Vigilantes (15 page)

“I spent the morning with Uzvaan.” Nyquist didn’t sound as upset about that as Flint would have expected. “He gave me some information that might lead us to the masterminds, as you keep calling them.”

Flint raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had been convinced that Nyquist’s interviews with Uzvaan would bring nothing to the investigation—but he didn’t want to say that to Nyquist. Nyquist hated the interviews already, and Flint hadn’t wanted to close off any possibilities.

“The Peyti clones,” Nyquist said, “had their masks delivered.”

He bounced a bit as he said that.

“The explosive masks?” Flint asked.

“
All
of their masks. From the moment they moved to the Moon. Maybe even before that. They were forbidden from buying the masks here,” Nyquist said.

Flint had no idea that the Peyti could buy masks here. That feeling he’d had earlier, about not knowing a culture, grew even stronger.

“I never thought about how any Peyti got their masks,” Flint said.

Nyquist nodded. “I knew there were stores—we’d investigated a few over the years, mostly for smuggling operations—but I hadn’t thought to trace the masks. The new masks—the explosive ones—are different from all the others.”

Flint leaned back. He should have realized that from the start. The clones had to get the masks from somewhere.

“I thought the bombs were an add-on,” he said.

“You didn’t see them in action, did you?” Nyquist asked. His smile was gone. He looked haunted. Uzvaan had tried to kill Nyquist—everyone at the Detective Division.

“I saw the footage,” Flint said. “And the aftermath.”

That had been enough. And he hadn’t looked at the footage closely. He’d been concentrating on the collateral damage and the faces of the Peyti, not on the method of attack.

“The masks were in two parts. The bomb was on the lower part of the mask,” Nyquist said. “The masks looked like a redesign of what we usually saw.”

Flint nodded. “And those were delivered.”

“
Every mask
that the clones wore, from the moment they got here to the moment of their attack, was delivered.”

Flint let out a breath. “And you think we can trace that.”

“Easily,” Nyquist said. “That’s the leak. We can easily trace that. I’m pretty certain your masterminds would never think we would be able to talk to the clones, so we wouldn’t know that the masks were delivered.”

Flint frowned. They’d know—eventually. Maybe. If the bombs had exploded as planned, there would have been rebuilding, and then investigation. The investigation would have gotten short-changed.

“I think you’re right,” Flint said.

Nyquist gave him an exasperated look. They weren’t easy friends, and Flint knew why—although he didn’t try to change it. Both men felt like they had to be the best investigator in the room.

“Even if the bombs had exploded as planned and the investigation started, we wouldn’t have found this for months if not years. By then, the information wouldn’t lead anywhere.” Flint templed his fingers, then tapped the tips against his chin.

He looked at Nyquist, who seemed to be waiting for Flint to catch up to him.

“But it’s only been a week,” Flint said slowly. “And the masterminds, whoever they are, are probably not thinking about covering up their tracks.”

“If they are,” Nyquist said, “they’re worried about shutting up the clones.”

Both men looked at each other. Obviously neither of them had thought of that until now, either.

“I thought S
3
gave you all injunctions against harming those clones,” Flint said.

“Yeah,” Nyquist said. “They enjoined
us
, the authorities. But these masterminds of yours—”

“They’re not mine,” Flint said, beginning to regret coining the term.

“—they seem to know how every single system we have on the Moon works. They might be able to get someone or something into the Reception Center and take care of the clones.”

Flint didn’t like the sound of that. He sighed, thinking about it. These masterminds weren’t above using bombs and causing a lot of collateral damage.

“They might attack the clones when they get into court, as well.”

“If they get into court,” Nyquist said. His smile was long gone. “This is a major mess.”

“Yeah,” Flint said. “But we’re making headway. You said you got other information?”

Nyquist half-smiled again. “I did. It turns out that Uzvaan wanted to talk. I didn’t get to half my questions before the guards shut me down, but I’ll go back.”

“What else did he tell you?” Flint asked.

“That’s stuff Noelle can investigate or have her pet Earth Alliance investigators look into it,” Nyquist said. “I just didn’t want them to know about the masks.”

“Even Noelle?” Flint asked.

Nyquist let out a small sigh. Then he shrugged. “It bugs me, how many systems these masterminds know,” he said. “And how we ignored those damn Peyti clones. We assumed that because they were lawyers, they were going to follow the law.”

“They did,” Flint said. “Right up until the day they stopped. We had no reason to distrust them.”

“I know.” Nyquist ran a hand over his face. “I never liked Uzvaan. I thought he was a good lawyer, but I never liked him.”

“I’m sure there are a lot of people you don’t like who are trustworthy,” Flint said.

Nyquist’s gaze met his. Flint could read the thought without Nyquist putting it into words. Nyquist wouldn’t be here if he thought Flint untrustworthy. The respect between the two men was clear. The friendship—or even the “liking” as Nyquist had put it—wasn’t.

“Still,” Flint said. “It might be worthwhile to tell me.”

“Uzvaan gave me the name of his mentor at the Impossibles. It was a human woman, and she protected him from that failure thing that happens to most attorneys there. It might mean nothing.”

“It might mean everything,” Flint said.

“The masks are a tangible lead,” Nyquist said, taking over the investigation. “The mentor might mean nothing at all—and the information is decades old.”

In other words, Nyquist would prefer it if Flint investigated the masks first. Nyquist was trying to direct Flint’s investigation, and if Flint were feeling just a little more contrary, he would prevent it.

But he agreed with Nyquist: the masks were a better lead. And combined with the information about the law schools, he might be able to find the masterminds through channels they never even considered.

“And here’s the other piece of information that you need to know,” Nyquist said. “I’m going to get Popova to double-check it all, but Uzvaan told me the corporation or entity or whatever you want to call it that paid for his law school was some damn Peyti word that means
legal fiction
.”

Flint wasn’t sure he heard that correctly. “What?”

“That’s what I said. Apparently the word has many meanings. But that’s the one that Uzvaan, at least, prefers. I asked him if law schools thought it odd that a company called ‘legal fiction’ paid the bills and he said he had no idea.”

Flint let out a long breath, not sure if he believed what Nyquist told him, and not sure he could
dis
believe it.

“I’m going to play you something,” Nyquist said. “Record it when I do. Maybe you can use the sound.”

Flint recorded everything that transpired in this office, at least when there were verbal conversations, so he didn’t have to worry about it being recorded. However, he wasn’t sure he wanted Nyquist to know that.

So Flint made a show of setting up a recording.

He nodded when he was ready.

Nyquist touched a chip on his hand. A voice Flint half-recognized said,
Who created us? This I do not know, at least, not exactly. I do know that a corporation titled
… and then a Peytin word resounded in the room, followed by,
The name has many translations, but I believe that the one the corporation’s founders intended was a little known meaning for the phrase. It is ‘legal fiction.’

Flint met Nyquist’s gaze. “Do you think he’s making this up?”

“I don’t know what the Peyti are capable of,” Nyquist said. “I investigated the meaning myself on the way over here, and got all kinds of translations for the phrase. It’s a Peyti idiom that, in some of the southern regions of Peyla used to mean
legal fiction
, decades ago. So he’s not lying there. I’m going to play this for Popova when I get to Noelle’s office, and see what she says.”

“You’ll need that other expert of Noelle’s—what’s her name?—Rastigan?” Flint said.

Nyquist nodded. “I plan to do that. But you might be able to get into some databases with that recorded word, maybe even find how the thing is spelled in Peytin, and scan for that.”

“I’m not sure what I’d find,” Flint said, “since I don’t read Peytin.”

“But the system—” Nyquist held up his hands and shook his head. “What do I know? You know how to search for everything, and I don’t know how to search for anything. But, I figured, you’d need this for the law school part of the investigation.”

Flint smiled at him. Another breakthrough, no matter how they used it.

“Yeah, I will,” he said. “Thank you.”

And now he had recorded it in some different places. He wondered what he would find when he used it.

He had a lot of work ahead of him, but it was, as Nyquist said, work Flint was uniquely qualified to do.

“Should you let Noelle know about the threat to the clones?” Flint asked.

“I’ll tell her in person,” Nyquist said. “It’s not going to go over well, particularly after that incident with S
3
.”

Flint nodded. His mind was already on the searches he had to do. He leaned over the screen in front of him, and started searching the home addresses of the clones. He began with Uzvaan because that was a name he knew. Once he found it, he searched for delivery information to Uzvaan’s home, looking for a regular package.

“How often do the Peyti replace their masks?” he asked.

“Uzvaan said they got the packets quarterly,” Nyquist said.

Flint nodded. That made the search even easier. At least for the delivery. He would cross-reference against deliveries to some of the other clones.

“Can I help?” Nyquist asked.

Flint didn’t want Nyquist touching his systems. “Maybe, but not here.”

Nyquist half-smiled again, as if he had expected that response. “Okay,” he said. “Rather than duplicate the effort, you tell me when I need to do the footwork.”

“Deal,” Flint said, monitoring both screens.

“And if you need my help you say so.”

Flint nodded.

“All right,” Nyquist said. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”

Flint nodded. He looked at the various screens, still scrolling the information he had plugged into them earlier. The screen to his left, the one he had searching for deliveries to Uzvaan, had a list that ran hundreds of items long.

Hundreds, instead of millions.

He found himself smiling as well. He had a hunch this was finally going to work.

EIGHTEEN

SENG PACED THE tiny office that Torkild Zhu had given her before he died. She had a single window and it overlooked the street, but she still didn’t see emergency vehicles or any kind of authority show up.

Her stomach twisted.

She’d managed to reach someone at S
3
on Athena Base, who wouldn’t really listen to her.

If you want to talk about S
3
On The Moon
,
that idiot had said,
you need to contact Rafael Salehi, and he’ll be unavailable for another day or two. Or perhaps you should contact S
3
On The Moon
directly
.

After too many back-and-forths, she had managed to convince the idiot that she was dealing with an emergency. She wanted to contact Rafael Salehi directly, but all the idiot would give her, besides the contact information for the damn office Seng was standing in, was the public line to the ship that Salehi was traveling on.

Then it had been some crew member, followed by a pilot, followed—finally!—by a junior associate, who seemed to know what she was doing. She promised that Salehi would contact Seng, and then broke the link.

Seng had promised herself that if she didn’t hear in the next fifteen minutes, she’d go through the entire rigmarole again.

A holoscreen rose in her office. She hadn’t even known that this office had that kind of capability. The screen flicked on, showing an ostentatious S
3
logo, followed by a privacy gray background. The privacy background made sure that whoever was looking at the hologram would only see what the sender wanted and nothing more.