“As opposed to why Miles might do it.”
“Yeah,” DeRicci said.
Paloma let her arms drop. “I must admit, I am intrigued, but I doubt I can help you. Miles and I are very different people. And just because you’re angry at him doesn’t mean yelling at me will make you feel better.”
“I’m not….” But DeRicci stopped the sentence long before she got to the end. She was angry at Flint. Was that why she came to Paloma? So that she could yell at someone?
Paloma stepped away from the door. “Come on in.”
DeRicci walked out of the elevator, past Paloma. The entry turned slightly and then opened to a large living room. The moonscape covered the entire far wall, but here it looked like a skillful painting rather than a view from the window.
“Miles thinks it indulgent,” Paloma said, coming up behind DeRicci.
“What?” DeRicci asked.
“This apartment. He doesn’t believe in spending money on luxuries.”
“I get the sense he doesn’t believe in spending money,” DeRicci said.
Paloma smiled. It made the wrinkles on her face deeper, but gave her a pixyish look. “See? You do know him.”
“I never said I didn’t.” DeRicci stood in the center of the room, not willing to sit down until Paloma invited her to.
Paloma leaned on the back of a brown couch, which blended into the brown rug. The drab furniture made the view seem even more powerful.
“Miles has been indicted for something?” Paloma asked.
“No,” DeRicci said.
“But you said he has fled the Moon.”
“It doesn’t look good,” DeRicci said.
Paloma nodded. “He and I are very different, you know. We run a different kind of business.”
“Run? I thought you were out of it.”
“I’ve retired,” Paloma said. “I doubt you’re ever out of it.”
DeRicci waited for her to expand upon that comment, but Paloma didn’t.
“What has he done?” Paloma asked.
“I can only give you the broad facts,” DeRicci said. “But here’s what I know: some people hired him to find their adult child. He did, and shortly thereafter all of them were murdered here on Armstrong. The weapon is his, and I have a security vid with someone who looks like him at the time of the murder.”
“Hmm.” Paloma nodded, as if she had heard this before.
“I talked to him when the investigation started and his name came up, asking him to share information from his research. He wouldn’t. And apparently at that point, he put some tracers in the police department’s computer system, focussing mostly on my files. In fact, the techs tell me that his system got alerted every time I logged on.”
“Miles always did have impressive computer skills,” Paloma said.
DeRicci let that pass. “When I found that security vid today, he was ghosting me. He saw it too. An hour later, he had taken the Emmeline and left the Moon. He didn’t even file a flight plan.”
“He wouldn’t have to,” Paloma said.
“Because of all that money he pays to the Port,” DeRicci said, and heard the bitterness again. “It doesn’t seem like Flint to spend the money on something like that.”
“He spends his money on necessities, Detective,” Paloma said. “That ship of his may look luxurious, but she’s a necessity too.”
“For escape,” DeRicci muttered.
“No,” Paloma said. “For investigation and defense. He’s going to be a lot more aggressive than I was, especially in going after people he believes have done something wrong.”
DeRicci sat, and nearly lost her balance. The chair was softer than she expected. She caught herself with the armrests. “You think he killed those people? He knows better than to commit murder in Armstrong. We have laws here, whether or not his profession encourages him to obey them.”
Paloma didn’t seem to notice the dig. “You’re looking at this wrong.”
“Really?” DeRicci asked. “The evidence points to his involvement in their deaths.”
“The evidence,” Paloma said, leaning back, “points to his caution—unless there is more that you aren’t telling me.”
“I’m not telling you identities, and that’s about it.” For which she could get into a lot of trouble. Coming to Paloma was a risk, just like going to Flint had been.
“Miles would never leave a weapon at a crime scene,” Paloma said. “Neither would you.”
“In the heat of the moment, anyone might miss something.”
“But you’re looking for other explanations, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. You want to know why he killed three people and betrayed you by not telling you.”
When it was put that coldly, DeRicci wanted to disagree. But that was why she had come to Paloma. In DeRicci’s mind, Paloma was the next best thing to Flint.
“Let’s take the corpses out of this. Let’s talk about Miles,” Paloma said. “He’s not your partner any more.”
“No, he’s not,” DeRicci said. “But we have worked together.”
“Have you?” Paloma asked.
“On the Moon Marathon,” DeRicci said.
“It seems to me that you were each working your own cases there, from what little he’s told me,” Paloma said. “He’s finally learning that Retrieval Artists work alone.”
“Whatever that means,” DeRicci said.
“It means he couldn’t confide in you. It means he couldn’t reveal confidential information. And it means he knew you would investigate him, and he wanted to see what you had before you surprised him with it.”
“Putting tracers in my office is illegal,” DeRicci said.
“It’s illegal for private citizens to do that anywhere, but I’ll wager you find some of Flint’s tracers in the dead people’s security system. It’s one way Retrieval Artists get information.” Paloma folded her hands together. “Everyone lies, you know. That’s why we investigate our clients. Everybody lies, so make sure you learn the truth before taking the case.”
“Flint couldn’t be thinking that I lied,” DeRicci said, and she tried to remember what she had told him. Had she lied? How much had she left out? The conversation was a blur, culminating with his refusal to work with her, and the sad look on his face as she left his office.
“But he knew you,” Paloma said. “He had refused to help you, and he knew you would have to investigate him.”
“So?” DeRicci said. “Why would he care if he had nothing to hide?”
“Why indeed?” Paloma asked. “Maybe he cared that his clients were dead.”
DeRicci started. Of course he would care about that. Of course he would care and want to investigate. That was Miles Flint, the man she had known. How come she hadn’t seen that either?
“So why not help me?”
“Confidentiality.” Paloma leaned back in her chair. “Or maybe he knew his involvement was too great, that he’d compromise your investigation.”
“I thought Retrieval Artists aren’t altruistic,” DeRicci said.
“Retrieval Artists aren’t,” Paloma said. “Miles is.”
DeRicci stared at her.
Paloma smiled slowly. This smile didn’t make her seem puckish. It simply made her seem sad.
“He helps people,” Paloma said, “whether they want it or not. He’s the only Retrieval Artist I know who started his career by helping a large group of people remain Disappeared.”
“I’m not supposed to know about that,” DeRicci said, holding up her hands. Helping Disappeareds wasn’t illegal unless you knew their crimes, which was how Disappearance Services skirted the letter of the law. But Flint had been the law when he helped those Disappeareds—or just newly retired. DeRicci had tried to ignore that for two years.
“You’re not supposed to know a lot of things,” Paloma said, “which is why Miles didn’t work with you. But you should know that he’s not the kind of man to murder three people in cold blood.”
“The evide
nce says otherwise,” DeRicci said.
“The evidence says that someone used Miles’s gun.”
“He might have been there.”
“Which is not a crime,” Paloma said, “unless he was there when the murders took place.”
“He followed my investigation,” DeRicci said.
“And left when he got a piece of information,” Paloma said.
DeRicci nodded.
“What you see as guilt, I see as research. He’s looking for the killer too, even though that’s not his job.”
“He told you this?” DeRicci asked, feeling a bit of hope.
“Of course not,” Paloma said. “He can’t confide in anyone any more. That was your main mistake, you know. Believing you could have worked with him on this case.”
DeRicci swallowed. She had been thinking the same thing, but it felt different hearing the words from someone else.
“You shouldn’t have gone to him. You can’t go to him in the future. He can’t work with you. Retrieval Artists work alone. Sometimes they die alone. That’s what the job is. Do you understand, Detective?”
“Are you saying he might get himself killed on this investigation?” DeRicci asked.
Paloma studied her for a long moment, and then sighed. “I’m saying that whatever you’ve felt for him in the past, you must set aside now. He can’t be a true friend to you, nor you to him. Too many conflicts. Just like he would have conflicts with me or anyone else. He’s chosen to be alone, Detective. Completely alone, and nothing you do can change that.”
“I don’t want to change that,” DeRicci said, but she knew she was lying. She did want to change it. Flint was the best partner she’d had, and the one person she actually liked in all her years of working on the force.
When he set out on his own, he still seemed like the same man. Then they had worked together one more time.
One last time.
“I might have to arrest him if the evidence still points in his direction,” DeRicci said.
Paloma shrugged. “Do what you have to. He’ll vindicate himself if he can.”
“And if he can’t?” DeRicci asked.
“It’s part of the job, Detective,” Paloma said. “He’s ready for it. Are you?”
Forty
Even the ports were brighter.
Flint had noticed that the first time he had come to Earth, and it struck him even more this time. Of course, this time he’d brought his ship through the atmosphere and to one of the oldest landing sites on the planet—a place called Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The Cape held a group of interlocking buildings, all of which served as a port. It seemed odd to Flint to enter a dock without going through a dome. It was strangely freeing.
It was also difficult to land in bright sunlight. Usually he landed in darkness, going from the blackness around the Moon to the artificial light inside the dome.
This time, he went from a clear blue sky into what the locals called a hanger bay. His ship leveled straight downward—he’d kept it on autopilot, since his experience with atmosphere and real-gravity landings were only on flight simulators.
The terminal was larger, cleaner, and more private. He had wired credits ahead, asking for the best accommodations in the closest landing site to Louisiana—the coordinates he had gotten gave him Cape Canaveral, a recommendation for air- rentals and airtaxis, and a list of dozens of hotels along the way.
Flint set his coordinates to land in Cape Canaveral, rented an aircar, and booked a room for that night in the Cape, and the following night at a hotel in New Orleans.
While the ship went through its decon cycle, and while the computers bickered about paperwork, he hacked into Earth’s portside system, looking for information on Hank Mosby.
He found that Mosby had entered via transport two days before, but found no other record of the man. No aircar rentals, no hired taxis, no bullet-train tickets.
Hank Mosby had vanished. Or, more likely, once he left the port, he assumed another identity and became one of ten billion humans overpopulating the planet Earth.
Flint had hours of decon to go through himself, along with security scans and identification verification. The last time it had taken him nearly a day to get through Earth’s complicated entry procedures. Of course, the last time, he had brought a small laser pistol, and learned just how stringent Earth’s no-weapons rule was. Not even a Moon-issue permit, stating that he had once been law enforcement and therefore entitled to carry the weapon, worked.
The pace of his investigation would slow here. Nothing moved as quickly on the home planet as it did on the Moon. He would start where he had found her, in New Orleans, talk to her friends, see if he could find the family she had abandoned for that odd little jazz career. Maybe, too, he might hear of a man who had lurked nearby and asked too many questions—a man other than himself.
Maybe that might lead him to Mosby.
He hoped it would. Because Flint couldn’t think of any other way to track the assassin down.
Forty-one
Everyone looked at her strangely as she walked through the front door of her restaurant, and it took her a moment to understand why. Nitara Nicolae touched the drying blood on her cheeks, frowned ostentatiously, and said to anyone who would listen:
“I got caught in the riot.”
People nodded, made sympathetic noises, and return to their meals. She staggered a little as she headed toward the back; just a touch of drama to divert their attention from her strangeness.
She didn’t feel like herself—at least, not her Armstrong self. She felt something like a girl she used to be, long ago and far away, when the place she lived had a real night sky and air that wasn’t manufactured by some machine.
A home she no longer claimed. Where she had lived with a family she no longer had.
The restaurant smelled of thyme and ginger and roasted garlic. Her stomach growled, but she ignored it. She would have time for food later.
The clank and clatter of silver against the dishes she had so carefully chosen sounded like atonal music, something she could not abide. Once she had found this place comforting.
Once it had substituted for home.
Amazing how much pain a person could put away, and think they were done with, only to have it rise up bit by little bit as the memories returned.
As the need for revenge rose with it.
Maybe she had been planning this all along. Maybe her rational mind had sent her to Armstrong, so deep in the Old Universe that she had thought her buried memories might not get resurrected.
Yet her subconscious mind had worked on vengeance anyway, hoping—maybe even praying—it would get the chance.
She could stop now. She knew that. But she didn’t want to.
That amazed her the most.
She pushed open the double doors that led into the kitchen she had designed. Her employees worked the ranges. The sous chef was just finishing with his preparations for the following day, and the pastry chef had already left.
The two main chefs were cooking dinners for the various patrons outside. Both men smiled at her as she entered the kitchen, their smiles fading when they saw the blood on her face.
She waved a hand toward it. “Riot,” she said, and one of them came to her, slid an arm around her back, and asked her if she was all right.
She was sure she was fine, she said to him. Positive. No need to worry.
“We have to get you cleaned up,” he said to her, and she nodded. Let them think what they needed to. Let them do what they had to.
They would leave soon, and so would the patrons, not knowing they had enjoyed the last night in her famous restaurant. Such a small dream, one she had put such importance on.
And who cared, really, if a restaurant succeeded or failed? People found food somewhere else. A good meal was a pleasure that couldn’t be repeated, but another good meal could take its place, and then another and another, until the first good meal was forgotten.
&
nbsp; The smells shifted: less ginger and thyme, more garlic, a few onions, and a beef broth that seemed a little heavy on the salt. But she said nothing.
Nor did she speak when someone—one of the waiters?—wiped the blood off her cheeks, speaking to her gently, as if she were a child.
Amazing that everything she needed to be the best chef in Armstrong, she would also need to exact her revenge. All those permits she had signed, all that bonding she had gone through. Decades of crime-free living so that she could own materials in her restaurant that the government considered dangerous inside a dome.
Flammable things. Destructive things.
Explosive things.
She sat at the table and waited for her best crew to finish their last shift.
Then she would begin hers.
Forty-two
The next morning dawned clear and hot. The variations in the weather here amazed Flint the most. The night before, when they had finally let him out of the hanger, he’d noticed a damp chill. As he had walked from the hanger to the public areas of the port, the air felt like it swirled around him, almost as if it were water, a sensation he remembered from his last trip, but hadn’t completely believed.
A lot about this place was unbelievable—the vegetation, green and lush and so much bigger than it seemed in the vids he’d seen of it; the smells of mildew and damp and what his ex-wife used to call freshness; the way the air actually had a texture, as if it were made of a slightly different substance than air on the Moon.
He also had trouble believing in the ocean. The blue water matched the color of the sky, and seemed to go on forever. Until he came to Earth, he had never seen a limitless blue horizon. It caught his attention each time he looked at the water.
Flint had the option of driving on land roads, something he had done for only short distances in Armstrong, or driving an aircar. He took the aircar, only because the roads looked mean and uneven, as if the material used to cover them could barely handle the differences in the weather.
The car picked the route after Flint programmed in his destination. The map informed him he would fly over the center of Florida, Southern Mississippi, and into Louisiana. Flint planned to double-check his research as he flew, but often he found himself looking out the windows, absorbing the sights.
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