Of course, if Wagner was behind the death, then that meant that Bowles’s killer was a hired assassin. Wagner would never do the work himself.
And Wagner would need time—from the moment he learned of Bowles’s stories and how harmful or inflammatory they would be to the moment of Bowles’s death—to hire the best in business.
Nyquist put Bowles’s report on loop—he wanted the words to become second nature to him—and then he stood. His knees cracked as they had done every day since the rebuild. The sound still startled him, and reminded him he wasn’t quite the same man as he had been just a year before.
He stepped back into the studio. One of the techs was pulling the shelves closed.
“Find anything new?” Nyquist asked.
“Just Bowles’s fingerprints,” the tech said. “I’m not sure anyone else knew about this thing until you came along.”
“What makes you say that?” Nyquist asked.
“Her fingerprints are on everything from the back of the shelves to the plastic tabs holding the screen in place. I think she put it up, and we might be able to find that in the studio’s security system, especially if it recorded what was going on in here as a matter of course. We’re going to need some computer techs to dig into this.”
Nyquist wasn’t surprised that Bowles wouldn’t trust anyone else with her secret information. “Were you able to back up those files she had behind the shelves?”
“What we could access,” the tech said.
“You think there’s more?” Nyquist asked.
“We don’t know,” the tech said. “There could be. But there might not be. Do you know how tech savvy she was?”
“She used to work for InterDome as an investigative reporter. I know she did a lot of her own on-screen work. Does that make her tech savvy?”
The tech shrugged. “I’m not a specialist in media systems. That’s why we’re going to send someone else down here.”
“Well, can I poke around back there and see what she was working on?”
“I suppose,” the tech said in a tone that meant he really didn’t care.
“I mean, will I destroy anything by doing so?”
“I have no idea. I might have destroyed a few things myself in looking through the files. But that would require a level of sophistication that didn’t seem evident in the set-up.”
“Meaning what?” Nyquist asked.
“Meaning if she knew how to hide information within her own systems, would she have set up the shelf units?”
“Good question.” Nyquist wasn’t sure of the answer to that, either, although he was inclined to say no.
“What I kept telling myself as I looked around in there,” the tech said, “was that most everything in any computer system is retained, even when it’s deleted, and the best techs can always retrieve deleted information.”
Nyquist glanced at the screen over the tech’s shoulder. “Do we have techs that are that good?”
“We have a few.”
“Can you make sure one of them works on this case?”
“Absolutely,” the tech said. “We’re going to need our best team on it, anyway, given the level of scrutiny we’ll all go through.”
“Because it’s a media case,” Nyquist said.
“Yeah.” The tech picked up his kit. “I’ve only worked one other media case, and I vowed I’d never take lead on another one.”
“Is that why you’re handing over the computer to a different tech?” Nyquist asked.
The tech shook his head. “I’m not lead on this for our department. Leidmann and Owen are splitting it. They hope that with two of them one will avoid the inevitable firing.”
And then he let himself out the main door.
Nyquist watched him go. The inevitable firing. He hadn’t thought of that until now. People always lost their jobs in a media case. What was standard operating procedure often became “sloppy police work” under the eye of some inept reporter.
The problem was that the department didn’t dare defend “sloppy police work,” even if the work wasn’t sloppy. They had to get rid of the offender to reassure the public that the department was doing everything that it could.
Maybe that was why Gumiela had put him on this case. She had needed a potentially expendable officer and he was the one. She had also known that it wouldn’t hurt his pension or his medical benefits.
He stared at the door for a moment, not sure how he felt about that. Then he realized he couldn’t worry about it.
He’d worked high-profile cases before and survived them. He would survive this one.
And if not, then he would offer to resign.
He pushed the shelves aside and stared at the diagram on the screen. It was clearly the family tree of a conglomerate. Somewhere in the middle of Bowles’s report, he had found himself wondering if that diagram had belonged to Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor.
If what Bowles had said was true, then she had probably done the same kind of diagram for WSX. Which firms branched off of it, which ones became hidden assets, which ones were publicly known affiliates.
The diagram in front of him could be for the Ultre Corporation, which she had mentioned in her report. Or for Gramming Inc. or Environmental Systems Inc. or anyone of a dozen other clients of WSX.
Or for a conglomerate not associated with WSX at all.
He had no real idea what other work Bowles had been doing. All he knew was that InterDome had fired her six months ago, and then she reappeared with this rented studio and a several-part story on the Moon’s largest law firm.
He didn’t know whether she was working on other stories. He didn’t know who paid her salary. He didn’t know anything about her personal life.
He had to be careful not to get too focused on WSX. Otherwise he would be guilty of sloppy police work.
Rather than poke around in the information on that screen, he decided to look through the studio one more time, while he waited for the high-end computer techs. Let them find the files and hidden information.
Then he would compile it and see if it related to his case.
Or if he just wanted it to.
Fourteen
So far, Flint wasn’t finding any evidence of anyone piggybacking onto the work that Talia had done. No one, it seemed, appeared to be looking for the other five cloned children.
He couldn’t be certain, of course. He was only using the files that Talia had created, and he was only about an hour into his work.
Talia had moved her chair beside his so that she could watch what he was doing. He hadn’t let her see how to log in to his systems, but he was explaining to her how he worked without creating yet another trail.
Any normal thirteen-year-old would have lost interest within fifteen minutes. But Talia appeared to be fascinated—and not just because she was watching him use the forbidden computer system.
She had a knack for this work, and an interest in it that hadn’t been tapped—at least, not by him, and certainly not by Rhonda. From everything he could gather, his ex-wife had discouraged her daughter’s interest in computers, patterns, and systems, probably because it all reminded Rhonda too much of Flint.
Or maybe he was giving himself too much credit. Maybe Talia’s growing expertise in hunting out information had terrified her mother. Since Rhonda had lied about everything, she probably had been afraid that her daughter would uncover some kind of anomaly, and then start asking the wrong questions.
Now Talia was asking the questions of Flint. And he really didn’t have a lot of answers.
So it felt good to explain how to dig without leaving a trail.
He was about to switch to a new screen, going into the history files for the Havos family, when one of his links cheeped.
He stopped and shrouded the screen in front of him.
“Sorry, Talia,” he said. “I’m getting a personal communication.”
She glared at him, then stood and walked across the room. He didn’t move the contact onto
one of his screens. Instead he instructed the link to place the image in front of his vision. He would use the privacy function.
He expected to hear from a potential client. That was usually how these messages found their way into his office.
Instead, Van Alen appeared across his vision.
She was wearing all black except for a very ugly pair of half-glasses that were supposed to be some kind of accessory. They made her face seem too round.
She leaned too close to the screen she was using to communicate with him.
“Miles, we have a serious problem.” She wasn’t using a personal link. She was actually talking to him through a screen somewhere. He could see a wall and artwork behind her. She was using the system at her assistant’s desk.
“Brace yourself,” she said. “Ki Bowles is dead.”
What? He almost spoke out loud. He must have made a noise because Talia looked over her shoulder at him. He smiled at her and turned slightly in his chair. How do you know this?
“It’s complicated,” Van Alen said. “Get down here. The police will be here shortly.”
I’m not talking to the police, Flint sent.
Van Alen looked over her shoulder, as if she was worried that someone was watching. Then she glanced at him again. “You won’t have to unless you want to. You’re going to be coming in as one of my clients, and I’ll have to take the meeting. I’ve already put you on the books.”
Maybe I should wait, he sent.
“I don’t think so. The news hasn’t been released yet. When it is, our hands might be tied. So get down here. Now.”
She winked out of his vision. He blinked a few times. He wasn’t used to being told what to do by anyone. That hadn’t happened since he quit the force years ago.
But he trusted Van Alen. She had helped him when no one else had, and she was his partner in the attempted destruction of WSX. So he needed to listen.
First, he had to shut down the system he was running. He glanced at his daughter. She still had her back to him, her arms crossed.
“Talia,” he said. “I have an emergency meeting.”
And she was going to have to come with him. He didn’t dare leave her, especially since he didn’t know how or why Bowles had died.
Although he had his suspicions.
He carefully shut down the system, then he stood and put his hand on his daughter’s arm.
“You’re going to have to come with me,” he said. “We’ll finish this later.”
“I can finish,” she said. “I know enough now.”
He smiled. “Not quite. But thank you.”
He led her out of the office building into the dust-covered street. It was empty.
“Stay close,” he said as he double-locked the doors.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
Everything, he thought.
“Not really,” he lied, and then winced, remembering the promise he had made her just that afternoon. He wouldn’t lie to her if at all possible.
Well, he’d find out what was wrong first, and then he’d decide what Talia needed to know.
And he hoped she wouldn’t have to know anything.
Fifteen
Savita Romey stood in the living room of Roshdi Whitford’s house, hands in her pockets, special liners on her shoes and pants. The house smelled of blood. This wasn’t a murder; it was a slaughter.
Romey had caught the case only fifteen minutes before. She’d been about to leave after completing an extended series of reports on the past five cases she’d worked. She’d closed all five in record time, and her boss, Andrea Gumiela, wanted to use Romey’s work habits as an example for the younger detectives in the squad.
It didn’t matter that Romey had argued that her methods were the same as everyone else’s. Nor had it mattered when Romey claimed she wasn’t good at writing reports. Gumiela had given her a choice: either write the reports or spend the next year training the current crop of detectives.
Romey wrote the reports.
She’d hoped for a week off after that. She didn’t lead the rotation, and she hadn’t had a day off in nearly a month. By all rights, she should have been at home in bed by now.
But Gumiela had contacted her on the way. It’s an important case, Gumiela had said. We need it closed fast and we need someone who can be discrete.
Romey wasn’t sure whether anyone on the squad lacked discretion, but she wasn’t going to say that to her boss. Instead, she programmed the address Gumiela had given her into the aircar and found herself here.
Fortunately the techs had arrived first. The victim, Roshdi Whitford, owned the best security company in Armstrong—or what had been known as the best security company in Armstrong. Romey now had her doubts. She had a hunch everyone else in the city would share those doubts when the news of Whitford’s murder emerged.
Romey’s identification chip, like every other chip given to police and emergency services, was supposed to open every door in the city.
But it didn’t open Whitford’s. She had to contact one of the techs to let her inside.
The techs had gotten in courtesy of one of Whitford’s employees who had shown up just before them because his boss wasn’t answering a page. That employee was now in a squad, waiting for someone to question him.
Romey would do that after she got a sense of the crime scene.
The house itself was made of some kind of concrete. The exterior walls were nearly ten centimeters thick, and one of the techs told her that the entire place would survive the collapse of the Dome when most other buildings in Armstrong wouldn’t.
There were no windows that she could see, although one had appeared on the door when she crossed the threshold. She’d seen windows like that before—they were formed only when needed. Since she needed to see out all the time, living in a place like this would drive her insane.
The interior walls were about half as thick as the exterior walls, and made of the same materials. With the doors closed, no one could hear what was going on from one room to the next.
But the doors were open, and sound traveled against the concrete walls, echoing down the corridors. She could hear the techs talking in the kitchen as they examined the room. She also could hear the beeps of someone’s link as he asked for help from some security expert in the tech team.
She didn’t need a security expert to know what happened. Somehow someone had breached this fortress and slaughtered Roshdi Whitford. The place was locked up solid when the employee arrived, but until Romey understood how the security system worked, she wasn’t going to assume this was some kind of locked room mystery.
Whatever happened here, it was clear that whoever killed Whitford had known how the house’s security worked. Which made it an inside job—unless Whitford was incautious enough to post the specs of his personal system on some kind of database.
She doubted a man with his reputation would be incautious about something like security system specs. Especially when most security companies in Armstrong trademarked their own systems and maintained a proprietary relationship with their equipment—and their customers.
Romey stepped around the most uncomfortable-looking couch she’d ever seen and into the living room proper. Occasional tables were scattered in what seemed like a haphazard pattern. Each table, however, did have a chair beside it, and some kind of lamp built in.
“Is the security system shut down?” she asked one of the techs as he passed by.
“No, ma’am. We haven’t figured out how to do that yet.”
“Figure it out.” She didn’t want to broadcast the details of their investigation to whoever could hack into the security system. “And tell Central that they need to establish a security system of their own. I’ll brief them later as to what kind we need.”
Certainly she wouldn’t do so in front of whatever recording equipment existed in this house.
Blood spattered along the tile floor. She would have expected carpet—easier to hide more security do
odads. But the floor itself had some kind of mosaic pattern. It took her a minute to realize that not everything that looked like blood was.
Some of the red and black that she saw was a pattern in the tile. A design that caused an optical illusion and, if she stared at it long enough, made her dizzy.
Maybe she had been wrong about the tile and the carpet.
“Make sure,” she said to the tech even though he was now leaving the room, “that whatever security team looks at this system looks at the tile as well.”
A pattern that fine could hide anything: cameras, chips, money, information. She wanted everything from this house, and she wanted it as quickly as possible.
She checked the clock on her internal system. She’d already been here half an hour. She’d promised her son she’d be home in time to share dinner with him and his little brothers. She hated to renege on that.
She wondered how she’d be able to supervise this crime scene and manage a dinner with her family.
That was the problem with this job. She had taken it for the intellectual and financial promotion, but it was costing her in the one place she couldn’t afford: time with her kids.
At least, at fifteen, her oldest could handle most of the emergencies that came up.
She’d give the scene another half hour, then she’d grab some takeout and run home for a quick dinner. She needed to touch base with the boys maybe more than they needed time with her.
She’d be back on scene before anyone got a chance to miss her.
The body itself was sprawled in the middle of the tile. No furniture was anywhere around the body and, oddly, none of the haphazard pieces looked like they’d been moved to accommodate it, either.
If Whitford had fallen where he stood, shouldn’t he have hit something other than the floor? Or did his terrible interior decorating skills somehow make him decide that a big gaping bit of nothingness in the middle of his living room somehow made up for the dozen occasional tables scattered around the edges?
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