“Seven.”
Tyreda shrugged. “Whatever, but since before you booted up to IAD and left this patch to me.”
“Have you ever known me to lie about my abilities before?”
Tyreda paused and frowned, thinking before he answered, “No. You’re the best street investigator I ever saw—even when the guys you’re trying to help would rather see you dead than say thanks. But you’re kind of an asshole—you’re arrogant and you don’t know your place—”
“My place . . .” Dillal gave a bitter chuckle. “How is my parentage or the color of my skin an indication of my worth, my willingness, or my intelligence?”
“We’ve done this before,” Tyreda said, shaking his head. “You’re the wrong guy every time, but you just keep going till you hit the wall. And then you force your way through it anyhow. I admire your guts, but you’re nobody’s kid—not Dreihleen enough, not Ohba enough, and not somethin’ else, either. You’re too smart, too pushy, and too colored for your own good, no matter who’s measuring.”
Dillal sounded irritated, but less than Tyreda’s words might merit. “I’m no more colored than you—just an inconvenient shade. The Dreihleen and Ohba have been here longer than any so-called First Settlement family and will be until whenever the corporation finds an excuse to wipe them out.”
Tyreda rolled his eyes. “That again . . . I’d think you’d be too busy keeping your own skin intact to worry about the future of folks who keep trying to kill you—Neme included. I don’t suppose you give a razor cat’s howl what happens to her sort, though I never thought you’d go this far to get past the color bar.”
Dillal gave the SO a sideways look, tilting his head slightly as if measuring Tyreda in his red-glinting eye. “I’ll go as far as I have to.”
Tyreda stared back at him, then he turned his head a little and closed his eyes, muttering, “Fuck me . . .”
The inspector neither moved nor spoke. Tyreda didn’t look at him, but after a minute of silence, he said, “So . . . this hopper-headed shit works?”
Now Dillal smiled with only the right side of his face—the left blank and unresponsive. “Help me collect the bullets and I’ll show you.”
I should feel belittled, maybe, being sent off for coffee, but, damn, anything to get away for a while. Matheson knew he was missing things—hints about the inspector, things about the crime that just weren’t coming together in his head—but his brain felt like a loose bag of mud in his skull and incapable of connecting anything more complex than “put one foot in front of the other.” And even that wasn’t so easy. His legs were rubbery and he dropped into a walk as he rounded the corner onto Rua dos Peixes and headed toward Yshteppa Park, and the canal beside it that marked the north and west edges of the ghetto. Just like the night before, chasing the pickpocket.
The district was busier here on the wider street, but not quite as it should have been. Under the green and gold Spring Moon banners that crossed from building to building over the road, the universally tall, slim Dreihleen weren’t rushing to work or festival pleasures. They didn’t pause to listen to the street corner political speakers or park bench revolutionaries whose numbers seemed to multiply daily in the Dreihleat, but walked with nervous steps and anxious glances. The dawn light gilded their skin brighter gold, flax yellow, and amber, but it didn’t lighten their mood. A crew of workers in orange Criminal Detention coveralls skimmed the trash from the green water of Southern Star Canal in preparation for the canoe races, but they didn’t speak, glared over by a single well-armed supervisor in a GISA uniform with a rugged-looking dog pacing at his side. Shop keepers swept up last night’s trash or roused the last of the homeless and addled who’d been sleeping in their doorways and sent them away with whispered admonishments. Even the children who picked through the festival trash for dropped treasures worked without chatter.
Gazes brushed over Matheson, and then away, and whispers sounded behind him like the brushing and ticking of bare branches against windows late at night. The unsettled feeling he hadn’t had in days crawled up his neck and across his scalp like a spider. They already know. But how could they miss two-dozen GISA personnel crowded into one alley?
He turned in at the café’s door. The strong scent of fresh coffee and hot baked goods shocked his numbed senses. For a moment he just stood still in the doorway and breathed it in. It left him dumb and weak after the grim reek of the crime scene and the hospital, and too many hours without sleep.
“Heh,” the counterman muttered—his features seemed undecided, but his voice was low enough that Matheson decided to stick with “male,” for now. “What I can do for you?” The distinctive rolling R and the Dreihleen clicking of the man’s tongue against his closed teeth brought Matheson back to himself.
“Coffee. Two. Very large.”
The lanky man had drawn his dark brown hair into a short spray of tiny braids at his nape. Matheson hadn’t yet got the knack of consistently reading a Dreihle’s age with a look and had to guess at something between thirty and forty-five. The counterman issued an interrogative sort of snort. “How you’re want them?” The hard consonants were clipped, the vowels throaty behind habitually clenched teeth that turned “them” into “zem.”
“Umm . . . Inspector Dillal sent me to get them. Plain is fine.”
“Huh. Is Inspector now, is’t?” the other replied, turning toward his steam pipes and samovars.
Matheson only nodded and watched the man juggling hot liquids like soft toys. How to answer that? He didn’t say anything.
“He working that thing over Paz? What’zat?”
Matheson shook his head. “I couldn’t say.”
The counterman squeezed lids onto the cups, pressing them tight and shooting a sideways glance at Matheson. “Murder.” It came out “mare’t. dair.” “Is bad. Is what I hear.” The word “is” buzzed into a long Z.
Matheson frowned. “Really . . . I can’t say. Not yet.”
The man nodded and put the sealed cups into a gossamer-thin box, his whole body bobbing in thoughtful agreement; he waved Matheson’s payment away.
“No,” Matheson insisted. “It wouldn’t be right, otherwise.”
The counterman gave him a cockeyed smile. “Right man, heh?” He chuckled to himself and swiped Matheson’s mobile with the payment wand, but he didn’t hand the drinks over at once. He dropped two small pastries in and folded down the top of the box. Then he handed the package over the counter. “Keep you well, Ofiçe. And keep you right.”
Weird turn of phrase. Puzzling over it, Matheson gave an absent nod to a Dreihle woman who had stopped just inside the doorway. She ducked her head away while watching him from the corners of her eyes. He’d seen the odd glance so often, he’d begun to think of it as “Dreihle-wise,” though hers was sharper than most.
It all felt strange and it wasn’t due to his own anxiety and lack of sleep alone. The counterman had met his eye and spoken directly to him about what was happening at Paz. But most Dreihleen wouldn’t look straight at non-Dreihleen, just like the woman in the doorway hadn’t. Yet another mystery. Matheson couldn’t quite hear the conversation in the café behind him—and wouldn’t have understood the language if he had—before the door hissed shut. Gossiping about the crime. He shivered.
He trudged back to the crime scene, keeping his head down. He was aware of quickly averted glances. Uncomfortable thoughts dogged him. How much information’s leaked into the neighborhood by now? Is it already muddying the witness statements? Will the street-corner agitators try to spin this into a corporate conspiracy? Rumor’ll be a nightmare . . . though it won’t be worse than the reality.
He crossed through the cordon, searched for Dillal, and found him back inside the club. Even with the ventilation on, the stink still crawled over Matheson like a cloud of gnats, but he barely flinched this time. It wasn’t that he was used to it—please, don’t let me ever become used to it—but he didn’t have the energy left to be sickened.
T
he inspector and Tyreda stood at the end of the bar, examining something laid on the surface under a harsh light.
“. . . Off-world,” Dillal was saying. “Possibly military origin . . .”
Matheson stopped on the entry tiles and both men turned toward him. Tyreda looked unnerved. The inspector made no show of noticing, but he said, “Tyreda, find someone to stand guard outside the door while Matheson and I take these back to the transport. And see about organizing relief for the remaining SOs and IOs—we can start sending them home once the alley survey is done.”
“Sure, D—sir,” Tyreda stuttered, hurrying to pass Matheson and get out of the bloodstained room as quickly as possible.
Dillal took a handful of evidence bags off the bar and shut off the lamp before walking over to join Matheson on the tiles. “The woman wasn’t in the shop?” he asked.
“Huh?” It took a second for Matheson figure what Dillal meant. “Oh. No. A man and a female customer. How—?”
“I can smell the pastries. She would never have given you those. He’s a useful man to know.” Dillal cast a look back into the room. “There’s too much yet to do, but it won’t spoil in a few minutes.” He glanced at Matheson’s mobile, secured in the parallel loops on his uniform shirt. “Fifteen minutes for coffee should be all right. These must go into the catalog, in any event,” he added, holding up the bags as he walked toward the door.
Matheson peered over Dillal’s shoulder at the contents of the bags. “Bullets?”
“From the walls in the bar room. Come along, before the coffee’s cold.”
Matheson followed, though he was beginning to feel that he spent all his time shuttling from one place to another, learning nothing, and expecting something awful to happen. It was a relief to sit down in the dry and quiet of the transport and just drink coffee. It had cooled enough to feel wonderful going down. As the internal heat and caffeine hit, he closed his eyes and let his shoulders slump. Not as good as a bed or a bath, but better than the street, or the nauseating air of the jasso. Coffee wouldn’t carry him far, but it would keep him from collapsing just yet.
“You should swallow that,” Dillal said and Matheson felt something nudge against his arm, which he’d rested against the work table, “though I can’t imagine you’ll enjoy it.”
With an effort, he sat up and opened his eyes, mumbling, “Sir,” automatically. One of the small pastries sat on a square of flimsy beside his elbow: Caked in sugar icing, it was cup-shaped, about as large as the first knuckle of his thumb, and filled with some kind of tiny seeds in brown paste. He wasn’t sure what the paste was: Gattis grew some damned strange plants and many of them had interesting pharmaceutical qualities. He couldn’t even be sure what the crust was made from, though it looked like ordinary pastry dough. He blinked at the morsel, wondering what the risk was.
“Gattian water poppy seeds are a stimulant.” Dillal’s measured voice sounded muffled and tired. “They’d be addictive if they didn’t taste like filth.”
Matheson glanced at the inspector, who’d propped his elbows on the table edge and buried his face in his hands, rubbing his fingers against his temples once again. His whole body sagged. It’s like that moment in the hospital room . . . but he’s been fine since. “Sir?”
Dillal jerked his head up as if Matheson had startled him from sleep, and clapped his palms down onto the table top. His natural eye was wide and blinking rapidly, while the other remained half-closed. “Callista Matheson.”
“What?”
“Your sister. Your father’s K. Parkman Matheson.” Dillal’s face went still and blank again. “Yes or no?”
Matheson drew back, feeling his shoulders tighten involuntarily. It was going to come up sometime . . . His last wretched meeting with Callista swam into his mind:
“A policeman isn’t much use to the family, Eric.”
“I want to do something beneficial—”
“Then start a charity!”
He shook away the memory of her icy disgust and the sharp ring of her heels on the floor as she’d left him. He gave the inspector a wary look. “Yes. Why?”
“Ah,” Dillal said and shrugged it away. “Just a data point. Drink your coffee. I want to finish with this scene by 0900, if possible.” He reached forward, pulled a data stylus and keyboard out of the nearest console, and began typing.
“Sir, I don’t understand . . .”
The inspector didn’t look at Matheson, but at the small pile of bagged bullets, entering their information in the evidence catalog. “Nor do I, yet. What do you think of our crime scene?”
Matheson’s head was spinning. He couldn’t keep up with the inspector’s mercurial changes of mood and topic, any more than he understood the hostility and discomfort that he provoked. Matheson gave up trying to sort it. “I think it’s merry fucked,” he blurted. Then he bolted down half his coffee and forced his mind back to the crime scene before he said more. “It’s not a crime of passion, so it didn’t start and stop at the doorway. The Dreihleen have a history of conflict with the Ohba, but we didn’t hear of any Ohba sighted in the Dreihleat last night and Neme thinks it’s clannish—”
“I already know what Senior Detive Neme believes. What do you think?”
“I think . . . that I don’t know enough.”
The inspector’s voice was still soft, but cut clearly. “You’re avoiding my question. You were the first man on the scene—or near enough.” He finished typing and put the entry equipment away, turning his disturbing gaze back to Matheson. Dillal’s jaw and the corner of his right eye were tight from fatigue or pain. “You’re academy-trained, which means you’re not stupid, you’re well-educated, and you might have some innate skill at this. So, before you were four hours into overtime, when you first saw this scene, what was your immediate impression?”
“My first impression? Was merry fucking hell, but someone’s a sick bastard. Or very angry. To kill like that . . . so many people . . .” Matheson’s innards twisted and the coffee burned back up his throat.
The inspector watched him. “But I agree with you that the crime is not one of passion, in spite of the violence of it. It was planned. It was careful—” he raised a finger between them—“up to a point. If this is an act of anger, it’s a very cold sort,” he finished, letting his hand drop.
“That doesn’t comfort me.”
One of his twitching, wry smiles escaped Dillal before he said, “No. It implies a disciplined mind at the heart of the matter, and that will make our job much harder.”
“Our job? I’m just a foot patrolman, an SO. Not even a real cop, just a corporate enforcement officer at the absolute bottom of the ladder.” Yes, I’m bitter. Everyone starts at the bottom—and I wanted to—but not here, not like this.
Dillal was silent a few seconds, thinking and peering at Matheson as if he could read something off his skin. Then he said, “You won’t be for long.”
“Which means?”
The inspector tilted his head but didn’t answer. He just picked up his coffee and stuffed the remaining pastry into his mouth. The right side of his face pulled down in an expression of disgust and he gulped coffee until the cup was empty. Then he coughed and shivered. “Escudos taste abominable, but they’ll keep you awake a while longer.”
Matheson followed the inspector’s lead and ate the little pastry in one bite. He almost spewed. No amount of sugar and sweet bean paste could cover the horrendous taste of the water poppy seeds: like fermented eggs spiced with strychnine. “Ugh, it’s like being poisoned!”
“If it had any odor, it would be a perfect aversive.” The inspector gave a faint snort that might have been a rueful laugh. “It’s mostly benign except for the taste.”
Matheson coughed and drained his coffee. Please, let that terrible flavor fade quickly . . . and don’t let me vomit—how much more awful will it be coming back up? “If it’s so useful as a stimulant, why don’t they just put it in capsules?”
“There’s always a fool or
two who wants to prove how hard they are—why not accommodate them? Capsules don’t taste any better.” The inspector shook himself, rose, and put the evidence bags away in one of the lockers. Then he took a pair of disposable coveralls out of the supply drawer. Matheson despaired of the clammy discomfort they represented.
“Can you continue, now?” Dillal asked. The expression he offered wasn’t unkind, but it wasn’t warm, either, and the lack of mobility on the left side of his face didn’t help.
Matheson checked himself. He did feel more alert, even if his mouth tasted like something had died in it. Actually . . . he was more than alert; an almost itchy feeling was starting just under his skin, as if his blood was filled with hyperactive spiders and his nerves were slightly raw. He rubbed his forearm and gasped at the sensation—like sandpaper on wet skin. “I think so,” he said. “If I don’t go crazy first.”
“It’s temporary.”
Did he mean the itching, or the insanity?
CHAPTER FIVE
Day 1: Afternoon
Two more hours sweating inside coveralls and spray seal killed off the too-lively sensation under Matheson’s skin and almost any thought aside from his desire to sleep. Even with a team of scene technicians from ForTech, the sheer volume of the work was deadening. Every body, every bullet hole, and every scrap of potential evidence had to be collected and recorded in notes, and motion or still video, and the inspector wanted to see as much of it as possible in situ. Matheson plodded through the rooms in Dillal’s wake, the inspector pausing to crouch and peer at the victims’ hands and faces, and give each one a name, turning them back into humans, not just stiffening, stinking corpses. Matheson’s chest, throat, and eyes ached.
Dillal took particular interest in one man and one woman—Denenshe Leran and Venn Robesh—who were slightly removed from the rest of those in the gaming room. They were both dead in the same way as the others, but neither of them had been bound with tape. They lay partially across one another, the man—Leran—face down across the woman’s bent legs as she lay on her side, facing him.
Blood Orbit_A Gattis File Novel Page 4
