by Scott Sigler
No matter where you looked in the city, you saw the yellow crawlers of the maintenance workers. The spider-like machines crawled up buildings, along the horizontal spires and arches that connected all the buildings in a spongelike mesh of civilization and all along the city dome, grinding, trimming and cutting the blue crystal.
Miriam’s building was in the northeast quadrant of Madderch, perched among other structures that clung to a small mountain of jutting blue crystal. It offered an amazing view, looking out across the sparkling blue river that meandered through the city. The square building rose up ten stories, twisting all the way to create beautiful curves that reflected the lights above. A staircase followed that curve around, leading up as well as giving access to each floor.
Whykor and Yolanda walked up that staircase, keeping close to the wall so they would not be visible from the street. Miriam lived on the top floor.
“This building is beautiful,” the Worker said. “With this location and the cost of keeping a surface smooth, her residence must be worth a significant amount of money.”
“Miriam designed it. This is what she was working on when she retired as a bodyguard. If I remember right, she got her place as payment for her design work.”
At the fifth floor, they had to wait for a beat-up yellow maintenance crawler to climb off the stairwell and let them pass. Where it had been, freshly scraped and polished blue wall gleamed with newness. The crawler clung to the wall as they moved past, then climbed back into place to continue work. Yolanda waved at the Quyth Worker in the crawler’s cockpit, but he did not wave back — waving was a Human-centric behavior that most species didn’t understand.
She and Whykor reached the top floor and approached Miriam’s door, a beautiful piece of composite carved in a representation of the city’s river. Whykor reached for the buzzer, but before he touched it, the door opened.
The deep-black face of Miriam Connor looked out. “Yolanda!” She held up a small, wand-shaped device. Glowing green dots of light circled the wand’s tip. “I see you’re still alive!”
Miriam reached out and pulled Yolanda in for a powerful hug. The HeavyG woman had the size one would expect of a GFL player, and Yolanda vanished inside of the thick arms — one real, one prosthetic. At 6-foot-4, the muscular Miriam was almost as big as Tarat and Leiba.
Miriam squeezed so hard Yolanda had to tap three times to get her to let go.
“Jeeze, Miriam, I’m happy to see you, too, but take it easy.”
Miriam smiled wide. “Can’t help it, lady, I missed you!”
“Can we get inside? We had to shake a tail.”
Miriam nodded like she realized she’d forgotten her manners. “Yeah, come on in.” She all but threw them into the apartment, then shut the door.
Yolanda pointed to the wand. “You still have that thing?”
“You can take the player out of the game, but you can’t take the game out of the player,” Miriam said. “As long as you’re alive, I’ll just hold onto this.”
Whykor leaned in to look at the device. “What is it?”
“LifeLok,” Miriam said. “When I guarded Yolanda, I made her embed a detector. I carried this unit with me everywhere. It detects her heart rate, alpha waves and a bunch of other stuff. If she was in trouble, I knew it even if I wasn’t in the room. And it sounds like I was wise to keep it — you had a tail?”
“A Ki,” Yolanda said. “Yesterday it was a Quyth Warrior, works for Gredok the Splithead.”
Miriam shook her head. “Some things never change. Still pissing off people who could have you whacked? And no offense, but your new bodyguard doesn’t look that imposing.”
“This isn’t my bodyguard, it’s my assistant, Whykor the Aware.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Connor,” Whykor said. “I saw you play against the Sheb Stalkers. Six years ago.”
Miriam nodded and gestured for them to walk out of the front entryway and all the way into the apartment. “I hope I had a good game,” she said.
“Two carries for seven yards,” Whykor said. “One reception for six yards, one dropped pass, an eighty-eight percent blocking ratio, although you did miss a linebacker blitz that gave up a sack, and one of your blocks sprang Ju Tweedy for a thirty-four-yard touchdown. The Orbiting Death won the game by six points.”
Miriam’s eyebrows rose. “What are you, one of those stats junkies?”
“Yes,” Yolanda said. “He just studies those stats until he memorizes them.” She cast Whykor a warning glare — don’t let on that you have a photographic memory, stupid.
Miriam’s flat’s walls were different shades of blue, a surprisingly calm decorative decision for a former GFL fullback. She led them to a room that had a drafting holotable and a kitchen nook that was clearly there to keep her sustained when she was deep into designing. Several prosthetic arms hung from a rack, each ending in a different drafting tool.
A couch sat against the wall under a window that overlooked the city. Before she sat, Yolanda took a moment to take in the amazing view of Madderch. “Miriam, this place is amazing. You did great work.”
Miriam smiled wide. “Thanks! It’s my humble home.”
“I do not think the word humble is used correctly in this context,” Whykor said. “A residence of this stature is more indicative of extreme wealth.”
Yolanda rolled her eyes. “It’s a figure of speech, Whykor. Don’t be so literal.”
Miriam gestured to a couch made for her HeavyG dimensions. Yolanda sat; she felt dwarfed by the oversized furniture.
Whykor sat in a chair, while Miriam plopped down next to Yolanda.
“So, what’s up, Yo-Yo?” Miriam said. “I’m guessing you’re not here to compliment my architectural brilliance. You need your tiny hiney protected again, right?”
“Actually, no,” Yolanda said. “Although, with two tails in less than a day, it might not be a bad idea to get some protection while I’m working this story.”
Miriam nodded. Jovial she may be, but she was always attentive when discussions of violence were at hand. It was one thing that had made her such a good football player.
“At least you shook the tail,” Miriam said. Her smile faded. “I’m glad you learned what I taught you. So I see this isn’t a social call, Yo-Yo — let’s get down to business.”
“I’m investigating the murder of Grace McDermot.”
Miriam shifted in her seat. “You already investigated that. I read your article on Barnes and my old teammate Ju Tweedy.”
“I have a new lead,” Yolanda said. “The lead was just a single name, Miriam. Your name.”
Miriam’s face was a mask of non-emotion, but Yolanda could see her old friend’s discomfort. Miriam was good at protecting people — she wasn’t good at hiding things.
“Talk to me, Miriam. Why was I given your name?”
“Who gave it to you?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
Miriam shrugged. “Well, then I have nothing to say.”
“That won’t stop me from learning everything, only delay it,” Yolanda said. “You’ve seen me work enough times to know that. Let’s just save some time, okay? Tell me how you’re connected.”
Miriam looked away and pulled at her lower lip. “Is this off the record?”
Grace took off her bracelet, shut it off and set it on the coffee table in front of the couch. “Off the record. I’m not recording anything.”
Miriam looked down. “And the shoe?”
“Already off, but here,” Yolanda said, pulling off the shoe and passing it over. “I swear, Miriam, I am not recording anything.”
Miriam took a deep breath. She rubbed her face with her hands, then blinked rapidly, gathering herself.
“I discovered the body,” she said.
Yolanda stared. The police reports said McDermot had signaled an alarm and that police had responded to find her apartment door shattered and the woman’s corpse inside. This was big, big news. Yolanda needed to
take this slowly, gently, coax every bit of information out of her former bodyguard.
“Miriam, what were you doing at Grace McDermot’s place?”
“My job,” she said. “Anna Villani hired me to redesign the hallway outside of Grace’s apartment.”
Anna owned the building. That was common knowledge, something in both the news coverage and the police reports. It was also no surprise, as Anna and Grace had been lovers before Ju Tweedy came on the scene.
“Anna Villani hired you?”
Miriam nodded, still not looking. “I lied to you when I told you they gave me this place to design the building. They gave me a discount, but even if I was a successful architect, I couldn’t afford this flat. When I played for OS1, Sikka the Death owned the team. I asked him to borrow the money.”
“Oh, Miriam … you asked a crime lord for a loan?”
The HeavyG woman closed her eyes. “I know. I know. But you gotta understand, I built this place. I spent years on it, put my heart and soul into it. I needed to live here. So I asked Sikka, and he turned me down.”
“And then you went to Anna? You asked Sikka’s underling for the money after Sikka himself said no?”
“She came to me,” Miriam said. “Villani said she’d heard about my request and wanted to help. Told me she was grateful for my time in the franchise and felt bad that I’d lost my arm to that shucking cricket Ciudad Juarez. She said she thought former players shouldn’t be abandoned. So she gave me the money.”
“And you didn’t pay her back, right?”
Miriam shook her head. “I wasn’t ever supposed to pay her back. She said someday she might ask me for a favor. I know how stupid it was now, believe me, but at the time, I couldn’t pass it up. I told her I would never kill anyone. Maybe I’d have to rough someone up or something. It’s not like the people Villani deals with are good, clean citizens, you know? So I took the money, and I bought my dream home. I—”
She stopped talking and looked away. “I can’t say anything else.”
“Don’t you hold out on me now, Miriam,” Yolanda said. “If Ju didn’t do the killing, there’s a murderer on the loose. Maybe Grace McDermot slept around, but that’s no reason to kill someone. You need to tell me what happened.”
Miriam looked at her finally, desperation in her eyes. “But if I help you, and Villani finds out, she’ll take my good arm. She told me that’s what would happen if I said anything.”
Yolanda got to her feet and stood in front of Miriam. She unbuttoned the blouse sleeve on her right arm and rolled it up. A light-blue, puckered scar ran up the purple skin of her forearm.
Miriam flinched. “Girl, who shucked up that healing?”
“This is what happened the first time I refused to give up a source. Midge the Quiet had instructions to break my arm if I didn’t. He nearly ripped it off. The bone came through. I saw pieces of myself I never thought I’d see. I got the bone reset and the tissue damage fixed, but I told the Harrah healing me to leave a scar. I keep it as a reminder to never reveal my sources and to let future sources know I’m serious. I will protect your identity, Miriam. But I wouldn’t be talking to you if there weren’t a chance Ju Tweedy may be innocent, and if he’s innocent, then I contributed to his framing. I need to know who killed Grace McDermot.”
Miriam sighed. “With that iron will, you missed your calling. You’d have made a good quarterback.”
Yolanda grinned as she rolled her sleeve back down. “I’m too small for football. So I report on it.” She sat down again. “So tell me what you know. Please.”
Miriam took a big breath and let it out in a huff. “Okay. I came to work, mapping out what Grace wanted done with the hallway and seeing what was possible, what costs would be. Anna told me to take my time, that she would pay me for every hour I spent there and she wanted the job done right. So I’m working, not far from Grace’s apartment door, and I hear Grace scream. And lots of smashing. Once that started, I went and pounded on the door. She didn’t answer, and I didn’t hear any more noise. I broke down the door and found her there.” Miriam’s eyes went glassy as she remembered. “She was almost unrecognizable. Her head was smashed in. Her brains were on the carpet, it was awful. She had been twisted around, her spine snapped. She could have looked down to find out if her dress made her butt look big.”
Yolanda blinked. “There’s no way a Human could have the strength to do that. Not even a big Human like Ju Tweedy.”
“No kidding,” Miriam said grimly. “So I was bent over her, stupidly checking for a pulse, and someone knocked me in the back of the head. I woke up in the bedroom. The bed was broken, I guess from when this sentient threw me in there.”
“And you didn’t see who it was that hit you?”
Miriam shook her head.
How convenient — you found the body and didn’t see a thing.
“Wait a minute,” Yolanda said. “What were you doing with the body?”
Miriam blinked. “Huh?”
“The body,” Yolanda said. “You said you were bent over the body. Why?”
“Uh … I was checking for a pulse.”
Yolanda’s eyes narrowed. “A pulse? You said her brains were on the carpet, and you were checking for a pulse?”
Miriam stared for a moment. “Yeah. I was kind of in shock, okay? Bodyguard habits die hard, Yolanda. Maybe you have a lot of experience with dead bodies?”
Yolanda slowly shook her head. “No, of course not. Go ahead. What happened then?”
“I called the cops,” Miriam said. “But guess who showed up first?”
“Anna Villani.”
“Yeah, Anna Villani. She said she was calling in her favor. She told me exactly what to say to the cops.”
“And you did what she asked.”
Miriam closed her eyes and nodded, the shame clear on her face. “I did. I told them I saw Ju Tweedy standing over the body. I told them Ju was the one to knock me out, then he took off.”
Whykor raised a pedipalp hand. “If I may?”
Yolanda was annoyed by his interruption, but she nodded for him to go ahead.
“You told the police that you saw Ju Tweedy standing over his murder victim, but that he just knocked you out and left? He would know you were a witness. It seems logical that a murderer would want to also eliminate any witnesses, and since he’d already killed once, why wouldn’t he just kill again?”
Miriam smiled grimly. “The cops asked me that same question, but Anna had prepared me. I just told them that Ju and I had been teammates. We played three seasons together. I blocked for him. We were friends.” She looked away. “I lied to the cops and told them my friend was a killer.”
Yolanda watched Miriam and marveled at the setup. Anna Villani wasn’t just ruthless; she was calculating and damn good at it.
“Ju was your friend,” Yolanda said. “Which means there was no way you could be mistaken in identifying him.”
“Exactly,” Miriam said. “Pretty tight, huh? Anna didn’t leave any loopholes.”
“But you didn’t see Ju there?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone, Yolanda. At the time I tried to justify it to myself that maybe Ju had killed her. I hate to say it, but he probably did. I know there were witnesses who saw him running from the building.”
Whykor raised his hand. Annoyed, Yolanda nodded sharply.
“If I may, Miss Connor, you were at the scene and gave a report to the police. So why was your name not on the report?”
That grim smile again, part hate, part respect. “Anna told me to tell them that I was afraid of her, that I would only give a statement on the condition that they kept my name out of everything. She had just taken out Sikka the Death, so it made perfect sense that I’d be afraid of her. The cops bought it.”
“The cops,” Yolanda said. “You remember their names?”
Miriam thought for a moment. “I talked to a Leader, mostly. Regat or something like that. And his partner, I think his name was Clerk
, or maybe Clark.”
She could have found out who the cops were and been playing dumb, but it didn’t seem that way. Miriam was close enough that Yolanda believed she had spoken with Regat the Smooth and Joey Clark. Joey had only been a detective for a week or so, which made Regat the senior and meant he would do most of the interviewing. That also meshed with Miriam’s story.
Yolanda let this information swirl about her mind. Miriam had discovered the body and given a false statement — she lied about that, so she could be lying now. “Miriam, I have to ask you this. Did you—”
Miriam interrupted. “Did I kill Grace McDermot? No.” She held up her maimed arm, the prosthesis immobile. “No way I could have done that kind of damage to her with this.”
Yolanda looked to the rack of prosthetic arms. “Sure, you may not be able to do it with the arm you have on now, but what about one of those? I know what kind of prosthetics and mods are available out there. In a way, you could have been the perfect assassin — kill Grace, get rid of the murder weapon, then be found at the crime scene with just one good arm, making it impossible that you did the killing.”
Miriam glared in anger. Even after her story, she was somehow indignant at being accused of a crime. She seemed to realize the irony of that herself, and her anger faded away.
“I never thought of that,” she said. “Yeah, that’s possible.”
“The cops didn’t ask you?”
Miriam thought, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s hard to remember, I was kind of messed up at the time.”
Yolanda looked hard, trying to see if her friend was lying, but Miriam seemed genuine. “So why didn’t the cops think you were a suspect?”
“Maybe because I lacked motive, and Ju looked good for the crime? Maybe because the neighbors saw Ju fleeing the scene? And I had a lump on the back of my head the size of a Creterakian. I’d filed the proper permits, and I had every reason to be there at the time. It was my fourth day on the job. I swear to you, Yolanda, I didn’t kill Gracie.”
