CHAPTER FOUR
The morgue was locked, but not all that seriously. If my picks hadn’t been confiscated I could have had it open in twenty seconds. Pix, with nothing but a set of long outrider claws and some mental instructions from Ixil, still managed to do it in under a minute.
I’d been prepared for whatever violence was necessary in order get a close look at the body. Fortunately, the morgue was deserted, the examiner and his team apparently gone to shelter elsewhere from the presumed imminent attack.
“What makes you think it’s not Dent?” Ixil asked as we checked the log.
“The arresting sergeant told me,” I said. “Not in so many words, of course, but—here we go. Drawer eight.”
We headed across the room to the neat array of body drawers. “Not in so many words?” Ixil prompted as we opened the door and slid out the rack.
After the sergeant’s description of the body’s state I’d been prepared for the worst. To my relief it wasn’t quite as bad as I’d expected. The face had been badly burned, as she’d said, but it was more strategic spot damage than full-on skullification. The actual killing shot, I also noted, was a dead-center chest burn.
Someone had wanted him dead, and that same someone had apparently wanted him hard to identify.
“She said I’d used Dent’s own weapon to kill him and burn his face,” I continued. “Problem is, these are plasmic burns. Dent was carrying a Golden four mil.”
“You’re sure?”
“I saw it,” I said. “If the badgemen are convinced his own weapon was used, this has to be someone else.”
“That’s fairly thin evidence,” Ixil pointed out. “Someone else could have brought a plasmic to the party.”
“True,” I agreed. “But there’s more. The last time I saw Dent he’d reversed his jacket from gray to a blue check. This guy’s jacket is the right shade of gray, but it doesn’t have a reversible side. That a bit more solid?”
“Considerably,” Ixil said. “Unless they switched out his jacket.”
“Which would have to have happened before he was shot,” I pointed out. “The chest burn marks line up perfectly.”
“Agreed,” Ixil said. “Anything else?”
“Oh, I saved the best for last,” I assured him. “Our killer was smart enough to destroy his victim’s face, but he missed a bet.” I pointed to the undamaged side of the charred head. “Those aren’t Dent’s ears.”
“Really.” Ixil gave me an odd look. “You make a habit of memorizing people’s ears?”
“It’s more a hobby than a habit,” I told him. “But it’s a useful one. With all the face-changing plastic tech around for the bad guys to take advantage of, you’d be surprised how few of them bother with their ears. They’re not quite as distinctive as fingerprints or DNA, but normally they’re distinctive enough for at least a first tag.”
“Interesting,” Ixil murmured. “So you’re thinking this is—?” He broke off, as if suddenly realizing he’d been about to say something he wasn’t supposed to.
“All I’m saying is that it’s not Dent,” I said, frowning. “Why? Do you know something I don’t?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Ixil said, sounding thoughtful. “But this isn’t the place for that conversation. Anything else?”
I shrugged, running my gaze over the body. “Aside from the jacket, the rest of the clothing is similar to Dent’s. The mutilation was done at close range; so was the kill shot. In the chest, too, which means he wasn’t running away at the time.”
“What about this?” Ixil pushed the jacket cuff up a couple of centimeters.
I leaned a little closer. There were smooth pressure marks on the man’s wrist. “He was tied up,” I said slowly. “Tied up before he was shot, and not untied until at least a few minutes afterward.”
I looked up again to find Ixil’s eyes boring into mine. “So he was someone’s prisoner,” the Kalix said, his voice flat. “Which suggests he wasn’t just randomly or accidentally killed.”
“And if he was tied up instead of just being tossed into a locked room, there’s a good chance he was being interrogated when he was shot.” I nodded at the body. “The question is whether he was mistaken for Dent, or whether his similarity to Dent is purely coincidental and he was being interrogated in his own right.”
“In which case you also have to explain why they had Dent’s wallet and ID to plant on him,” Ixil pointed out. “That seems a lot to pile onto coincidence’s shoulders.”
“Especially when you throw in the fact that they also had my wallet to leave beside the body,” I agreed.
“Yes,” Ixil said. “Speaking of your wallet, I hope you’re not going to want to raid the evidence room next.”
“No, I think that would be pushing things beyond even my wobbly boundaries,” I agreed regretfully. There hadn’t been a lot of money in the wallet—and most of it had been the Icarus Group’s anyway—but I was a bit annoyed about losing my ID. The set of forgeries tucked away aboard the Ruth were reasonable enough, but I’d really liked the photo on that particular one. “Anyway, I’ve got replacements for everything back at the ship. You said something about getting out of here?”
“I did,” Ixil said. He slid the body tray back into its receptacle and closed the door. “Come. Jordan and Selene are waiting.”
* * *
I’d expected our rendezvous to be in McKell’s ship, the Stormy Banks, or possibly in the private back room of some seedy, beneath-the-radar bar where badgemen were reluctant to intrude. Instead, we met him and Selene in a far less dramatic but far more logical place: the local StarrComm center.
Because if there was one thing that was consistent across the Spiral, it was that the lifeblood of organizations was timely field reports.
On rare occasions I’d seen Admiral Sir Graym-Barker relaxed and almost genial, a far cry from his usual hard, intimidating self. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of those times.
“ . . . so once Dent and Roarke made contact, I figured that what they needed most was a bit of privacy,” McKell said.
“You were ordered to watch over their meeting,” Graym-Barker said stiffly.
I winced. As my father used to say, A man’s face is not a reliable indicator of how angry he is. No matter how mad he looks, he’s usually even madder.
Unfortunately, it did appear that this was one of those times.
“I was ordered to make sure it came off safely,” McKell corrected calmly. I didn’t know how much practice he’d had standing up to Graym-Barker, but apparently it had been enough to build up some immunity to the admiral’s megawatt glare. “I’d seen a group of Iykams slip into the Red Poppy just before Roarke and Selene left, and it seemed reasonable that they would continue their tailing efforts. So I turned back—”
“Wait a minute,” I spoke up. “You’re sure they were after us and not Dent?”
“Pretty sure,” McKell said. “Dent had already left and had picked a doorway to loiter in where he could wait for you to come out. If the Iykams had been following him, there would have been no reason for them to go inside.”
“Why does it matter?” Graym-Barker rumbled.
I looked back at him, forcing myself not to wilt under his glare. “Because after our last little run-in with them, I figure most Iykams out there are after my blood,” I said. “Being identified and followed, but not attacked, suggests a new subtlety to the situation.”
Graym-Barker looked back at McKell. “Does it?”
“Could be,” McKell said thoughtfully. “The Iykams I deflected away from the meeting didn’t seem interested in killing anyone. At least not right away.”
“And we do know one Patth who understands subtlety,” Ixil added.
“Sub-Director Nask,” McKell agreed, his eyes going dark. He disliked Nask even more than I did, though to be fair his association with that particular Patth went back a lot farther than mine did. “On the other hand, we also know Iykams aren’t great at differentiating between human faces,” McKell continued, looking back at me. “Maybe they were just out enjoying the New Moon Festival and didn’t recognize you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And also didn’t recognize Selene?”
McKell’s lip twitched as he looked at her flowing, pure-white hair and delicate Kadolian features. “Point,” he conceded. “Okay. The other possibility is that Nask has figured out you’re working for us and is dropping Iykams along your backtrail hoping you’ll lead them to the mother lode.”
“He may not be far off,” I said grimly. “Selene? I assume you haven’t told them?”
“There wasn’t a clear opportunity,” Selene said. She focused on Graym-Barker, her pupils showing freshly increased nervousness. Normally, she wasn’t as intimidated by people as I was; but then, normally she could tell from a person’s scent if he was actually angry or just looked scary. Here, viewing Graym-Barker on a StarrComm display, she didn’t have that advantage. “I smelled portal metal on Dent’s arm.”
McKell’s jaw dropped a couple of millimeters, Ixil’s outriders stiffened in perfect unison, and even Graym-Barker seemed to forget for a moment that widened eyes didn’t exactly add to his usual authoritative look. “Are you sure?” he demanded.
“Of course she’s sure,” I jumped in as Selene winced back from his intensity.
“He means is she sure it was on Dent and not someone else in the crowd,” McKell jumped in right behind me, rising to the defense of his boss in the exact same way I’d just come to the defense of my partner.
“It was on Dent,” Selene murmured, her voice quiet but firm.
“Interesting,” Graym-Barker said, his eyes and face back to normal. “We assumed he’d just heard rumors about Icarus, possibly from Nask or some other Patth. But if he’s actually touched one . . . ” He pursed his lips. “How long since he touched it?”
“I don’t know,” Selene said. “The scent was very faint.”
“But it was there?” the admiral pressed.
“Yes.”
“All the more reason to get on top of this,” McKell said grimly. “And on him. Okay. First step—”
“Hold it,” I interrupted him. “Before we get to steps and flowcharts, there’s a dangling thread I want to clear up. Ixil, back in the morgue you said you knew something I didn’t. How about sharing with the rest of the class?”
“The rest of the class already knows,” Ixil said, an odd look on his squashed lizard face. “We think—we think—Easton Dent has a twin brother.”
* * *
It was my jaw’s turn to drop a little. Dent had a twin? “What do you mean, you think? That sounds like it should be pretty easy to figure out.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Graym-Barker said. “Jordan, you can take this one.”
“As much as anyone can take it,” McKell said, scowling. “Okay. When Dent first popped up on our radar Tera and I started poking into his background. Along the way, we noticed a few anomalies. For one thing, while he seemed to work alone, there were a few times when a deal gone bad ended up with the other party shot, usually in the back.”
“Yes, Tera mentioned the various stray bodies,” I said. “I have to say Dent didn’t seem the type to go out of his way to be that irritating.”
“Not sure if he instigated the conflicts or just had the bad luck to deal himself into high-risk agreements,” McKell said. “Obviously, the other parties involved weren’t available afterward to give their side of it.”
“It may not be simple happenstance,” Graym-Barker put in. “Tera noted that he walked away from each of those confrontations with whatever it was he’d originally stolen plus the other party’s planned payoff.”
“When the other party actually brought payment,” McKell amended. “We know that on at least two of those occasions they came to the meet empty-handed, probably with the intent of stealing Dent’s goods outright.”
I nodded. Selene and I had occasionally been on the short end of that kind of deal. As far as I was concerned, shooting such blatant swindlers in the back was completely justifiable. “As my father used to say, If he looks like he’s going to hit you, don’t hit him back first. Hit him back only. So Dent’s got a silent partner with good aim. How does that make the partner a twin?”
“We sent Jennifer to check his background,” Graym-Barker said. “You remember Jennifer, I assume?”
“She’s a bit hard to forget,” I assured him. Jennifer—like Tera, I’d never heard her last name—was one of the Icarus Group’s operatives, handling everything from quiet diversions to facing down armed Iykams.
She’d also threatened Selene and me once or twice, but I didn’t take that personally.
“She is that,” McKell agreed. “Anyway, we sent her to the province on Gremon where Dent grew up and had her check his original birth documents. It turns out that sometime in the past fifteen years they were hacked into.”
“Fifteen years,” I repeated, thinking back over the slim file on Dent that Tera had sent us. “So just about the time Dent left the planet.”
“Right,” McKell said. “The record only lists one live birth, of course, but Jennifer found indications that there’d been a link to another record with the same date and place. That file had unfortunately been deleted.”
“A good hacker should be able to reconstruct it.”
“Jennifer had an excellent hacker with her,” McKell said. “Dent’s hacker was better.”
“I understand that it had also been too long for some of the more subtle techniques to be useful,” Ixil added.
“Correct,” McKell said. “All they could pull up from the deleted file was a name: Weston Dent.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Weston Dent?”
“I know,” McKell said dryly. “Easton and Weston Dent. Sounds like a comedy team.”
“Not if you’re the one being shot in the back.”
“Point.”
“What about people who knew the family?” Selene asked. “Could Jennifer have talked to one of them?”
“She tried,” McKell said. “But it was a rural area that had gone through a lot of economic upheaval over the past decade, and there was no one there who remembered the Dents.”
“And you couldn’t track them?” I persisted. “Come on. The government tracks everyone.”
“Except those who hire hackers to clear them out of those databases,” McKell said.
“I decided it would be dangerous to continue,” Graym-Barker said. “Wide-ranging probes like that inevitably draw unwanted attention. If the Patth hadn’t already noticed Dent, we didn’t want to accidentally put them on his scent.”
“Right.” Like the Patth needed an excuse to go poking around Commonwealth data listings.
“But there are a few other indicators,” McKell said. “Dent’s first ship was named the Southern Cross, while his current one is named the Northern Lights. Add it to Easton and Weston and he’s got the whole compass boxed.”
“Of course,” I said. “Since cutesy clues are something professional thieves really like scattering around for badgemen to zero in on. Just to make it clear: No one on our side has actually seen this mystery twin. Right?”
McKell’s lip twitched. “Right.”
“Unless,” Ixil added quietly, “you and I just saw him in the morgue.”
A hard knot settled into my stomach. “You think that was Weston Dent?”
“I don’t know,” Ixil said. “He was a bit taller than Easton, and his skin seemed a bit lighter.”
“Then again, there’s no indication whether Weston was identical or fraternal,” McKell pointed out.
“If he existed at all,” I said.
“If he existed at all,” McKell again conceded.
For a moment no one spoke. I counted off the seconds, idly calculating how much this thoughtful hush was costing the Icarus Group in StarrComm fees. Fortunately, it was Graym-Barker who was paying that bill, not me.
It was McKell who finally broke the silence. “All right,” he said. “Now that that’s out in the open, let’s get back to the steps and flowcharts Roarke mentioned. If that body is indeed Weston Dent, Easton may try to retrieve it.”
“And will be royally pissed at whoever killed him,” I warned, flipping a mental coin. They’d told me what they knew about Weston Dent. Should I tell them what I knew, or not?
Not, I decided.
“Which may put him in the mood to take stupid chances,” McKell continued. “Unfortunately, none of us can hang around long enough to do anything about that.”
“Why not?” I asked. “You got somewhere else you’re supposed to be?”
“As a matter of fact, we do,” McKell said. “And after your extraordinarily brilliant jailbreak, you need to get off New Kyiv, too.”
“I suppose,” I said reluctantly. I really hated being chased off planets. “I guess we’ll just have to wave him off some other way.”
“Any idea on how to do that?” McKell asked.
“Apart from alerting the local badgemen,” Graym-Barker added. “Getting him arrested won’t do us much good.”
“Not to mention pinpointing his location for anyone who might still be gunning for him,” I agreed. “No, I was thinking more along the lines of telling him what he’s up against. Assuming he’s smart enough not to just charge in at dawn with his Golden blasting divots in the station’s walls, he may pause long enough to drop into a StarrComm center and check his messages. If we give him some reasonable options, he might be willing to surface again.”
“Not sure how receptive he’ll be, given how fast he bailed on you,” McKell said doubtfully. “But it can’t hurt to try.”
“At least until we come up with something better,” Graym-Barker said. “Jordan?”
“Yes, sir,” McKell said, nodding. “I’ll set it up for him as soon as we’re finished here.”
“Thanks,” I said. “So I guess my only other question, Admiral, is who was the dead guy in the picture Dent showed us?”
They were good, all right. There was barely a flicker of reaction from either McKell or Ixil, and nothing at all from Graym-Barker. It was only Pix and Pax who gave noticeable twitches. Luckily, with my eyes focused on the screen and the admiral, I could pretend I hadn’t seen that. “He was middle-aged and balding,” I continued, “with a kind of professorial air about him.”
“Any idea how he died?” McKell asked.
“The photo only showed his face,” I told him, “and I didn’t see any signs of trauma there. It was also an analog photo, on old-style film, not a dij copy.”
“Interesting,” Ixil said thoughtfully. “It sounds like Dent didn’t want to be caught carrying around a dij of the victim.”
“That was what I thought, too,” I agreed. “Which not only adds another layer of suspicion but also raises the question of where he got his hands on an analog camera to begin with.”
“Lots of places he could have gotten a camera,” McKell said, his forehead furrowed as if he was genuinely concentrating on the problem. “But why he would have one is less obvious. We’ll look into it.”
“Into which one?” I asked. “The victim or the camera?”
“The victim, of course,” Graym-Barker said stiffly. “I’ll start that inquiry. You and Selene will meanwhile concentrate your efforts on finding out where Dent touched a portal.” He raised his eyebrows. “If and when you do, you will contact me immediately. No going off and playing detective on your own.”
“Of course,” I said, as if such a thing had been the furthest thing from my mind. “You’re the professionals here, not Selene and me.”
“And try not to forget that.” He gave me a brisk nod. “Good luck.” He reached somewhere off camera and the display went blank.
“And good-bye to you, too,” I muttered as McKell started working the board. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
McKell made a final adjustment and nodded. “Go.”
I recorded a short message for Dent, loosely based on the speeches I used to give targets I was trying to persuade to surrender peacefully, though in this case I made it clear he was merely an information source and not in any sort of trouble. When I finished McKell keyed the message to Dent’s mail drop, and we were done.
“I hope that works,” McKell commented as he collected his change from the slot. “If it doesn’t, he’s going to be doing his vengeance charge alone.”
“I still think Selene and I should stay here a day or two and watch for him,” I said. “After tonight, the badgemen will be pretty well beat.”
“No,” McKell said firmly. “You need to get off New Kyiv as soon as possible.”
“Which may present a problem,” Ixil warned. “By now the Ruth is certainly being watched.” He looked at McKell. “We could fly them out in the Stormy Banks.”
“Only if they hurry,” McKell said. “We need to get back to the job.”
“I thought we were your job,” I said, putting some disillusionment into my voice. “I’m crushed.”
“You’re not our sole reason for living, either,” McKell assured me. “Just be thankful we were close enough to help out. So do you want a ride or not?”
“Not if it means leaving the Ruth here,” I said. “Thanks for the offer, but we can get out on our own.”
“Do remember that you’re running from a murder charge,” Ixil said. As if I might have forgotten. “Surveillance is likely to be hotter than you’re used to.”
“Right,” I agreed. “And of course badgemen are usually cool with people who break fugitives out of lockup.”
“Not saying they won’t be all over us, too,” McKell said with a shrug. “But we know a few tricks.”
“Likewise,” I said. “You might be surprised how often the person offering the bounty isn’t on the same planet as the target.”
“And the locals sometimes want their own crack at him?” McKell suggested.
“Pretty much always,” I said.
“They must love to see you land,” he said philosophically. “Anything we can do to assist before we go?”
“If you have time, you could get an order logged into the Port Authority for the Ruth to be impounded tomorrow morning,” I said. “It would save me the trouble of doing it myself.”
“No problem,” McKell said. “Any time in particular?”
“Let’s make it around seven. That’s when a lot of big-shot ships are starting to head out.”
“Sounds intriguing,” McKell said. “I almost wish we could stay around and watch this one. You want a side order of diversion or distraction with that?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “Well, actually, it would be convenient if you could get all the low-orbit patrol ships moved somewhere else other than directly overhead. If not, don’t worry about it. We can work around them.”
“I’ll see what we can do,” McKell said. “Good luck, and watch your backs.”
“Ditto,” I said, nodding in turn to each of them. “Come on, Selene. Let’s go home.”
* * *
The badgemen were still roaming the streets out there, of course. But I wasn’t much worried. We’d been out of sight long enough that their logical conclusion should be that we’d either gone back to the Ruth or else headed for the tall grass. Since they were certainly keeping an eye on the ship, that left the tall grass. If I were them, I’d be monitoring the city’s various transit lines, cabs, and runaround rentals.
Given the crowds still filling the streets, all of whom would eventually be taking those same cabs and transits to get home, I wished them luck with their search.
“You don’t think it was Easton Dent’s brother who was killed, do you?” Selene asked quietly as we wended our way through the merrymakers toward the spaceport annex.
“I don’t just think it, I’m a hundred percent sure it wasn’t,” I said. “Put yourself in their place. You’re Weston Dent, and you’ve been quietly working with your brother for the past fifteen years. Not just working with him, but successfully staying invisible that whole time. Would you really wear an outfit that could let you be mistaken for him?”
“Unlikely,” Selene conceded. “So who was he?”
I shook my head. “My guess is he was just some poor sap who turned up at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“And in the wrong clothing,” Selene murmured. “And they didn’t realize he wasn’t Dent?”
“Not quickly enough,” I said. “Maybe not until after they’d shot him. After that, of course, they had to destroy his face to hide the fact they’d grabbed the wrong man.”
“But why kill him at all? Why not just let him go?”
“No idea,” I said. “I assume he saw or heard something he shouldn’t.”
Selene was silent a few more steps. The crowds were starting to thin out, I noted uneasily, with the last determined holdouts finally starting to call it a night. If the landscape opened up too much before we got back to the Ruth we would be painfully easy for the badgemen to spot.
“In that case, why didn’t they hide the body instead of leaving it where it could be quickly found?” she asked. “And why steal your wallet and leave it there with him?”
“Obviously, to frame me.”
“But that wouldn’t hold up to a real investigation.” She looked sideways at me, her pupils showing dread. “Dent was just the bait and hook, wasn’t he? You and I were their real targets.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I think so,” I conceded. I’d been hoping she wouldn’t reach that disturbing conclusion, or at least not this quickly. “In which case, a dead nobody everyone thinks is Dent works just as well as the real thing. They were probably working on a plan to have the badgemen hand us over to them, only McKell and Ixil got there first.”
“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “It seems very inefficient. Why not just take us when they stole your wallet?”
“Too public or too crowded, maybe,” I said. “Or they knew they’d never be able to sneak up on us and that super nose of yours. Hiring a local pickpocket who you’d never smelled before would be safer.”
“If they were worried we’d spot them, they must be someone we already know,” she pointed out.
“Or a group of such someones,” I agreed. “Any Iykam, for instance.”
Selene inhaled sharply. “A pickpocket. That’s why Dent ran off the way he did. He realized he’d been robbed and was chasing the thief.”
“Could be,” I said, remembering back to what I’d seen of him moving through the crowds. He hadn’t been rushing, but he’d definitely looked like a man with a purpose. “I hadn’t thought of that, but it makes sense. It would also explain why he reversed his jacket. Easier to tackle someone if they don’t instantly recognize who it is who’s bearing down on them.”
“And the path of him following someone would look very much like him trying to get away from us,” Selene said. “If that’s true, then we didn’t frighten Dent away. That should make him more likely to answer the message you just sent.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said, refusing to let my hopes get too high on that one. As my father used to say, Hope may spring eternal, but jumping up out of the weeds is a good way to get shot. “Unless he thinks we’re the ones who had him robbed. Either way, he may not be willing to surface again until he knows who did.”
“Which we don’t know, either.”
“Not yet,” I said, a plan slowly forming in the back of my mind. “Though maybe we can find out.” I took her arm and picked up our pace a little. “Come on, let’s get back to the Ruth. We’ve got places to go and people to see.”
“Which people?” Selene asked, fluttering her long eyelashes as she tried to read my sudden change of mood. “The pickpocket, or Easton Dent?”
“Who says we have to choose?” I countered, giving her a tight smile. “Let’s see if we can find both.”