I started with the unit database. His fitreps had been topflight. The Foresters gave him increasingly challenging opportunities over the years of his service, and he’d always served well. Thus, he’d risen up the ranks smoothly and earned several bonuses and commendations along the way.
An exemplary soldier—except, of course, when he’d sent over the electronic codes necessary to ambush his company on Peninnah. Hard to gloss over the betrayal and destruction of an entire platoon and more of mercs who depended upon him.
Weighed against his mother, though?
I turned to his family background. An unbroken line of Greggs had served with the Foresters and other merc units ever since the Alpha Contracts. All Greggs who served in the Foresters had done so with distinction. Many had reached the rank of major and moved on to larger units with more opportunities for higher promotions.
One article written just after the Alpha Contracts talked about George Edmonds and Marcus Gregg, the current Gregg’s great-something grandfather. Both had tried to purchase the battle honors and history of a Royal Canadian Army regiment from the Canadian government. Each promised to use those honors to form a Canadian-focused merc unit. Marcus had even founded a now defunct non-profit to help get his unit off the ground.
Eventually the Canadian government had accepted the offer for the Foresters from Edmonds, because he had better financing. Marcus had then dropped his request, resigned his commission, and had become one of the first Royal Canadian Army transfers to the new merc unit. In fact, he was Edmonds’ executive officer for nearly two decades.
Then I turned my attention to Captain Gregg’s personal files. Nothing wrong or strange in his financials, not that I’d expected to see anything. No stupid escapades as a teen. Three-sport athlete. Devout student of military history, especially the transition from cavalry to armor in the early 20th century. High marks throughout school, culminating in one of the top VOWs ever. A good kid, by all accounts, though his teachers and coaches often mentioned he might be too intense, too driven.
Desperately wanted to be a merc and follow in the family tradition. That must have made his betrayal of the Foresters even more difficult. Worse, once they got you, they got you. Bastards.
I sent a copy of the record to my pinplant, and for the rest of the trip I sat in the suite that had once been Bullitt’s, drank his scotch, and memorized every bit of Gregg’s past.
There’s not much else to do once you enter a stargate.
* * *
The African Queen’s shuttle dropped me off at the Houston Starport, and I went straight to the Lyon’s Den.
The Lyon handed me a Ragnar’s chilled to precisely ten degrees Celsius. “You look like you could use this.”
“Yeah.” I grabbed the rich brown ale and took a healthy drink.
“How’d it go?”
I sighed. “Well, I have a new boss.”
“There was a rumor about the old one…”
“I bet.” I held out my new UACC.
His eyes widened. “And Bullitt?”
“Dead.”
“So it’s true.” He snorted. “Trust you to end up with the Peacemakers, though. That’ll surprise everyone.”
“Good.” I finished the Ragnar’s.
He gave me another.
“And give me a Macallan’s 12,” I added.
He raised his eyebrows, but poured out two. “To absent companions?”
“Yeah, to all those who’ve earned their measure of love and respect.”
We drank the scotch and stared at our memories.
“Another?” he finally asked.
“No, just keep the Ragnar’s coming.”
“What now?”
“I need everything you have on Gregg.”
“He doesn’t deserve the law after him.”
“I’m after the one who got to him.”
He blinked. “As a Peacemaker?”
“Yes. We believe the one who threatened him also threatened a Peacemaker’s nephew. The Guild takes a dim view of such things.”
“I can imagine. In that case, you should stay overnight, and we can chat.”
“We’ll chat in the morning. I hope you have a bunch more of these.” I tilted the bottle back and drained it.
He put another on the bar. “I got plenty.” He chuckled. “And I’ll make sure one of the Lumar shoves an anti-hangover pill down your throat when they carry you to bed.”
I nodded and proceeded to earn that pill.
The next morning, Lyons knocked on my door. “Breakfast in my office.”
“Ugh.”
“All the coffee you could ever want.”
“Ugh.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘Be right down.’”
“Ugh.” I rose, freshened up, and went to his office.
“Sweep it,” he commanded.
I blinked, then I pulled my sweeper out and checked for any evidence of bugs. None. His security had always been good.
I must be hungover not to have done that automatically.
Lyons smiled. “OK, now we’re both happy. I kept looking at Gregg after you left to help the Foresters. I’m not sure what happened to his mother.”
“They kidnapped her?”
“They apparently…moved her to a new hospital.” He grimaced. “I think my nosing around made them nervous.”
“Assholes.”
“Yeah.”
“Heard anything about Kukuluki the Zuparti?”
“A Zuparti?” Lyons leaned back. “Well now, maybe that makes sense. There’s been a bunch of Galactic credits flowing around this whole thing, more than is usually a part of something purely Earth-bound. Why him?”
“He’s been one of the ones going after the Foresters, and I’d be shocked if he wasn’t involved here. He’s got his rat claws in too many pies for my comfort.”
“The attack on the Foresters leaving the Den?”
“My guess is yes, but that’s just a guess.”
His eyes sharpened. “He went after the Cochkala on Bruce Peninsula. That attack always seemed odd, but if it was actually aimed at the Peacemaker…”
“Yes.”
Lyons drummed his fingers on the bar. “Whoever it was, put a lot of money into attacking the Foresters. The ambush here, Peninnah, the mining colony.” He snorted. “And Binnig’s still pissing in their pants about whoever it was that broke into their systems.”
“I never had a chance to really look into that with my sweepers.” A thought crossed my mind. “That reminds me, I want to find one of my old co-workers.”
“Assuming they’re alive.”
“I hope so. Her name’s Heidi, and she’s a sharp cookie. Likes chocolate donuts with sprinkles.”
“Who doesn’t like sprinkles?”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Thank you. And I’ll see what I can find out about a nurse working at a certain assisted living facility.”
“Yes.” Lyons narrowed his eyes. “Be a shame if that one were to have a bad day.”
“Yes.”
* * *
When I got to the nursing home, I discovered the nurse had just had a really bad day, and that it was, indeed, a shame.
I sat in a pancake shop just west of the I-55 corridor in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The local news coverage splashed garish images of an aircar that had crashed and burned. The EMTs put a body into an ambulance in that relaxed, laid-back manner of people who understand time is, for the moment, irrelevant.
The accident had occurred two nights before, but the crash had been spectacular enough it still dominated the coverage. “Police,” they said, “are still investigating the cause of the accident that killed Vincent Sasaki, 34, nurse at SEMO Life Care Center.”
“Strange thing isn’t it,” said the waitress, older but pretty, with deep blue, experienced eyes framed by laugh lines.
“What? The crash?”
“Yep.” She topped off my coffee. “H
aven’t seen anything quite like that in a while. I mean, accidents happen and all that, but I can’t remember the last time we had someone die like that. I heard the explosion inside my apartment, and it’s like four miles away.”
“What happened?”
She shrugged. “I guess he took off all the safety restraints and lost control.”
“Poor guy.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “Anyway, can I get you anything else?”
“No, thanks, I’ll finish this cup and get to my client.”
“Have a great day, dearie.” She smiled. “Come on back while you’re here.”
It was a nice smile. “I will.”
A few minutes later I drove my rented aircar to the SEMO Life Care Center. I walked in and inquired about their facilities for an ailing mother. While the efficient lady with perfect hair but no laugh lines discussed their options and checked my cover ID’s credit, I slipped a tracking program into their system.
Then, after promising to call back, I went elsewhere to prowl through their records.
Leslie Gregg had been a resident there up until very recently. Then she wasn’t. I double-checked the dates. Her record at SEMO ended a week before the attack on the recruit platoon on the Bruce Peninsula.
That’s not a coincidence I believe in.
I didn’t see anything in her records that raised my eyebrows, but I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on Tri-V. After Sasaki’s ‘accident,’ I didn’t expect to find a clue on where they’d taken her after SEMO, and I didn’t. No final care records. No new doctor listed. No transfer of prescriptions to a new pharmacy. Cape Girardeau had 33 assisted living facilities. None of them showed a Leslie Gregg or any patient fitting her description arriving at the correct time.
I looked at ways to transport a patient. I went through the records of both ambulance firms in the region. Neither showed a record of her. If she left alive, it had to have been in a personal vehicle.
It came as no surprise that the security systems had apparently glitched on the day of the last entry in her record. There was no video footage of the hall outside her room, or to the nearest exit, either inside or outside. In fact, all video of her room since her arrival date had been deleted. The key card records for her final day had disappeared as well. All that remained were Sasaki’s notes on her charts.
I went to public records and looked her up. No death certificate or obituary. None of the local funeral homes listed her. I looked through all the freelance body transportation companies.
Nothing. She’d just completely disappeared.
I turned to Sasaki’s personnel record. His time at SEMO had been exemplary, according to his supervisors. “Great with patients.” “Always on the ball.” “Cares about everyone.” They’d never written him up for anything. His drug tests had all come back clean. SEMO had even named him employee of the year once. His salary wasn’t huge, but more than enough for Cape Girardeau, which seemed a pleasant, prosperous place to live.
I pulled his bank account from his records. It was with one of the national banks, and we already had a route into their systems. I started the laborious process of checking all his transactions.
It had a reasonable balance. Direct deposit from SEMO on the 1st and 15th. Rent and bills auto-withdrawn. Subscriptions to several gaming networks. None of the purchases seemed abnormal. Restaurants and bars, though not as frequently as many bachelors. I noted the transactions with personal accounts to double-check them on his social media.
I looked for other accounts and found two. His retirement account held a large amount, but not extraordinary, given that Sasaki had started investing early on. The other looked like a savings account. It too had a sizeable balance, but all the deposits were direct from SEMO, and he’d made few withdrawals, mostly for the biggest, baddest gaming system he could afford.
In short, it was the profile of a sensible, reliable employee who liked to game.
I logged into his gaming sites. I still had their security codes, too, of course. It was probably the first thing Bullitt’s techs had double-checked every day, after all. I pulled down his records from those sites, especially his in-game purchases and comm logs.
I set my sweeper to search through those logs for repeated patterns or hints of codes. I repeated the process with his social media profiles and communicator records. Then I manually read through them all.
Two days later, I’d read back nearly ten years and had seen nothing extraordinary. The personal transactions in his bank account matched conversations with friends. My pattern recognition programs had found no hint of hidden communications within any of it. I’d only spent a few days on it, so it wasn’t the most detailed search, but thus far there wasn’t a hint of anything wrong with Sasaki.
So how did they get to him? Could it have been a different nurse, and maybe Sasaki discovered something?
I spent several days going through the bank records of every employee at SEMO. At least the waitress at the pancake shop had given me her comm number, because the only thing I discovered was the best way to get her to laugh, among other things.
What had Sasaki known?
* * *
I said goodbye to the waitress that Friday. No tears, just the unspoken shared knowledge this week could never be repeated, even if we happened to be in the same place again. Two days later, she’d find a mysterious message and a sizable addition to her account. Even with the expenses I’d incur with the African Queen, I had more money than I’d ever spend, and Laugh Lines deserved proper appreciation.
Then I went to Sasaki’s apartment. The electronic lock there proved no challenge, nor did hiding my presence on the security cameras in his complex.
Getting through the police caution tape actually proved more difficult, at least without making it obvious I’d tampered with it. Then I remembered I could flash my Peacemaker badge, and I just cut it.
I started by moving everything from the freezer to the sink to thaw.
Then I went to the bedroom. It wasn’t neat, but not a complete mess, either. He had a fairly normal collection of shirts and jeans to go with his work scrubs. A normal collection of shoes. One suit and a few Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, but he clearly wasn’t a clotheshorse. No expensive jewelry.
The only thing possibly out of place was an old model GP-90 and a half-empty box of 10mm caseless ammo. I double-checked his social media, though, and saw that, while he was no gun nut, some of his friends were. He’d been shooting with them a number of times.
I logged in to all his electronic devices and downloaded their histories. He had a few porn sites linked, but nothing surprising for a bachelor, and their records showed he played straight, vanilla stuff on a regular basis. I set my sweeper to compare the records on his gaming machines with those from the site servers.
I went back to the kitchen. His utensils looked well-used, and he had a variety of half-filled containers holding a usual assortment of cooking ingredients. He had a pad in the kitchen linked to recipe sites. He seemed to favor traditional Italian, which matched his grocery purchases.
The frozen items included the usual sort of things. No diamonds hidden in the ice or drugs stuffed into the ground beef. He had some cheap beer in the fridge, matched by a few cans in his recycling. He had open bottles of vodka and rum, plus around two dozen bottles of reasonably priced wine that went well with Italian food.
His living room was sterile and boring, and looked merely to be a path from one end of his apartment to his kitchen.
Of course that was where I found something.
He had pictures of his family in rotating displays. I downloaded the photos and went through them all.
The last date code for his sister Maria was two years ago. Prior to that, he’d gotten pictures from her regularly. I checked to see if he’d said something about her dying on his social media, but found nothing, though he’d stopped mentioning her at about that point.
If there’s one thing these assholes have shown, it’s a p
enchant for manipulating people out of love, not greed. They could have done it to him, too.
His contacts file listed her address in Orlando. I looked for her in the Orlando media, but found nothing. I checked the death and hospital records. As far as the government knew, she still existed and had even paid her taxes the last couple of years.
That meant I had to go to Orlando. I sighed.
I hate Orlando. I especially hate Orlando during the busy season. In fact, now that I think about it, I hate all of South Florida.
* * *
Orlando was as awful as I remembered. Tourists. Companies who tried to help tourists but didn’t. People who scammed tourists. Honest beggars with their hands out. Dishonest officials who were even worse. Bureaucratic nightmares everywhere. Worst city in the worst state in the union.
As I drove my rental car through the city, I set my sweeper to hide as much of my passage as possible. It eliminated my record going through the constant toll stations, stoplight cameras, and everything else it detected. If there was ever a city I’d make sure to take my normal precautions in, this was it. I thought about ‘accidentally’ erasing the city’s current month’s data, but that’d just hurt the lives of everyday people.
I drove to her apartment and bypassed the complex’s security without a problem. I started with her door records. The patterns had changed two years ago, exactly as I’d feared. Previously, the door to her apartment had opened on a normal basis. Now it only opened every few days during the middle of the afternoon, and then again after about ten minutes.
Time enough to make sure nothing had changed.
Her rent had been auto-withdrawn and had never been delinquent. I looked at the bank account. Other than rent, utilities, and a regular deposit to cover those amounts, the account showed no activity for the last two years.
I look at the source of those deposits. The account went to a shell company, and then another, and then to a blockchain linked to a tumbler. I decided to hold off backtracking this until I could use the computing power on the African Queen.
The Gates of Hell Page 14
