Vigilantes (23 page)

He had also seen the good-hearted people he knew get crushed by exhaustion and emotional overload as they tried to cope with this crisis.

Yes, he wished what was happening in the Armstrong Police Department wasn’t happening, but he would have been naïve if he expected the PD to go about its work unaffected.

In some respects, it was a miracle that so few officers had gone off—at least in the short term.

Even he didn’t want to investigate this crime. He felt it was not as important as anything else he had to do right now.

Bartholomew Nyquist, the detective who occasionally made that fatuous speech, the one about each life being worth something. The detective who had done his best to avoid dealing with crimes involving aliens because he might have to make the kinds of choices that had driven Miles Flint from the department.

That Nyquist had now actually evaluated a life and deemed it less worthy of investigation than other lives.

He wondered if Torkild Zhu’s family would understand.

Nyquist bet that families of the Peyti Crisis and Anniversary Day victims
would
understand.

He also knew that Gumiela was right: S
3
would be all over this. It was amazing they weren’t already.

And he really wished that motivated him enough to do a good job on this investigation.

In actuality, all he wanted to do was wrap up this case and return to the bombings. On the drive to S
3
’s offices, he considered resigning from the department so that he could help DeRicci full time.

But the only access he had to Uzvaan and the prison had come through his police ties.

And besides, he was a detective first. Before his world literally exploded, he had realized that working for the Armstrong PD was the center of his identity, something he did not want to give up.

He wasn’t sure that was true any longer, but he had to factor in one other aspect of his life now: his identity as an Armstrong PD detective was one of the last things remaining from the old world. He wasn’t sure he wanted to give that up.

Somehow he had talked himself into focusing on this investigation by the time he got to the area near S
3
’s offices.

He parked several blocks from the crime scene. He had noted on the footage that Zhu had walked a few blocks to get to the S
3
offices. Zhu was carrying a disposable coffee mug with the name of a deli on the side.

The deli was open and doing a brisk business, but not as brisk as the deli next door. The scent of coffee and baked bread would have normally enticed Nyquist to enter one or the other place, but he wasn’t hungry at the moment.

At some point, he would interview the staff of both delis to see if they witnessed anything. Right now, however, it was more important for him to retrace Zhu’s steps and make certain that everything on that footage Brodeur had given him seemed accurate. The last thing Nyquist wanted to do was interview people at the deli only to discover that Zhu had been using the same disposable cup for days.

The walk to S
3
was short. The street was empty, and the buildings had that neglected look much of Armstrong had these days. A check on his networks showed that there were a lot of low-level legal services available in this neighborhood, and quite a few law-related businesses.

Almost every single law firm and law-related business had been shut down since the Peyti Crisis. In some cases, the firms were shut down because they’d lost staff. In others, they were shut down because one of their lawyers had tried to attack Armstrong.

The entire Moon-based legal community was in complete disarray. Which made S
3
’s arrival a few days ago seem even more astounding.

Nyquist hadn’t liked Zhu, and he had been offended that Zhu slapped injunctions on law enforcement. Zhu’s firm was, in its own way, guaranteeing that these massive crimes would not get solved.

Anyone with half a brain would know that killing Zhu wouldn’t prevent the machinations of S
3
. If anything, S
3
would probably become more determined in its war against law enforcement because of Zhu’s death.

But thinking didn’t seem to be anyone’s strong suit this week. That meeting with all the detectives the day before had left Nyquist unsettled. Most of them hadn’t been interested in solving the Peyti Crisis; they’d been interested in getting revenge.

And clearly, someone had taken revenge on Zhu.

Nyquist sighed and looked down the long block that led to the brand new offices of S
3
On The Moon. The building looked a little rundown. A human security guard stood at the door, arms crossed.

He hadn’t been on the footage, at least that Nyquist had seen.

And if he had been around, then Zhu’s attack made no sense.

Nyquist ignored the guard for a moment, and scanned the rest of the area. There were no crime scene lasers, nothing to block off the sidewalk where Zhu died, even though Brodeur had set the lasers up.

He had left everything in the best shape possible for the crime scene techs and he had waited until they arrived before leaving with Zhu’s body.

That meant that the scene should have remained off-limits for at least 24-hours.

Nyquist’s stomach turned.

No one was following the rules here, and that would just make his job harder.

He crossed the street, and approached the guard. The sidewalk still had a long, black stain running down it—Zhu’s blood mixed with coffee, as it flowed away from the building. There was even a bit of a body-shaped depression in the thin layer of Moon dust that every public place in Armstrong seemed to attract.

The guard watched him approach. The guard was a tall, burly man with broad shoulders and large muscles straining against his clothing. The muscles looked real and not enhanced.

He was cradling a laser rifle, which flashed its registration on a police link as Nyquist approached.

The guard was with one of the biggest security firms on the Moon.

Nyquist raised his right palm as if he were going to take an oath in court. He made the badge embedded into his skin flare so brightly that it would show up on security vids.

The guard stopped cradling the rifle. He moved his hands along it, so that he could aim it at Nyquist if necessary.

In all his years on the force, he’d never had this response to his approach before.

He supposed it made sense, though, since it was clear that Zhu’s murderers were cops.

“I’m no threat to you,” Nyquist said, keeping his hand up. “I’m investigating Torkild Zhu’s murder.”

“Go back to your office,” the guard said. “The killer’s there.”

“I know,” Nyquist said. “But I couldn’t see any faces on the security vid I had. So I know what type of person did the crime. I just don’t know
who
.”

“So?” the guard asked.

“So, I need to do a thorough and accurate investigation. I’m sure that S
3
would want the killers to be punished, and that means I have to go by the book.”

The guard grunted, and shifted his hands slightly. “What do you gotta do?”

Nyquist came closer, palm still up. He felt a little ridiculous, but he also knew that he was on security vid. So he wanted to make sure that everything he did was correct.

“My name is Bartholomew Nyquist,” he said. “I’m a detective with the Armstrong Police Department, and I had nothing to do with what happened here this morning. In fact, I wasn’t even inside the dome when it happened.”

“Good for you,” the guard said in a tone that implied he didn’t care.

“Were you here this morning?” Nyquist asked.

“You’re kidding, right?” the guard asked.

“No.” Nyquist kept his tone calm.

“My firm got hired after this poor guy died. I came as quickly as I could. We’ll have more security here starting in a few hours.”

So it was good that Nyquist arrived when he had.

“I’d like to investigate the scene,” he said, “and then I’d like to talk with anyone who was here at the time of the death.”

“You can’t pin this murder on S
3
.” That was a different voice. It was female, and it broadcast over the building’s security link.

Nyquist couldn’t see the speaker. Obviously she was inside somewhere.

He looked up, scanning for the camera. He knew roughly where it was, based on the footage he had seen, but he didn’t know exactly.

“I’m not trying to pin it on anyone here,” he said to the woman, whoever she was. “It’s clear that Torkild Zhu died outside the building and no one from S
3
had anything to do with his murder. As I told the guard here—”

“I know,” the woman said. “You need to follow the book. Too bad your colleagues didn’t.”

“Yes,” Nyquist said. “It is.”

“It’s unusual that a cop shows up without a partner, isn’t it?” she asked.

He wished he could see her. “I’ll tell you why face-to-face,” he said. “I’m not going to shout to the entire street.”

“The entire
empty
street,” she said, and then went silent.

The guard had raised his eyebrows, as if he were impressed by her forcefulness.

Nyquist wasn’t. He had known he would encounter resistance here. He just hadn’t expected it right away.

Maybe he still was a bit of an innocent.

He looked at the guard.

“I’m going to walk the scene,” Nyquist said. “I’ll be recording my every move, and I’ll be backing this up outside of my internal system.”

“So the police can delete it?” the guard asked.

“I’m not that dumb,” Nyquist said. “I was just letting you know what I was doing and why, so that you don’t interrupt me.”

The guard let out a snide half-laugh. “If you think it’ll do any good.”

Of course it wouldn’t do any good. Torkild Zhu was already dead. S
3
had already declared war on law enforcement here in Armstrong, and Armstrong’s law enforcement community had struck back. Ill advisedly, but they had.

Now, Nyquist had to straddle the two, and make it all work.

On top of everything else.

He nodded at the guard, and began to record.

TWENTY-NINE

GOUDKINS STUDIED DERICCI for a moment. DeRicci stifled another burp. She surreptitiously brushed a chip on her stomach with her thumb. The chip released a soother to calm her stomach. If she used the damn chip too much, it would notify a doctor or stop working, and she wondered if she had reached that level yet.

She really hadn’t been taking care of herself at all. She glanced at the couch, and thought of the way it tempted her with a nap.

“You weren’t kidding when you said this would be dangerous,” Goudkins said.

“I meant it would be dangerous on a lot of levels,” DeRicci said. She really hadn’t thought of the personal danger to Goudkins. DeRicci didn’t care if someone got harmed getting information, at least, not at the moment. Maybe she would have six months ago.

Goudkins was frowning.

“To be frank,” DeRicci said, “I’m a lot more concerned about increasing the danger to the Moon than I am about either of us.”

Blunt, as always. It had gotten her in trouble from the beginning of her career, and now that she was the last person standing, it was probably going to prevent Goudkins from working with her.

“Yeah.” Goudkins nodded. “I’m being stupid. There’s so much at stake here and I’m worried what’ll happen to me if I get caught. As if the universe was the same place it had always been.”

DeRicci’s gaze met hers. The sad truth was that the universe
was
the same place it had always been. The Moon was different.
They
were different. Maybe the Alliance was different.

But probably not.

“You haven’t given me the name,” Goudkins said.

“I’m only giving it to you if you’re actually going to help us.”

“Of course I’m going to help, Chief DeRicci. I lost…” Then Goudkins shook her head. “I know how serious this is. I know how dangerous it is. I told you I’d help.”

“Then you have to be cautious,” DeRicci said. “You can’t tell Ostaka, you can’t work with our links here in the office, you have to work somewhere that looks like a non-Moon based location. Can you do that?”

“Of course,” Goudkins said.

“All right.” DeRicci took a deep breath. Trust didn’t come easily to her, especially on something that had this kind of stakes. “You’re looking for a woman named Jhena Andre. She initially worked in a lower-level position at the prison that housed PierLuigi Frémont. She was there on the night he died, and according to our source, she took some of Frémont’s DNA. She’s never tried to sell it, and we don’t know what happened to it.”