And Kinoy had done that.
For almost twenty years.
He’d sold babies and made a hefty profit for Gramming. Some of that profit went to WSX in the form of consulting fees—probably keeping-quiet fees—and some of it went directly into Kinoy’s pocket, before it ever saw Gramming’s books.
Gramming itself, the five regular employees and the six part-timers, only saw the standard fee. They handled the records exactly as they would handle them for a straight adoption.
The only difference was that the boss handled the case and kept the most damning records on file with his law firm.
WSX.
And Paloma had meticulously copied those files along with all the others.
Flint rubbed a hand over his forehead. He could comfort himself with the knowledge that the families were vetted, like the other adoptive families. Gramming employees found no history of child abuse or alcoholism anywhere in the family’s past, made sure the financial records were in order, demanded a written commitment to education, and a determination to raise the child within the best guidelines of the family’s community.
The rules had come from Gramming’s early days. Then it had had a political mission. It had wanted clones to become the best human beings in the universe. The corporation wanted to prove that clones were as good as and sometimes better than their originals.
The initial founder of Gramming had wanted to help clones obtain their legal rights all over the Earth Alliance.
Then he’d retired and someone else had taken over and the mission got lost.
Then Kinoy became CEO.
And sold babies.
“You all right?” Van Alen asked. She was standing beside her desk.
“I don’t know,” Flint said.
“Were you injured earlier?”
He shook his head. “Just some information I found.”
Van Alen knew better than to ask him what that information was. “Well, they tell me that the food is here. Can they bring it up?”
“Of course.” He darkened the screen, but not before checking his own logs.
He hadn’t given any of this to Ki Bowles. He’d given her some material on ESI and some on Aleyd, but nothing on Speidel and Gramming.
He moved to one of the other nonnetworked computers, where he kept Ki Bowles’s interview lists and her own research material—things he had insisted on having from the beginning of her work, so that he could monitor her.
He found three former legal assistants to Justinian Wagner. They had told Bowles that if she wanted a scandal that would break WSX open, she should investigate Gramming.
And that was all she had.
She’d used it as a threat in her first piece without knowing what she was digging into.
Kinoy had made millions selling babies. Clones. If Bowles had completed her investigation and reported it, the news would have destroyed families.
Families that had paid too much for their children, but families that had, so far as Flint could tell from the small sample Talia had found, kept up their bargain with Gramming. They’d educated their children, raised them to be solid citizens, and given them the best advantages within the Earth Alliance.
“How bad is it?” Van Alen asked as she raised the etched glass door.
“Bad,” Flint said.
And he wasn’t sure exactly what he could do.
Fifty-seven
Nyquist stopped outside the interrogation room and watched Romey work. The elation he’d felt with Wagner’s arrest still hovered at the edges of his emotions. He needed to calm down.
He had to remind himself that things could go very wrong with the Wagner case.
If Wagner were anyone else, the interrogation room that Nyquist would be about to enter would have Wagner in it. And Nyquist would be able to get him to answer each and every question he asked.
Instead, Wagner had one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the Earth Alliance on his way here from Cairo on Earth, and a surrogate who just happened to be the best criminal defense attorney in Armstrong standing in until the other attorney got here.
Nyquist would probably lose his prize.
But he’d make sure the press knew each and every detail of his case. He’d already leaked the arrest and the reasons for it, along with parts of Talia’s recording.
That kid was brilliant. She’d gotten everything, from the men encircling her father to the ride to WSX and the “talk” with Wagner himself.
If WSX survived that little recording, then there was such a thing as miracles.
Or maybe, to put it more accurately, if Wagner survived it. The law firm might have a life of its own, but it wouldn’t be as powerful as it had been, and it certainly wouldn’t have that man at its head. Not with all he’d admitted to in the privacy of his own office.
And Nyquist had to admit he found some satisfaction in that. Even if Wagner hadn’t killed Ki Bowles—and Nyquist wasn’t yet convinced of that—the poetic justice was still nice.
Wagner, in trying to get rid of a media gadfly, was going to be brought down.
By the media.
And one kid he’d called barely human. Talia was certainly a lot more human than Wagner could ever be.
And smarter too.
Nyquist would have to think of a way to let her know what she’d done was great. She’d been too shaken in the car for him to really talk with her—not about what happened, she’d been clear about that—but about how she felt about it.
Not that it was his concern.
But he’d gotten to know her a little in the months that she’d lived here, and while he’d always liked her, he never really realized what a thinker she was.
Which shouldn’t have surprised him, given that she was Miles Flint’s daughter.
Whom Wagner had called a clone.
Nyquist hadn’t released that part of the recording to the media. He’d keep that as quiet as he could. He’d been surprised by it, but it made more sense than Flint’s story—that Rhonda had had a second child and kept that child hidden from him.
Still, not everyone would be understanding if the word got out.
And not everyone would treat Talia with the kindness that she deserved.
Nyquist turned up the sound from the interview room. Romey had been going through Illiyitch’s fake history with him, the stuff the man had put on his résumé. The résumé hadn’t been that deep. If Whitford Security had done the kind of background check that the police department did, they would have found that Illiyitch was using one his many false names.
They would also have found a half dozen arrest warrants from all over the Earth Alliance, many for murder, and a few for murder for hire.
Romey hadn’t had that information when she started the interrogation. She’d asked a junior detective to do the research and he’d handed it to Nyquist as Nyquist finished with Wagner.
Now all Nyquist had to do was bring it inside.
He wondered how many other cops had tried to interview this bastard, how many cops had failed to get information from him, how many times charges had been pressed only to be dismissed later on.
He didn’t have the time to look all that up.
He just had to assume that the other cops all over the sector had failed with this guy.
So he wouldn’t.
Nyquist pushed the door open. Romey was leaning over the table, her hands splayed, Illiyitch cuffed to the chair near her. The fact that he didn’t complain about his treatment proved that he had been arrested a number of times before.
Nyquist plugged the chip that the junior detective gave him into the table screen. Images of Illiyitch appeared all over it—some with blond hair, some with brown, some with dark skin, some with light.
“Murder for hire, Gulliver?” Nyquist said. “That’s quite a gig you’ve gotten for yourself. How do your subjects contact you? Through a friend? Some sort of advertising? Or do you go to them and ask them if they want anyone killed?”
Illiy
itch swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed. “I work for a security company. They wouldn’t hire me if I had the kind of background you say.”
“I’ll wager if we look at your Whitford Security records, we’ll find them to be incomplete. And I’ll wager that someone—maybe you—hacked into their systems and made sure your résumé was at the top of some stack, already marked as one that was approved by whatever system they used.”
Nyquist sat down across from Illiyitch.
“Was that what was in that underground room at Whitford’s house? His secure files? Or did you destroy the protection down there so that someone could access the information he stored there?”
Illiyitch frowned at Nyquist. Romey raised her eyebrows.
“You want to tell me about that?” Nyquist asked. “Or should we just put the case together on our own?”
“Someone’s setting me up,” Illiyitch said without enough fear to be convincing.
Romey’s eyes twinkled as she looked at Nyquist, but to her credit, she didn’t smile. Instead, she tapped one of the images.
“Murder for hire. Amazing,” she said. “Who hired you this time?”
“I want a lawyer,” Illiyitch said.
Romey raised her eyebrows as she looked at Nyquist. “We must have hit a nerve. He hasn’t asked for help until now.”
“Send for someone,” Nyquist said. “But make sure it’s someone good. Maybe your friends from WSX.”
“Where?”
“They’ve already got a criminal defense attorney working with your buddy Wagner,” Nyquist said.
“Who?” Illiyitch looked confused, and this time, his acting job had improved. He didn’t seem to know who Nyquist was talking about.
“Tell us who to send for, and we’ll do so,” Romey said.
“I got a guy in Gagarin Dome,” Illiyitch said. “He handled my dad’s estate. Maybe—”
“Stop playing,” Nyquist said. “You’ll need a good attorney, since we have a record of the murders you committed.”
“A record?” Illiyitch asked, further giving himself away.
Romey gave Nyquist a harsh glance. She had no idea what he was talking about because he was lying, and he hadn’t told her what he was going to do. He hoped she’d play along.
And he hoped that the coroner had interpreted the evidence on the bodies correctly.
“You know,” Nyquist said. “You made one serious mistake. You shouldn’t have had your buddy—Lamfier, was that his name?—hold Bowles steady. You should have just shot him, then let her run. That’s how most people would have done it. They’d shoot the bodyguard first, then went after the potential victim.”
Romey sank into a chair beside Nyquist. Because she didn’t know where this was going, she focused on Illiyitch.
Nyquist appreciated that.
“You could’ve gotten her before she made it out of the Hunting Club’s protected grounds. You’re a good shot. She would have been terrified. It would have been over in a matter of seconds. And…”
Nyquist paused for effect. Illiyitch was watching him, a pulse throbbing in his neck. The man looked scared for the first time since Nyquist arrived.
“And,” Nyquist said again, “we wouldn’t have gotten a record of the kill. Your jammer took out all of the Hunting Club’s cameras. That was good work. But you didn’t take out Bowles’s personal cameras. She had four on various parts of her body. You know, killing a reporter isn’t easy. And she was looking at you the entire time.”
Color rose in Illiyitch’s cheeks. Nyquist almost breathed a sigh of relief.
The man had believed him.
One more thing to thank Talia Shindo for. The girl had given Nyquist this idea.
Even if it was a lie.
“If you give us the person who hired you,” Romey said, “we can make sure your charges are reduced. We’ll also make sure you go to a minimum-security facility, rather than maximum. We won’t tell the judge about any of the other warrants, and we won’t let the other jurisdictions know we have you.”
Illiyitch was watching both of them. The pulse visibly beating in his neck was going faster.
“That’s a hell of a deal,” Nyquist said. “You’ll probably get twenty years instead of consecutive life terms.”
“And you’ll be in a facility that allows visitors, has great workout areas, and net capabilities. It’ll be easy, at least compared to some of the prisons I’ve seen.” Romey smiled at him.
He looked at her, then at Nyquist.
“The deal is good for the next fifteen minutes,” Nyquist said. “The longer you wait, the more we take off the table. Starting with the other warrants.”
Illiyitch bit his lower lip. “I want a lawyer,” he said again.
“Who do we contact?” Romey asked.
“I want one before you take stuff off the table,” Illiyitch said.
“Fine,” Romey said. “We’ll video-conference you. Who do we contact?”
“What if…” Illiyitch was looking at Nyquist now. “What if I don’t have a name?”
“We’ll find you a lawyer then. Or let WSX do it.”
“No, no,” Illiyitch said. “Of the person who hired me. What if all I have is some contact information?”
His voice shook enough for that to be true.
“Why wouldn’t you have a name?” Romey asked.
“I never ask,” Illiyitch said, admitting to all the murder-for-hire cases. “I don’t dare. It’s better to get the assignment and the money in my account and move on. Safer, too.”
“If you don’t have a name, there’s no deal,” Nyquist said.
“I have contact information,” Illiyitch said.
“If it leads to a person, then maybe we can do something,” Nyquist said. “But contact information isn’t the same as a name and a witness. You wouldn’t be a good witness to contact information. It could be anyone using someone else’s passwords and accounts.”
Illiyitch swore. “I want to deal.”
“Then give us a name,” Nyquist said.
“I don’t have one,” Illiyitch said. “Just the contact information.”
Nyquist shook his head and stood. He headed out of the room. As he pulled the door open, he heard Romey say, “Give me the name of your lawyer. We’ll get him down here.”
Illiyitch answered, but Nyquist didn’t hear the name. He didn’t care. He let the door close behind him. He leaned against the wall until Romey came out.
“I believe him,” she said.
Nyquist sighed. “I’m hoping it’s a tactic. Maybe we’ll get a name after the lawyer comes.”
“You don’t believe that, though, do you?”
“No names would make more sense on a murder-for-hire agreement,” Nyquist said.
“I know. Do you think the contact information will lead us to anyone?” Romey asked.
Nyquist shook his head. “I was hoping we could wrap this up today, but we’re not going to. We might never get the person who hired Illiyitch.”
“So what do you want to do? Rescind the deal?”
“Yeah,” Nyquist said. “We gave it a time limit. We’ll just act on that. Besides, it was contingent on a name.”
“At least we can give the press Illiyitch.”
“Without telling them it’s murder for hire?”
Romey shrugged. “Let them think the case is closed. It’s easier for us. We’ll spin some story about him being a disgruntled Whitford employee, and Bowles got caught in the crossfire.”
“Won’t that hurt at trial?”
“You think there’s going to be a trial?” Romey asked.
Nyquist closed his eyes. Of course there wouldn’t be a trial. Illiyitch would make a deal—not as good a deal as Nyquist offered him, but one all the same—and they’d get the useless contact information.
Then they’d keep the file open for decades. Periodically, someone would poke at it and see if they could find anything.
“You can’t give up,” Romey said.
Nyquist opened his eyes. “I’m not giving up,” he said. “I have to remind myself I am having a good day. I arrested Justinian Wagner on kidnapping charges, charges that could stick with some effort on the part of the prosecutors and with the right judge. I’ve resolved two cases in less than twelve hours, and all that in my first week back. I’m even going to make friends with the press. That’s a good day.”
“That’s a stellar day.” Romey smiled at him. “You’re damn good. I don’t say that lightly. Any time you want an affair…”
He smiled back. “I’ll call you.”
Fifty-eight
“You know,” Van Alen said, “sometimes taking your mind off things helps your subconscious come up with a solution.”
Flint knew that. He also knew he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about Gramming while he ate rich food and talked with his daughter.
His cloned daughter.
Whom he hadn’t paid for.
So he knocked on the bathroom door, told her in a loud voice that the food was here, then went to Van Alen’s networked computer.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“What you wanted me to,” he said. “I’m going to look into your power glitch.”
And think about something else for a little while.
He settled into the chair behind Van Alen’s desk and leaned forward, touching the screen to scroll back through the last few hours.
In a wave of steam and perfume, Talia came out of the bathroom. Flint looked up. She was wearing a long dress, belted at the waist. Grown-up clothing. Her hair was pulled back and her face, freshly scrubbed, looked vibrant.
His heart stopped for just a moment. She looked like an adult.
And he found that he didn’t want that yet. He didn’t want her to grow up any faster.
She had already aged years today. He’d seen that in her eyes.
He had promised her she’d be safe in Armstrong and then the day’s events had replayed the horror she’d experienced the day her mother had been kidnapped.
“I’m not that hungry,” Talia said.
Van Alen was helping an assistant put food on the conference table near the window.
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