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14

The good news, Karl Zivonik reflected as his SFS cruiser bored through a beautiful, sunlit sky, was that Chief Shelton hadn’t shot down Stephanie’s plan entirely. Or Karl thought that was good news, anyway. He still didn’t see any better approach to the problem, but he knew only too well who Stephanie envisioned as their “fact-gathering expedition,” and he was definitely in two minds about that. Unfortunately—or perhaps he meant fortunately—Shelton had pointed out that they still had nothing like any actual crime to investigate, beyond Nosey’s beating and the apparent attempt to intimidate Herman, and they had no admissible evidence or even criminal complaints in either of those cases. Without at least a little more to go on than a spate of accidents which might or might not be caused by the ingestion of a substance that wasn’t illegal in the first place, neither he nor Chief Chuchkova had the basis to open an actual investigation. And absent that sort of basis, Chuchkova was less than enthralled by the notion of turning a bunch of underage amateurs loose on her turf.

Karl couldn’t really blame her for that, and he had no objection at all to keeping Stephanie out of as much trouble as he could, but—

The sudden, shrill scream of an alarm jerked him upright in his flight couch. He was sixty kilometers north of Twin Forks, headed for the Harrington homestead, and the lurid, crimson icon of the crash beacon glared in his head-up display. It was barely ten kilometers off his flight path, and he turned sharply to port even as he keyed his com on the dedicated SFS frequency.

“Dispatch, Zivonik!” he said crisply.

“Dispatch,” Carla Jensen, the duty Forestry Service dispatcher replied almost instantly. “What do you need, Karl?”

“I’m showing an air car crash transponder,” he told her tersely. “Fifty-seven clicks north-northeast of Twin Forks. Grid Alpha-Kilo-Two-Niner.”

“Hold one.” Jensen’s voice was crisper, and he pictured her checking the planetary net.

“We don’t show it on the net,” she told him after a moment. “You’re sure about those coordinates?”

“Yes,” he said. “Positive.”

“I believe you,” she said, and he wondered just how emphatic his own tone had been. “But we don’t show it.”

Karl frowned. That didn’t make any sense. If he was seeing the beacon, then why weren’t the satellites picking it up? Beacons were short-ranged homing devices, intended mainly as backup for an air car’s regular transponder, and those were specifically designed to be tracked from orbit. So why—

His mouth tightened as he came up on the beacon site and saw the line of tangled wreckage plowed through the trees.

“I don’t know why you’re not picking it up, Carla,” he said flatly, “but I’m eyes-on now, and somebody’s definitely down. It…doesn’t look good. I’m setting down. Switching my transponder to ground mode. Does it show on the net?”

“Got it,” Jensen said. “Strong signal. Twin Forks first responders are saddling up now.”

“Tell them to hurry. If anybody made it through this, they’re likely to be in pretty bad shape.”

“Copy,” Jensen said grimly.

Karl landed in the trough the other air car had torn through the tree canopy. It was a good thing his cruiser was designed for rough field landings most civilian craft couldn’t have handled, he thought, as jagged, snapped off branches and trunks crunched under his fuselage. And it was also a good thing—probably—that this section of forest was mostly picketwood. Judging from the damage around him, the wrecked vehicle must have been traveling at well over a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour when it hit. Not even modern synthetics could handle that kind of impact energy, and the picketwood had ripped the incoming air car to bits as it slammed through the trunks. But if this had been crown oak and the hapless pilot had hit one of those enormous trunks squarely, his air car would simply have disintegrated.

Air cars were designed to be as crash-survivable as possible, and at least the safety features designed to prevent the hydrogen reservoir from exploding must have worked, since there was no sign of fire. Despite that, his stomach tightened as he realized how unlikely it was that anyone could have survived this.

He pulled on his SFS helmet and activated his air car’s search-and-rescue drone. As it deployed from the side hatch, he slid back the canopy, grabbed his emergency medical kit, and turned up his personal counter-grav. He vaulted to the ground, his landing softened by the counter-grav, and turned up the drone on his helmet’s visor as Survivor landed beside him. The drone’s field of view was much wider than anything he could manage from ground level, and if anyone had lived through this, he needed to find them fast. Because—

An icon blinked on his visor, alternating green and amber, and his eyes widened. That was an ejection seat’s transponder! Had someone punched out before they hit?

He turned to charge through the debris field, cursing as he stumbled over uneven ground, ripped and torn foliage, and an unholy tangle of broken branches. Survivor had wheeled in the same direction and gone darting through the wreckage even before Karl detected the transponder. The ’cat was a blur of cream and gray, scurrying through and over the litter of shattered greenery, and Karl felt a moment of bitter envy. Even with the counter-grav, it was hard going for someone his size and with only two legs, and he wished he had one of the thruster packs that could have propelled him above the tangled terrain on his CG. But he didn’t, and he reminded himself—not for the first time—that, unlike Stephanie, he didn’t have the Meyerdahl mods, either. Muscles, yes; those he had. But his bones were just as fragile as Cordelia’s or any other unmodified human’s. If he fell and broke a leg, he wouldn’t do any possible survivor any good.

There!

Survivor bleeked urgently at him as he slithered down a sharp slope into the ravine where the ejection seat had crashed to earth, and his stomach tightened when he reached the bottom and found his companion perched atop the seat.

Whoever was in it must have ejected at the last possible second, he thought. Its built-in counter-grav clearly hadn’t lifted it above the picketwood canopy before momentum carried it into the trees right behind the air car. But its attitude computer must have had at least a sliver of time to react, because it had gone into the trees base first, and it had clearly been climbing when it did. Instead of the heavier, lower trunks which had demolished the air car, it had crashed through the upper, thinner branches, and its protective shell’s armored base had survived the impact more or less intact. Whether that had been enough—

Karl clambered toward Survivor, up the tangled mass of broken limbs wrapped around the ejection seat. It was even more badly damaged than he’d thought. The panels that automatically deployed when someone ejected were intended to protect a passenger from the airstream at relatively high velocities, not from high-speed impacts with the ground. They were twisted and torn, and at least one branch stub had slammed right through them.

Karl punched the button that was supposed to retract the panels, but he wasn’t surprised when nothing happened. Not given how badly wrecked they were.

He unhooked his SFS issue bush knife from his belt. The audible alert whined as he brought the vibro-blade to life, and Survivor recognized the sound and leapt clear. Treecats might not understand how human technology worked, but he’d seen bush knives in action often enough to stay out of the way. Despite which, Karl waited a beat to be sure he was clear. And to consider angles. That blade could cut through almost anything, including whoever was in the ejection seat, if he wasn’t careful. Every instinct screamed that he had to move faster, but he made himself stand back. Made himself plan exactly what he wanted to do and how. Then, and only then, he cut away the tangle of broken picket wood and sliced a rectangle out of one side of the protective shell with quick but careful strokes.

He grabbed the rectangle as it came away and tossed it to one side, and his eyes widened in recognition as he saw the blood-soaked young woman in the seat. Its base hadn’t absorbed all of the crash energy, after all. The entire shell had telescoped when it hit, but one side had taken a lot more damage than the other, and her right leg was twisted, bleeding heavily around at least one compound fracture, She’d been hit by the branch which had penetrated the shell, as well. Fortunately, it hadn’t hit her squarely, but the channel it had ripped through the left side of her torso looked bad.

But she was still breathing, and it was his job to keep her that way, he told himself fiercely, and heard—and felt—Survivor humming in agreement.

The last thing she needed, especially if—as seemed likely—there were internal injuries he couldn’t yet see, was him dragging her around. But she couldn’t survive that much blood loss for very long, either.

He was vaguely surprised to discover that his hands were perfectly steady as he pulled out the med kit’s tourniquet. He got it under and around her right thigh, as high as he could and jostling her shattered leg as little as possible, and hit the inflation button. The tourniquet hissed as it pressurized, and he tapped the pressure pad, watching the numbers as he tightened it far enough to slow, and then stop, the heavy blood flow pulsing around the broken bone which had pierced her skin. Unless he overrode it, the tourniquet would periodically loosen briefly, long enough to let blood reach the leg’s tissues, then tighten again, but hopefully the Twin Forks EMTs would be here before he had to worry about that. In the meantime—

He used the bush knife to cut the branch that had penetrated the seat’s shell, pulled it free, and tossed it aside, then ripped away enough of her shirt to reach the wound in her side. It didn’t look quite as bad as he’d thought it was, but it was bad enough. At least it hadn’t penetrated her abdominal or chest cavities, but the ribs which had taken the brunt of the impact, and probably prevented it from ripping right through her, were badly broken. He could actually see two of them where the branch had driven into her, and the inside of her upper left arm was also badly torn. The arm didn’t appear to be broken—or no bone fragments had broken the skin, at least—but the tissue damage was too high on the limb for another tourniquet.

His eyes were grim as he sprayed coagulant into both wounds to stop the bleeding, He didn’t know if it would be enough to save her, but there wasn’t anything else he could do without at least one more set of hands, and he felt suddenly useless. He knew he’d done everything anyone could, but he ought to be able to do more, damn it! What good was he, if he couldn’t—?

Violet-blue eyes slitted open in a blood-streaked face. They were unfocused, tracking without seeing, but he touched the side of her face.

“Trudy?” he asked gently. “Trudy, can you hear me?”

“He flew into the trees.” Trudy Franchitti sounded almost calm but as if she were speaking from a long, long way away. “He just flew into the trees. I told him. But he flew into the trees.”

“Who? Who flew into the trees, Trudy?”

Those blue eyes blinked slowly, as if trying to focus on him. He didn’t know if she’d actually heard him at all, but then she rolled her head.

“Stan,” she said, in that same, detached voice, but it was thinner, wisping away. “Stan…just flew…into…the…”

Her voice disappeared into silence, and Karl’s eyes burned as he brushed bloody hair from her forehead while Survivor stood on the base of the ejection seat, leaning lovingly against him, and the Twin Forks EMTs’ incoming sirens wailed behind them.

Jessica sat in the bedside chair, stroking the treecat curled in her lap as she watched the monitors and waited.

She and Trudy were no longer as close as they’d once been, and there’d been a time, especially when Trudy had been so eager to acquire a treecat “pet” of her own, when Jessica had actively disliked her, almost as much as Stephanie had. But, also like Stephanie, she’d been forced to amend her opinion of the other young woman as Trudy became more and more deeply involved with Wild and Free. Jordan Franchitti despised “bleeding hearts” and “enviro maniacs,” and he’d actually forbidden Wild and Free to “trespass” on his land. He’d certainly never concealed his contempt for it, and Jessica had seen how much tension that had created between Trudy and her father. And her brothers, for that matter. But Trudy had made it clear that she knew her own mind in that respect. Given her own large, boisterous, close-knit family, Jessica could sympathize only intellectually with the degree of tension that must create within the Franchitti clan, but she’d come—grudgingly, almost against her will—to respect Trudy for the stand she’d taken. That hadn’t made them bosom buddies again, but Jessica was constitutionally unable to hold grudges against people who at least tried to make amends.

Which was why she’d volunteered to sit in ICU with Trudy as she drifted back toward consciousness. It wouldn’t be much longer, she thought, watching the monitors, but until Trudy said she was ready for it, the hospital had no intention of admitting anyone but staff to her room. Besides—

Trudy’s head moved on the pillow. The tip of her tongue licked her lips, and her eyes drifted open. For three or four seconds, they only gazed blankly at the ceiling, but then, slowly, they focused.

“Trudy?” Jessica said softly, and Valiant crooned from her lap.

Trudy rolled her head, blinking, then smiled a fragile smile.

“Jessica.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but her right hand rose, reaching out, and Jessica took it. Valiant sat up in her lap, patting their joined hands with a gentle true-hand, and Trudy’s tiny smile wavered a bit wider. “And Valiant,” she said. “Of course.”

“Well, of course ‘of course,’” Jessica replied, squeezing her hand. “He sort of comes with the territory.”

“I know.” Trudy smiled again. But then her face tightened and she closed her eyes again. “Stan?” she asked, and Jessica inhaled deeply. She’d dreaded this moment, and Valiant’s comforting purr buzzed higher as he stroked Trudy’s hand.

“He didn’t make it,” she said simply, as gently as she could. “I’m so sorry, Trudy, but he’s gone.”

A tear leaked from the corner of Trudy’s eye and she bit her lip, her hand tightening almost painfully on Jessica’s. She turned her face away, shoulders quivering, and Valiant leapt lightly from Jessica’s lap to the hospital bed. She started to reach after him, but he moved with delicate precision, avoiding Trudy’s injured left side, to curl beside her and lay his chin on her shoulder, his nose against the side of her neck, while his entire body quivered with the force of his purr.

Trudy lay still for a long, trembling moment, then turned her face back toward Jessica. She tugged her hand free of Jessica’s, wrapped her arm around the treecat, buried her face against his coat…and sobbed.

“Better?” Jessica asked five minutes later.

“Better.” Trudy nodded, still stroking Valiant’s coat. It was quite a bit damper than it had been, and she smiled gratefully. At Valiant, Jessica noticed, not at her. “Still a long way from good, but better.” She transferred her smile to Jessica. “Thank you. Thank you both.”

“Hey, somebody had to keep an eye on you. Just the luck of the draw that it was me.”

“Sure it was.” A spark of actual humor glinted in the depths of Trudy’s voice. “And you just happened to be sitting here when I woke up.”

“Well, maybe it was a little more than ‘just happened,’” Jessica confessed.

“How bad is it?” Trudy took her hand from Valiant and waved it in an arc that encompassed the entire hospital room.

“Let’s just say you’re lucky it wasn’t a whole bunch worse.” Jessica shook her head. “You almost lost your right leg entirely, Trudy. It’s going to be okay, eventually, but the soft tissues and muscles got ripped up really badly. The bone damage was worse, though. They decided it was best to just go ahead and replace the tibia and fibula with synthetics, I’m afraid, and they had to almost entirely rebuild your femur. You’re going to be stuck here for a while, even with quick heal, over that one, and after that you’ll be doing a lot of PT.”

“Which Sphinx’s gravity’s going to make a real pain in the ass,” Trudy observed with a grimace.

“Oh, I think you could probably put it that way,” Jessica agreed. “The good news is that your leg’s still there to be a pain in the ass.”

“I know.” Trudy nodded. “And this?”

Her right hand indicated her immobilized left arm.

“Hopefully the painkillers mean you’re not noticing it, but every one of your ribs on that side were broken. Not only that, you’ve got heavy damage to the external oblique and intercostal muscles, and the crash peeled your left tricipitus muscle completely away from the humerus. They got everything reattached, but that’s why they don’t want you moving it yet. Like your leg, it’s going to be okay, eventually.”

“With more of that PT.”

“With more of that PT,” Jessica confirmed, and if Trudy’s response was more grimace than smile, at least there was a smile wrapped inside it. Then it faded.

“How?” she asked. Jessica raised an eyebrow, and Trudy shrugged, careful of her damaged side. “How did I make it?” Her voice was darker than it had been. “From the sound of things, I shouldn’t have.”

“It was Karl,” Jessica told her. “He just happened to be passing by, literally, on his way to Twin Forks when you and Stan went in. He was close enough he picked up the crash beacon, and he got to you on the ground in time to at least stop the bleeding.” She met Trudy’s gaze steadily. “You wouldn’t have made it without him.”

“I figured.” Trudy closed her eyes briefly, and her nostrils flared. “I owe him.”

“Maybe. But, Trudy, he picked up the short-range crash beacon, not the one from the air car’s transponder. If he’d been forty kilometers farther away, nobody would’ve known what happened until it was way too late.”

Trudy opened her eyes again, looking at her, and Jessica leaned forward in her chair.

“They recovered the transponder,” she said. “Why was it manually disabled?”

Trudy didn’t answer. She only looked back in silence, her lower lip trembling ever so slightly, and Valiant stirred. He touched her face lightly with a long-fingered true-hand, his croon so soft Jessica could barely hear it, and Jessica felt…something. She didn’t know what, but she knew it came from Valiant, and she watched Trudy’s eyes widen, and then soften before they moved back to her.

“Stan disabled it,” she said then. “I told him not to. I reminded him how much trouble he’d get into if anyone found out. He just laughed and said no one would. Stupid.” She shook her head, fresh tears gleaming. “So stupid.”

Jessica nodded. It had, indeed, been stupid, and in more than one way. Intentionally disabling an air car transponder carried a hefty fine and a one T-year license suspension. That was for the first time it happened. After that, the penalties got stiffer. Up to, and including, jail time for repeated offenders.

But those were only the legal consequences. Stan Chang had just discovered—briefly—what the other ones were. With the transponder down, only the short range, omnidirectional crash beacon intended to help on-site rescuers zero in on a downed air car whose location they already knew from the transponder had remained to guide Frank to Trudy in time to save her life.

“But why did he do it?” she pressed.

“I didn’t know he had until we were already in the air.” Trudy’s voice was stronger, clearer, now that she’d admitted Stan had shut it down deliberately. “He was so…so pleased with himself when he told me about it. I told him it was the dumbest thing he’d done yet, and he only laughed harder. He said his dad had threatened to ground him the next time he tried any ‘fun’ aerobatics. But without the transponder to ‘rat him out’ his dad would never know.

“I guess he was wrong about that.” Her voice was lower, hoarser, and another tear trickled down her cheek.

“Yes, he was,” Jessica agreed softly. She leaned closer to blot the tear with a tissue, but even as she dried the tear, she frowned internally. She’d never really liked Stan, even when she and Trudy had originally been close. He was a braggart, with a streak of bully, and she’d wondered even then what Trudy saw in him. But, despite that, he truly had been an excellent pilot. He’d always enjoyed pushing the limits, and she didn’t doubt that his father had threatened to ground him, but this…

“Trudy,” she said after a moment, “you told Karl Stan ‘just flew into the trees.’ What did you mean?”

“I said that?” Trudy blinked.

“To Karl.” Jessica nodded. “Just before the EMTs got there.”

“Well, he did.” Trudy closed her eyes again. “He was buzzing the treetops. So fast and so low it scared the hell out of me. I told him that. And he just laughed that laugh again. Like it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard! And the more it scared me, the closer and faster he went!”

“That…doesn’t sound like Stan,” Jessica said.

“Oh, yes it does.” Trudy didn’t open her eyes, but her tone was bitter. “He liked scaring people. He thought it was funny, and sometimes, I have to admit, after I got done being scared, I thought it was funny, too. Not always. But sometimes.” She bit her lip. “Maybe if I’d yelled at him more about it, told him I’d walk if he kept doing it, then maybe…”

Her voice trailed off, and Jessica touched her hand again.

“Stan was always Stan,” she told the other young woman. “You weren’t going to change that part of him, Trudy. I don’t think anyone could. What I meant was that he could be a complete zork sometimes, and he was awfully full of himself where his flying was concerned, but you guys went into those trees at almost two hundred kilometers per hour. That kind of speed, that close to the treetops?” She shook her head. “I don’t remember him ever buzzing the ground at that speed. He was more into high-altitude craziness. Or that’s what I always thought, anyway.”

“Mostly, yeah.” Trudy opened her eyes with a sigh. “But lately, the last few months, he’s gotten—he had gotten,” she corrected herself with a wince “—a lot…cockier, I guess. Started doing a lot of really dumb stuff. I think—”

She cut herself off, but Jessica’s eyes widened as a connection clicked in her brain.

“Trudy,” she said carefully, “do you think Stan was doing drugs? Is that what happened?”

Trudy said nothing for almost a full minute. Then she sighed again.

“Yeah,” she confessed. “He always did some, and to be honest, I did them with him, for a while. I quit back when the fires first got so bad and I got involved with Wild and Free, and I told him he had to, too. Oh, we didn’t do anything heavy. And Stan never drank. He said he didn’t like what it did to his coordination, so he’d never do anything like that. But we’d sniff a little dust, sometimes. Maybe smoke a little more weed than was good for us. I didn’t quit because I was scared of what it was ‘doing to me.’ I quit because I was…kind of crawling into it. Using a lot more of it, and not just to party. I was pretty unhappy about then, you know.” She looked Jessica in the eye as she made the admission. “I figured out I was using so much more of the stuff we did to pretend I wasn’t, and I’ve seen too many people do that. So I knew I had to quit, and I told him he had to quit, too, if we were going to be together. Because I didn’t trust myself, Jess. I was afraid I’d slide back into it—no, I knew I’d slide back into it—if I was around him and he kept doing it.”

Jessica nodded, with more respect than she’d ever thought she might feel for Trudy Franchitti, as the other young woman admitted that. She’d known Trudy’s life had gotten a lot more stressful in light of her strained relationship with her family, but she’d never realized Trudy had that much self-awareness. Or the strength of will to do something about it.

Of course, if she’d thought Stan was still doing drugs anyway, she should have gone ahead and walked away from him. But it wasn’t easy to just walk away from someone you cared for. Especially not if you were trying to help them with a problem they might not even be willing to admit they had. But…

“But you think he was still using,” she said, and Trudy nodded unhappily.

“I couldn’t prove it. But, yeah. That was why I’ve been spending so much less time with him. Until today.” Another tear leaked down her cheek. “It was…tomorrow was his birthday, you know. We were supposed to grab something at the Red Letter to celebrate, but—”

She broke off, lower lip trembling, and drew another deep breath before she resumed.

“But whatever he was doing, I know it wasn’t the kind of stuff he’d done before. Weed always just sort of…mellowed him out, you know? And dust made him high as a kite, convinced him he had the greatest sense of humor in the world, but it didn’t make him stupid. He did yellows, once in a while, but once you’ve done a couple of those, you can hardly even move till you come down. This…this was different. It was like…like dust on steroids, but it never affected his coordination. He just got wilder. It was like whatever it was, it just made him really, really stupid. It was like he was convinced he could do all the things he would’ve known he couldn’t do if he’d been straight. I mean—”

She broke off, shaking her head in frustration at her inability to nail down what she was trying to describe.

“I understand what you’re trying to say,” Jessica told her, and Trudy’s eyes narrowed at something in Jessica’s tone. “In fact, I think I understand exactly what you’re trying to say.”

“The drug screens were completely clear,” Chief Shelton said, his expression grim. “Absolutely nothing any of the med scans could identify. No alcohol, no dust—nothing.”

Stephanie and Karl nodded, their expressions as unhappy as his. They sat in his office, facing his desk, Survivor and Lionheart on the backs of their chairs, and the accident report glowed on Shelton’s display.

“Karl,” the chief ranger said now, “you did good. That girl would be dead if you hadn’t been there, hadn’t acted as quickly as you did. I’ve put you in for a commendation for it, and you damned well deserve it.”

Karl nodded soberly, and Stephanie reached across to lay one hand on his forearm. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it much, but she knew the wreck site haunted him. Trudy’s injuries had been bad enough, but he and Survivor had also been the first to find what was left of Stan Chang’s body.

And all of it had brought back what had happened to Sumiko. She knew that, too. He’d made a lot of progress dealing with those memories, but not enough to protect him from the echoes of something like this.

“And Jessica did well to get what she got out of Ms. Franchitti,” Shelton continued. “For that matter, I have to admit that I was a bit surprised Ms. Franchitti was prepared to make a formal statement about Chang’s condition. Or what she thinks was his condition, anyway.”

It was Stephanie’s turn to nod. She’d been at least as surprised as Chief Shelton could possibly have been, and she didn’t like admitting that to herself. She’d always known her mom was smart, but in Trudy’s case, at least, she hadn’t paid enough attention to Marjorie Harrington’s observation about hidden depths and the ability of human beings to surprise you if you only gave them the opportunity.

“Unfortunately, we still don’t have any proof that this baka bakari was involved. And Ms. Franchitti can’t tell us who was supplying it to Chang, assuming someone actually was. Which”—he added dryly as Stephanie straightened in her chair—“I do assume someone was, Stephanie. But assumptions on my part, despite my vast wisdom and innate brilliance, do not constitute legal evidence. And neither do yours, young woman.”

“Point taken, Sir,” she said after a moment.

“Ms. Franchitti thinks he was getting them from Frank Câmara or someone else in that circle, but she never actually saw it happen. And, given that we’re talking about something that’s not a prohibited substance, even if it should be, I can scarcely hand this over to the sheriff or go to the magistrate myself and ask for a search warrant. At the same time, though, we’re beyond just personal injury, even serious personal injury. This is the first time—that we know of, anyway—where someone may have actually been killed because of this stuff, but it’s entirely possible it won’t be the last. So, I think you two are probably right. You have no idea how little I want you to be right, and not just because of how many ways this could go sideways. But you’re right that this has gotten to a point where just collecting anecdotal evidence isn’t enough. So, much as it pains me, I’ve screened Chief Chuchkova again, and this time she’s agreed—assuming certain conditions are met—to let you young idiots try it.”

“‘Idiots,’ Sir?” Stephanie repeated. “Isn’t that just a little strong?”

“Oh, excuse me.” Shelton rolled his eyes. “I meant to say ‘you overly enthusiastic young overachievers.’ Does that sound better?”

“Much better!” she agreed brightly.

“Of course it does…you young idiot,” he told her with a smile.

“Dead?” Herman Maye stared at Karl and Cordelia. “He’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so,” Karl replied as Herman sat down—collapsed, really—on the plastic bench. “It happened late yesterday.”

“And…and it’s confirmed that baka bakari was involved?”

“Not officially, no.” Karl shook his head, and saw a flicker of what might have been relief in Herman’s eyes. “But there’s not much question,” he continued unhurriedly. “Trudy Franchitti’s testimony is pretty damning, Herman. And she’s made an official statement to SFS.”

Herman swallowed, hard.

He’d been clearly unhappy to see Karl’s SFS cruiser land on the landing apron, for which Karl couldn’t blame him, given his concern that Orgeson and her goons might hear about Karl’s visit. But that visit was safely unofficial, if anyone asked, because he’d simply agreed to “drop Cordelia off” with Zack and Mack, since it was “on his way.” If anyone was keeping a close enough eye on Herman to know Karl had visited him at all, they should also be able to discover that fact.

Not that Karl had any intention of mentioning that—yet, at least—since the real reason he was here was to hit Herman as hard as possible with news of Stan Chang’s death. They’d figured that having Karl deliver the news in his official capacity as a law enforcement officer would be the best way to do that, and from Herman’s ashen expression, they’d been right.

“Eventually, this is all going to come out, one way or another, Herman,” Karl said. “Surely you’ve always known that.”

“But if I—If people think I supplied him with it…”

“Well, indirectly, you did,” Karl pointed out.

“But I never wanted to do!” Herman half-wailed. “And I never thought anyone would get killed!”

“Of course you didn’t.” Cordelia’s tone was much more sympathetic than Karl’s had been as she stepped into the “good cop” role. “But,” she continued a bit more sternly, “whatever you may have thought, you always knew this could happen.” He stared at her mutely and she shook her head. “Eldora Yazzie shattered her ribs and damaged both lungs, Herman. And Jake Simmons broke his back in that skimmer park accident! It’s sheer luck that he wasn’t killed, then.”

“Sphinx is a high-risk environment,” Karl said, pulling Herman’s eyes back to him. “It always has been, and probably always will be. Couple that with something like baka bakari, and it was inevitable someone was going to get killed eventually. Why do you think we’ve been trying to find a way to get on top of this?”

Herman stared at him for a long, still moment, then drew a deep breath.

“You’re right,” he said. “And I guess I always knew that. But I never wanted anyone to get hurt at all. For that matter, I never wanted to be involved with this at all! It just…happened. And now…”

He leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs and stared down at his interlocked fingers.

“I’m responsible, aren’t I?” he asked in a low voice.

“Legally?” Karl shrugged. “I honestly don’t know how that would shake out, Herman, but I doubt it. It’s not a legally prohibited substance—yet, at least—and you didn’t personally provide it to Stan. Or did you?” He frowned. “I know Stan hung around with Frank a lot. Did you ever hand any of it directly to him?”

“Never.” Herman didn’t look up, but he shook his head firmly. “Oh, he made a couple of collection runs with Frank, so I probably handed him a carton of it once or twice. But I never gave it directly to him; only handed it to him when he was here with Frank.”

“In that case, I’m not sure about the legal liability aspects of it.” Karl shrugged. “There is a moral aspect to it, of course, but you didn’t make Stan fly while he was using it. But, Herman, ultimately you are responsible. You’re the one who cooked it up the first time, however accidentally, and the one who’s gone on supplying it to Frank. And to Orgeson, now.”

Herman nodded wretchedly.

“I’ll stop,” he said. “I’ll stop right now.” He looked up at last, and his eyes were hard. “I’ll go to Dr. Bonaventure. I’ll tell her about it. And I’ll make a formal statement to Chief Ranger Shelton. Orgeson and her thugs can do whatever they want about it, but I’m not going to get anyone else killed.”

“No.” Karl shook his head, and Herman blinked in surprise.

“Frank knows which mushrooms and other ingredients go into your ‘special stir-fry,’ doesn’t he?”

“Well, yes,” Herman acknowledged. “He knows which mushrooms, at least, and he watched me cooking it a couple of times. But I don’t think he knows all the ingredients, and he doesn’t know the proportions, because I was careful not to tell him after I first realized what he might be up to.”

“But he does know the mushrooms—which means Orgeson does by now, too,” Karl pointed out. “And he may know the other ingredients. He definitely knows at least some of them, anyway, and I suspect a good chemical analysis of the final product could crack the basic recipe for the rest of them. For now, they obviously prefer to…encourage you to cook it up for them, but I’m pretty sure that if you just stop, they’ll find someone else to experiment until they come up with the right recipe and cooking times. And the problem is that this stuff still isn’t illegal, and nobody knows enough about it to decide whether or not it ought to be. So, we need you to go right on doing what you’re doing. I’ll take you up on that formal statement for the chief ranger, and I think we need one that details what Orgeson and her thugs were really threatening you with before Cordy and the guys turned up that night. It would only be your word against theirs, of course, and there’s four of them, but it would go to establishing a pattern if all of this ends up in the courts. And I promise we’ll keep it completely confidential until and unless there is a formal investigation of Orgeson. But in the meantime, you have to play along with them until we can get some kind of break. And I need a couple of kilos of baka bakari to send to somebody I know in Landing for a complete analysis.”

“But somebody’s been killed,” Herman said stubbornly. “I don’t care whether it’s illegal or not—not anymore! Like you said, I’m ultimately responsible for anything that happens because of this stuff. I know that now, whatever the courts may finally say about it. I can’t pretend I’m not, and I don’t want to contribute to any more deaths. Or even ‘just’ any more accidents that don’t happen to kill somebody!”

He meant it, Karl realized, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I understand,” he said. “I really do. But look at it this way, Herman. There’s no way to prevent Orgeson from finding another cook. It may take her a while, but she will eventually, and you know it. So even if you stopped providing it to her tomorrow, more people are going to get hurt by it down the road, anyway, unless we can figure out if—and how—it ought to be regulated. If you really want to make up for any responsibility, you need to help us get a handle on it, figure out just how dangerous it really is, and stop Orgeson and Frank from going right on peddling it. And that means you have to go on working with them while we put together the facts we need to figure out how to stop them, too.”

Herman stared at him for another long moment, and then, slowly, he nodded.


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Framed