Duplicate Effort

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  He slid into another booth and touched the screen. He knew how to hack into the university’s secure system from here. He did so, then contacted Nyquist.

  Flint used the privacy filter so that no one who happened past could see the screen. He kept the audio on low, so it would be impossible to hear outside the booth.

  “This secure?” Nyquist asked as he appeared on the screen. He looked tired. There were deep shadows under his eyes.

  There seemed to be trees behind him, but they weren’t evenly spaced like the trees at the Hunting Club.

  Flint couldn’t quite figure out where Nyquist was.

  “As secure as I can be in a public place,” Flint said.

  “How’d you know about Bowles?” No preamble, no niceties. Just the cop question.

  “One of her security guards told me.”

  “What?” Nyquist looked startled. “Why you?”

  “Because I was the one paying for her protection,” Flint said.

  “I thought you didn’t like Ki Bowles.”

  “I didn’t,” Flint said.

  “Then why would you pay for her security detail?”

  “To keep her safe,” Flint said. “And that’s all you’re going to get out of me until you give me something in return.”

  “One of her bodyguards was killed with her,” Nyquist said.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Along with Roshdi Whitford himself.”

  Flint leaned back in the booth. He wasn’t sure how to play that. He knew that information, but it implicated the other guard.

  But the guard was in police custody, so Nyquist would eventually realize that Flint had known that bit of information before Nyquist revealed it.

  “The bodyguard told me that as well,” Flint said.

  “Well, then you’re ahead of me,” Nyquist said. “This bodyguard have a name?”

  “Pelham Monteith.”

  Nyquist nodded, as if he were making a mental note of the name. “So do you have some other information for me?”

  “In trade,” Flint said.

  “You know the department doesn’t do that,” Nyquist said.

  “Of course you do.” Flint leaned back in the booth. One of the serving trays came by and bumped him. He had to order to be here as well. “That’s what informants are for.”

  “I can’t give you anything,” Nyquist said.

  Flint pressed the top item on the menu in front of him, then punched in his number, not caring what he had just ordered. “Then we can’t work together.”

  He moved broadly, as if he were going to sign off, when Nyquist asked, “Okay. What is it you want?”

  “Leads when you have them in the Bowles case. I need to know if she’s a random victim or if she was the target. I also need to know who targeted her.”

  “Why?” Nyquist asked.

  “For the same reason I hired her protection,” Flint said.

  Nyquist frowned. “You in trouble?”

  “I don’t know,” Flint said. “If you give me some information, I might be able to answer that question.”

  “What the hell did you involve her in? And why?”

  “She’s a good reporter,” Flint said.

  Nyquist’s frown grew deeper. “You hired her for her skills?”

  “Sometimes you take the best, even if you don’t like their methods.”

  “For what?”

  Flint grinned at him. “Think about it, Bartholomew. Then get back to me.”

  He was about to sign off, when Nyquist held up a hand.

  “You’re her source?”

  “Of course not,” Flint said. “How could I know anything about Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor?”

  “Your closeness to…” Nyquist stopped speaking before he finished the thought. He finally put the information together. He knew that Flint had gotten some files from Paloma the day that she died. He also knew that Flint had never looked at those files.

  Nyquist also knew that Flint hated Justinian Wagner, and was furious that no one would be punished for Paloma’s death and the attack on Nyquist. They’d talked about it while Nyquist was still hospitalized.

  Flint said someday Justinian Wagner had to pay for letting the assassins know where to find Paloma and Claudius Wagner.

  “You don’t strike me as a revenge kinda guy,” Nyquist said.

  “You’re right,” Flint said. “I’m more a believer in justice.”

  Nyquist made a small dismissive sound. “Your justice might’ve just gotten a woman killed.”

  “Believe me,” Flint said, “I am aware of that.”

  The serving tray appeared, covered with something that looked like a cross between vomit and peanuts. It smelled like green tea.

  Flint made a face—he couldn’t help himself—but let the serving tray place the food on the table. At least the stuff didn’t smell all that bad. He just couldn’t look at it.

  “This stuff that you gave Bowles,” Nyquist said, “is it—”

  “I’m not saying I gave anything to Bowles,” Flint said.

  “You just said—”

  “I just implied,” Flint said.

  “Oooo-kay.” Nyquist spoke slowly, as if Flint were a crazy man. “This stuff you implied you had…”

  “Didn’t say I had it, either,” Flint said.

  Nyquist made that disgusted sound again. “This stuff Bowles was using, this information, is there any way I can see it?”

  “If she has copies,” Flint said.

  “You have to share something if you want information from me,” Nyquist said.

  Flint leaned closer to the screen. “I’m only going to say this once. Bowles and I made our deal before I found out about Talia. I need to know what happened to Bowles because…”

  Nyquist closed his eyes, as if the realization just struck him. When he opened them again, his expression had some sympathy.

  “I’ll let you know if I think you’re a target,” Nyquist said. He paused, as if he were trying to figure out what to say next. Finally, he settled on, “Give me what you can, okay?”

  “I will,” Flint said and signed off.

  He sat in the booth a moment longer, staring at the vomit-covered peanuts. It had to be a Sequev dish. No human would eat anything that looked like that—at least, not voluntarily.

  He shoved the plate away, and rubbed a hand over his face.

  You didn’t strike me as a revenge kinda guy, Nyquist had said.

  Yet Flint was worried that his motives hadn’t been as pure as he thought. He knew that Wagner wouldn’t be punished for his parents’ murder, so Flint had set this up, to punish the man in a way that would make him suffer the most.

  That was a lot closer to revenge than justice.

  Especially when you considered that it had gotten someone killed.

  He sighed. It wasn’t enough to tell himself that Ki Bowles had known what she had signed up for.

  She hadn’t, not really.

  But then, neither had he.

  Twenty-eight

  Nyquist stood on the grounds just outside the Whitford estate, uncertain what to do next. Romey wanted to go to Whitford Securities—and she was right: someone had to go there soon. There were employees to be interviewed, records to be examined, security systems to learn.

  But, as usual, Nyquist’s conversation with Flint left him unnerved. Flint always seemed to have a way of turning Nyquist’s world around.

  When Lucianna Stuart, aka Paloma, died six months ago, Miles Flint inherited her estate. This, despite the fact that she had two living sons, and an ex-husband whom, it turned out, she was still close to.

  Justinian Wagner, the oldest Wagner son, threatened to fight Paloma’s will in court, but after a few days Flint gave in. He said that Wagner could have anything from the estate that he wanted.

  Flint even gave Wagner some disputed documents that, Flint said, washed his hands of the whole affair.

  But now Flint had implied that he had more in
formation on WSX than he should have had. And he implied that he had given that information to Ki Bowles, with the intent of bringing down Justinian Wagner and his empire.

  No matter how much Flint denied it, a man only did things like that for revenge. Stupid fool, taking on the Wagners in any form.

  Nyquist had already considered taking on the Wagners. He had been with Claudius Wagner, Justinian’s father, when the Bixian assassins showed up to kill Claudius. Nyquist hadn’t been able to save Claudius, but he had saved himself.

  Claudius, who had been living under the name Charles Hawke, had taken his false name because some legal work he and Paloma had done had forced some victims of that work to hire Bixian assassins to kill Paloma and Claudius. Bixian assassins, while good at killing, weren’t good at human legal systems; the assassins couldn’t find any human who adopted a new name.

  But Justinian had given Claudius’s and Paloma’s new names to the Bixians.

  It was an efficient—and legal—way to make sure that assassins someone else hired took out his parents.

  There was no way to prove malice or conspiracy to commit murder. There simply was no way to defeat the man within the law. Nyquist didn’t care enough—even after the attack—to try something extralegal.

  And he thought Flint would leave things alone as well. After all, Nyquist knew that Flint wasn’t a killer. Or, perhaps put more accurately, Flint was a reluctant killer, like most police officers. He would shoot in the line of duty, but not out of cold blood.

  This revealing background stuff, the stuff Bowles had hinted at in her first story, had to have come from Flint. And something in it was strong enough to bring down WSX—at least in Flint’s mind.

  And he might have been right.

  After all, it could have gotten Bowles killed.

  Which was what led to Nyquist’s dilemma. The discovery of the connection to Whitford Securities made it seem as if Bowles had been an innocent bystander.

  But now Nyquist’s first theory was in play again: Bowles’s death happened because she had somehow messed with WSX.

  He wanted to examine everything in Bowles’s research files. Even though Flint claimed he couldn’t tell Nyquist anything, he also implied that the information was there.

  Which meant that Bowles had it.

  All Nyquist had to do was find it.

  Romey drove an aircar out of the gates. She looked taller when she was driving a vehicle. She hovered only a few centimeters from the ground, and leaned out the window.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I just got some information from an informant that leads me back to Bowles again. I’m going to dig into her files for a bit. Can you handle Whitford Securities without me?”

  She grinned.

  “Of course I can.” Then her grin faded. “But you are going to tell me what your informant said.”

  “If it pans out,” Nyquist said.

  She gave him a sideways glance that was one part mocking and two parts disbelieving. And then she drove off without saying another word.

  He pivoted and started back to the gate, where his own aircar waited.

  As he did, his links pinged.

  Andrea Gumiela appeared before him, all head and neck against the gate itself. She looked even more frazzled than she had a few hours before.

  “Your time is up,” she said to him. “I don’t know how they found out, but they did. The jackals have descended. And it’s bloody out there.”

  It took Nyquist a moment to understand what she was saying. “The media knows that Bowles is dead?”

  “Yep. And to them, that’s a bigger story than Roshdi Whitford. They’re going to be all over this, and all over you. I just wanted to warn you.”

  He sighed. “You told them about Whitford to throw them off?”’

  “They already knew about Whitford,” she said. “They were interested until someone found out about Bowles. The rumors spread, and then they became truth. It’s all been in the last five minutes or so. I’m heading to the press conference now. The only choice you get is this one: do you want me to release your name now as lead detective or do you want me to wait until tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “So long as you think they’re not going to suss me out, too.”

  “Who knows?” Gumiela said, brushing some hair off her forehead with one well-manicured hand.

  “Well, tell me this before you go. Do they know that Bowles’s death and Whitford’s are tied?”

  “Doubt it or they would have had more interest in Whitford. But I’m not sure. I’ll know more after the press conference. Of course, they will too.” She gave him a tired smile. “And so the insanity begins. Have fun.”

  And with that, she vanished.

  He rubbed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose, feeling some old scars that hadn’t yet been lasered away. He liked the roughness between his fingers; he might request that those nearly invisible scars remain.

  They reminded him that he was human and vulnerable, although on afternoons like this, he didn’t need that big a reminder.

  Then Gumiela reappeared against the gate. The size of her head unnerved him. He wished they had the kind of relationship where he could tell her to adjust her settings.

  “One more thing,” she said. “Are you and Romey headed to Whitford Security?”

  “Romey is.”

  “You two fight already?”

  “I have a new lead on Bowles,” he said.

  “Well, tell Romey there’ve been some blips in the power grid near Whitford. Tell her I have no idea what that means, just that it’s happening.”

  Then Gumiela vanished again.

  Nyquist frowned. Blips in the power grid? The power grid was the most stable part of Armstrong’s infrastructure. It had to be. It kept the Dome running, and the environmental controls working.

  If the power grid failed, the entire Dome had backup generators that powered the Dome for two days before it failed.

  He tried to ping Gumiela but she had really and truly signed off this time. She was probably already in front of cameras, giving one of her spirited press conferences.

  He would forward the message to Romey, and explain that he knew nothing. Then he would put it out of his mind until he saw DeRicci next.

  She would know what intermittent power failures meant. She would know if that was truly dangerous or if it was just a maintenance problem.

  Gumiela probably only noticed the whole thing because of the proximity to Whitford.

  Nyquist sent a message to Romey, asking her to contact him as soon as she received it.

  Then he went inside the gate and got into his car, knowing Bowles needed his full concentration—and not sure he could give her even half of that.

  Twenty-nine

  Justinian Wagner was just completing a holo meeting with the board of directors for one of his largest clients when his assistant broke into the conference room.

  “You have to see this,” the assistant said.

  Wagner’s breath caught. The assistant had just violated an entire set of company rules.

  First, he’d barged into a closed conference with half a dozen people, all holographic reproductions, but still, there—a presence, even if they weren’t actually on-site.

  Then he had given Wagner an order—You have to see this—not a request, not an “excuse me.” Just a “you have to.”

  And finally, he hadn’t followed protocol. And Wagner had made it a condition of the hire that everyone in WSX knew protocol. For some clients, protocol was more important than actual knowledge of the law.

  He turned, about to rebuke the assistant—what was his name? Wagner couldn’t remember. Every assistant seemed the same to him—when the young man did it again.

  “Sir, please. It’s important.”

  Better, but still not protocol. And what Wagner had taken for enthusiasm seemed more like terror.

  He turned his back on the assistant, facing
the group before him. Their conference room—all teak and mahogany—was superimposed over his.

  “I do believe we’re done for the moment,” Wagner said. “I thank you all for your time and your consideration. We will find out what happened, and I can assure you nothing like this will ever happen again.”

  Each board member made some reassuring noise. The chairperson nodded, and then the conference room winked out.

  Wagner turned, about to launch into his own assistant, but the young man was gone. The door was open, though, and he heard voices from the outer office.

  He stepped out, the rebuke on his tongue, and stopped when he saw every screen in the waiting area activated, each on a different newscast.

  Conflicting images of Ki Bowles filled the screens. In some she was young. In others, she had strawberry blond hair. In still others she was bald and her tattoos—cheap but attractive—stood out in strong relief against her cheeks.

  He had to concentrate to catch any words.

  …murdered in the grounds of the Hunting Club…

  …despite the presence of a bodyguard…

  …slashed almost beyond recognition…

  “What?” he asked stepping closer.

  Half the staff seemed to be in this room. The human staff, anyway. The Peyti had no business in human affairs, and the androids of course had no curiosity.

  “What is this?” Wagner asked.

  “Ki Bowles,” said his assistant. “She’s dead.”

  Wagner stared at the screens. On some images, Bowles was talking in the background, sitting behind a desk. In others, she stood against various backdrops, including one just outside the grounds of the Hunting Club.

  No one showed the report he had memorized, the report he had been dealing with all damn day.

  “Dead,” he repeated. The word didn’t quite go in.

  “Murdered,” one of the young lawyers said with a little too much relish.

  “By whom?” Wagner asked.

  Collective shrugs around the room. But his assistant, who apparently had no fear of him, said, “They’ll probably look at us.”

  The gasp around the room seemed to belong to no one and everyone. Wagner stiffened.

  Bowles’s last story was about WSX.