Blood Orbit_A Gattis File Novel

by K. R. Richardson

  No, not just you. The thought made him wince, as much as his gratitude that Aya didn’t follow him.

  Apparently Dillal hadn’t put the mobile down—maybe he couldn’t. Is this conversation coming directly through the cybernetic link? Matheson wasn’t sure if he should admire that trick or find it deeply unsettling.

  “What do you think of this?” the inspector asked.

  “Me? I don’t know . . .” He felt off-kilter between Aya’s comforting refuge and Dillal’s grim recall to reality.

  “I’m not asking for a technical evaluation. You spoke with him recently. Did his state of mind seem bent to this?”

  Matheson squeezed his eyes shut, dredging for memories that seemed suddenly slippery. “Uh . . . he was distraught. He thought he’d be blamed in some way for the situation at Paz. He was panicky and distressed, but he was also drunk.”

  “Would he take his own life over that distress?”

  The weight of unresolved sleep was falling away and Matheson sighed. “I’m not sure. I suppose it’s not impossible.” He rubbed his face with his free hand but stopped short, flinching at pain, and feeling the rough scratch of whiskers against his palm.

  “‘Not impossible’—there’s a useless phrase,” the inspector said. “Once again, without your brain getting in the way, does it ring true to you?”

  He gave only a moment’s reflection—Dillal had ragged on him enough about over-thinking. “No. It really doesn’t.”

  Dillal heaved a disgusted sigh. “But it will stand as suicide unless the examiner finds otherwise, which seems unlikely.”

  “Can’t you rule on it? You’re the CIFO, after all.”

  “That is what Orris is asking also, but it would only further complicate our case.”

  Matheson’s brain was still sluggish. “How? Aside from being unable to question him at trial.”

  “Would that not be complication enough?”

  “You’re laying another of your verbal traps for me, aren’t you? Sir.”

  “Not this time. But I do fear there is another sword waiting to fall if I misstep here. I can’t take the Santos case without bringing scrutiny on its possible connection to ours and I can’t let it be summarily closed as a suicide if it is connected.” Dillal growled and added, “Send me your report on yesterday as soon as you can.”

  “I will. Sir, I did make a breakthrough—”

  “Then follow up—I can’t speak further now. I’ll want to see you as soon as Orris is finished with you—if it comes to that.” The inspector closed the conversation and the downward “ping-ping” sounded from the mobile’s speaker.

  Matheson sat on the bench, at a loss. The inspector was pissed off about Santos, but Matheson was, for the moment, adrift. There would never be a return to walking his rounds with Santos—or anyone else. This case loomed as all he had and might be all he would ever have. There were too many people whose lives were crushed or hanging in the balance. It wasn’t just his career or Dillal’s at stake. He shook his head and thought about dead people, about the victims at Paz, the anonymous arms dealer in the Ohbata, the unaff kid, about Christa Santos coming home and finding . . . He had forgotten to ask how long Santos had been dead. He hoped it had been hours, not minutes. Though it didn’t make him feel better thinking of Christa walking right past her dead husband in the morning darkness. The cool dawn air was full of the roof garden’s scents and sounds, and he knew Aya was nearby, but none of it seemed to mean anything. He shivered in horror and his mobile fell into the white gravel at his feet, unnoticed.

  The fog off the Cove was starting to thin in the street below as the morning breeze moved between the buildings, trailing the smell of industrial saltwater and fish. Higher up, the wind whispered along the balcony rail, but wasn’t strong enough to move Santos’s body. Dillal dropped his hand, which he’d cupped over his left ear. Then he stared at the body and didn’t turn immediately when Orris stepped onto the balcony and accidentally splashed into a shallow puddle of water spilled from an overturned planter.

  “What d’you think?” Orris asked, crossing his arms over his chest and tucking his hands under them.

  “Of what?” Dillal replied.

  “This. Situation, COD . . .”

  “Death by ligature strangulation.”

  “So, he hanged himself.”

  “Probably.” Dillal’s voice was flat. “His hands and neck don’t show much sign of his having tried to remove the rope.”

  “Much?”

  “Very little—any ForTech med/legal could tell you this. Most hanging victims panic at some point and try to loosen the ligature. You see scratching at the neck and abrasion on the fingertips. Even suicides do it.”

  “And that’s what you’ll sign off on.”

  “No.”

  “No?” Orris stepped around and stood close in front of him so Dillal was forced to look up. “Why not?” The older investigator had to squint as the rising sun hit him in the eye and glanced off the front of his faded jacket. He shaded his face with one hand as he glared at Dillal.

  “Santos was connected to my investigation,” Dillal replied. “I can’t certify death for one of my own suspects. It would be fatal to the legal standing of the case. Pritchet wouldn’t be pleased.”

  Orris didn’t raise his voice or change his tone, but he said, “Dog-bugger Pritchet. We don’t have enough staff to certify this and close it today, unless you do it now. It’s a ball-cutting shame, but this isn’t a major case—it’s just a miserable, friggin’ suicide—and I’d like to clear it and get back to the rest of my load.”

  Dillal shrugged. “I know a doctor who would step in to certify, if you’re in that much of a hurry.”

  “I am. Who’ve you got?”

  “Dr. Andreus. She’s always on weekends at the health center—no seniority. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Orris nodded, looking grimly pleased. “Good. Thanks. I can wrap this up and let his widow get on with mourning.”

  “It’s a pity.”

  “Fuckin’ tragedy, but it happens all the time.”

  Dillal nodded, but made no further comment. He walked through the balcony door and Orris followed him back inside. Dillal made for the main door and stopped short. Then he turned back, his gaze directed to the floor as if he were uncomfortable.

  “Despair, I suppose.”

  “What?” Orris asked, walking a little closer.

  Dillal looked up, the metallic lid of his prosthetic eye blinking out of sync with the natural one and setting a tear of thick, pink fluid at the incision’s edge. “Matheson reported that Santos was despondent about the Paz da Sorte case. This, I suppose, is the result. We’ve both walked that patch and feel nothing. Why did Santos take it so hard?”

  Orris gave him a strange look, as if he thought Dillal had lost his mind. “Well . . . your reasons would be different from mine, but it’s not like anyone’s heart breaks over leaving the Dreihleat. Santos never left.”

  “Why not? He’d been in Security Office a long time—you worked with his unit when you first transferred from Agria Corps, I recall. He must have had chances.”

  Orris heaved a sigh and folded his arms again. “To tell the truth, and meaning no disrespect to the dead, Santos was a fuck-up. Hit his personal ceiling and couldn’t get over it—though I suspect the grease didn’t hurt. But he was stuck there and when this jasso murder went down, he wouldn’t have seen any way back up. Especially if he had anything to do with it. Did he?”

  “He hadn’t the time to kill them, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But you said he was a suspect, so he must have been involved.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Y’know, if it was racial, that could have been the problem—or the cause. His wife’s Ohba.”

  “I thought as much. It must have given them difficulty—him working in the Dreihleat, forming connections with the enemy, so to speak.”

  “It would wear a man’s soul right down to the nub. He dran
k pretty heavily—or at least he had been, judgin’ by the trash.”

  Dillal grunted and turned away, letting himself out the door.

  Matheson had been sitting a while when he began hearing people moving on the streets two stories below, but he didn’t bother to wonder what they were doing. The white stones on the roof clicked as Aya walked across the open garden. She had put on a dress—a thin white thing that billowed in the breeze coming up with the sun over the edge of the crater. She draped an equally light blanket over his shoulders and sat beside him. He shivered again, though it wasn’t cold and the wind wasn’t strong enough to chill the moisture in the air.

  He sat still and tried to breathe, but it felt like a weight had settled on his chest and his breath came in hard jerks and pants that sparked pain across his bruised back and ribs. He closed his eyes and felt a harsh burning at the lower lids that was not only lack of sleep. His mouth crooked at an unexpected pang of grief. This can’t be right. This isn’t right!

  “Eric?” He opened his eyes slowly, saw the motion as Aya tilted her head, but couldn’t make himself turn to look at her. “What is’t?”

  He had to lick his lips. It was hard to speak at all and his tongue felt heavy, his brain thick. “He’s dead.” His voice shook and he noted it as if it were someone else’s. “He died this morning.”

  Now she put her hand on his shoulder—a touch barely discerned—as she leaned toward him. Her face creased in a puzzled frown. “Who?”

  “My partner. He’s dead.” It didn’t seem real. But the inspector wouldn’t lie to him about this. Santos was dead.

  Aya took a sharp breath through her nose and stood, rearing away from him. It startled him and he turned to her in concern. She looked thunderstruck.

  “Dead?” she asked. “By what?”

  He stumbled over it, not wanting to say, but wanting to push the idea out of his own head and get rid of it. “He hanged himself.” The words seemed to crush a cold void in his chest that grew larger as Aya’s eyes grew wider.

  Matheson shook himself. There was someone else to worry about, now, someone else to deal with. His voice sounded mechanical in his ears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you must have known Santos. He’d been here a long time, so I should have guessed.”

  She closed her eyes and swayed. He pulled her down to sit beside him on the bench and she lowered her face into her cupped hands, her hair falling forward. She shook for a minute and Matheson had no better idea what to do this time than he had the last time.

  She raised her head suddenly, but kept her face forward. She didn’t even turn her gaze to him Dreihle-wise. “I’m know him. But I’m not cry. I’m . . . thankful.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s one takes the real-protezhão.”

  Matheson knew half the word—Real was the Gattian monetary unit—but the other word was too far from one he recognized . . . Aya frowned at his incomprehension and made a gesture for money, rubbing the tips of her first two fingers and thumb together.

  “Protection money. Merry hell. You too.” Matheson closed his eyes and put his hand over them. Even knowing it was true, he hadn’t wanted to believe it of Santos, poor dead son of a bitch . . . but his disgust was suddenly stronger than grief. “He’s dead, but there’ll be others.”

  “I’m already pay the morning walkers this month. I’m not do it, they’re burn down my shop. Even Minje and the kind are not stop them.”

  His emotions were in chaos. He turned to her, guilty by association. “Aya. I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You’re make these men? You’re send them here?”

  “No. But it’s all part of the same system. The system I work for, the system the Sunday speakers rail against—rightly. Yet I’ve asked you to betray those people . . .”

  She scowled, casting him her sideways glance. “This you’re not saying last night. You’re not believing it but for the pain you’re feel now. You’re think one crime’s excuse another now?”

  “No! Maybe! Blackness take it, I don’t know!”

  Her expression softened and she put her hand on his cheek. “Is hard for us. You’re understand now why we’re buy hopes from park benches. Why Robesh is not tell you who Venn’s follow like her own heart’s beat. But I’m tell you who you must find—not for destroying hope, but for making it clean again.”

  “What am I becoming? A better cop, a worse one . . . or a tool for someone’s revenge?”

  “We’re not deserve vengeance when they’re murder our neighbors, poison our chances?”

  Confusion tore at him and muddied his thoughts further. “Yes—No—I—is that what I’m pointed at? Is that what I can get? Without ruining something else just as precious.” Matheson lowered his eyes. Now he felt hollow. “I don’t know. I’m coming to think I don’t know anything at all and the people I know best are all dead.”

  Aya leaned closer to him. “Is not true.”

  “I mean . . . the people I have come to know about are sixteen murder victims that I know better than my dead partner. And except for Venn Robesh and Denny Leran, I hardly know them, either. They are names and faces”—he shuddered, remembering Venn’s face and Denny’s—“disconnected from . . . a person. Ghosts that haunt me because it’s my job to put them to rest—or try to. I don’t know them, but I know you and you make me feel their loss and their desperation like a knife in my gut. And now there are two more—maybe a third. And there may be others—there may be a lot of others if things go wrong.”

  Aya peered at him. It was a searching look that seemed to take him apart and stare into places he didn’t want to look himself. “You’re trust your inspector?”

  “I do. I have to. We’re in this mess together.”

  “You’re not think he’s let you sink in it if it’s save him?”

  “Never.” He had no hesitation about that but Aya seemed to be measuring his reply, weighing him against a standard he didn’t comprehend. “We’ve each put ourselves in the other’s hands. We have to solve this or we’re both done for. Without Santos it’s going to be harder. And if I can’t find the men you told me about last night—”

  “Banzet and Tchintaka.”

  He nodded and repeated the names. “Do you know if they did this? Or are they only names that lead to more names?”

  “I’m not know if they’re the ones go with Denny. But they’re friends between him and Venn. I’m hope is not them, but they’re all I’m know.”

  “If I don’t find them, I may not find a solution in time. If Dillal and I are right, that could lead to the death of all of you, every Dreihle and probably every Ohba too, because you stand between Gattis Corporation’s charter and its future survival.”

  Back in his office, Dillal found a report among his messages and read through it on one screen while composing a message to Dr. Andreus on another. Once again, he moved the file to a more secure virtual location and destroyed the original and all trace of it that he could reach. But he paused several times and reread sections—especially one that mentioned Fahn.

  Dr. Andreus replied by voice while Dillal was composing a summary of the report for Pritchet. He touched his hand to the back of his left ear and winced as he made an adjustment to the socket there. Then he typed a command on his terminal, routing the call through his datalink. Only his half of the conversation was audible to anyone else and he kept his voice low. “Yes.”

  “I don’t have time to play games with you, Inspector. What is it you want now?”

  “Do you have a report on Santos yet?”

  “No. The body only just arrived. But if you want me to make an educated guess, it’s strangulation, as everyone else said—including you.”

  “Nothing complicating?”

  Her annoyed sigh came through the datalink “At first glance, yes, but that doesn’t change the COD. You didn’t ask for a full autopsy, just certification of cause of death. I’m ready to certify strangulation by hanging. But I suppose you want all the details, don’t you?”
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  “I do. And I’ve a small problem of my own.”

  “Yours isn’t the only dead body I’ve got on my agenda today, so if you want this done with any speed, you’ll need to come to the hospital and lend me a hand.”

  “Thank you.” He tapped the keyboard, cutting off the voice call. Then he continued typing Pritchet’s summary, scowling the whole time.

  . . . three different types of projectiles of the same caliber and composition, but with varying design. This leads to the conclusion that the individuals involved in the murders at the Paz da Sorte were unable to obtain consistent ammunition from any legitimate source and were placed in the position of accepting what was available from an illegal source or sources.

  The combination of materials used in the projectiles is unique and is definitively identified as part of an ordinance consignment used by outside military and mercenary forces supporting local units during suppression of the Cafala flood riots on the continent of Agria twelve years ago. A voluntary detachment of those troops remained for clean-up and debriefing. Agria Corps standard procedure did not require accounting for ammunition issued by non-Gattis units at that time. Thus, a significant cache of ammunition of this design and caliber could have gone missing without comment. The remaining question is, from whom did the perpetrators obtain the ammunition and weapons? Since both are military in origin, the obvious conclusion is that they were acquired illegally.

  GISA’s interest in this case will be best served in locating the undocumented cache, seizing it without delay, and interrogating those with knowledge of it with as little publicity as possible and an eye to apprehending not only the perpetrators of the Paz da Sorte murders, but any other parties who may be in possession of such illegal matériel . . .

  Dillal read through the stultifyingly dull report and smiled. Then he directed the document to Pritchet, and rose once again from his desk.

  He avoided both staff and private transportation and made his own way to the hospital.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Day 5: Morning

  The crowds in the street seemed like a mirage to Matheson. His thoughts fragmented—part still with Aya, part mourning Santos, while the rest was trying to get back on track with the investigation. The two men Aya had named should be somewhere around Yshteppa Park, but he didn’t know what they looked like. He sent a database request for any records of Hoda Banzet and Osolin Tchintaka and flagged the inspector on it as well. Dillal wouldn’t be able to do much with it while he was dealing with Orris, but at least the names would be in his queue.