Dead Man on the Moon (29 page)

A red directional arrow popped up on Linus's readout. He followed the arrow and Karen followed Linus. They threaded their way through another passenger bay, up a set of stairs, through a kitchen, and down a short corridor to a door marked
Crew Only.
Karen knocked. A moment later, the door slid open, revealing a woman so plump that she was nearly spherical. Her brown eyes threatened to disappear into folds of flesh. Her hair was hidden by a black skullcap that only emphasized the roundness of her body. The green jumpsuit she wore made her look like a Granny Smith apple.

"Yeah?" she said. Her voice was flat, with a hint of sandpaper.

"I'm Chief Inspector Linus Pavlik." He flashed his identification. "This is Dr. Karen Fang. We're looking for Ms. Adrienne Miao."

"Why?"

"Are you Ms. Miao?" Linus asked.

She paused. Linus waited patiently. People often hesitated before giving their names to the police, as if by admitting who they were, they were confessing to some crime. Either that or they were reviewing recent questionable behavior, something that might bring a cop to the door. Linus thought about reassuring her that she wasn't in trouble—she'd been piloting the shuttle at the time the body was tossed out, so she couldn't be the killer. Still, it was probably better to keep her a little on edge. Nervous people tended to babble, and babblers were always useful.

"I'm Adrienne Miao," the woman said at last. "What's this about?"

"Could we come in and sit down?" Linus said.

Adrienne stood aside. The room beyond was a common-area lounge for the crew. Chairs ringed a pair of rectangular tables, all of which were bolted to the floor. Closed cupboards of stainless steel lined one wall near a full-sized refrigerator, a sink, and a small stove. A hand of solitaire lay face-up on the table next to a bag of red licorice whips. Adrienne wedged herself back into the chair and picked up the remaining pack of cards. Linus and Karen took up chairs of their own, and Linus set his obie to record.

"What's up?" she asked, fiddling with the deck. "I'm on a winning streak here."

"You play with cardboard cards?" Karen said. "Pretty rare these days."

Adrienne fished a stick of licorice from the bag, bit it in half, and stuck one piece into her mouth like a cigarette. It gave off a sweet, childhood sort of smell that made Linus think of Halloween bags and Easter baskets.

"Computer cards are for sissies," Adrienne said. "My dad was a blackjack dealer in Beijing, and he taught me and brother how to handle a
real
deck. Watch." She swept the solitaire hand together into a single pack, tapped it once on the table, and flicked the entire deck into a perfect fan. Her plump fingers danced as she expertly shuffled a few times. She
flipped the top card over to show the queen of spades, flipped it back over, and dealt half a dozen cards to Linus and Karen. The cards floated into place like butterflies. A flick of Adrienne's fingers exposed the top card again—the queen of spades. She dealt more cards, then showed the queen again.

"Lady stays on top," Adrienne said. "The best way all around."

"Pretty good," Linus said, impressed. "Do you cheat when you play solitaire?"

"Of course. How do you play?" The licorice whip dangled from her mouth like a snake's tongue.

"We wanted to ask you about your overshoot four months ago."

Adrienne blinked at him. "You're here about that? Weird."

"What's weird about it?" Karen asked.

"It was a weird overshoot, that's what." Adrienne bit the end off the licorice whip and chewed on it, all without removing the whip from her mouth. The remaining piece bounced up and down like a conductor's baton. "What do you want to know?"

Linus reminded himself not to lean forward, though his interested was piqued. "Can you tell us what happened?"

"I was taking the shuttle in on its final approach to the spaceport. After a minute I realized something had gone wrong and I was going to overshoot." She tapped the cards on the table. "Per procedure, I alerted the captain and the crew to the problem and recalculated. Once I'd triple-checked the numbers, I flipped the shuttle around and gave a gentle blast to get us going in the right direction. Landed just fine after that, though the rest of the crew won't let me forget any of it."

"Okay," Linus said. "What was so weird?"

She took another bite of licorice whip and chewed noisily. "God, I need a cigarette. These things are a fucking poor substitute for a good unfiltered. None of that menthol shit, either."

Smoking was illegal on shuttles, of course. Aside from the attendant health problems brought on by secondhand smoke, cigarettes sucked down oxygen like a half-starved pig at a trough. They were illegal on Luna for the same reason. Air was too expensive to waste on bad habits.

"Quitting?" Karen asked sympathetically.

"Hell, no. I'm just on hiatus until I get back Earth-side." Adrienne reached for another licorice whip. "These make the time go by faster. They're low in fat, too."

"What was weird about the overshoot?" Linus repeated.

"The computer had fucked up."

"What do you mean the computer?"

"We always check the reason for overshoots," Adrienne told him. "Can't let it go, you know—overshoots are expensive enough, and the bosses don't want 'em happening more than once. Anyway, when I saw the computer data, it showed numbers I didn't remember entering. They were
close,
but not the same. I went back and checked the keystrokes, and they showed me entering the wrong numbers, too. But I triple-checked like I always do, and I
know
the numbers were fine when I entered them. The crew got a fuck-all of a laugh out of that, let me tell you. Thank god I caught the problem early on or we might have ended up halfway to the dark side."

"You're sure the numbers you entered were correct?" Linus said.

"Positive. The official report has it down that I made a mistake because I can't prove it was the computer, and it burns me, you know?" The pilot held the licorice whip between two fingers and blew out a short breath, as if she were smoking it instead of eating it. "Are you investigating this for the company or something? Am I in trouble?"

"Not so far as I know," Linus said. He hitched the chair a little closer to the table. "Look, can you tell me which airlocks would have been facing away from the spaceport at the time you hit the burners to reverse direction?"

"Easy. The ones in the lower quarter, closest to the boosters. What's this about?"

"We're investigating a death," Linus said. "Did you hear any talk of a stowaway on that trip?"

Adrienne gave a laugh like wood going through a chipper. "Joke, right? You have to know the exact mass of everyone and everything on this tub before it leaves Tether Station so we know how much fuel we're gonna need. A stowaway would show up on the sensors within five minutes. Doesn't stop people from trying, of course—some of these college kids will try anything—but security routs them out fast enough."

"One more question, then. Did you get any reports of an airlock being blown while you were in flight?"

"Nope. And the boards would report that pretty damn quick."

"Thanks for your time," Linus said, rising. "If you think of anything else, please let me know, day or night."

They left her dealing out another hand of solitaire and reaching for more licorice. Karen turned to him once the door was shut.

"If an airlock blew," she said, "the computer would have recorded it."

"The same computer that didn't screw up Miao's numbers?"

"So you think someone messed with the computer," Karen said.

"That's my theory. Come on—let's find the airlock. The one that didn't blow."

"There's an innuendo in there somewhere, love, if you'll give me a minute to find it."

"No thanks. Come on."

Their obies provided maps and schematics of the
Anna May
and highlighted the airlocks in the lower quarter, per Adrienne's information. Linus furrowed his brow.

"Eight down here," he counted. "Five emergency, three every day. Any ideas which one we should hit first?"

"I trust your judgment, love," Karen said. She sounded much closer to her old self. "Hit whichever one you like."

"Assuming you're a computer whiz who doesn't have to worry about setting off alarms," Linus said, thinking out loud, "you'd want to avoid airlocks near high-traffic areas. That narrows it down to the emergency locks, since the main ones are all near passenger and cargo bays. An emergency airlock is down that flight of stairs."

Karen hefted her kit. "Off we go, then, Mr. Holmes."

"After you, Dr. Fang."

The banter did much to relieve Linus's tension as they loped down the steps. Maybe he'd been mistaken about Karen. Maybe she'd just been in a bad mood earlier. Maybe .. . maybe she'd never felt anything toward him at all.

The thought made his stomach tighten, and the reaction surprised Linus. He wasn't supposed to feel anything for her but friendship. He
didn't
feel anything for her but friendship.

Right,
he told himself.
Keep telling yourself that. Why don't you write a nice letter to an advice columnist while you're at it and see if she agrees?

Emergency airlock 5A was an empty room big enough to hold about ten people—fifteen if they were friendly. It was painted pale green. Both the outer and inner doors sported a thick, round window that reminded Linus of a porthole. The outer window looked out over the gray lunar landscape. A sensor node the size of a light bulb jutted out from one wall at head height above a control panel near the inner door.

Karen set her kit down and glanced around. "The walls are the same color as the paint I found beneath the victim's fingernails. But then, so's half of Luna City."

Linus set his own kit on the floor, produced a flashlight, and got down on his hands and knees to examine the floor and the jamb around the inner door. "No scratch marks that I can see."

"I'm getting DNA." The green bar of light from Karen's scanner hummed slowly over the walls and floor. Every so often she paused, swabbed a section of ceramic tile, and fed the end of the swab into her scene kit's computer. Each
time, the results that flashed across the display made Karen shake her head and go back to scanning the floor. Linus realized he was admiring her quick, efficient movements and forced himself to concentrate on the search for scratch marks. He found nothing.

"I'm getting maintenance workers and other crew members," Karen reported after an hour, "but nothing that matches the victim."

"I'm coming up empty, too." Linus rose. "Let's try the next airlock."

They did, and again turned up nothing. The two of them quickly fell into a pattern. Linus checked for scratches first around the doorjamb, then on the floor, then around the walls. Karen scanned for DNA first on the floor, then around the walls, then around the doorjamb. It was a dance. They moved around the airlocks, not quite touching, able to stay out of each other's way with ease, like a long-married couple cooking together in the kitchen without stepping on each other's feet. It should have been cool and clinical, but Linus found it oddly intimate, knowing how and when Karen would move and timing his own movements to coincide.

By the time they arrived at the fourth emergency airlock, they didn't even need to speak, and Linus found it disconcerting when his flashlight beam ruined their pattern by revealing faint scratch marks around the airlock's inner door. His heart jumped.

"I've got it," he said excitedly. "Scratches. Right here." Linus aimed his obie at the marks and captured the image. They were only a few millimeters deep and barely visible, but present nonetheless. He got a swab from his kit, ran it down the frightened scratches left in the paint, and inserted it into the kit's computer. Linus held his breath. After a long moment, the display flashed.

"Oh my god," Linus said, not daring to believe it. He grabbed Karen by the wrists and danced her around, almost stumbling in the light gravity. "The DNA matches! Our John Doe was in this airlock, and he made the scratches. We found him!"

"Very good, love," Karen said, laughing. "Don't bump my head on the ceiling now."

He quickly released her and swallowed hard. "Sorry."

"Can't blame you," Karen replied with a pretty smile. "And at the risk of sending you through the roof, I found something strange over here. Take a look."