

  After a moment, Fontana said, “Does this relate to Mr. Chenoweth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then . . . meet in my office in ten minutes.”

  Mama came off the sofa to lean over the cell. “You sound like you’re in the gym. We haven’t seen that yet. How about meeting there?”

  “There isn’t much privacy.” Fontana paused. “However . . . since you’ve been weightless for — what? — three days now, you do need some time in gravity. Come to the park. That’s Level Nine. Take radial shaft B to the rim.”

  Mama’s brows rose as Janna disconnected. “Reduced gravity must make handball inter—”

  Athena’s voice interrupted from the table screen. “Scan your scib at the portal of your quarters.”

  Mama stepped from the room into the hall and waved his wrist past the scanner.

  “Identity confirmed. You are authorized to use code sigma-two-delta-zero-three-gamma-eight.”

  Mama’s cell played its jaunty little macabre March to the Scaffold. He answered it on speaker.

  “Congratulations,” came Doubrava’s amused voice. “Athena supposedly feels no emotions, but because of you, I think she’s learned one. After alerting me to an individual in your quarters attempting to use my authorization code, I told her if she identified that individual as Detective Maxwell, let him use the code. She came back with what I swear sounded like exasperation. ‘It compromises security to reveal your personal authorization code to other individuals and permit them to use it.’ Which is true, so . . . I hope you won’t make me regret compromising security.”

  Mama’s expression went earnest. “We’re professionals.”

  Doubrava laughed. “I’m not sure that’s a reassuring answer. But never mind. Before running afoul of Athena, did you learn anything new?”

  “We encountered Titus and he’s offered an explanation for meeting Fontana at the morgue.”

  Janna smiled. Encountered. Nice way to phrase it.

  “We’re on our way to Fontana for corroboration,” Mama said.

  “Fontana!” Doubrava cleared his throat. “Ah . . . Geyer will expect me to be present. I had specific orders from her to keep you leashed and out of trouble. Where are you meeting him?”

  “The park at the bottom of radial shaft B.”

  “I’ll meet you on Level Nine.”

  * * *

  They arrived via the cable to find Doubrava already there, on platform C.

  “How did you beat us?” Mama said.

  Doubrava pointed at the elevator traveling upward, medics visible in it holding the capsule vertical between them. “We had the elevator standing by for transport, and those of us with the knowledge, can speed it up.” He turned toward the portal.

  Janna frowned. “Fontana’s instructions were to come down radial shaft B.”

  “With the rings, one portal is as good as another.” Doubrava waved open the one in front of them.

  Because it rotated. Of course. Janna mentally kicked herself.

  Inside, a bulkhead and five feet of deck between it and the entry portal slid slowly past them, bringing a radial shaft with B on the bulkhead beside it into view.

  Before it passed, Doubrava crossed the deck and grabbed one of the loops on a cable lift running overhead down the shaft, each side in its own shallow chase.

  Once on the cable, perception of the shaft switched from horizontal to vertical. No surprise. Shortly her body began feeling it, too. First as a tug at her feet, then as increasing weight the farther they descended, pulling her parallel to the cable. Cross corridors opened on both sides halfway down, but preoccupation with gripping the loop kept Janna from noticing more than a profusion of plant life crowding the walkways through them.

  At the bottom, releasing the loop sent her staggering for support on a fence enclosing an area around an opening where the cable disappeared into the deck. “Crap. Is this really half gravity?” She had expected relief at having firm footing again. Instead she felt heavy and awkward as a hippo. At least Mama hung on the fence, too. If Doubrava grinned, though, so help her . . .

  Instead, he gave them a sympathetic smile. “I know how it feels. I’ve been through it, too. Everyone here has. It’s one of the reasons for the rail.”

  “And why we encourage spending time each day here or in the gym,” came Fontana’s voice. “Please accept my apologies for not warning you what to expect.”

  Janna looked up to see him on the other side of the fence. No longer the sleek executive . . . wearing a grey warmup suit with a stretched neck and fraying sleeve and pants cuffs, hair clinging dam
ply around his face.

  He smiled. “No longer than you’ve been weightless, you’ll recover quickly. Walk around the enclosure. Don’t feel self-conscious about supporting yourself on the fence. As Captain Doubrava pointed out, we’ve all had to.”

  Doubrava said, “Think of it as getting your sea legs.”

  Gritting her teeth, Janna forced herself to walk. Shuffle, rather. Fontana keeping pace with them outside the fence did nothing to help her self-consciousness. Even when a pair of females in pink and green paisley respectively came down the cable and after greeting Fontana, barely glanced at Mama and her before slipping through one of the gaps between fence sections.

  As though reading her mind, Fontana said, “Try distracting yourself by admiring the park.”

  Distraction or not, it deserved admiration. The fems followed a meandering path through an authentic-looking meadow . . . grass and field flowers filling the width of the deck — probably forty or fifty feet but appearing double that by merging into meadow images on the bulkheads — and stretching away out of sight in an upward curve. Overhead, the bulkhead mimicked a cloudless blue sky casting light from no obvious source.

  The other direction from the cable replicated a piece of woodland. Water trickled down a wall of large boulders into a pool surrounded by fallen logs and flat-topped boulders of an ideal height for sitting. Beyond lay a wide path between massive, brilliantly blooming bushes.

  “Those are magnificent rhododendrons,” Mama said.

  “Thank you. On around the rim there’s a butterfly garden, a maze, a formal garden with an aviary, and a beach. Something, we hope, to please everyone.”

  Janna was more pleased to find her muscles remembering how to support her. Passing the meadow side again, shuffling steps became an almost normal stride. By the third round she merely slid her hand along the top.

  Fontana nodded approval. “Excellent. Shall we go talk now?”

  He led the way to the pool.

  It appeared to Janna about ankle deep over a bottom of smooth stones. “That looks tempting to wade in.”

  Fontana smiled. “We encourage it. Walking on the stones has the same therapeutic effect as acupressure and reflexology.” He sat on the end of a log, waving her and Mama to boulders beside it. Doubrava chose another log.

  Sitting down, Janna discovered a colloidal layer softening the top of her boulder.

  “Ask your questions.”

  Mama said, “Surveillance showed you visiting the morgue twice, once in the morning after Chenoweth’s autopsy and again in the afternoon with Clell Titus. We need to know why.”

  “Why?” Fontana’s eyes narrowed. “Ah.” He nodded. “You’ve determined that’s where the data stick was planted in Chenoweth’s leg, I take it. Have you talked to Titus? Of course,” he said after a glance at their poker faces. “Then you know about the St. Christopher search.”

  Titus had mentioned no search. “Tell us your version,” Janna said. The usual ploy to appear knowing more than they did.

  “When I called Chenoweth’s father after the autopsy, he asked that we make sure his son’s St. Christopher medal was returned with the body. It’s been in the family since the Civil War, handed down to members going into danger — usually off to war, but given to Chenoweth when he took the job here. I went to the morgue with a hospital aide to make sure the medal was on the body, only to discover it wasn’t.” He smiled wryly. “And so began the hunt. Dr. Waller remembered only handing it to an aide at the start of the autopsy. One aide denied being the one and while the other had received it, she needed two hours to recall she’d put it in an exterior pocket of the VE suit. When tracked down, the suit techs said, yes, they’d found a medal while examining the suit, and knowing Chenoweth and Titus, had given it to Titus as a memento. So . . .” Fontana spread his hands. “I linked to Titus and explained the situation. He agreed to give up the medal if he could personally place it around his friend’s neck. Which he did, becoming emotional in the process.”

  Hence the comforting hand-holding outside the morgue. “Titus still has his memento. He had a copy printed for him.”

  Fontana blinked, then laughed. “I’d probably do the same.” He paused. “So . . . what other questions do you have for me?”

  “Did your wife catch her flight to Mars?” Mama said.

  Fontana’s voice went flat. “You’ve accessed my calls?”

  “We’re accessing those of everyone who spent time in the morgue. The smuggler had to communicate details to someone below. Captain Doubrava, do you often send large photo files to Ms. Cooper?”

  Janna watched Doubrava for his reaction. He just grinned. “She complains about that, but how else will she know who and what I’m talking about?”

  Fontana mouth went grim. “Have you found anything incriminating in the communications?”

  “Not that we’ve been able to determine so far. Unless it’s in the scrambled calls to Santa Fe.”

  “You’ll have to accept my word those involve only confidential business concerning the station.”

  “We have learned why the seal on Chenoweth’s suit failed.” Mama explained about the wax.

  Janna watched Fontana for his reaction.

  His eyebrows shot up. “My god. I thought what’s his name . . . Lavery destroyed all that.”

  What? The three of them stared at him.

  “You know about this wax?” Mama said.

  “It was supposed to be the ultimate lubricant. A chemist named Adam Lavery invented the formula, but could never make it work in all temperatures.” Fontana frowned. “That was six or seven years ago. I can’t believe someone took that material and saved it all this time.”

  Mama said, “Some people will save anything interesting, and others have an instinct for imagining future uses. The way our forensics people will save evidence against a day of more sophisticated tests.”

  Fontana eyed them for a long minute, then shook his head. “The wax is an interesting theory, but I can’t see the smuggler counting on success. What if there wasn’t enough heat to turn the wax slippery? What if it did but Chenoweth or Saleem noticed the loosening seal in time to take action?”

  “A gamble, yes . . . but it worked.”

  Fontana took a deep breath, then abruptly stood and without a word, headed for the cable.

  Mama watched him catch a loop upward. “He knows more than he’s willing to say.”

  “It doesn’t mean he’s involved,” Doubrava said. “Let’s focus on our ghost.” He stood. “Which we’ll do in the morning.”

  “Why not review the recording now?” Janna asked.

  “I have to file a report on the Lemieux incident. Then, finally, I’m going off duty. The recording won’t change overnight.” He headed for the cable, too.

  Janna looked over at Mama. “We can view it ourselves.”

  He said nothing, sitting with eyes closed. Dozing? The comfort of the colloidal surface on her boulder and hypnotic sound of trickling water made that tempting.

  Then his eyes flew open. “We won’t find him with the construction crew.”

  She blinked. “What? Why?”

  He jumped to his feet. “I’ll show you. Come on.”

  They caught the cable back up the shaft.

  Back to feeling only a tenuous grip on the deck as Mama led the way along the curving deck. “Consider . . . this corridor connects all the radials. Which means it also connects all these.” He stopped walking and waved at a portal as the wheel’s rotation carried them past.

  Ah-hah fizzed through Janna. “Letting our ghost leave by another portal! So we’ll run the surveillance on the others and see which one he used. Then track him through the station from there.”

  She started for the next nearing portal to catch the cable back to their quarters.

  Behind her Mama said, “I find it interesting that the alternate exit supposedly never occurred to Doubrava.”

  She stopped to look back. “Supposedly? You think he’s deliberatel
y withheld the information?”

  “It’s a thought. Or maybe the lower rings aren’t configured like this one.”

  “But they’re rings. Why wouldn’t they be?”

  “Let’s see.” Mama pulled out his slate and opened it. “Nakashima said we can access the datanet on our slates, right?” With voice recognition activated he said, “Display schematic of Level Twenty, horizontal cross-section.”

  Seconds later, frowning, he turned the slate to show her the message: Schematic not available. “You can’t tell me they don’t have every centimeter of this station on record.”

  Janna said, “Maybe just not on the public datanet.”

  “A possibility.” He recited Doubrava’s code and repeated his request for Level Twenty’s schematic . . . and frowned again.

  This time the message read: Authorization invalid. Enter construction code.

  “It is under construction,” Janna said.

  “You’d think schematics would still be available at the security level.”

  As the wheel carried them past the A portal, they stepped back against the bulkhead, clear of a laughing quartet entering with cases for musical instruments. Two for violins, one for possibly a flute, and an unfamiliar round case. She pictured them setting up in the formal garden Fontana mentioned.

  Mama’s slight turn their direction betrayed an impulse to follow, before he re-focused and asked for Level Eighteen’s schematic. “If it has the corridor, Twenty probably—” His brows went up. “Look.”

  Schematic not available. Enter construction code.

  “Ask Athena about the corridor.”

  “After I try something. Display schematic for Level Nine, horizontal cross-section.”

  The ring module appeared promptly on the slate: circular corridor, four spokes leading to the fat rim, connected halfway down by curving cross-corridors. Sections of the park and crops in the greenhouse corridors all labeled.

  A pair of males skated past them in the direction the musicians had taken, followed by a mixed group of six.

  “Display Level Five, horizontal cross-section of modules’ upper level only.”

  The level displayed, but a schematic for only the hospital. The other three modules showed only as outlines labeled: Administration, Data, Security. Until he used Doubrava’s code. Then Admin and Security’s layouts appeared, spaces identified by function. Data remained only an outline.