“You have the answer.” Dillal said.
“I don’t know—wait!” He pointed at the inspector. “You said it. You said these people were businessmen and they came to the club with their money in their pockets. So this was a robbery. But why didn’t someone else raise a fuss about being robbed?”
“It’s easier to bow the head. The Dreihleen—and the Ohba also—feel that they, as a people, stand alone, surrounded by enemies, oppressed, discriminated against, and disenfranchised without legal cause. Even the honest work they can get outside the ghettos is limited and poorly paid—unless they choose prostitution. They dislike and distrust GISA and wouldn’t have reported such a crime to you—not even to Santos unless it was unavoidable. Other Dreihleen would understand that. These people did not expect to die. They only expected to pay the robbers and then exact justice their own way, later. It’s one of the reasons the trade societies, the clans, exist. They aren’t simply gangs, but cooperatives that protect the businesses and people of the Dreihleat. As GISA does not.”
Matheson closed his eyes. “Would the Dreihleen have concealed this? The murders.” How many of the people I walked past every day might be clandestine killers, or culpable?
“No,” Dillal said. “A single killing, especially the result of a clan’s determination of justice, might be concealed or obfuscated. But not this. This is beyond the Dreihleen’s tolerance. And that is why these sixteen are all dead.”
Matheson blinked at the inspector. “I don’t understand . . .”
“Think, Matheson. If Leran is part of the gang, it makes perfect sense. They are collecting victims, they know your rounds, they mean to get out before you and Santos return, but Robesh fights and Leran kills her. Perhaps an accident, perhaps not, but then a bullet—an old military-issue projectile from an old style of gun—enters his head at the rear of the right parietal bone—”
Images appeared on the monitors above the bodies, conjured somehow by Dillal, and coming faster and faster as his speech sped up. Matheson looked back and forth, almost unable to keep up.
“It comes from above him and angles down and left, from a distance, as if he were shot by someone much taller, or someone standing in the archway between the bar room and the gambling floor—on the step between them. None of the victims have gunshot residue on their hands—Leran has some compound I haven’t identified yet, but it’s not propellant, and he was killed with the same gun as some of the bound victims. It’s not self-defense and the shot that killed Leran was not an accident. The robbers became murderers and all the witnesses had to die or the Dreihleat would turn on them. Every friend would become an enemy, every stranger a possible assassin. They had to run before you and Santos returned. They had to kill them all and run!”
“But we didn’t hear anything or encounter anyone!”
The flow of images stopped and Dillal replied with his usual reserve. “You were chasing a pickpocket and the thing was quickly done—look at how neatly the dead lie in the gaming room. As if they had no time to panic.”
“But not those in the bar! They must have been killed in a hurry as the gang left.”
Dillal nodded with the small lift of one side of his mouth that Matheson mentally tagged “approval.” He was almost embarrassed at feeling pleased. He shook his head at himself in disgust.
Dillal saw it. “Why are you displeased with your conclusion?”
“Not the conclusion that bugs me, it’s—” Matheson shook his head again and glanced back up at the monitor displaying Robesh’s information, watching the images of her face as it had once been. Memory struck him and linked to a dozen connections like flash fire. He felt dizzy and grabbed the edge of the nearest table to steady himself. “Oh. Blackness and burn . . . She’s the Julian girl.”
“The what?”
“I knew she seemed familiar! Merry hell, this can’t be . . .”
“Explain,” Dillal said.
Matheson glanced at him, then strode back to the lockers of personal items. “Which one is hers?”
“Third from the end, second row. What are you looking for?” Dillal added, crossing to him.
“The clothes! The shoes!” Matheson dug into the locker and took out the sealed bag of Venn Robesh’s effects. He started looking for gloves or spray seal and Dillal handed him a can of the sealant from a drawer nearby.
Matheson covered his hands and wrists and opened the bag. He pulled out the dress—once a shimmering white shading to pearl gray, the shoulders and front were now drenched in blood and brain matter. He dug out the shoes and put them on the nearest work table with care, flattening the dress beside them with gentle hands. “The Julian Company—it’s a . . . well, they run very high-end resorts, and also own lines of luxury cosmetics, jewelry, and clothing. This girl—Venn—I couldn’t cross the jumpway-to-orbital transfer station or the space port without seeing her face on commercial banners and float ads all over the place. I should have recognized her earlier but the damage to her face . . .” The truth was that he’d tried not to notice or think about the presence of the company that was named for his great grandfather.
Dillal gave a grunt of agreement and drew closer to study the dress. “It’s Regausa silk.”
“I know. This dress must be a sample or a costume kind of thing. It’s got the logo all over it—see this sort of . . . frond of gemstones at the shoulder?”
“Trench diamonds. They’re Gattian—as is the silk—but no Dreihle girl could afford such a dress,” Dillal said.
Matheson nodded. Beyond the unsettling presence of his family’s financial interests, there was, more immediately, the girl herself: Robesh’s outfit was the sort of thing that sold for staggering prices in exclusive boutiques next to the swank casinos on Cove Quay, produced in sweatshops in places like the Dreihleat and Ohbata a few at a time with painstaking skill for low pay. Robesh didn’t have the hands of a seamstress. Even with broken nails, they were elegant and soft. However she’d risen to this, it hadn’t been by manual labor. “All right,” he said. “But the shape—that’s an abstraction of the Julian logo. It’s repeated on the skirt. And on the shoes. She was a sort of walking advertisement.”
“But she wasn’t in the Dreihleat to attract customers for the Julian Company. So why was she in Paz and with whom?”
“Leran?”
Dillal shook his head, wearing half a frown. “No. That doesn’t fit. But Gil Dohan might. He owned Dohan Sewing.”
“It’s in the Dreihleat? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Not on your patch. It’s on the eastern side.”
“If Venn Robesh was related to Dohan or works for him—”
“She’s not related, except as all Dreihleen are in community. She may work for him, but Dreihleat businesses pay their Dreihleen workers under the table, so there’s no record for us to connect. We would have to confirm her connection to Dohan ourselves, as well as confirming or eliminating a connection between Dohan and the Julian Company.” Dillal gave Matheson a thoughtful look. “What do you know about them?”
“Julian? They’re well-positioned—wherever there’s something that draws the rich, you’ll find the Julian Company busily pandering to them. I’d presume that’s why they’re developing a presence here. But since you didn’t know about them, it must be recent.” Matheson closed his eyes, shunted his personal feelings aside, and thought aloud, “The ad campaign must be a market-opener—a wedge. That’s their usual strategy in a new market.”
“This is family business.”
Matheson flicked his eyes open, startled, then turned his gaze aside in discomfort. “Yes.”
“I understand,” said Dillal. “Why did Robesh stand out to you?”
“She was . . . exotic.” His face burned until he expected to combust. “I thought she wasn’t real, just a simulation, because she was flawless. Luminous. Like she was polished.”
“Flawless,” Dillal repeated, as if making note of the term. “Was her picture shown outside Gattis Jumpway?”<
br />
Matheson looked at the inspector. “I’d never seen it anywhere else. It was as if . . . she was Gattis. I admit, it gave me a false impression of what this place would be like.”
“The face of Gattis was a seventeen-year-old Dreihle girl with little formal education or opportunity . . . What a loss. We’ll have to discover how Leran and our Julian Girl knew each other.”
“Why?”
“Because if we know that, we may know why Leran killed her, and from there the rest of this knot may unravel. But it will be bloody. Homicide—even an accidental one—that occurs during the course of a robbery—”
Matheson knew the law. “It’s first degree homicide and everyone willingly involved before or after is held equally guilty. They were already double-murderers. Fourteen more wouldn’t make their burden in law any worse.”
“Not most places. Here, it carries a mandatory death penalty. Aggravated murder. That is why, Matheson, no tourist would have been involved. Yes, one might get away with murder here, but not mass slaughter. Because we would hunt him, as we will hound these men, to the bitter end.”
Matheson looked at the floor, then up at the monitors sparkling with the ever-rotating images of the dead as they had been, and as they were now. They glimmered above him like blood-spattered stars, and deathly silence folded around him until his ears rang with it. Scattered objects no more, but ghosts assembled to haunt him, suddenly joined with faces streaked in gore and mud the color of ripe plums . . .
The unexplained vision shook him. Then it was broken and chased away by the sudden intrusion of Dillal’s cold voice.
“We begin tomorrow.” Dillal’s expression was grim. “I want you to speak with Santos. Irrespective of his injury, he’ll be off shift for a few days until we can say he’s cleared of any connection.”
“Then . . . you didn’t talk to him already,” Matheson said, shocked to sharpness.
“I didn’t say I had.”
“You gave me that impression.”
“You took that impression. I didn’t correct it. Matheson, it’s not my intention to mislead you, but to make you think more precisely and logically. To be rigorous, not to assume anything. That’s why I had you discard your uniform jacket—so you would feel less like an academy man, or like Santos’s trainee, thinking the way he wants you to. I need you to think like Eric Matheson, not like Security Ofiçe Matheson. A whole man, not a calculator, nor a recorder.” He stepped closer, bringing an odor of disinfectant, mint, and medicine, and started to reach for Matheson, but drew his hand back suddenly, pushing his clenched fist into his own gut. “But I also need you to think here.” He jabbed a finger again into his chest. “And here.” He reached high and tapped his fingertips against the unshaven side of his head. “Not just here.”
Then Dillal stepped back. “You’re still an SO, in fact, but you’re my IAD in practice, and that requires you to reason without a mental straitjacket. Do you understand?”
Matheson nodded. “I get it. But why send me to talk to Santos? We’re not exactly close, and if he was the district bag man, he’s not likely to tell me about it.”
“That’s not what I want you to discuss with him. It’s immaterial unless it did bring him into collusion with the gang. All you need to do is find out when he actually entered the jasso and what he saw and did.”
“Then you’ll take the Dreihleat . . . ?”
“No. You’ll have to carry on with that as well. I can’t set you to work here—the forensic material is my purview—so the legwork falls to you until I’ve cleared my immediate end, though we’ll both be at a disadvantage. You’ll need to collect whatever the general canvass turned up and pursue anything promising. It won’t be as simple as walking your rounds—you’ll be alone and the SOs on first- and mid-shift won’t appreciate your presence on their turf any more than some of the Dreihleen. There is also the matter of the tunnels.”
“‘The Tomb?’ I’ve heard about it, but I haven’t seen it yet.”
“Remnants of the terraform. Commonly used by black marketeers and criminals. Don’t pursue any leads that point there without me or a Dreihle you can trust with you. There’s no communications, no cameras, no help—if you go in alone, you won’t come out. The Dreihleat is a difficult place.”
Matheson considered the unnerving feel of his first days. “It’s better than the Quay.”
Dillal raised an eyebrow, but Matheson volunteered no more. The inspector continued, “Orris’s report is in the database, but Neme has yet to file her canvass report. Begin there.”
Matheson was tired in spite of himself and wanted to go back to bed. He doubted that either of the senior detives was still in, but he trudged down to Investigation Office—“I-Office”—anyway. It lay on the opposite side of the building from Security Office with ForTech crushed between like an uneasy referee under the spire of the admin tower. Funny how no one upstairs ever complains about ForTech’s weird smell . . .
I-Office was far from deserted. He could hear shouting and a scuffle before he even reached the doorway, and had to move quickly to the side to avoid being tripped or hit by flailing limbs as he passed through. Several rough-looking young men and women—Ohba and mixed—were cuffed to the intake rail. They watched the brawl in the middle of the room and shouted encouragement broken by spitting and insults. One female IO in uniform, Neme, Istvalk, and one more plainclothes struggled to separate two young men: one Dreihle, one Ohba. The Ohba, short, burly and carnelian red from his hair to his bare feet, slipped a blade from his loose shirt and thrust a solid jab at the other guy. Only a sudden backward pull by Neme and the IO saved his taller, slimmer Dreihle opponent from a knife in the gut. Matheson had no time to move before it was over.
Neme let go of the man she’d helped haul away, and spun suddenly into the broken circle of violence, ramming her elbow into the nose of the man with the knife. He reeled back a step, but didn’t go down, in spite of the bright blood that burst from his face. He jerked forward, but Istvalk and the other investigator held him back. Neme reached behind her back and drew a smaller version of the standard shock box from her waistband. “Back down, meathead,” she said, holding it up.
“Nor o-sum,” the Ohba snapped, wrenching his arms against the pull of the men struggling to cuff him. “This one is not being scared of a sandworm bitch protecting caddis flies.” He kicked back at his captors and lunged.
The Dreihle behind Neme flinched back, but managed to spit at the Ohba from between his clenched teeth as he did. The heavier man lurched free and dove forward as if he’d go right through Neme to get to his opponent.
Neme swayed aside, slapped the shock box against the Ohba’s neck, and pushed the button.
He let out a harsh shout and fell to his knees.
“You dirt-eating moron,” she said. “Assault with deadly in a room full of cops? Are you that stupid?” Then she glared past him to the plainclothes who’d lost hold of him. “And you, Sojan. You’re a bigger pile of crap than your prisoner.”
“He’s just another fucking hump!” Sojan yelled back. “How’d I know he was going to go jumpwise?” He was Central brown, taller, and older than Istvalk, but he sounded younger when he whined.
“You brought him, unfettered, into a room with a dreck and you didn’t think there’d be a blow up?” Neme shouted back. “I should put you in the box with both of ’em!”
Half the cuffed audience at the rail catcalled and stamped, and she wheeled to glare at them. “Stitch it closed or I’ll have you all shocked and locked before you draw another breath!”
One of the young women—dazzle-eyed and twitchy from drugs—strained forward against her confinement and jeered, “The hell you will, y’blue-assed bitch!”
Neme narrowed her eyes and darted across the space between them. She shoved the shock box hard under the offender’s chin. “The hell I will,” she said, staring into the other woman’s face with her teeth bared.
Matheson felt cold when he thought of the woman
down and bloodied. He started forward.
But the copper-skinned girl was all bluster. She cowered down into an uncomfortable huddle, her arms attached to the intake rail and her face averted. Neme took a step back and looked at the line of now-quiet detainees. “Who’s next? I’m kind of enjoying kicking your punk asses, so go ahead. No . . . ? Fine.”
Sojan and the female IO had wrestled the groggy Ohba to his feet and cuffed him while Istvalk took possession of the Dreihle.
Violence seemed to balance on a knife edge in the room as Neme turned back toward the Ohba and his escort. “Get that piece of shit out of my sight, Sojan, and clean up your mess.”
“My mess? What about Istvalk? It’s his filthy yellow intake who—”
The Dreihle started to speak and Neme stepped back and slapped him. “Trap up! You and your damned mouth started this.” She shot a glance at Istvalk and muttered, “Get him done before I lose my temper.”
Then she turned back to the IO and Sojan as she tossed the shock box onto a nearby desk. “I don’t give a cat’s crap why you didn’t process your half-assed gang of met warehouse-breakers through S-Office like you should have, or why Istvalk is sitting on our canary-yellow friend like a duck hoping to hatch him. I only care that you’re the blighted moron sollet-brained enough to bring trouble on my watch because you never, ever, ever bring multiple perps directly into this room without a sit check. Get me? So, finish up and get your flea circus out of here or I’ll boot your ass to Belcourso myself.”
Sojan’s face went crimson. “Fuck you, Neme,” he replied, but he still helped the IO drag their prisoner out.
The tension drained from the room as quickly as it had built.
“Yeah, there’s a line for that,” Neme muttered. She turned away, looking down at the sleeve of her blouse that was splattered with the Ohba’s blood. “Crap.” It reminded Matheson of Venn Robesh’s ruined dress—the pale, pearly gray material was Regausa silk just a few shades lighter than Neme’s skin.
Blood Orbit_A Gattis File Novel Page 8
