Duplicate Effort

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  She’d never gotten the opportunity to save her mom.

  She could save her dad.

  And she had to do it now.

  Forty-three

  Romey beat Nyquist to the precinct, which surprised her. Maybe he had stopped off at the Detective Division before coming to the interview area. She had thought he was closer to the City Complex than she was when she contacted him.

  The interviews were still continuing at Whitford Security. She reviewed several of them, mostly by asking investigators what—if anything—they had learned that was of interest. Most claimed they hadn’t learned anything.

  But a few of the investigators had discovered some interesting tidbits. Such as the fact that that bunker beneath Roshdi Whitford’s body wasn’t for human protection, but protection of a high-end computer system, one that wasn’t linked to anything else.

  What if, the investigator postulated, someone discovered that the bunker existed, figured out how to break in, and got caught by Whitford? Maybe that was why he died.

  It was a good theory, although it was as yet unprovable. The evidence hadn’t yet shown whether Whitford was home when the break-in occurred or he had opened the door to someone he knew (who also knew how to turn off the alarm systems) or he had stumbled on some kind of major break-in in progress.

  And as yet, Romey couldn’t even tell if someone at Whitford Security had been notified that the boss’s house was being broken into. Even that information was parceled out.

  Still, she felt encouraged by something one of her other investigators had said: You know, when we’re done with all this talking, we’ll know more about Whitford Security than anyone who works there.

  And they would. It was the downside to the parceling out information. If a determined someone put all of that information together, then that someone would know more than anyone who worked for the company—and might be unstoppable.

  In fact, as Romey headed to the interview room to see Pelham Monteith, she turned that very idea over in her head. Maybe her team wasn’t the first to come up with the idea that one person could know more than all of Whitford Security combined.

  All it would take would be some careful conversations—a bit of information here and a bit of information there. In fact, it might be relatively simple.

  A conversation could go like this: I heard you’re handling the Bowles case.

  Naw. I’m taking care of XYZ case. I have no idea who is handling other cases.

  And so on and so forth.

  She let out a small breath. If that someone worked for the company, then the other employees might be willing to divulge information. Just like Medora Lenox had to her friend Gulliver.

  Maybe she hadn’t been the only one to give him tidbits of information. She certainly wouldn’t have known if he spent time with someone else.

  He had only spent midnight to six with her.

  The interview room where they had stashed Monteith was at the end of a long hallway. The room was one of the larger units, designed for long-term interrogations. It had the most equipment and the most environmental controls.

  Romey could play all kinds of games if she wanted to, cutting down the oxygen, amping it up, making the room warmer or colder, depending on what she wanted to do.

  But she wasn’t going to play any of those games—not yet. Maybe not ever.

  She knew that the street cops who had brought Monteith in had placed him here because the case was high profile. High-profile interviews often got stuck here because they could be easily monitored.

  Romey peered inside the interview room before she went in. Two extremely junior detectives sat on either side of Monteith.

  Monteith himself seemed calmer than she expected. He was also older. He sat between the two detectives, answering each question with a deliberation that was obvious even with the sound off.

  He was balding. All of his enhancement money seemed to have gone to his muscles, which bulged out of his black suit. Or maybe he had somehow done that on his own.

  Romey didn’t want to think about it.

  And she didn’t want to start without Nyquist.

  But she would if he didn’t get here soon.

  She had a feeling that interviewing this man was the key to the entire case.

  Forty-four

  Talia let out an ear-shattering scream. It took Flint a moment to realize that a word was buried in that sound.

  “Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

  She raced across the cafeteria and launched herself at the man behind Flint.

  “God, Talia, no,” Flint said. “Go away. Go away!”

  But his words were doing no good. She landed on the man’s back, her hands pulling his hair, her knees pressing into his kidneys. The man’s face turned red.

  Flint had no choice. He elbowed the man on the other side of him, then reached for the guy in front of him and slammed him into the Peyti’s table. The guy to the right reached for Talia, but she had somehow gotten the guy she had attacked to turn and turn and turn.

  As Flint punched the man on the Peyti’s table, he realized that Talia was biting the other guy on the ear.

  The man Flint had elbowed was standing up. Flint kicked him in the stomach, figuring a second hit would help.

  That man had been the one with the jammer, and for a moment, Flint’s links kicked back in. He sent a message along the emergency links, then he sent one—he hoped—to Nyquist:

  Ki Bowles killers have come for me—

  The jammer went back on. The man who had done all the talking held it up like a prize.

  The law students had backed away from the fight, but Flint knew they had to be sending for help as well.

  Flint reached for the jammer, but the man pulled it out of his reach.

  Then Talia screamed.

  The man Flint had kicked in the stomach had pulled her off the first man’s back. That man’s ear was bleeding. It looked like Talia might have ripped part of it off.

  Talia was spitting blood into the face of the man who held her. She wasn’t screaming at all. She was shouting, and flailing at him, trying to get him to let go of her.

  Flint went for the man holding her. Then the man with the bloody ear pulled her away and put a laser pistol to her head.

  “We wanted you to cooperate, Mr. Flint,” said the man with the jammer.

  Flint did not turn around to look at him.

  “We wanted this to be a nice, polite little conversation. We’ll take you to our boss, and you’ll talk, and then you can leave.”

  “I don’t go with anyone unless I know who I’m going to talk to,” Flint said.

  The man with the jammer laughed. “Nice try. But I’m not going to tell these fine students where we’re going.”

  He turned toward them, waving the jammer like a weapon.

  “Mr. Flint and his daughter will be fine. You can tell the police that. And tell the police that the attack came from the girl. She’s out of control. We’re just going to get her some help.”

  “No!” Talia said, still kicking at the man holding her. “Dad, stop them. Stop them. Don’t worry about me.”

  As if he could do that.

  “Regretfully, we’ve been told that the loss of this girl here isn’t all that important,” said the man with the jammer. “I understand that there are replacements? She’s not unique, am I right?”

  Talia flushed and immediately stopped flailing.

  “She is unique,” Flint said.

  The man with the jammer laughed. “Then you’ll protect her. And the best way to do that is for both of you to come with us. Calmly.”

  Calmly. As if Flint could be calm. But he didn’t see any choice. He had to trust that Nyquist got his message. He had to hope that he was right—that these thugs were from Wagner.

  But he didn’t really know.

  “If someone comes,” he said to the law students, “tell them—”

  “You’ll tell them that there was a fight and it got settled,” the
man with the jammer said. “Don’t try anything else, Mr. Flint. I’ve heard you’re pretty smart. But we have the weapons. And that lovely child whom you think is unique. So behave.”

  “Dad,” Talia said, her voice filled with tears. But her eyes weren’t. She was pretending to be limp so that he could try an attack. She was letting him know that she was ready.

  He shook his head ever so slightly.

  “We’ll come with you,” Flint said. He really didn’t see any other choice.

  Forty-five

  Romey was already inside the interrogation room when Nyquist arrived. He switched off all but his emergency and police links as he approached the door, just like he did every time he conducted an interview of this magnitude.

  But his personal links gave a cheep of protest. A message had come through.

  For a moment, he debated checking it. Then he decided it could wait.

  He stepped the interrogation room. The room was normal temperature, which he hadn’t suspected. All of the environmental controls were at normal levels. Usually interrogators tried to make the subject uncomfortable.

  It seemed like Romey was doing the opposite.

  “Detective Nyquist,” Romey said as Nyquist closed the door. “This is Pelham Monteith. He headed the security team for Ki Bowles.”

  Nyquist was about to say, Well, that worked, when something in Romey’s face caught him.

  “Mr. Monteith is about as upset as I’ve ever seen a man. He’s never lost anyone he was guarding before.” Romey was finessing the guy, and she clearly wanted him to do the same. “We’ve been talking about procedures from Whitford. They’re proprietary, but Mr. Monteith is willing to tell us what the systems are so long as we keep them confidential.”

  Monteith was nodding. The crown of the man’s head was shiny with sweat. He almost seemed relieved that someone was treating him with respect.

  Nyquist gave Romey a surprised look. He’d never seen this kind of interview work before, but he was willing to give it a chance.

  “He was about to tell me about the poor guard who died trying to save Ms. Bowles,” Romey said.

  “Enzio Lamfier,” Nyquist said, trying to make his voice as sympathetic as he could.

  “Yeah,” Monteith said. “I didn’t know him well.”

  “Was he a new hire?” Romey asked.

  “New to our team,” Monteith said. “Illiyitch recommended him.”

  “Gulliver Illiyitch?” Romey asked.

  Monteith nodded.

  “And Mr. Illiyitch is missing now, right?”

  “You didn’t find him?” Color appeared in Monteith’s cheeks. “I thought the police were going to look for him. He had to be in those woods.”

  “Near the Hunting Club?” Romey asked.

  “Surrounding the Hunting Club.” Nyquist finally understood why Romey wanted him here, and why she wanted him to go lightly. Monteith felt aggrieved—a professional who hadn’t been treated like one—and he was more likely to share information with peers than he was with authority figures.

  “Yes,” Monteith said.

  “I must have arrived on the scene after you left,” Nyquist said. “I coordinated the search for Mr. Illiyitch.”

  “And you didn’t find him?”

  Nyquist shook his head. “We didn’t find him. I wasn’t even sure if the second person in that forest was another guard for a while. The Hunting Club didn’t know, and we couldn’t find any representatives from Whitford.”

  Monteith’s mouth thinned. He might have heard that last comment as disapproval.

  So before Monteith could say anything, Nyquist added, “I had a hunch that was standard procedure. Most security organizations run their own investigations when something goes wrong.”

  “Exactly,” Monteith said, sounding relieved. He glanced at Romey as if looking for her approval. “I have strict instructions for what to do when there’s a problem. I call off the team. Then I have to report to the team coordinator, and then we decide how to handle everything.”

  “So you called off the team,” Romey said. “And spoke to the coordinator.”

  Monteith ran a hand over his skull. He glanced at his palm, seeming surprised that it was covered with sweat. “My coordinator on this one was Roshdi Whitford.”

  “That seems unusual,” Romey said. Nyquist let her take the Whitford questions. He’d bring it back to Bowles in a minute.

  “It is,” Monteith said. “But Ms. Bowles was so high profile and her handlers were paying a lot, so Mr. Whitford wanted to oversee the case himself.”

  Romey looked at Nyquist to see if he wanted to pursue the handlers question. He didn’t, not yet.

  “You went to the office to find him,” Romey said.

  “No, I tried to contact him on his links, but they were off. I sent ahead to the office, but his assistant said he hadn’t arrived yet and I should go to his house. So I did.”

  Monteith looked nervously from Romey to Nyquist, then back to Romey.

  “You found the body,” she said.

  Monteith nodded. “I went in. It’s protocol. Some of us have the house codes.”

  Nyquist raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything. That sounded like a major security breach to him, especially for someone as paranoid as Whitford had seemed.

  “What happened when you went in?” Romey asked.

  “I went to the main room. I could smell the blood before I saw it. I….” Monteith’s voice faded. “We’re not supposed to go to the police. Sometimes our clients are being protected from police forces from other countries. You understand.”

  Nyquist felt his own face flush. He did understand. Sometimes Whitford Security was protecting a Disappeared. Then the company couldn’t go to the police.

  But he didn’t like it.

  Romey saw that. She said, “We do understand. You had your orders. And in this case, they were to go to a lawyer?”

  “No,” Monteith said. “We went to the client if the client was different from the person being protected, which in this case it was. I had the name of the lawyer who hired us. Turns out she did so in the name of someone else.”

  “Who is?” Romey asked.

  Monteith licked his lips. “I shouldn’t say.”

  “Remember the promise I made,” Romey said. “This is important.”

  Monteith sighed. “I probably don’t have a job anymore, anyway,” he said, and for the first time, Nyquist felt some sympathy for him. He probably didn’t have a job. And after this, he probably wouldn’t be able to get a job in security. Even if the police didn’t say a word about the interview, the fact that he had lost a subject under his protection would probably count against him in any future job interview.

  Monteith was looking at Romey.

  “The man was named…Flint,” he said.

  “Miles Flint?” Nyquist asked, feeling stunned.

  “Yeah, I think so. Weird blond guy.”

  “You met him,” Romey said.

  “He’s the one who told me to come to you. Or he approved it. The lawyer had already called the police.” Monteith didn’t sound too happy about the arrangement.

  “Do you know why Flint had hired you to take care of Bowles?” Nyquist asked.

  “You mean besides to keep her alive?” Monteith’s answer bordered on sarcasm.

  “Yes,” Romey said in that gentle tone. She gave Nyquist a warning glance. Apparently she had worked hard at softening Monteith and didn’t want Nyquist to ruin it.

  “No,” Monteith said. “But we did know that once some stories ran, she would be an even bigger target. I tried to talk her out of the Hunting Club. It doesn’t like outside security agencies. It thinks it’s the best. But it really screwed us. We had a team inside, a team with her, and I was on the street. But someone still got her.”

  “And Mr. Lamfier,” Nyquist said.

  “And probably Mr. Illiyitch,” Monteith said sadly. “He’s probably somewhere nearby.”

  “We’re searching the entir
e area near the Hunting Club now,” Nyquist lied.

  “Tell me about Mr. Illiyitch,” Romey said. “You said Lamfier was new to your team. Was Illiyitch?”

  “Assigned that morning. But he’d been with the company for a while. Everyone liked him.”

  “Did you?” Nyquist asked.

  Monteith looked away.

  “It’s all right, Mr. Monteith,” Romey said.

  Monteith nodded. He looked at Nyquist. “Illiyitch broke the rules sometimes. He gossiped.”

  “Talked to people he shouldn’t have?” Romey asked.

  “Not clients or anything. Just people in other parts of the company. We’re not supposed to socialize, but he did. I think he was sleeping with some of the women.”

  “Not just one?” Romey sounded surprised.

  Monteith shook his head. “I saw him with at least three. He—I don’t know—I asked him to be put on a different team. But he’d been pushing for the assignment and he’d been moving up in the company, so I got overruled.”

  “By whom?” Nyquist asked.

  “The memo came from Mr. Whitford. But it seemed odd to me. I tried to ask Mr. Whitford about it, but our appointment wasn’t until tomorrow.”

  Nyquist’s gaze met Romey’s. She raised her eyebrows, giving him some kind of signal.

  “I’m so sorry about this, Mr. Monteith,” she said. “I’m getting an urgent message on my links. Detective Nyquist and I have to go look at some evidence, but we’ll be back shortly. Can we bring you anything?’

  Monteith shook his head. Then he sighed.

  Nyquist stood, wanting out of the room. He opened the door, and Romey walked through it. Once it was closed, she said, “I interviewed a lot of people. All the information in Whitford Security is segregated. No one person can have more than one piece of information. But it seems that this Illiyitch was talking to everyone. He could be your killer.”

  “Our killer,” Nyquist said. “Especially if Whitford decided to talk to him before Monteith did.”

  Romey nodded. “This would have taken a lot of planning.”

  “It seems more like opportunity. He got himself assigned to Bowles’s detail and looked for the moment. Lamfier was new to the detail as well. If they were in it together, it would explain how Bowles died so quickly.”