by Ilsa J. Bick
Ramsey opened his mouth to reply, but the woman working dispatch knocked on the doorjamb. “Crime scene people just pulling up,” she said, and then crossed to the pot. She poured, sipped. “Ah, you tried the egg shells.” She turned to Ramsey. “I’ve been picking at this old coot for five months to listen to Lottie. Just about wore a hole in my stomach that stuff he was drinking and—”
“Sheila,” Ketchum cut in. “Don’t you have some emergency to attend to?”
“Actually, it’s been kinda quiet and I—”
There was another knock on the sheriff’s doorjamb, and then the crime scene tech brushed past Sheila, sniffed, said, “That fresh?” and went to pour a cup. He took an experimental sip. “Hey, that’s not bad.”
“Egg shells,” Sheila said. “I was just saying, I’ve been picking at . . .”
Ketchum rolled his eyes. “Small towns.”
* * *
His hands gloved, the tech pinched up the butt from the muffin wrapper and turned it in the light. “Doesn’t look like it got wet,” he said then brought the butt up to his nose. “Smells fresh. No stamp on the wrapper. Most brand names stamp the wrapper.”
“So it’s a knockoff brand?” Ramsey asked.
“Probably. Be pretty hard to narrow down distribution. One saving grace with the HPGs down is manufacturers aren’t venturing far out of their prefectures. They can’t coordinate shipments so well. So they stick to a certain preset route, where they’ve got JumpShip freighters hanging, waiting for the next pickup. As for DNA”—he shook out an evidence bag, dropped the butt inside and sealed the bag, then poked at a noteputer and wrote a number on the bag in indelible marker—“we might get something. The rocks, I don’t know.”
“Damn it,” Ramsey said. “I was hoping we really had something.”
Snapping off his gloves, the tech said, “That reminds me. New Bonn called right before I came over. That’s why I was late. They have some results for you on that stuff we found in those brambles, and those tread marks.” He closed out one program on his noteputer then opened another. “The treads are specific to a Bannson Hawk-Spirit turbocycle. Manufacturer’s in Prefecture II. Pretty common, bread-and-butter turbo.”
Ketchum nodded. “I can think of maybe fifty people off the top of my head.”
“What about the fibers and that hair?” Ramsey asked.
“The fibers are cashmere,” the tech said. “Made from a Nystera species of goat.”
“Never heard of it.”
“No reason you should’ve. Turns out that about the only people interested in Nystera were the Clans. Lessee,” the tech said, checking his noteputer, “back a ways, the Ghost Bears owned the planet. Then the Diamond Sharks—”
“Who are the Diamond Sharks?”
“Better to ask who they are now. They renamed themselves Clan Sea Fox a while back. Anyway, the then–Diamond Sharks challenged the Ghost Bears, won and then lost the world the very next year after the Battle of Tukayyid.”
“Who’s active there now?”
“House Kurita, but that’s about all we know. The Dracs aren’t in the habit of providing updates to the database. But that might not help you much anyway because the blue dye’s from Twycross, and that’s Clan Sea Fox. But here’s the kicker: Denebola never imported this type of cashmere. You can’t legally buy it anywhere on the planet. There might be a black market, but I don’t think people will risk jail time for a sweater.”
“So where would you have to go to get this particular sweater?” Ramsey asked.
“Had to go,” the tech corrected. “The manufacturer stopped production right before the Jihad. Only Clan Sea Fox, they’re shills for just about anything. They’d sell their own Elementals to turn a profit. So Sea Fox might’ve stockpiled. Plus, the lab says the fibers are pretty brittle. The sweater’s really old, like it belonged to someone’s grandma. But there was no useful DNA they could find.”
Grandma—or grandpa. “What about that white hair?”
“Ah, the hair. Some of the hair’s from a wig. Most of it’s human but treated with a synthetic for added durability. No word on the manufacturer, but New Bonn thinks they can extract the modacrylic synthetic and narrow down to manufacturers.”
“Yeah, but distribution must be huge,” Ketchum said.
The tech held up a finger. “But there’s makeup on the fibers, commercial-grade, like what a woman might wear: foundation, crap like that.”
“A woman?” Ramsey had assumed their killer was male, someone strong enough to hoist Limyanovich’s rigid body into the car. Then Ramsey remembered Amanda’s forearms and hands, all those muscles from baling hay and reining in horses.
Ketchum frowned. “Could we be looking at a team?”
“Doesn’t feel right. Most teams have this erotic thing going, and this doesn’t feel sexual.” Ramsey looked back at the tech. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” the tech said. “Blood.”
Ramsey felt a tingle on the back of his neck. “Like blowback?”
“Exactly like blowback. Only on the tips and not down the shaft, and the blood’s not all from the same person. One type is O positive, the other’s AB negative.”
“Male or female?”
“Don’t know yet,” the tech said. “They’re running the DNA.”
“You said there were three things,” Ketchum said.
“Right. That white hair? It’s not all from a wig. Oh, it’s real hair. It’s just not human. Felis domesticus Orestiana” the tech said, with a flourish. “The hairs are from a cat.”
29
1700 hours
All right, so what was that little huddle at the church?
Gabriel paced his kitchen like a caged Orestelian lynx. He was still in his Sunday best: dark blue jacket and trousers. Of all days to forget he’d volunteered to help with the church supper. The meal had dragged for hours, the minutes frittered away.
But what was that little powwow at the church? Obviously, something big. Anyone who wasn’t inside the church, including Gabriel, saw the three of them, and soon the whole congregation was abuzz. He wouldn’t be surprised if that was all over town by now. And it was probably about Schroeder.
He had to take action. Reaching into his hip pocket, he pulled out his wallet, unfolded it and riffled through bills. Had to use cash. No credit, no paper trail. He squared the wallet on the kitchen table then went to the refrigerator and dialed it open. (The keypad was a joke. When he was a kid, dear old Dad thought to keep him from that vodka in the freezer. Idiot. He’d cracked the code in an hour.) Then Gabriel reached in and retrieved three glass vials. He lined the vials up and stared at them for a long minute then crossed to his bedroom, his fingers already jerking at the knot of his tie.
Do this right, they’ll have a hell of a lot more to worry about than Schroeder.
He would give them plenty.
* * *
Amanda showed up five minutes after the tech left. Her long hair was loose and damp around her shoulders, and she smelled of soap and, faintly, rose petals. “Sorry,” she said as they hustled out for Ketchum’s patrol car. “I was going to stop by the hospital, but I ran out of time.”
Ketchum drove. Ramsey filled her in about the fibers, makeup and blood types then added, “We may need to rethink about whether there are two people involved.”
Amanda was quiet a moment. “Do you think that Isaiah Schroeder was involved with something, I don’t know, secret—and maybe the other people who knew the secret decided he couldn’t keep it? And maybe that Limyanovich figured out the secret and then whoever killed Schroeder had to murder Limyanovich, too—or even”—she hesitated—“maybe Limyanovich was there when they killed Schroeder?”
“You know, you got to stop doing that,” Ramsey said, shaking his head. “You’re making me look bad. Anyway, how you figure that?”
Now Amanda looked almost apologetic. “If you assume one killer, why wear a disguise? The only reasons would be either you were afraid of being seen,
or Limyanovich might have seen you before. That raises two possibilities. Either the killer used the disguise to keep Limyanovich from identifying him, or the disguise made Limyanovich relax because he knew that person wouldn’t hurt him.”
Ketchum grunted. “She’s pretty darned good. We shoulda thought of that.”
“Yeah,” Ramsey said. “So maybe we’re talking more than one or two people. Maybe we’re talking a group—and now we’re heading into Garibaldi-land.” Ramsey looked over his shoulder at Amanda. “You got any other little bombshells?”
“You don’t have to get pissy,” she said.
* * *
Old Doc Summers’s place was south and much further west, teetering on the very edge of town. The house was a rustic, black-and-white side-to-side split-level, facing north to south upon a rolling grade. A curl of driveway led to a two-car garage, and a footpath of white gravel wound from the driveway to disappear somewhere behind the house. A tired-looking navy blue sedan with a rust-speckled tailpipe was parked in the drive. To the left of the house and maybe eighteen meters back was a long, modular shed with a roll-down door.
“He live alone?” Ramsey asked as Ketchum pulled into the drive.
Ketchum nodded. “His boy Adam comes back off and on, sometimes for a couple weeks, sometimes longer. He’s a little . . . off—you know what I mean?”
They’d rolled to a stop. Ketchum killed the engine, but Ramsey didn’t unbuckle. “No, I don’t know what you mean.”
“He means psychiatric, Jack,” Amanda said. She unbuckled. “He means like drugs and rehab and some prison time, and a kid who’s a little bit crazy. Like that.”
* * *
Summers was waiting for them on the porch. He was still in his Sunday best: dark blue trousers and a rumpled white shirt. No shoes, and a lit cigarette pinched between his fingers. Summers looked as rumpled as his shirt, and his thatch of silver-white hair was mussed. There were purple smudges under his eyes, which were bright and a little wary. They followed Summers through a front hall that smelled of coffee, cigarettes, old tomato sauce, sweaty feet, and cat piss.
“I just put on a pot,” Summers ground out, his accent a little broader today. His voice was thick, and he cleared it with a phlegmy smoker’s hack. “You want a cup, Hank? ’Manda?” He didn’t ask Ramsey. When Ketchum and Amanda declined, Summers tipped more coffee into a chipped earthenware mug then unceremoniously dumped a white long-haired cat off a kitchen counter littered with a stack of dirty plates and cutlery. Summers leaned against the counter and knocked out another cigarette from a crumpled pack. “Okay,” he said. He plucked his butt from his mouth, screwed in the unlit cigarette, touched it off with the butt and then stubbed out the butt in an ashtray overflowing with crinkled stubs. He squinted past a column of new smoke. “What’s so darned important you had to call on a Sunday afternoon after I’ve been in the hospital all night and church the whole blessed day?”
“You just got home?” Ketchum asked.
“That’s right,” Summers rapped. “Supper with Father Gillis, and you can check with him to back me up on that.”
“Doc, we’re not accusing you of anything.”
“No?” Now, Summers rounded on Ramsey. “Well, you’re doing a fine job of not accusing me. Don’t bother denying it, Hank. Everyone saw you three at church, and people can’t stop wagging their fool tongues about it. And then before that, he”—a jab of his cigarette at Ramsey—“shows up at the hospital with questions about a case I closed and you signed off on.” Now he turned a glare to Ramsey. “You don’t think the nurses have ears? The janitor? You don’t think they weren’t flapping their gums?”
“Doc,” Ketchum began.
Ramsey cut in. “You’re getting pretty worked up over a couple of theoreticals.”
“You wouldn’t?” Summers threw back.
“No, I wouldn’t. If I was confident I was right, that is.” He paused to let Summers jump back in. When he didn’t, Ramsey said, “Look, I’m sorry I said something in front of people. That was my error.”
Summers snorted. “From what I heard about you, Detective, just one of many!”
Ramsey kept his temper. “But that doesn’t change the fact that there are discrepancies between your report and Dr. Slade’s impressions. So, yes, we’re looking at that again.” He pulled out his noteputer. “Schroeder’s death is the only one of its kind in these parts in the last decade, and I had questions.”
“Such as? I know you went out to Cameron Island. Eric down at the dock said you and Amanda rented a boat, so I know you went.”
Amanda jumped in. “Doc, please. I just had a couple of questions about your findings, that’s all. Your interpretation of Schroeder’s craniofacial trauma is a bit different from the radiologist. But that’s certainly nothing criminal.”
And, just like that, Summers visibly deflated. His shoulders hunched, and his chest caved in, and he looked, suddenly, extremely old. He swallowed and said, “You haven’t been here as long as me. If word gets around that I’ve been negligent, you think anyone’s going to see me? I guarantee, my practice will evaporate”—he snapped two shaky fingers together, flubbed it, and gave it up—“like that. It’ll ruin me.”
Ketchum said, “Doc, at this point, what’s done is done. Right now, you can make it easier if you just look at the reports and see what you think.”
“And that’s all?”
“For now,” Ramsey said.
Amanda shot him an angry look, and Summers stiffened. “Oh, yes, I forgot, Captain Republic,” Summers said. “You ruin people as part of your job, is that it?”
“You want to talk about ruin?” Ramsey said. “Whenever somebody kills someone, people get hurt. I’m not just talking the obvious. I’m talking the community because all of you have to come to terms with the fact that, most likely, the killer’s one of you and he’s killed a lot more than just a man. He’s killed trust. He’s killed your town. Farway will never be the same again, but I haven’t done that. The killer has.”
Summers stared for a moment then took a drag from his cigarette and dropped the butt into his mug. The cigarette hissed, and died. Then, he held out his left hand for Ramsey’s noteputer, and for the first time, Ramsey saw a small bandage crossing Doc’s left palm.
“Let me see that goddamned thing,” Doc said.
* * *
Summers read the report through three times, taking his time. Finally, he said, “I only see one thing, but I don’t understand how it’s a problem. The man was shot in the face with a rifle, for pity’s sake.”
“Doc.” Amanda laid a hand on his arm. “You left out the wrists and you left out the part about the teeth.”
“So?” Summers frowned. “The wrists were scraped. That could’ve happened when he fell, or from animals. His front teeth were broken. He was shot in the face. Why is that a problem?”
“First, you’re wrong about the wrists. Second, you didn’t put either finding in the report. Third, they change the range of possible conclusions. Doc, I actually looked at the spot where Schroeder was found and the position of his body, and it doesn’t add up. Plus, he had all those basilar skull fractures that you left out.”
“So?”
“Doc,” she said, gently, “Schroeder’s walking up the hill. Or he’s walking down it. Either way, if he trips and somehow ends up with the bore facing him, the blast will still have an upward trajectory. But he has basal fractures. His cerebellum is gone. That means the blast angled down and, most likely”—she paused—“the gun was in his mouth.”
Summers didn’t say anything for a moment. He lifted his nicotine-stained fingers to his mouth, seemed surprised there was no cigarette there and let the hand fall. “But it’s possible it happened the way I said, isn’t it? It’s possible that—”
“No, Doc. It isn’t.”
“But,” Summers stammered, “but he took a bullet in the face.”
“And you put down all the other stuff that was broken, but not the front teeth,
” Ramsey said. “Why didn’t you put the front teeth or the fractures into the record? Because it would’ve changed the interpretation, for one.”
Whatever softness or hesitancy Summers had was gone. Flaring, his eyes blazing fire, he turned to Ketchum. “Hank, I have to protest—”
“Don’t look at him. Look at me!” Ramsey snapped. He brought the flat of his hand down on the kitchen table hard enough to make crockery rattle and Summers flinch. “Look at me. The trajectory of the bullet couldn’t have done the teeth. I’ve seen this before, and I caught it. Amanda’s seen it before when she worked Towne, and that’s why she caught it. Ketchum couldn’t have known and wouldn’t have questioned it because you’ve never had anyone murdered here before in quite this way.”
“Murder,” Summers said, numbly. “You’re talking murder. You’re saying—”
“Yes, I am. If you’d said you did it to protect Schroeder’s widow from thinking that her husband killed himself, I almost would’ve believed you. But you didn’t. And I know how teeth get broken like that.” Ramsey leaned in. “Because someone forced the gun into Schroeder’s mouth. They had him on his knees, and they’d tied his hands behind his back, and when he wouldn’t open his mouth, they pushed that gun in hard enough to break his teeth. Then they pulled the trigger . . . and blew his head off.”
* * *
No one said anything on the way to the car. Ramsey felt eyes, and when he looked back, the old man was watching from his porch, a cigarette scrolling smoke between his fingers and the white cat weaving in and out between his legs. Ramsey slid into the passenger’s seat and pulled the door shut. The car rocked on its shocks as Amanda got into the back and Ketchum plopped into the driver’s seat. “So what do you think?” Ramsey asked.
“I think that if this keeps up, I’m gonna be lucky they elect me dogcatcher.” But Ketchum didn’t sound angry. Just . . . depressed.
“That’s what’s really eating you?”
“No. Hell,” Ketchum said, and he made it sound like a dirty word. “I sure hope we haven’t wrecked a good man for nothing.”
