Anniversary Day (31 page)

She really did need his help, and Talia’s help as well. Talia had even more experience in this area than Flint did, because Talia had looked for her sisters, as she called the other clones of Flint’s natural born child, Emmeline. Talia had spent months on that search before Flint had caught her and done his best to stop any damage she might have caused.

“Dad?” Talia asked. She sounded scared now. She hadn’t made the mental leap that he had. She didn’t know what was coming once this crisis was over.

He didn’t want to tell her either.

He cleared his throat, and swallowed, feeling really uncomfortable. But he had to go forward. He couldn’t change what had just happened. The best thing he could do was find these assassins and the person who had brought them to the Moon, and then he could worry about the future.

“Miles?” DeRicci said again.

“First of all,” he said, sounding odd, even to himself, “let’s not call them clones. They’re assassins or wannabe assassins. There are a lot of law-abiding people on the Moon who happen to be clones. Let’s not shove everyone into that category.”

“Fine,” DeRicci said impatiently. “I haven’t let any word get out about them. What I want to know is can you help me?”

Talia was looking at Flint, her face pale. She had just realized what he was talking about.

“Yes,” he said. “I can help. So can Talia. But we need a place to work. You’re in a hurry, right?”

“I needed this done before these clon—men—attacked anyone,” DeRicci said. “Which would be yesterday. So yes, I’m in a hurry.”

“Then you probably don’t want us using your equipment. If someone backtraces our investigations—”

“Are you suggesting that you’ll go to your office? Miles, we don’t have time.”

“We’re not going to follow police procedure,” he said. “What we do won’t hold up in court.”

“We’ll reinvent that if we have to,” DeRicci said, surprising him. She usually followed rules, even though she didn’t like them. “I’m not worried about that. These clo—assassins are saying that this is just the beginning, but they won’t say the beginning of what. We need to find out before they establish the ending, because I have a hunch we’re not going to like it.”

Expedience, not legalities. DeRicci was scared.

“All right then,” Flint said. “Get us set up—and not inside your office. We’ll keep this part as far from you as we can.”

“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’m not sure I can trust Hänsel, and I really don’t think Rudra is capable of doing this right.”

Flint nodded. He didn’t think so either. And this was much more important than DeRicci realized. At least for Talia and all the others like her.

Flint had to do this right.

Fifty-five

When Nyquist arrived at Space Traffic’s Interrogation Center, a computer informed his links that Palmette waited for him in interrogation room 65B. The number itself surprised him, even though he knew Space Traffic had more interrogation rooms than all of the other Armstrong authorities combined. Space Traffic handled everything from contraband materials to contraband humans. It was the first line of defense against alien governments trying to snatch someone without going through the proper procedures.

More red flags went through Space Traffic than anywhere else on the Moon. Not only did Space Traffic have a lot of interrogation rooms, it had a corresponding number of holding cells, ostensibly to hold anyone—or anything— until it/he/she/they got transported off the Moon again.

He hadn’t been in the Interrogation Center before. He was surprised at how clean it looked, and then realized why. White walls, bright white lights, white floors, white tables, white ceilings. The Interrogation Center was designed to unnerve, and it did—even the interrogators.

Before he came in here, he had briefly spoken to Murray. Murray had explained how the Interrogation Center worked, and why it was better to keep Palmette here than it was to take her to Armstrong Police Headquarters.

Nyquist preferred familiar surroundings—he was already off-balance today—but he listened to Murray. Murray’s argument, besides the basics (that she belonged here) was that she might need to be sent to the Earth Alliance for some stronger punishment than any Moon laws could dish out. So better to keep her here than subject her to transport.

What neither man was saying was that if the news got out that she was in any way responsible for the attacks on this day, there was no guarantee she would survive a transport. Not just because a mob might take her down, but also because the police themselves might not allow her to survive the journey.

It had taken nearly an hour longer for Palmette to go through decontamination than Nyquist expected. The Quarantine Squad had discovered a device attached to her body—although from what Nyquist understood, “attached” was not quite a strong enough word. The device had almost become part of her body, parts of it deeply embedded in the skin.

It took two high level medical avatars to remove the device. The squad leader wanted to send for an actual physician, but Murray had talked them out of it. He reminded them that Palmette had already tried to kill a bunch of people that day; there was no guarantee that the device wouldn’t kill a living breathing person who touched it as well.

Nyquist was annoyed that he hadn’t been consulted about this, although, in truth, he would have made the same decision. No one in Space Traffic had seen this kind of device before, nor could the avatars find it in any known database.

Palmette wouldn’t tell anyone what it was. In fact, she refused to talk at all.

Nyquist hoped that wouldn’t last. He needed to talk to her, and he had bet his part of the investigation on the idea that she would talk to him. Otherwise, he could be back at the Security Building helping DeRicci.

Before Nyquist went into the Interrogation Center, Murray told him where the nearest cafeteria was to Room 65B. Inside, Murray said, were sandwiches, sweets, and more coffee than the most dedicated investigator would ever need.

Since Nyquist had managed to choke down a lunch—not that he wanted food—he figured he wouldn’t need anything else. Still, he was surprised that Space Traffic provided food to its interrogators. Armstrong PD certainly didn’t.

The Interrogation Center had no direct openings into Space Traffic Headquarters or to any public part of the Port. A prisoner had to go through heavily guarded, high security back corridors to get to an interrogation room.

So did the interrogator.

Nyquist used the walk through the white corridors to calm himself. He also had to review what he’d spent the last two hours learning about Palmette.

She had never married. No long-term relationships were on file with the City of Armstrong. No living children, which Nyquist found to be an interesting turn of phrase in her biographical material, one he sent an information bot to track down, wishing he had the time to sort through the public records himself.

He had to resort to police files, security department files, and the standard public records. The files from the various police psychiatrists hadn’t arrived yet, although a judge had authorized their release. Nyquist would get pinged when they arrived. He planned to excuse himself from the interrogation to study them when (if) they got to his links.

She had been born in Armstrong, the only child of two engineers, now deceased. As far as Nyquist could tell, she had no living family. She lived alone, had no pets, and, according to her financials, seemed to spend no money in public places like bars or restaurants, suggesting that she didn’t have much of a social life either.

This wasn’t a change after the bombing. She hadn’t done anything before it either, except tend to her career—a career that had gone off-track the moment she showed up, coffee in hand, outside Alvina’s dilapidated house.

Nyquist didn’t like what little he found. It gave him both too little and too much to go on. Enough so that he could speculate, but not enough for him to be confident of that speculation.

He had gone into a thousand interrogations with less, but somehow that felt wrong in this case. Perhaps because he knew Palmette. Or perhaps because he felt oddly guilty.

He’d been off his stride since she challenged him about law and justice.

Since he realized she wasn’t the innocent victim he had hoped she would be.

Interrogation Room 65B looked the same as the other interrogation rooms near it. White with a one-way mirror, more ways to record and process information than any interrogation room in the Armstrong PD, and thick walls so that no creature could use its limbs to break through. Some of the other members of the Earth Alliance, aliens by Armstrong standards, had the strength to easily break standard human construction, but not here.

This place was designed for non-humans. That it imprisoned humans easily was a bonus.

Nyquist stopped outside the one-way glass and looked in. Palmette sat at the table, her hands flat on the white surface. Restraints gave her some freedom of movement—she could move her arms to her side or back up the table—but not enough that she could attack her interrogator or try to break out of the room.

She was wearing some kind of beige jumpsuit, which was soothing to his eyes in all that white. He knew, from the materials that bombarded him as he went into the Interrogation Center, that he was supposed to change into pure white clothing as well, so that his clothing disturbed her eyes, but he wasn’t going to do it.

He needed some psychological advantages, it was true, but not that kind. Besides, Palmette was too smart for the standard mind games. She’d been trained in them, just like the officers in Space Traffic.

Just like Nyquist himself.

She looked up as if she could see him behind the window. She couldn’t, of course. Nor could she hear anything from outside the room.

She looked thinner than he remembered, thinner, even, than she had seemed inside Terminal 81. There he had seen her as a threat. Now he saw her as diminished woman, one who had nothing. Less than nothing really.

Logically
, she had said,
it’s better if I die
.

She had been right. It would have been much better for her if she had died.

Which begged the question—why hadn’t she tried harder to get the squad to kill her? Why didn’t she have her own failsafe, something she could have activated to facilitate her own death?

Maybe that device they had found on her would have done that, and maybe she hadn’t activated it.

Did that mean she was willing to cooperate? Or was she regretting her decision in Terminal 81?

Somehow he needed to find out.

He put his palm on the door and waited for it to process his living flesh, his DNA, and his authorization. Before the door unlocked, it cautioned him that he might be dealing with a dangerous offender. Should there be any violence at all—from him or from her—other authorities would be summoned.

He had to indicate his formal—legal—understanding before the door allowed him inside.

He hadn’t had to do that in police headquarters in more than thirty years. He had forgotten about all the strange legalities scattered through Armstrong as a matter of course.

The door opened inward. He stepped inside.

The air was much colder in here, uncomfortably so, and it smelled of cleaning fluid. He had the option of making the room hotter and having it smell of rotted flesh. The idea of that turned his stomach. He just left it as close to standard as possible.

“I didn’t think they’d let you anywhere near me,” she said before he could speak. “Don’t you have a conflict of interest?”

He knew what she was trying to do; they had the same training. Whoever spoke first theoretically controlled the interview.

Provided, of course, that the other person didn’t understand the mind game.

Nyquist had been playing that kind of mind game long before Palmette was out of school.

“What would that conflict of interest be?” he asked.

“I thought if you cared about….” She let her voice trail off.

He could actually read her expression for just a brief moment. She had believed him back in Terminal 81 when he said he cared about her. Now she was doubting that.

If she doubted it too long, she would not cooperate.

“For a standard investigation, you’re right,” he said as he sat across from her. “There’s nothing standard about this.”

She bit her lower lip, watching him.

“You’re in a lot of trouble, Ursula,” he said, deciding at that moment to go with her vulnerability. He was going to be the friend, the mentor, the person she could rely on.

“Is that why I’m still here?” she asked. “So that you can ship me off to some prison somewhere without sullying Armstrong any further?”

“No,” he said, deciding to lie. “It’s so that I can talk to you without Gumiela watching over this. She’d stop this interrogation from the start.”