Final Inquiries

by Roger MacBride Allen

  "That doesn't make him a killer, though," said Farrell. She glanced at Singh. "Somewhere underneath all that, I think there's still a good agent. It's just that it's been so long since he's been given anything worthwhile to do that he's sort of given up."

  "Give him the chance and he'll step up, rise to the occasion?" Hannah suggested.

  "Something like that," Farrell agreed.

  "If he doesn't trip over a gin bottle first," said Singh.

  "Joginder, that's just plain mean," Farrell said, obviously annoyed. "Snide remarks and gossip are one thing," she said. "But Milkowski's our colleague--and Emelza's dead. We can't make a joke out of that--or make jokes that could get people in trouble."

  "You're right," Singh said, beating a hasty retreat. "That wasn't fair. I take it back."

  Hannah said nothing, but reflected that being unfair was not the same as being inaccurate.

  Farrell turned toward Hannah. "You've heard all we know about the case," she said, clearly determined to change the subject. "And that's pretty close to nothing. Isn't there anything more you can tell us? Emelza's dead. That's really the one fact we have. We can guess it didn't seem like natural causes, or else none of this would be happening. But--well, I know it seems weird and all, saying this about a Kendari--but she is--was--our friend."

  "She won't think that's weird," Singh said. "Don't forget she knows Brox."

  "I know Brox," Hannah said cautiously. She very deliberately didn't call him a friend. Things were complex enough already. "We worked together. And I don't think he did it--but he might have. I have to treat him as a suspect, every bit as much as I have to treat you two that way--even more so."

  Farrell surprised Hannah by nodding in sober agreement. "Crime of passion--or the Kendari equivalent. Throw love and jealousy and hormones and romantic rivals and meddling families and so on into the mix, and who knows what anyone is capable of doing? When one of two lovers is killed, the other has to be a suspect. But that's just us humans projecting our culture and emotions onto the Kendari way of doing things. There are thousands of things we don't know about their traditions and personal lives."

  Hannah had expected Farrell to make some breathy protest about how dear sweet old Brox could never do such a thing. Maybe Hannah was underestimating her.

  "Can you give me anything more on Brox?" she asked, deliberately phrasing the question as ambiguously as possible. More on him as a being, as a coworker, as Emelza's intended, as a murder suspect? Let them choose.

  "Well, xenos are xenos," Singh said cautiously. "And cultures vary. The three of us around this table come from very different traditions. The two sides of Maria's family probably wouldn't have been caught dead speaking to each other, a few hundred years ago."

  Farrell smiled. "They still don't like it."

  "My family has some stories too," said Hannah. "What's your point?"

  "Two points, actually. One, what's perfectly acceptable, even expected or required in one culture, is a sin or a crime in another--as I am sure you know, ma'am."

  "If I didn't know it, Brox and Mendez and I found it out together on Reqwar," Hannah said grimly.

  "The other is that we humans tend to make the mistake, over and over again, of assuming every xeno species has a single, monolithic culture. We don't. Why should they? What we know of Brox and his people suggests to us that he is very unlikely to have committed this crime. But there are endless things we do not know. There could be as many Kendari cultures in that embassy as there are human ones in this one. They could conflict, or interact, in all sorts of ways."

  "So maybe that duty and honor would require him to murder his fiancee, and then lie about it?" Hannah asked.

  "It sounds off the wall, but xenos are xenos," said Singh.

  "But you can use that argument to explain just about anything," Farrell objected. "If something a xeno does seems illogical or unreasonable, just chant 'xenos are xenos' and you can pretend you've got an answer." She turned to Hannah. "The other problem with Brox as the killer is that he and Emelza seemed--well, not happy, exactly. I'm not sure Kendari are ever really happy. They seemed content, comfortable. As if they were the two parties to a business arrangement, and each was satisfied with the deal they had made. So, yeah, it might be that they were hiding all sorts of inner turmoil, maybe stuff that all the other Kendari could spot from a kilometer off--but it didn't seem like it."

  "She's right," said Singh, a bit reluctantly. "No knock-down, drag-out fights. No insults about the prospective in-laws, or the financial arrangements--if there are any."

  "Something like that would have come in handy--if we were trying to build a case against Brox. So far, we're not."

  "It is very tempting to ask if you have a leading suspect, but of course you cannot tell us that," said Singh. "Is there anything you can tell us about the case?" Singh asked. "We understand that we can't work on it--and can't do any work until we're cleared. But I know I speak for Maria too when I say we want to help."

  "Well, you can," said Hannah. "Mendez and I are going to have to cover for you at this big meeting with the Vixa today. Walk me through that. What can we expect?"

  Farrell's lively, expressive face went absolutely dead, emotionless. "What can you expect?" she echoed. "Chaos. Chaos, and some really massive headaches."

  SEVENTEEN

  HOME AND AWAY

  They were getting there, Jamie decided as he peeled the tamper-proof tape off yet another hatch. Cross-checking alibis was speeding things up significantly. If A vouched for B, and then C said he was with A the whole time, and then D confirmed key details of the statements made by A and B, then either the entire gang of them were involved in the conspiracy, or else they were all telling the truth. Even better were statements that could be backed up by some sort of physical evidence. Each newly established trusted player could be used to expand the net, confirming the statements of E, F, G, and so on. It wasn't foolproof. A skillful liar, or someone who had planned ahead to establish an alibi, might have been able to game the technique. But that was harder to do than it seemed. Complex lies were almost impossible to defend.

  And there was often a lot more useful evidence than people realized. Fred made a phone call from a comm unit that logged the time automatically. Ned took a picture to send back home that happened to include Ted and Ed--and a clock--in the background. Maura scribbled a handwritten to-do list in the corner of a printed, time-stamped message sent by Flora to Laura, thereby proving she had been around after the message had been sent.

  They had gotten far enough down the list that both Hannah and Jamie felt they could relax the rules a bit and talk to at least some of the people outside their cabins. They had been cooped up for a while, and getting them out of confinement was bound to relax them a bit, make them more willing to talk.

  All of which brought him to--he checked his list--Frau Helga Groppe. Motor pool chief, the ambassador's personal driver--or pilot, given that the ambassador generally rode in an aircar--and also the designated commander of the embassy ship, in the event of emergency. He rang the annunciator, and the door slid open at once. She was a tall, stern-looking woman, with a high-cheekboned face, dark hair, and thick dark eyebrows that added drama and emphasis to her expression.

  "You are the investigator," she said flatly. "You have come now to question me."

  "Yes," said Jamie, a bit taken aback. "Please come with me," he said.

  "To the Snack Shack, no doubt," she said.

  "Ah, yes."

  "It is the only slightly comfortable place to talk in this compound. We go."

  Jamie found himself following her down the corridors of the ship. Well, he told himself, you wouldn't want a pilot who wasn't sure of herself.

  Five minutes with Groppe was enough to get her statement and add her to the virtuous circle of people who could vouch for each other, or provide physical evidence, to show they did not enter the joint ops center during the critical period. Groppe had been working in the motor pool, doing ma
intenance checks, and had logged all the checks in to the admin system, generating multiple time stamps. Three people had seen her, and she had seen two of those three, and two others besides. She had been working outside in plain view of the joint ops center doors from 1900 hours until the crisis. When they opened and shut the doors they were very loud. Of course she would have heard them if anyone had opened or shut them. She had heard or seen no one go in or out, except for the BSI agents coming and going as per usual, and Milkowski going in, then rushing out again.

  Five minutes with Groppe was also about as much as Jamie felt like spending. He didn't do well with people who were sure they knew the right way to do everything.

  He set her loose and went back to the BSI office in the main building and ran through his list of embassy personnel. Who had they seen? The ambassador. Check. The deputy chief of mission had been sent home for medical reasons. That post was empty. Med officer. Check. Dr. Subramanian, chief engineer. Check. BSI agents. Check. Mutambara, the economic officer, and his wife, the political officer. Korelev, the science attache, and her husband, the military attache dressed up in civilian clothes that fooled no one. The ambassador's administrative assistant, another admin assistant, her husband, the chief engineer's. Groppe, the motor pool officer--who was also tasked as the embassy ship's captain in the event of emergency evacuation. Her husband, Ostman, the communications specialist.

  Vargas, the administrative and life-support services officer--some places, that meant making sure there was enough bottled air on hand. Here, that meant running the Snack Shack--and keeping human-edible food available fifty gazillion kilometers away from the nearest grocery store. Not an easy job, or an unimportant one. And, thank the stars, Vargas had even been something close to reasonable about the two interlopers invading his domain and making free with his supplies--though that might have had something to with Hannah promising to call in a few favors and arranging to expedite a special shipment of Argentine delicacies that was being held up.

  That was everybody. Jamie allowed himself a sigh of relief. They were done with the initial interviews. Based on what they had learned, it seemed clear that no one besides Milkowski, the ambassador, and Zhen Chi knew any of the details of the crime, or was in any position to know anything. Those who knew, it would seem, had kept their mouths shut. No doubt that damn fool business about everyone confining themselves had helped on that. No one who knew anything had had much of a chance to gossip.

  Perhaps more importantly, it hadn't taken a great deal of cross-checking the statements to confirm that just about everybody had at least a partial alibi for the crucial time period. The overlap was almost complete--not surprising in a place this small, with only one place to eat if you didn't want to hunker down in your quarters. There were a few loose ends, like the few minutes in which Subramanian might have done the job, but Jamie fully expected that a closer study of the statements, and a few follow-up queries, would resolve them as well.

  It was almost, but not quite, too tidy. Leaving aside off-the-wall conspiracies that would require just about everyone in the embassy to be in on the kill, setting up an alibi grid of the initial statements put nearly everyone at the embassy in the clear, at least on a provisional basis.

  Jamie stood up and looked out the window. The BSI office was on the ground floor of the main embassy building with a good view of the compound. It was strange to see it full of people after seeing it as a ghost town. They were going about in twos and threes, all of them no doubt trading all the latest gossip and theories about what had happened.

  He spotted Hannah coming across from the Snack Shack, carrying a large, carefully sealed box--the contents of which were no doubt going to be the subject of a good deal of conversation in the days to come. He went to the entrance to help her in through the doors. "Ready to make a delivery to Brox?" she asked.

  "Yeah--but you'd better make sure Medical Technist Remdex is there too--and Zhen Chi, as well."

  "Neither of them is going to be too happy. We've just invented God knows how much work for both of them."

  "More work in the short run, maybe--but with any luck at all this stunt will eliminate a huge number of variables in one swell foop, as the Reverend Spooner would put it."

  "You're probably right," said Jamie, "but even so, this move isn't going to make us very popular. Anyway, while you've been working the physical evidence, I've been evaluating the interviews."

  "And everyone has an alibi?" Hannah asked, perching on the desk.

  "A few question marks here and there, but essentially yes. You get anything out of the junior agents?"

  Hannah grinned. "How's it feel, getting to call someone else 'junior,' junior?"

  "I could get used to it."

  "Don't be in a rush. Being the senior agent present all the time reminds me just how senior I'm getting to be."

  "Anyway," said Jamie, "to answer your question, yeah, I got some nice murky contradictions out of part of the ambassador's statements.

  "First, the ambassador's statement to us strongly suggests that Milkowski gave him most of the details about finding Emelza when the two of them were face-to-face outside the joint ops center. Milkowski's much more detailed and specific statement has Milkowski leaning over the corpse, giving him the main details over the phone. It's either a minor difference in recollection, or, far less likely, one of them is deliberately misleading us for some reason--presumably not a reason we'd approve of."

  Hannah went on. "Next murky contradiction: Singh confirmed the foul-up with the recording surveillance video, but he made it sound as if it would have been a much simpler problem to solve than the ambassador had described. More significantly, Singh reported that he hadn't forgotten about changing out the media. According to him, the ambassador ignored Singh when he requested that Farrell assist him on the two-person job, but instead kept both of the junior agents busy running around on this errand and that to arrange the lockdown.

  "The ambassador wouldn't even take Singh's call until several hours after the lockdown had started. Singh thinks that the ambassador was sleeping during that time, with his phone off--and kind of hinted that maybe the ambassador was just a teeny bit drunk--or maybe blind stinking drunk--when Singh finally got through.

  "But, as Singh pointed out, probably it doesn't matter. We have full video coverage for the time before the death was discovered. That's the good news. The bad news is I just did a fast scan of the video records of the joint ops center, starting four hours before the murder, going until the recording media ran out. I saw nothing at all besides everyone quitting and going home for the day, then Milkowski returning as per his testimony, and everyone milling around as reported in all the statements we have."

  "Does that mean the ambassador knew he was going to have something to hide after the recording media ran out?" Hannah asked. "Or that he's a pompous ass who pays no attention to technical problems because subordinates are supposed to do that? Or just that all hell was breaking loose and he made some mistakes, and maybe didn't behave perfectly?"

  "Zero data on that point," said Jamie. "New topic." He picked up a paper notepad that he had been using. "Aside from going through the statements, I've been compiling lists of this and that--such as people like Agent Farrell and Zhen Chi who have hands small enough to make that handprint."

  "But the handprint couldn't have been made until hours after the murder, by which time they were both confined to quarters," Hannah protested.

  "And it couldn't have been made then, either, because the joint ops center was under seal and everyone was locked down. No one could get in there and either someone's very slick at manipulating temper-detecting strips, or nobody left his or her compartment. And then you need someone who's about on the Houdini level of getting past locks and seals who makes a beeline for a crime scene, does something as blindingly stupid as planting a handprint on a corpse, and then gets him-or herself locked up again without being caught. You'd have to be a genius and an idiot at the same time to
do all that. What all that tells me is that something's wrong. Remdex got the times wrong, or something else made that print, or something. There's a piece missing, or a piece that doesn't fit the way we think it does."

  "Okay, I can buy that," said Hannah. "But you're leading up to something else."

  "Yeah. Planting that handprint makes no sense--but neither does the murder. Not if a human does it." He turned around the notepad to show the page to Hannah. "This is what all my lists and notes came down to," he said. There were crossed-out lists and scribbled-out queries--and one word written in big bold letters, all capitalized, and underlined with a box around it.

  MOTIVE

  "Why would anyone working at this embassy kill a Kendari this way? It was either Milkowski being incredibly stupid and clumsy, or someone doing an incredibly stupid and clumsy job of trying to frame Milkowski, or someone doing an utterly brilliant job of making the crime scene look like a stupid and clumsy attempt at a frame-up."

  "Yeah, so?"

  "So it's like our idiot genius who gets past all that tamper-indicator tape and the locks on the joint ops center to poke the corpse. If the motive was simply to kill Emelza, there had to be plenty of other ways to do that. Put a bullet in her head. Strangle her. Bundle her into an aircar and drop her into a large body of water filled with hungry predators. Smother her with a pillow--or whatever Kendari use instead of pillows. This wasn't murder for the sake of killing the victim. This murder was done the way it was to stir up trouble. It had to have been chosen expressly for that purpose. Anyone who killed a Kendari this way would have to know it would threaten, maybe even wreck, the human bargaining position. They had to know it might easily cost the human race its shot at the Pentam System. This wasn't just murder. This was close to treason."