Anniversary Day (40 page)

Authors: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

BOOK: Anniversary Day

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He stood for a moment in the manicured lawn of the most elite school in Armstrong, his heart twisting. He didn’t want to leave her either. He didn’t want to do anything except bunker into his house and never come out.

But he was taking his own advice. He was returning to his daily routine. As were so many other people all over the Moon. Others didn’t have that luxury yet. Others were still cleaning up the collapsed domes, mourning friends and family, and trying to rebuild ruined buildings.

He knew that DeRicci hadn’t had more than a few hours of sleep per day since the attacks happened. And he knew that she hadn’t seen much of Nyquist either, who was leading the interrogations of that facilitator, Palmette.

For everyone, life would never be exactly the same. But for a lot of people, daily life would never return.

Flint and Talia had been lucky this time.

He was going to make sure they remained lucky.

He was going to figure out what the hell happened, and make sure that the third wave never, ever, arrived.

He wasn’t going to do it for himself or for the Moon or for the Earth Alliance.

He was doing it for Talia. She deserved a normal life. She deserved a bright future.

He was going to make sure she would get it.

Seventy-three

Nyquist carried the two to-go cups of coffee into Space Traffic’s Interrogation Center. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept. He wasn’t really sure how many days had passed since the bombings. Time ran together, the hours blurry and unimportant.

The white walls no longer distracted him. The silence of the place made it seem almost like a sanctuary.

Maybe he would feel that way if Ursula Palmette wasn’t in room 65B. He had started to think of it as “her” room. It wasn’t, of course. The rules of interrogation and police procedure had kicked in. She had a cell.

So did he. He hadn’t gone home in days. Gumiela had given him a choice: a day off or a one-day suspension.

He chose the day off and slept. Then he grabbed half a dozen changes of clothing, and essentially moved into the prison wing of Space Traffic.

He wasn’t leaving until he knew everything about Ursula Palmette. Every little detail, from the name of her teacher when she was seven to the thought she had in her brain the day she decided to destroy the Moon.

He felt like he was partway there. He’d gotten names from her, names that he passed on to others. People were watching the interrogation now, or if they weren’t watching, they would eventually watch in a few days.

He was part of a large investigation. Every single police officer, every single person with any kind of law enforcement authority all over the Moon, had been mobilized to catch the sons of bitches who had done this.

DeRicci had also told him that the Earth Alliance was now involved. Law enforcement organizations all over the Alliance were investigating every single detail. There was more manpower devoted to this than any other investigation in Earth Alliance history.

If, indeed, manpower was the right word. The alien governments were involved as well, feeding information, seeking the killers, tracking the clones.

Nyquist couldn’t hold it all in his head. He knew that DeRicci was trying. She hadn’t slept much either, and he doubted she had left her office. Right now, she was the only real authority on the Moon. Several mayors were dead or incapacitated, and the ones that weren’t were dealing with crises caused by all the Dome explosions.

Even the mayors of the smaller cities were too busy to concern themselves with Moon government. So DeRicci had taken over. Or had slid into the role anyway, because
someone
had to be in charge, and she was acting like the person in charge, so people came to her with their problems.

Better her than him.

He was dealing with Palmette.

Without a partner.

Gumiela hadn’t even insulted him by suggesting one. In fact, the day she had ordered him to take some time off, she had sideways apologized to him.

I’d partner you with someone, Bartholomew,
she had said,
but you’d spend more time getting that person up to speed and then, I suspect, that person would hurt more than help
.

His long-time complaint. He had always done better alone.

He wondered what would have happened if Dispatch hadn’t assigned Palmette to that crime scene four years ago. She’d probably still be on the force, and maybe, just maybe, this crisis never would have happened.

Or Armstrong would have been destroyed too, and no one would have had a lead.

He had to think that it made a difference, what he had done. He had to believe it. Because there were too many turning points otherwise.

What if Palmette hadn’t come to the crime scene? What if he hadn’t saved her life? What if he had stepped in after the trials to help her get her job back?

What if he had really cared about her instead of pretending that he did?

He shook his head. That was the tiredness talking. The tiredness and the frustration and the anger. He was furious at her, but he couldn’t do anything about it—not directly. So some of that anger went inward.

He was doing his best to prevent that inward anger from becoming toxic.

So he was probing, every day, going deeper and deeper into Palmette’s past, deeper into her psyche. He would know the color of her underwear on the day she graduated from the police academy by the time he was done.

Whenever he would get done.

Because they were all in it for the long haul now—him, the other detectives, DeRicci, the Earth Alliance. They had to find these people and whoever was running them around before another attack.

DeRicci believed there wouldn’t be another attack, not soon. She had gotten the idea from Flint, and she said it was persuasive.

Nyquist hadn’t listened to the rationale. He didn’t want to know. He wanted to focus on Palmette only. He saw her as a pathway to the future, her knowledge as the key to the next part of this puzzle.

He also believed she didn’t realize exactly how much she knew.

So he would pull it out of her one bit at a time, and he would pray there wouldn’t be another attack in the meantime.

He reached the door to 65B. He paused. He was carrying two cups of coffee. One was plain, hot, and strong, for him. The other was filled with cinnamon and milk, masking the coffee taste.

Partners brought each other coffee in the morning as they got ready to face their day. It was a simple act, one he had never performed for any of his real partners.

He was pretending that Palmette was his partner now to get her to talk.

He was aware of the irony.

He also knew that in the future, this simple action—carrying coffee to Palmette every single morning—would preclude him from ever doing it for a real partner, no matter how much he liked that person.

If Gumiela ever tried to partner him with anyone again.

He had strong arguments against it. And the rules had been destroyed along with nineteen Domes across the Moon.

The old systems were gone, the new ones not developed yet.

And he wasn’t the person who would develop them. He was the person who would make sure those new systems would remain in place for decades, centuries even. He would see to it that the bad guys, as DeRicci had taken to calling them, wouldn’t win.

He balanced the coffees in the fingers of one hand, and used the other to open the door to room 65B. He didn’t look at Palmette, not right away.

Instead he braced himself for another day of details, a daily grind that would eventually bring him to the answers he—and the Moon—so desperately needed.