Anniversary Day (8 page)

“Everyone?” the officer said, with some surprise.

She looked up at him. Young, so innocent that he didn’t even have frown lines around his mouth. He probably hadn’t been on the job longer than a year.

“Everyone,” she said.

“What do you consider to be the vicinity?” he asked. Which was a really good question. She had no idea. One block? Five? Ten? It didn’t entirely matter. She had taken so long to get here—the system had taken so long to contact her—that if anyone wanted to get away from the crime scene they could.

“Five-block radius,” she said, just because it sounded good. “Up and down. See if anyone saw anything from windows and aircars, too.”

He nodded crisply. She had a hunch he’d get this done efficiently, which would make her life easier.

She should have gotten his name, and by the time she had that realization, he was already gone, doing what she needed.

The mayor’s aides were fluttering around her, trying not to ask her questions, looking nervous. She should feel nervous as well, but she didn’t. Even though this was the biggest case of her career.

The mistakes had already been made. One hour from death to a detective on site. That was the biggest error, and it wasn’t hers. She’d make note of it in her report as a cover-her-ass moment. Not that she needed it.

This investigation would be gone over, detail by detail, by the law enforcement branch, by the press, and by the hundreds of conspiracy theorists who seemed to thrive in the Moon dust.

She couldn’t think about them. She needed to think about doing this properly.

She had full control of this investigation. The chief of police had hand-picked her due to her closing record and her ability to handle high-profile cases. He gave her carte blanche. She could pick her team, and she could conduct the investigation as she saw fit.

She saw a lot of fit. Crime scene lasers in the wrong place, too many people close to the corpse, too many ways into and out of the scene, from the door to the restaurant to the open limo door to the sidewalk, up and around.

She sent a message to Dispatch on her links.
I needed crime scene techs an hour ago. And how come there’s no coroner yet?

Ethan Brodeurwanted to make sure his lab was in order before he brought in such an important corpse
, the dispatch sent. She didn’t just send audio but added an icon, a sketch of herself rolling her eyes, which was more of a commentary than Romey had ever seen from anyone on Dispatch.

Not that anyone liked Brodeur. He was marginally competent at best, and he’d screwed up more cases than he had resolved. Romey had a hunch he was a political appointee—or he knew where all the bodies were buried, and he used that knowledge to keep his job.

Send that new coroner—the one with the stupid name—?

Jacobs?
Dispatch sent.

Yeah, her. What’s her first name?

Marigold
, Dispatch sent.

This time it was Romey’s turn to roll her eyes. How could she forget a name like that? But she had.

Send her,
Romey sent,
and get Bartholomew Nyquist here ASAP. I need someone competent, and right now, I’m surrounded by politicos and street cops
.

Anyone else?
Dispatch sent.

Not at the moment
, Romey sent, even though she should have reminded Dispatch that she was supposed to have a supervisor/advisor of sorts from Moon Security.

That was the only part of this case that really bothered her. She didn’t have a true buffer between her investigation and the United Domes of the Moon. When she knew anything, she was supposed to contact Security Chief DeRicci.

Romey supposed she should contact her now. But she was going to wait a few minutes. She half-thought she’d let Nyquist do it, but that wouldn’t work. The stupid man had some kind of relationship with DeRicci, and that alone might complicate the case.

It certainly explained why Romey had lead here, and not Nyquist. Since he’d got back from sick leave, he’d gone back to his old ways—closing more cases than anyone and alienating partners.

He’d asked her to partner with him twice, and she’d said no, not because they’d be a bad team but because they’d be a damn good one.

He was the first man she’d met in years who intrigued her. Who more than intrigued her.

Who fascinated her.

And that didn’t make for a good working relationship.

Except when she needed him.

Like right now.

Fourteen

The sirens made a shiver run down Nyquist’s back.

He got up and went to the window of his office, tugging on the shade with his bare hand. The shade slid up, reminding him of that moment four years ago, when he had celebrated the rise of another shade, one that he worried would trap him in that horrible building forever.

Four years. He was in the same office, but in a different place mentally. And this window was clean. It opened onto the outside—as outside as things got in the Dome. He could see the street below, a street filled with people going about their daily routines.

Vehicles with sirens blaring had left this building an hour ago, and more were leaving now. Normally that didn’t bother him. Normally, it didn’t catch his attention at all.

Sirens blared all the time around here—enough that some detectives had taken to listening to music on their ear chips to block out the sound. Orders had come down from headquarters—no music in the office—and the detectives had filed complaints.

So the windows got some soundproofing. Not enough to block the sound completely, but enough to make the sirens less abrasive.

Not that they had ever bothered Nyquist.

Until today.

And probably, if he was honest with himself, last year on Anniversary Day as well. He didn’t remember going to the window to see what caused the sirens, but he probably had.

Or had he still been recuperating from the Bixian attack?

He didn’t want to look at the calendar to remember.

The second set of sirens had an immediate sound to them. Not that one set of sirens could be more urgent than another. But it seemed that way to him. Or maybe it was the number of response vehicles.

Or maybe it was the Day.

He left the shade up as he went back to his desk. He would get this work done even if he had to stay here until midnight.

As he eased himself into his chair, his link chirruped: Dispatch, also urgent.

His heart rate increased. He could feel it. He really was on edge.

This day’s dispatch was an older woman, with frown lines on both sides of her mouth. Either she’d had enhancements so long ago they’d stopped working or she was as contrary as he was, refusing to use artificial means to hide aging.

“Detective,” she said, using audio, which was just as unusual as using an image. Right at the moment, her image ran across his left eye only, making her seem like her tiny image was floating a meter above his desk. “Your presence is requested at O’Malley’s.”

He sighed. He’d kept up on Anniversary Day activities. “What kind of trouble did the mayor get himself into this time?”

“This is not a secure link,” the dispatch said. “I will transfer.”

She winked out, and Nyquist frowned. What the hell? Why would Soseki want to summon him, and why would that take a secure link?

Then the dispatch winked back in, floating in front of his right eye this time. He didn’t know if that was because this link was secure or if she just felt like playing with his mind. Probably the latter. He had a hunch personnel put all the budding sadists into Dispatch.

“This information has not yet been released publicly,” the dispatch said with such great formality that Nyquist realized she was recording everything more than once to cover her own ass. “The mayor is dead.”

“What? How?”

“No one is certain. Detective Savita Romey is the primary detective on this case and she has requested your presence to assist.”

Romey was primary on such a major case? Before his injury, he would have been primary on something like this.

“Has anyone informed the Security Office of United Domes?” he asked, not wanting to be the one to tell DeRicci.

“They’re sending personnel as well,” the dispatch said.

“Is this related to the Anniversary Day celebrations?” Nyquist asked.

“We have no information as of yet, Detective,” the dispatch said. “The scene is locked down, and teams are heading there now.”

Nyquist frowned, brought up the timestamp at the base of his links, then said, “Wasn’t the mayor supposed to be giving an Anniversary Day speech across town about now? Why was he still at O’Malley’s?”

Dispatch sighed. “Please direct your questions to the primary detective and do so on scene. We need you there immediately. A squad is waiting below.”

“If you want this to remain quiet, then stop sending so many squads out with their sirens on,” Nyquist said.

“We’ve have a number of emergencies today,” the dispatch said. “Anniversary Day is becoming one of the worst for troubles throughout the city.”

Then she winked out.

Everyone hated Anniversary Day. He hadn’t realized that before.

And now they would hate it worse, with the mayor dead.

The day of the bombing, everyone believed the terrorist attack was only the beginning of the attacks on Armstrong. People expected another attack that day, and when it didn’t happen, they expected one that week, then that month, then that year.

For four years, all of Armstrong had lived in anticipation of yet another attack—and the attack hadn’t come.

Nyquist took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He hoped to hell Soseki was dead from natural causes. Nyquist had never wished anyone had a massive heart attack or a surprise brain aneurysm before, but he hoped for that now.

Because if someone had killed Soseki, today of all days, the entire city would go insane.

Fifteen

Savita Romey felt overworked, maybe because she
was
overworked. She had twice as much to do now, because Soseki’s aides dithered more than she would have had she arrived an hour earlier.

She had done what she could outside: she had protected the body. But even that had taken some effort. The street cops who arrived when the aides made the call had done some of that, but not in the way an experienced homicide detective would have. They made the perimeter too wide, and didn’t ask who had walked close to the body.

The other problem with coming in late was that there were too many people milling around aimlessly. Someone had ordered the remaining people to stay on scene, so some of the patrons of the restaurant still sat at their tables, the remains of their meals scattered before them. Waiters, recognizable only because they wore uniforms, sat at empty tables. Chefs remained in the kitchen, and the owner hovered near the reception desk.

The back room still had people who had come for Soseki’s speech. Some of those people were important—rich business owners, a few politicians, a couple of bigwigs from off-Moon. Soseki’s aides wanted her to deal with them first.

She had to figure out a way to deal with the aides. They were irritating her, and getting in the way of the investigation. But they had been in charge of the scene from the moment Soseki died, and she wasn’t quite sure how to deal with them, without alienating them, without getting the information they didn’t even know they had.

For all she knew, one of them had killed Soseki.

The interior of the restaurant smelled of garlic and baking bread. Her stomach growled as she worked. She needed a command center, she needed a place to put the witnesses, she needed staff to interview those witnesses, and she needed the crime scene techs to get here before the entire scene got contaminated.

The coroner’s van showed up first.

Romey left the restaurant, stepped around the crime scene lasers she had placed around Soseki’s body, and watched as the back of the van opened. She worried that Brodeur The Incompetent had overruled her and had come instead of Jacobs.

But Romey shouldn’t have worried. Brodeur hated extra work, and important cases were always extra work.

Jacobs stepped out of the back, her kit in hand.

Jacobs was tiny, muscular, and no-nonsense. She had bright yellow hair, which couldn’t have been natural. If it was natural, then her parents deserved to be chastised for naming her Marigold, because her hair was precisely that color.

Jacobs had an angular face, intelligent eyes, and a calm manner. Her husky voice seemed genderless over audio links. She nodded at Romey, then set to work, without having to be told what to do.

Romey let out a small sigh. At least one thing had gone right this morning.

One of the street cops approached her from her left. He was careful to avoid the crime scene lasers as well.

“Detective,” he said, “there’s someone here from the Security Chief’s office?”

His tone made it clear that he didn’t believe the outsider was from the security chief’s office, which made her realize the young cop hadn’t even asked for identification.