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CHAPTER SIX

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Six hours later, I awoke to the pleasant and mildly surprising discovery that I had not, in fact, been murdered in my sleep. I got up, took a quick shower, made myself some breakfast, and got to work.

I was still at it when Selene joined me. “Good morning, Gregory,” she said, her pupils looking a little uncertain as she sat down across the table from me. “Did I wake you?”

“No, I woke up on my own,” I assured her. It was mostly true, hopefully true enough that it wouldn’t trigger a change in my scent that she could pick up on. “Slept a little in here, then figured as long as the ship was quiet I might as well hit the day running.”

She craned her neck to look at the Bilswift city map I’d opened on my info pad. “We’re not going into the mountains?”

“Maybe later,” I said. “Right now, I think we should look into Lukki’s murder and Galfvi’s disappearance before those trails go any colder than they already have.”

“I don’t think Detective-Sergeant Kreega wants our help,” Selene warned.

“I wasn’t planning to offer her a choice,” I said. “The fact that she got here last night as quickly as she did tells me she’s already leaning toward pinning everything on outsiders, which at the moment are you and me.”

“And Tirano,” Selene murmured. “All right. Where do we start?”

“The fish market,” I said, tapping a spot on my pad. “Right now, both Tirano and Galfvi are effectively ciphers. We need to get to know them: how long they’ve worked at the fish market, how well they got along with each other and the bosses, what their usual routine was, where they lived, who else they hung out with, and all the rest of it.”

“So we’re treating Galfvi like a bounty target?”

“Exactly,” I said. “After that, I want to go see where Lukki was gunned down. I have some questions that only a good look at the landscape can answer.”

“Such as why the shooter was able to get to point-blank range?”

And why he was at street level in the first place instead of sniping from a rooftop,” I said. “And why her thugs didn’t do a better job of protecting her. And if there aren’t any badgemen around, maybe we’ll see if there’s anything of interest inside her apartment.”

“I’m sure Kreega would want that sort of help even less.”

“We’ll try not to trouble her with such details,” I said. “Regardless, we need to get a handle on both incidents. If we can find a common denominator, we may be able to connect the dots.”

Selene suddenly stiffened. “Tirano,” she said softly.

I was about to say that, yes, Tirano was definitely one of those common denominators when the boy appeared in the dayroom hatchway. “Hello,” he said, a little uncertainly. “Am I interrupting?”

“No, not at all,” Selene said, standing up and turning to face him. “Are you hungry? Can I make you something to eat?”

“I don’t think I have time,” Tirano said. “I need to get to work.”

“Afraid you’re not going to work today,” I told him. “We need to keep you here.”

“But I have work to do,” he said.

“Tirano, Galfvi is missing,” Selene put in gently.

“Missing?” Tirano said, giving her a sort of half frown. Kadolian physiology didn’t lend itself to that sort of facial expression, but he was trying mightily to make it work. “He was there yesterday. How can he be missing today?”

“We don’t know,” I said. “But until we figure out what happened to him, we think it’ll be better for you to stay here.”

“And to stay here quietly,” Selene added. “That means you can’t leave or let anyone know where you are.”

“Did something happen to him?” he asked, his eyes flicking back and forth between us, his pupils still unreadable to me. “Was he hurt? Was he stolen?”

“Was he kidnapped,” I corrected. “Sapient beings like Galfvi are kidnapped, not stolen.”

“Mr. Darnell says Galfvi and I are his property,” Tirano said. “Like the seafood shop and the fish.”

I looked at Selene, caught the sudden flash of anger in her pupils. “Mr. Darnell is mistaken,” I said. “Whatever he told you, or whatever Lukki told you, you’re a person, with all the rights and privileges as laid out in Commonwealth law.”

“I understand,” Tirano said, though I was pretty sure he didn’t. “But Mr. Darnell will be angry if I don’t come do my work.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I soothed. “We’re going to go talk to him this morning. We’ll let him know what’s happened.”

“All right.” Tirano looked back at Selene. “So then I do have time to eat?”

* * *

Selene had come up with several food suggestions, no doubt with Tirano’s ongoing Kadolian acclimation in mind. But the boy asked for more of the crab chowder, so she heated up another bowl of it for him. Reminding him again not to leave the ship, call anyone, or let anyone in, Selene and I collected our gear and headed out.

Once again, mindful of our phones’ tracking capabilities, we left them in our cabins.

“Were you going to tell him how to use the deadbolt?” she asked as we made our way down the zigzag.

“No, and I’m hoping he doesn’t figure it out on his own,” I told her. “The last thing I want is to get locked out of my own ship because our houseguest is sleeping deeply amid a potpourri of Kadolian spices or something.”

“That’s not really how it works,” Selene corrected, her pupils looking a little cross. “Besides, there’s always the back door.”

“Theoretically,” I cautioned. The Ruth’s secret back door was through the Number Two equipment bay, which held equipment normally accessible only from the outside of the ship. Our bay, however, was gimmicked with a removeable back panel that would allow us to get into or out of the ship without anyone who might be waiting by the entryway being the wiser.

Unfortunately, in this case, Bilswift spaceport’s compact size and sparseness of standing monitors and fueling equipment worked against that kind of inconspicuousness. At most ports there was enough clutter and associated visual cover to let us slip into and out of the Number Two bay without being seen. Here, without enough of that to shield us from view, pulling that off without being spotted would take careful timing.

“But as a practical matter, I wouldn’t want to try it until after dark,” I added. “You’d be pretty exposed if you tried it in broad daylight. Where’d you park, by the way?”

“Under the runaround stand overhang,” she said. “There’d been a little hail earlier during the rainstorm, and I thought the car would be better protected there.”

“Good idea,” I said. “Of course it meant a longer walk in the rain for you but . . . uh-oh.”

“What?” she asked.

“That dark blue ground car,” I said, giving a small nod toward a vehicle parked twenty meters behind the runaround stand. “Odds are that’s a badgeman in an unmarked car.”

“You think Kreega sent him here to watch us?”

“Unless he moonlights as the town greeter,” I said with a sigh. “Might as well go see what he wants.”

We reached the bottom of the zigzag and headed toward the two parked cars. We passed ours without stopping and continued on. The driver of the blue car slid down his side window as we approached. “Morning, Officer,” I said as we came to a stop. “Out enjoying the morning air?”

“Good morning, Mr. Roarke,” he said in a neutral tone as he held up a badge for my inspection. Apparently, Kreega’s pretend folksy casualness wasn’t official policy for the rest of Bilswift’s badgemen. “May I ask where you’re going?”

“To the Javersin brothers’ fish shop,” I said, eyeing the badge. It was Bilswift issue, all right, with the name ZILOR along the bottom. “We’re interested in trying some of your local mari-mari, and Bicks Javersin told me yesterday that it would be ripe today.”

“I’ve heard it’s very good,” Zilor said. “I’ll give you a ride.”

“Ah . . . thanks,” I said, frowning. That was unexpected. “But we have our own car.”

“I’ll be happy to bring you back after you do your shopping.”

“We may want to do more touristing after we get our fish,” I said.

“As I said, I’ll bring you back.”

This was starting to get awkward. “I doubt Detective-Sergeant Kreega will want you playing chauffer to a couple of visitors,” I warned.

“Actually, Detective-Sergeant Kreega has already instructed me to bring you to the seafood shop.” Zilor touched a control, and I heard the back door locks disengage. “Please don’t make me insist.”

I huffed out a breath. “Wouldn’t think of it,” I muttered, opening the door and ushering Selene into the sealed rear compartment. “Especially since you ask so nicely.”

“Bilswift is known all over Alainn for its politeness,” Zilor said. “Oh, and just leave your weapons back there on the seat when we reach the seafood shop, okay?”

“We still have our bounty hunter licenses,” I told him. “That entitles us to carry weapons.”

“I know,” Zilor said agreeably. “That’s why I’m asking you to leave them back there instead of confiscating them right now and keeping them up here with me.”

“Ah,” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure that was what the law said, but it wasn’t a hill I was willing to fight over. “Again, since you’re so polite about it. Can we assume this won’t take very long?”

“You can assume anything you want,” Zilor said as he started the car. “Doesn’t necessarily make it so.”

* * *

We arrived at the Javersin brothers’ shop to find the place still shuttered as Selene had seen it when she drove past the previous night. There were two other badgeman cars parked along the street, this pair fully marked as such. One of them was an aircar, and as Zilor walked us past I noted it was marked as Cavindoss Law Enforcement. Either Kreega had elected to call in help from the much bigger city beyond the mountains or else someone had made that decision for her.

Which was probably not a move that would tilt things in our favor. Outside pressure tended to make officials grumpy and goad them toward impulsive and not necessarily well-thought-out verdicts. With Selene and me at the top of Kreega’s suspect list, hasty moves were not what we were looking for.

Kreega and two other badgemen were waiting in the back of the shop near the interior door I’d noticed the previous day, conversing in low tones, as we were ushered in. One of them was considerably older than Kreega and the other uniformed badgeman and dressed in plainclothes, and I tentatively identified him as the out-of-towner. Darnell and Bicks Javersin were off by themselves in the prep area, also talking together and working anxiously at an info pad. No one in either group was smiling.

As my father used to say, Watch out for people who look like they’re going to a funeral when there’s no obvious guest of honor. They could be holding that spot open for you.

“Mr. Roarke,” Kreega greeted me with a perfunctory nod as Zilor took us over to her group. “Thank you for joining us.”

“Glad to oblige,” I said. “As Badgeman Zilor probably told you, we were on our way over anyway. How can we be of service?”

“That’s one of them?” the plainclothes badgeman interjected, nodding at Selene.

“Yes, she’s a Kadolian,” Kreega confirmed, the temperature of her voice dropping a couple of degrees. So much for his presence at her crime scene being her idea.

“And you wanted her here why?”

“To test a theory,” Kreega said, beckoning to Selene. “If you’ll follow me, Ms. Selene?”

Kreega led the way through the door into a small office with a pair of desks, a large file cabinet, a set of shelves with the usual random detritus of every normal office, and a waist-high Poconos Barline safe tucked into the back corner.

A waist-high safe whose door was swung all the way open.

“That’s how the Javersin brothers found their safe this morning,” Kreega said, waving toward it. “They say there were sixteen thousand commarks in there when they left last night.”

“Ouch,” I said sympathetically. Sixteen thousand: comfortably within the range I’d estimated for the stash hidden in Galfvi’s robe. “Was it forced?”

Kreega shook her head. “Opened with the combination.”

“Ah.” I gestured toward the safe. “May I?”

“Go ahead,” she said. “We’ve already pulled off everything we could.”

I nodded and walked around the desks to the safe. The door was equipped with a standard keypad, the manufacturer plate identifying the lock as relatively low-end but still perfectly respectable. As Kreega had said, there were no indications the safe had been forced. “Who had the combination?” I asked.

“We did,” Darnell Javersin said.

I looked back to find that he and Bicks had joined us and were standing nervously in the doorway. “Anyone else?” I asked. “Tirano or Galfvi never went into it?”

“No,” Darnell said.

“No, no—remember?” Bicks said. “Couple of weeks ago. You had Tirano put some money in there.”

“Yeah, but the safe door was already open,” Darnell said.

“You’re sure the money was there when you left last night?” I asked. “That was a lot of cash to leave lying around.”

“It was, but we needed it,” Darnell said. “We have a shipment coming in today, and we needed it on hand to pay for the goods. And yes, it was in there and the door was locked.”

“But Tirano and Galfvi were still finishing up when we left,” Bicks added.

“If you’re quite finished, Mr. Roarke,” the plainclothesman said impatiently, “we’ve already been through this.”

We haven’t been through it,” I pointed out. “Detective . . . ?”

He glowered at me. “Detective-Lieutenant Sovelli. And we didn’t bring you here to play badgemen.”

I raised my eyebrows politely. “No?”

“Detective-Sergeant Kreega,” Sovelli said, leaning just a little too hard on Kreega’s lower rank, “thinks the Kadolian who worked here might have been able to crack the combination. She thinks your Kadolian can prove that.”

“Okay, let’s start over,” I suggested, raising a halting hand toward Selene as she started forward. “I’m Gregory Roarke, former bounty hunter, current crockett. This is my partner—not my possession, my partner—Selene. We’re here because you have at least one murder on your hands, maybe two, and at least one disappearance, maybe two. You think we might be able to help sort through the ground clutter and help you find some answers, and you’re very aware that we’re under no legal obligation to do so. So let’s have a little less hostility and a little more respect, okay? Because whoever foisted you on Detective-Sergeant Kreega is expecting results, and I don’t think you want to disappoint them. Did I miss anything?”

Sovelli’s face had gone through a whole range of expressions during my little speech, starting with disbelief, shifting to outrage, and ending up in cold loathing. For a couple of seconds he just stood there, and then he took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said. “My turn. You have no standing, no authority, and no allies here. Furthermore, you and your partner are also prime suspects in this case. I don’t need you here, I don’t particularly want you here, and I’d just as soon toss you into one of the Bilswift cells to rot. You so much as lean over the line and I’ll have you there so fast your ears will fall off. Did I miss anything?”

“No, I think you got it covered,” I assured him calmly. Kreega, standing beside him, had a pinched sort of expression. Possibly trying to figure out which side of this she was on. “Just wanted to make sure we both knew where we stood. Now, what exactly do you want Selene to do?”

“I want to see if she can crack the safe,” Sovelli said. “I’m told Kadolians have a good sense of smell, maybe good enough to pick up the Javersins’ scent from the buttons. I want to see if that’s possible.”

“Fair enough,” I said. Actually, that was one of the tests I’d been planning for Selene anyway. “Selene?”

Silently, she moved past me to the safe and knelt down beside it. Leaning close to the door and the keypad, she began sniffing.

I looked back at the Javersin brothers. “How long have Tirano and Galfvi worked for you?” I asked.

“Galfvi’s been with us for nearly eight months,” Darnell said. “Tirano for about a year.”

“How have they been as employees?” I asked, frowning slightly. So if Tirano had been orphaned at six and was now ten, we were looking at a three-year gap. What had he been doing during that time? Wandering around on his own until Lukki ran into him?

“Decent enough, I suppose,” Darnell said.

“What was their attitude like?” Sovelli asked. “Were either of them mouthy or argumentative?”

“No, neither of them,” Darnell said. “Tirano was especially cooperative.”

“Which he shouldn’t have been, if you ask me,” Bicks growled. “I mean, a fish-shop cutter after having once been a tracker? Doesn’t take a genius to see that’s a big step down.”

“What kind of tracker?” I asked. “He track anything in particular?”

The two brothers exchanged a quick look. “No, no, not really,” Darnell said. “There used to be some natives living up in the mountains—”

“The Loporri,” Bicks put in.

“Yeah, the Loporri,” Darnell said. “There used to be a village of them up the mountain near a place called Seven Strands. All gone now, but people still sometimes go up there looking for artifacts.”

“Tirano used to sometimes go with groups to help sniff them out,” Bicks added.

“Ah.” The missing three years from his timeline? “Still, there’s a lot to be said for a job where you’re out of the weather and don’t have to tramp up and down mountains all day. What about Galfvi?”

“He was fine,” Darnell said. “Though I sometimes got the feeling he thought we were beneath him.”

“Like Tirano ought to have thought,” Bicks muttered.

“Did Galfvi come from Lukki, too?” I asked.

“No, he just showed up one day looking for a job,” Darnell said.

“It was really kind of weird,” Bicks said. “He just sort of popped up, said he liked fish, and asked if he could work here.”

“Anything else odd happen that day?” Kreega asked.

“No, nothing,” Darnell said. “Though—” He frowned at his brother. “Didn’t we decide he must have come in on the Tranlisoa shuttle?”

“Yeah, because he wasn’t local and didn’t have a car or any way to have come from Cavindoss or anywhere else,” Bicks agreed. “Yeah, I remember wondering why someone would leave a major place like Tranlisoa and come to the middle of nowhere without a plan.”

“Maybe he had a plan and it fell through,” Kreega said.

“Speaking of plans,” Sovelli said, turning to Selene. “How is that going? You got anything?”

I turned back. Selene had finished her analysis and was waiting quietly for a break in the conversation. “Yes,” she said. “It would take me a little time, but I could open it.”

Sovelli threw me a significant look. “How?”

Selene looked at the brothers. “Is it all right if I tell the others the numbers?” she asked. “I don’t know how many of each was used, or the order.”

Darnell and Bicks exchanged looks. “I suppose that’ll be okay,” Darnell said cautiously.

Selene nodded. “The numbers are two, four, seven, and nine,” she said. “As I said, that’s all I know. But that knowledge would limit the possibilities to something a thief might find manageable.”

“How do you know those are the numbers?” Darnell asked.

“They’re the ones you and your brother touched.”

“Did you smell either Tirano or Galfvi on them?” I asked.

“Not on the keypad,” Selene said. “But there’s the scent of the same plastic as is in the clean-up gloves out in the prep room.”

“So the perp wore gloves,” Kreega said, nodding. “Not surprising. Also nonconclusive.”

“Sounds pretty conclusive to me,” Sovelli said, a note of satisfaction in his voice. “Ms. Selene just proved Tirano’s the only one who could get the safe open. He popped the lock, took the money, and ran.”

“Maybe,” Kreega said. “But Galfvi had access to the office, too. Didn’t he?”

“I can smell traces of both of them in here,” Selene confirmed.

“So he was here,” Sovelli growled. “So what? Patth can’t do what Selene just did. Either Tirano did it on his own, or he and Galfvi did it together. It’s the only way it works.”

Darnell’s face screwed up. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I can’t help wondering why either of them would do it now. We’ve had more money than that in the safe before. Sometimes a lot more.”

“Like with the Nellingham deal,” Bicks said.

“Exactly,” Darnell said. “We had nearly thirty thousand in the safe then. So why now, when all they could get was sixteen?”

“Maybe Tirano decided to run, and he took what he could get,” Sovelli suggested.

“Or maybe he needed to run,” Bicks said, his tone going dark. “If Tirano and Galfvi were working together . . . You said some of Galfvi’s blood was in here, Detective-Sergeant?”

“There was some Patth blood, yes,” Kreega confirmed. “But we’re still analyzing it to see if it’s Galfvi’s.”

“It is,” Selene told her. “I smelled it when we came in.”

“Or you just smelled him,” Sovelli countered. “You already said his scent was all over the place.”

Selene shook her head. “The scent of a person’s blood is different from the scent of the person.”

Sovelli grunted. “Whatever,” he said reluctantly. “Anyway, it already seemed pretty straightforward. Tirano opened the safe and took the money. Galfvi caught him at it, they argued, Tirano cut him and they both ran off.”

“And Galfvi didn’t go straight to the badgemen?” I asked. “Or even just call them?”

“Maybe he couldn’t,” Sovelli said. “Maybe he’s lying dead behind a house somewhere.”

“No,” Selene said. “The blood loss was very small, not enough to incapacitate him.”

“Maybe Tirano dragged him out of here and he bled out somewhere else,” Sovelli countered.

“There’s no blood trail through the shop,” Selene said.

“Did you find the weapon he was cut with?” I asked.

“It was one of the shop’s cutting knives,” Kreega said. “We’ve got it bagged back at the station.”

“Could I examine it?” Selene asked. “I might be able to tell who was holding it when Galfvi was cut.”

Sovelli snorted. “Like maybe space pixies? Come on. I know you want to protect a fellow Kadolian, but this has gotten ridiculous.”

“Right,” I said. “Because it saves so much time to come to a conclusion without having to wait for that pesky evidence stuff.”

“And if I were you, I’d watch your own mouth, bounty hunter,” Sovelli warned. “You carry a plasmic. Lukki Parsons was killed with a plasmic. You were seen fighting with her at Panza’s Café. More of that pesky evidence?”

“Connecting dots isn’t the same as evidence,” I reminded him.

“It’s usually a good start.” Sovelli looked at Kreega. “I don’t mean to tell you how to run your town, Detective-Sergeant, but I’d like to point out that you’ve got two prime suspects working your crime scene.”

“They’re helping collect evidence,” Kreega countered. “There’s nothing either of them is saying that won’t be checked via other sources or other means.”

“Well, then, try this one.” Sovelli jabbed a finger at Selene. “She’s already said she could open the safe. If that means Tirano could have done it, it also means she could have.”

“Absolutely,” I said sarcastically. “Because the first thing everyone does when they roll into a new town is pick a shop at random and rob it.”

“Maybe you’re all working together,” he shot back. “Tirano does the recon and prep work, you swoop in and grab the goods.” He turned again to Kreega. “I’d recommend you get a warrant to search their ship. I’d lay you odds that Tirano and the money are both there.”

“Hey!” Zilor’s voice came from the main part of the shop. “Come back here!”

I looked at the Javersin brothers, caught their sudden surprise and disquiet as they looked out the office door behind them. Reflexively, I dropped my hand to my holster before remembering my plasmic was tucked away out of sight in the back seat of Zilor’s car. I glanced around, spotted a decorative paperweight in relatively easy reach on one of the desks that would do as a makeshift throwing weapon in a pinch. The Javersins stepped quickly out of the doorway—

As a pair of gray-robed Patth stormed into the office, a flustered Zilor trailing behind them. “Detective-Sergeant—” he began.

“Where is he?” the Patth in the lead demanded harshly. He twitched aside the right flap of his robe, revealing a holstered plasmic. “Where is he?

“Where is the person who murdered our kinsman?”


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