by John Bowers
“No.”
“You didn’t get jealous over another woman and shoot him?”
“I wasn’t in love with him. And I don’t own a laser.”
“Do any of your…clients…talk in their sleep?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, sometimes men will tell a lady something in confidence that they would never tell anyone else. Given your line of work, I would think you might be in a position to hear things that might help my investigation.”
“Your investigation?”
He nodded. “We’re talking about who killed Ron Gates.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t come here to talk about that.”
“Obviously. But if you were a friend of Gates, I would think you’d like to help find his killer.”
“Well, sure. But I don’t know anything.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t I?”
Nick studied her in silence for a moment.
“You know, Judy, I’ve had a very long day. It was nice to meet you, but I really need to get some sleep.”
She stood up from the bed and walked toward him, slid her arms around his neck and pressed herself against his bare chest. She wasn’t nearly as well built as Suzanne Norgaard, but she exuded an undeniable sensuality. Her lips found his mouth and she kissed him hungrily. His head reeled and his senses buzzed but she pulled back before he could push her away.
“Tonight’s pretty quiet,” she said huskily. “I have nothing better to do.”
“I’m much too tired,” he said. “We’ll be talking again, but you’d better go.”
She smiled impishly and turned for the door. Reaching it, she looked back. “If you hear bumps in the night from down the hall, I’d appreciate you just ignoring them. Things get a little noisy sometimes.”
“Okay. But if I hear you scream, I’ll come running.”
* * *
Friday, July 17, 0442 (CC) – Kline Corners, Sirius 1
In spite of his exhaustion, it was still dark when Nick awoke. His wristwatch told him it was a few minutes after 0300, which with a twenty-five hour day meant he’d been asleep almost nine hours.
He closed his eyes and waited to drift off again, but it didn’t happen. After fifteen minutes he got up and showered, then put on his ridiculous cowboy outfit.
Carrying the package Sheriff Blake had given him the day before, he left the hotel, walking west to the last building on the north side of the street. The early morning was absolutely still, nothing moving except a light breeze.
Kline Corners was like a ghost town, dark and deserted. The air had cooled considerably and was scented with the unmistakable smell of cow manure. From the edge of town he looked west and saw scattered lights on the horizon, north and south. Industrial lights, no doubt, some kind of processing plants, or equipment yards. Some of Kline’s employees apparently worked night shifts.
At the marshal’s office, Nick opened the envelope Blake had given him and removed a sonic key, which disabled the force field over the door, then used the combination code to unlock it. The door slid open and he stepped inside.
The lights were operated manually and he found the switch, then locked the door again. The office was about the same size as Blake’s, a doorway leading into the back. A desk faced the back wall but none faced the door. The chair in front of the desk was probably the one Gates had been sitting in when he was murdered, his back to the door.
Nick moved closer and saw smudges on the floor where thermal and sonic tests had been taken, the residual stain faintly outlining where the body had lain, leaving a picture as clear as a chalk mark might have done in ancient times.
Like every other building in town, the marshal’s office was built of composite wood, the floor made of the same material. A few dark splotches still showed where blood had soaked in.
Nick walked into the back room and saw bulk files and storage cabinets. It was a small office, but included just about everything he would have expected to find in a U.F. Marshal office. Nothing appeared to have been taken, but he would inventory later to make sure. He inspected the plumbing and found everything to be adequate, then hunted up a coffee pot and a jar of Sirian coffee.
Returning to the front office he sat down and looked at the computer terminal on the desk. The screen was dark. He activated start-up and went to retrieve a cup of coffee while it booted. Sipping the coffee, he made a face and decided that Kline had been right about the merits of Sirian coffee as opposed to Brazilian. This stuff was awful.
Nick set up a new user ID and password and deactivated the one used by Ron Gates; anyone who might have copied Gates’s login information would no longer be able to access the system. Next, he displayed all the applications to determine just what was stored on the computer. He found the usual stuff…Federation bulletins; Vmails; databases for fingerprints, voiceprints, and retina scans; basic forensics; links to suspect files on both SiriusNet and SolarNet; a basic accounting database for office expenses, a daily patrol log, case files, and subject interview notes. Finally, one folder contained text files of personal notes.
Starting with the Vmails, Nick began to read. Most of it was routine stuff, updates from U.F. Marshal headquarters, a few private Vmails to friends on Terra, not much else. The patrol logs were brief and boring—a U.F. Marshal’s job wasn’t like that of a local lawman, so he didn’t usually deal with drunks and petty crimes. Nick paged through several months worth of entries without seeing anything of interest.
Then, on January 13, 0442, he saw a single entry: Missing Person.
Nick clicked on the entry to bring up the detail. The missing person was described as Constanza Valenzuela, 14. An attached holo taken the previous year showed her as a cute adolescent with long black hair and a friendly smile. Her address was 21 B Street in Kline Corners. She had left for school on the morning of January 12, but never arrived. Her mother reported her disappearance to Sheriff Blake. Dr. Taylor had filed the same report with Ron Gates.
Nick scrolled through several more weeks of patrol logs, finding little until March 27: Missing Persons.
This time two girls were missing—Julia Gato and Consuelo Ratón, both 13. They had been abducted by two men just outside Village 24—in November of 0441, two months before Constanza Valenzuela; several children had witnessed the abduction.
Nick frowned. Why had Gates waited until March to log the abductions? Had it not been reported until then?
He kept scrolling. In April Gates had logged two more missing girls, three more in May, and five in June. All the children had been taken several months before the entries were logged. Nick scratched his chin…Gates had been backtracking, looking for crimes that hadn’t been reported—and finding them.
He’d been murdered on June 24, just three weeks before Nick arrived to replace him. Had he been getting close to something?
Nick sat back and rubbed his eyes, picked up his coffee cup and swallowed the lukewarm dregs. There was more here, but dawn was breaking and he was hungry. He shut down the computer and stood up, put on his hat and went out the door, locking it behind him.
Lost in thought, he headed toward the Vega and breakfast.
Chapter 6
“If you should be posted off-planet, the odds are that you will work largely alone. Many resources are available, but your biggest asset will be your deductive ability, your training, and your logical mind—assuming you have one.”
—Professor Milligan, U.F. Marshal Academy
The Vega was crowded with diners. All the tables were filled when Nick stepped inside, so he walked over to the bar and took a hover stool. Heads turned at the sight of him; it was the first most people had known a new marshal was in town. Most of those eating breakfast appeared to be cowboys or other farm workers. Two or three were women.
“Good morning, Marshal.” Nick looked up to see Suzanne Norgaard watching him with her usual expressionless gaze. “Sleep well?”
“Yes.
But I was awake well before daylight. Probably take me a couple of days to get regulated.”
She smiled briefly.
“Breakfast is pretty standard here. Eggs, beef, bacon, potatoes, coffee and juice, unless you prefer milk.”
“Brazilian coffee?”
“Of course. Mr. Kline has a fit if we serve any other kind.”
“Must cost a fortune to import it from Terra.”
“We buy in bulk.”
“I’ll take the eggs and beef. And coffee and juice.”
She nodded and disappeared into the back. Kristina came out and headed toward a distant table, her arms laden with food plates. Moments later she returned for a coffee pot, saw Nick and stopped, staring at him in horror.
“Morning,” he said.
She gulped, glanced toward the kitchen doorway, then picked up the pot and approached him. She gave him a mug and filled it with coffee, her hand shaking slightly.
“You aren’t going to tell my mother, are you?” she whispered hoarsely.
“About what?”
She peered at him a few seconds, standing perfectly still.
He winked at her, and relief washed over her face. She offered him a weak smile.
“Thank you!” she breathed. “I owe you one.”
“You’re welcome. But you and I need to talk,” he said. “Later. Meantime, you better get back to work.”
She fled with the coffee pot just seconds before her mother came back through the doorway. Suzanne poured herself a mug of coffee and pulled her own stool up to the bar.
“You’re not bad looking for a non-Vegan,” she observed.
He laughed, taken by surprise.
“That sounds like high praise from a Vegan woman,” he said. “Are you fishing for a marriage proposal?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because every man in town has already proposed, but I haven’t. Maybe you feel it’s your due.”
“And maybe you’re a smart ass.”
“It keeps me single.”
“Have you solved the murder yet?”
“Working on it. What do you know about Constanza Valenzuela?”
Suzanne cocked her head. “Who?”
Nick gazed at her. She knew the name, he was certain.
“Oh.” Her expression softened. “You mean the girl that went missing in January.” She picked up a cloth and wiped the counter. “I don’t know much, except that no one ever found her.”
“Did you know her?”
“I’d seen her around. She was a serf girl, never came in here.”
“From what Mr. Kline said, I had the impression that most…serfs…lived in villages around the area. Do very many live in Kline Corners?”
“Only two families. Constanza’s mother works for Dr. Taylor, and Mr. Garcia works for Dennis Green at the garage. They live close by because of their jobs. The other serf families live in the villages.”
Nick’s lips compressed as he fiddled with his coffee cup. The very idea of serfs was repugnant to him, but Suzanne seemed to find nothing wrong with it.
“Did Ron Gates talk to you about the abduction?”
Suzanne’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what it was? An abduction?”
Nick glanced up.
“I don’t know. But it seems unlikely she was a runaway. Where could she go in this desert?”
“Maybe one of the villages. If she really wanted to run, she could disappear there without much trouble.”
He nodded. “I guess that’s a possibility. Have you heard of other girls going missing?”
“No.”
“If girls in the villages disappeared, would you be aware of it?”
“Probably not, unless someone came in talking about it. What are you getting at, Marshal?”
He shrugged. “Just thinking out loud.”
“Have other girls gone missing? Did you find something in Ron’s files?”
Nick didn’t answer at once. It wasn’t usually prudent to tell everything he knew, but Suzanne struck him as an honest person, and she was in a unique position to hear things—if he could trust her. After a long moment, he made a decision.
“What you and I discuss has to remain confidential,” he said.
“I know that. I had the same understanding with Ron.”
But he didn’t tell you about the other missing girls, Nick thought. Maybe I shouldn’t either.
“All right.” He glanced sideways to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. “Ron Gates logged thirteen missing girls over the last year.”
Suzanne’s green eyes widened.
“Thirteen!”
“And I suspect there may be more. Every one is a Spanic girl, what you would call a serf.”
“Goddess!” She placed her elbows on the counter, shock written across her face. “Ron never mentioned any of this. This was in his files?”
Nick sipped his coffee and nodded.
“What do you think is going on?”
“I don’t think anything yet. I was hoping you might shed some light on things. You know the culture better than I do.”
Still looking shaken, Suzanne’s eyes lost their focus for a moment.
“Sometimes I pick up bits and pieces, but nothing like this.”
“Bits and pieces of what?”
“Well…men don’t talk to me about certain things, but they talk to each other and I overhear. I know that some of the cowboys use serf women as whores. Serf women get raped sometimes…”
“Girls too?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Does Blake know about this?”
“I’m sure he does. But this isn’t the Federation, Nick. We have a caste system here. On Sirius, if you aren’t white, you aren’t important. Up in the states, it’s perfectly legal to rape a woman if she isn’t white. Most white Sirians are racist, and they don’t see anything wrong with it. Sheriff Blake isn’t going to investigate something like that, especially if the woman wasn’t injured or killed. The serfs know that, so they wouldn’t even report it to him.”
Nick chewed his lip as Suzanne got up and refilled his cup, then sat down again.
“So you’re telling me,” he said, “that rape is prevalent here, but abductions are rare?”
“I wouldn’t say rape is ‘prevalent’,” she amended. “Rape happens everywhere. Even on Vega, where women are venerated.”
“But here it’s racially motivated?”
“I wouldn’t even say that. ‘Racially excused’ would be more accurate.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that. The…serfs…know the law isn’t going to help them, so they don’t report it. In other words, they have to accept it because they have no choice.”
“Yes.”
“At the same time, you said the victims aren’t usually injured or killed. So it’s significant when a girl simply disappears. Right?”
“I would think so, yes.”
“Yet thirteen girls have gone missing. So what the hell is going on?”
She sat silent a moment, watching him.
“I have a feeling,” she said quietly, “that you’re going to find the answer.” She placed a hand over his. “I’ll go check on your breakfast.”
Suzanne got up and went back to the kitchen, returning a moment later with his food. She set it before him and filled his cup again.
“Eat up. You’ll need your strength if you’re going to save the planet.”
With that she was off to refill coffee cups.
Nick ate ravenously, astonished at how good the food was. If dinner had been fantastic, breakfast was just as good. He was halfway done when Kristina showed up and slid onto the stool. Suzanne had left the dining room and the girl made a show of keeping his coffee cup filled.
“What did you do to Nathan?” she asked in a nervous whisper.
“Nothing. Told him good night and sent him on his way.”
“Thank the goddess.”
“Are you in love with him?”
“Yes.”
“But your mother isn’t?”
“No.”
“He said your mother hates him.”
“I don’t think she hates him, but she doesn’t want him hanging around. It’s so unfair! He’s the nicest boy in town.”
“Your mother doesn’t want you getting pregnant.”
Her eyes widened in alarm. “You’ve been talking to her?”
“No. I’m just guessing. You and Nathan were getting pretty heated last night. I was telling him, and I’ll tell you—you can’t keep that up and expect nothing to come of it.”
“We know when to quit!”
“You think so?”
“Yes. We always have.” She cast an anxious glance at the door.
“I’ve been there, Kristina. You keep that up and the day will come when you won’t be able to stop. I’m not trying to ruin your fun, or interfere with true love. It’s just biology.”
“So what can we do? I’m miserable without him.”
He shook his head. “I don’t have an easy answer for you. But unless you want to end up pregnant and eliminate most of the choices for the rest of your life, you’d better keep your clothes on around him.”
“That isn’t much help.”
He finished the last of the beef and pushed the plate aside. Wiping his mouth with a napkin, he looked at her for a long moment. She really did look miserable.
“No, I guess it isn’t.”
“Mom doesn’t even want me to talk to him. She won’t let him in here without his parents.”
“I might be able to do something about that,” he suggested. “But it will take time. I can’t bring it up without tipping her off that I know about you two. But once I get to know your mother better, I might be able to talk to her about it.”
Suzanne came out of the kitchen and joined them. Kristina gave a start but recovered quickly, looking at Nick in desperation.
“Why do I have to pay cash every time?” he asked the girl. “I should be able to have an account and just pay at the end of the month.”
Suzanne looked at her daughter in alarm. “Kristina, what are you telling him?”
The girl played along. “We don’t know anything about him, Mother!”
“Ron Gates had a tab with us. Which, by the way—” Suzanne turned to Nick. “—is still unpaid.”
