For an artificial intelligence, Janet was incredibly intuitive. She knew this was my last case, but she also knew threatening a trial, and a lifetime in prison, might get Ingrid thinking about making some sort of deal, and loosen her tongue in the process.
Ingrid stared at us, chewing her lip, for a long time.
"It was all Eldridge," she said finally. "That's his real name, Frank Eldridge. The guy you thought was Fritz."
"All him?" I asked. "How do you figure that? You were the one biting off more than you could chew. So to speak."
I watched as hot blood filled her cheeks. I'd hit a nerve again.
"I had a shit life," she said angrily. "Grew up in the foster care system, never had two credits to rub together. I got shuttled from one home to another, sometimes two or three a year, until I was sixteen."
"What happened then? You weren't legally an adult until eighteen."
Her expression darkened.
"I ran away."
"Why?"
She ran her fingers through her hair, and let out a long, deep breath. It was obvious she was wrestling with whether to tell me about it.
"I got moved to a new home on my birthday," she said in a low voice. "And later that night, my new foster dad decided to give me a special present. He crept into my room when I was asleep, put his hand over my mouth, and pried my legs open."
My guts suddenly went cold. I didn't need to hear what happened next, but I imagined a jury might have to if it ended up coming to that.
"I'd known they were there since I was a little kid," she said. "You know, the teeth. And the tentacles had started coming in a few years before that night. But he didn't care about that. He just climbed on top, and went to town." She looked at the floor. "It ended exactly the way you think it did."
"That's horrible," Janet said from behind me.
"So I ran," said Ingrid. "And I've been running ever since. I lived on the streets until I was twenty, and Frank found me. We got to fooling around one night, and I offered to blow him for money. He said he wanted more, and I said I couldn't do that. He was curious, so I showed him. Then we got to talking. He was nice back then."
"You told him what had happened on your birthday?"
She nodded.
"He said we could make money at it. And believe me, I needed money. One night he hooked me up with this guy who was a real bastard. We went to a hotel, and this guy starts slapping me around, like it's foreplay or something. Then he climbs on top of me. I did the same thing to him I did to the last one, but this time I waited until he came. He was quiet as the grave when he died."
I knew where this was going.
"How'd that make you feel?"
"I felt powerful," she said, and her voice had regained some of the earlier attitude. "I'd do it again, too."
"But from then on, you did it for money."
"You're fucking right I did. Frank found people who were willing to pay to have assholes like that guy killed, and we worked our way up. Within a year, we were bringing in six figures for a hit."
"That's a lot of credits for someone who was living on the streets," I said. "How long before clients started coming to you?"
"Sixteen months ago, give or take. Frank discovered the Assassin's Guild, and that's when things really took off."
I frowned.
"Pull the other one, Ingrid. Everyone knows the Assassin's Guild is a myth."
She snorted a laugh.
"Yeah, you're right, Burnside," she said. "I made it up. Stupid me for thinking I could fool you."
Janet touched my shoulder.
"We've heard rumours of an Assassin's Guild. If what she says is true, we need her information. It will lead us to whoever put out the contract on Jon's life."
"Well, now," said Ingrid, brightening. "Suddenly I'm much more interesting than I was a minute ago, aren't I?"
"Don't overestimate yourself," I said grimly. "I'm betting there's more than enough info in your ship's computer to lead us in the direction we need to go."
That got her. The smile faded quickly.
"I'm not going to talk about that anymore," she said.
"Good, because right now I'm more interested in how you and Eldridge managed to frame Lindsay Thayer in such short order."
She rolled her eyes.
"That bitch was as stupid as the day is long. Once Frank knew you were going to be on the station, he started setting up a decoy. Lindsay was easy to manipulate, all I had to do when I got here was tell her who DeLeo really was, that he was looking for some arm candy, and she could probably score a pretty sweet deal. Next thing you know, she was all over him. Then I showed up, seduced and killed him, and Frank took care of the rest."
I leaned forward, and propped my elbows on my knees, so I was only inches away from the force field. Something about what she was saying was prompting that itch in my brain, but I didn't know exactly why just yet.
"And how did you know we would know Stephen Anderson was actually Antonio DeLeo?"
The question seemed to confuse her.
"All I know is Frank recognized him," she said. "He said we should set it up to make it look like he was the target, and Lindsay Thayer was the killer. It would make it easier to get close to Hunter, and get off the station if everyone's guard was down."
"Huh," I grunted. "And you believed him?"
She frowned.
"Why wouldn't I?"
"It would have been virtually impossible to get off the station after murdering Jonathon Hunter," said Janet. "Regardless of what Eldridge may have told you. You know what happened to Lindsay Thayer, she was vaporized."
Ingrid held her tongue, but the rest of her face was starting to pale noticeably.
"Here's what I think happened," I said. "Eldridge set you up to kill Hunter in the expectation you'd be killed in the aftermath, and he'd get away on a scheduled flight, because no one knew who he was. He'd collect the fee for your services, plus the bounties on Hunter's head, and live out his days as rich as a king, while you occupied a slab in the morgue. That's your partner for you."
"No," she whispered. "That's not true."
"That's why me showing up at the station was such a monkey wrench for him. Between me, Jane, and Janet, we figured out he was involved in everything. We may have had some of the details wrong, but we saw the big picture. That's why Eldridge tracked me down, and tried to kill me. Didn't work out for him, obviously."
Janet moved from behind me to beside me, and gave Ingrid a sympathetic look.
"I'm afraid he's right," she said. "Eldridge had been on the station for days, which meant he had to have known what he could get away with. I think he was planning to hide out in the uninhabited areas, then simply get on a transport in a few days, and disappear."
"Did you ever see any information on your clients?" I asked.
She avoided my gaze.
"No. Frank handled all of that stuff. He'd get the contract, do all the set-up, then collect and pay me later."
"So," I said. "That leads me to the big question. How much was the contract on Hunter worth?"
"I don't know," she said, and I believed her. "But I bet it was five million, easy."
"Multiply that by a hundred," said Janet. "It might put you in the ball park."
Ingrid's mouth dropped open, which told me everything I needed to know.
"That's crazy," she breathed. "Half a billion?"
"That kind of money will make people do crazy things," I said. "Like send a partner to her death."
She stared into the distance for a long time, not saying anything. The whole experience was starting to weigh on me, what I thought would be incredibly satisfying was turning into something I wanted over as quickly as possible. It was clear Eldridge wasn't just Ingrid's partner in assassination. He was probably the only man she'd ever trusted. Her whole life had been shit since day one, all because her parents decided to fly through a radiation belt before she was born.
"Leave me alone," she said weakly, s
lumping back down to the floor.
Janet and I shared a glance. There was no reason to keep on browbeating her, at least right then. I spared one last glance at Ingrid as I left. She didn't look up.
I was glad for that.
Forty Nine
Jane met me in my suite, sporting a satisfied grin.
"I take it you found what you were looking for," I said, as she walked past me into the living room.
"I did indeed. It turns out neither Ingrid nor Frank Eldridge were particularly smart when it came to hiding their trail. We have all of their emails, going back to her original childhood account. In addition to her personal ones, she has a series of 'work' addresses, which appear to be drop addresses. Mail in, never any out. Eldridge as well, as it seemed he accessed a lot of his mail from her ship, and used it to back up his PC."
"I'd be willing to bet hers were set up by Eldridge," I said.
She arched an eyebrow.
"Are you sure?"
"After my interrogation, I'm quite sure. He wanted to make sure the trail always led to Ingrid, not him, if they were caught."
"All right. Now for the big news. We also have bank records, which include the origin accounts for each payment drop."
My mouth dropped open.
"You're joking," I said.
Jane's grin widened in response to my reaction.
"Nope. And most importantly, we have the email for the contract on Jon. It's completely intact, including all the routing information. No bank deposit, as the kill was never made, so she hasn't been paid. No up-front payment as far as I can see. But the email alone is information Jon would kill for. Up until now, all the employment emails for the Mercs and assassins who hit him and the team, have led nowhere."
I stared at her, dumbfounded. For a few brief moments, I thought she was pulling my leg, but then I remembered underneath that gorgeous shell was a state-of-the-art AI system, something I couldn't hope to match with the feeble neurons in my organic brain.
"So you're saying we'll be able to identify who paid for each kill?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying."
She shot me a cocky look, which dared me to defy her. I wouldn't do that in a million years.
"There's one other thing." She paused to make sure she had my attention. "She killed a lot more people than you know about, which probably accounts for why there are some big gaps between hits, while the last few were relatively quick. A lot of her victims were never found, and are still listed as missing. We can probably assume Eldridge disposed of bodies when it was easy to do so, and left the rest to taunt the local authorities with, and later you. Some were also bodies so badly damaged, no-one noticed they all had the same thing missing."
I shuddered. I’d had my share of identifying bodies put through some sort of shredder, or chopped up so extensively, not all the parts were ever found.
Jane left, and I dived into the emails and bank records, spending the rest of the day looking for paymasters. Janet helped me with the research, and in most cases, the payments were from holding companies and false fronts, hardly unexpected, but for an AI, the connections back to people were just a matter of sifting through a few trillion spider webs of data. Some of them were out in plain sight, like the rival Cornerball player on Avon, who'd paid to remove James Patterson, so he could take his spot on the team's roster.
The other names which emerged were shocking, to say the least. Some of them had been on the ESPD's most wanted lists for years. That said, a few were squeaky clean, at least as far as ESPD records went, and it might be difficult to get a jury to convict, even with the evidence we'd amassed.
Thinking about sympathetic juries reminded me of my interrogation with Ingrid. She was a killer, obviously, many times over. An incredibly effective assassin, who'd been five steps ahead of me for the better part of two years. Yet I couldn't help but see the scared, angry child underneath it all. A young woman desperately trying to find some power, in a world where she'd had none for so long. In a way, it fit the profile Dr. Pritchett had given me, but in many other ways, it didn't.
That said, I'd do everything in my power to see Ingrid went down hard. No one else made her choices for her.
One thing was clear though, as soon as the news of her arrest broke, she was going to need very secure containment to keep her alive. Assuming, of course, Jon didn't simply condemn her to death first. But if he did, he was going to make a lot of law enforcement people down the spine very unhappy. Earth PD at the very least, would want to make her trial a public spectacle.
It took most of the night, and the morning which followed, to assemble all the records for each potential arrest. I was on a high the likes of which I'd never experienced before, and there was no way I could have slept, even if I'd wanted to.
I was on my third pot of coffee when Jane reappeared in the door of my suite.
"You look like hell," she said sweetly, sitting next to me on the sofa.
The heels of my palms ground into my eye sockets, as I tried to work the lack of sleep out of them.
"I resemble that remark," I sighed.
"Success?"
"Yup. As soon as ESPD gets the info into the right hands, district prosecutors will be able to start issuing warrants, and rounding up the people behind the hits. I'd say there's a good chance of conviction in at least nine of the cases. And if Ingrid works out a deal in exchange for testimony, it'll raise that to one hundred percent."
"Assuming Jon lets her go," she said.
I shrugged.
"There's a lot riding on that, yeah."
"I'm more concerned about the Assassin's Guild, which is what I've been working on for the past twelve hours. That's why I'm here."
"You found something?"
"I found everything," she said. "The Guild is as real as it gets, Dick. There's a direct link in Ingrid's data retrievals. The last of the email addresses is currently listed on her profile there as a dead drop. It's not a large Guild, but she's rated as one hundred percent reliable for hits on males, and specifies she doesn't hit females for any amount of credits. I discovered why there's no up-front payment for a lot of her hits, too. The Guild has its own bank, and deposits are made there pending confirmation of a successful kill. I assume that's for clients not known to the Guild as being reliable payers."
This hit me harder than I'd expected. Even when Ingrid was talking about it earlier, I never honestly fully believed such a Guild could exist, without law enforcement officials knowing about it. But here it was.
"We need to get everything you discovered to ESPD as soon as possible," I said.
"We need to absolutely not do that," she countered.
"What? Why not?"
"No one besides us knows at this point that Ingrid's hit on Jon was a failure. When word does get out, the Guild will almost certainly send someone to kill her. By keeping a lid on all of this, we'll increase her odds of living until she goes to trial, and postpone any future hits on Jon as well."
I mulled that over for a moment. She was right, of course. And it was also necessary to keep it all on the down low, so we weren't possibly tipping off any of the people who'd commissioned Ingrid's services. Any hint she'd been captured, would send them fleeing into the wind, and we wanted them to be nice and shocked when the cops came knocking on their doors.
So much of what happened next would depend on the decisions of Jonathon Hunter. And the more I thought about it, the more I was inclined to believe it was the best for all concerned.
"What do you think Jon will do?" I asked.
She tilted her head.
"It would seem most logical to send the Guild a message by executing Ingrid. Of course, logical thinking isn't exactly Jon's strongest trait, which can be incredibly frustrating at times. Then again, following his gut has saved countless lives, as well."
"Keeping her alive could allow the ESPD to use her as bait to draw out the Guild," I offered. "Once they're in the open, they could put their full resources towards b
ringing it down."
"It's possible. Whatever the case, right now we need to make sure no one is talking about this anywhere. If the Guild intercepts the communication, everything we've discovered will have been for nothing."
That got my wheels turning again. Everyone would be waiting for word, any word, on what had happened. The celebration was public knowledge, and the Guild would be waiting on the announcement of Jon Hunter's death. The longer they went without hearing something, the better the chances they'd figure out the assassination failed, which meant they'd put out another contract. And the next one might not fail.
"What are you thinking?" Jane asked.
"I'm thinking I'm about to retire," I said.
"That's an odd change of topic, wouldn't you say?"
I grinned.
"Actually, it has everything to do with what we've been talking about."
"How so?"
"I think I might be able to use the fact I no longer answer to ESPD, to help clear this thing off the books in a way Jon Hunter will appreciate."
Fifty
I stared into the recorder, tapping my finger against my chin, wondering how best to proceed. I'd never really done any acting, even in school, so I wasn't sure how to go about it. But it occurred to me I'd been putting on a show every time I interrogated a criminal throughout my career. With that in mind, I began my report.
"Captain," I said, my voice grave. "I, well, I don't quite know how to say this, so I guess I'll just come right out with it. Jonathon Hunter is dead."
I stared down at the floor for a few seconds for good measure, before looking back up. My jaw was set, and my teeth clenched, to show just how much it pained me to have to give him the news. Inside, I had to clamp down on the urge to laugh at the look which would be on his face when he realized his worst nightmare had come true. Hopefully he didn't have any stress-related illnesses which might cause a problem, before I could let him off the hook, and tell him the truth.
I put an edge into my voice so I'd come off as someone who'd just committed the most grievous sin of his career. I needed to make sure anyone who might intercept the message believed I'd let Hunter be murdered on my watch.
Burnside's Killer: Extended Version (The Hunter Legacy Book 6) Page 21
