TWENTY-ONE

 

 

NORMALLY THE RESTAURANT would be a full-blown crime scene, but it had been compromised from the moment the crime happened. Romey made certain that crime scene techs had gone over the table nearest the manager’s office first, gathering what evidence they could. She recorded it all, then when they were done, piled her own information on top of it.

That table became her on-scene command center. She set her own flat screen on top of the table, and expanded the image size. Then she pressed information from one side to another, including the list DeRicci had sent her concerning the banned substances in the City of Armstrong.

Romey had just assigned that to one of the crime scene techs—as in, check for any of these—when she got another, coded message from DeRicci.

And the message was enough to make her knees buckle.

The governor-general unconscious at Deep Craters. Mayor of Moscow Dome nearly dead of similar attack. Mayor of Glenn Station unavailable, maybe off links, maybe injured. Critical that we have information about your investigation as soon as you have it. You’ll share that info with your counterpart in Moscow Dome. Might be coordinated attack. Need to stop it now.

Might be a coordinated attack? Was DeRicci insane? Did she miss the clues? Or was she trying to be discreet because she sent the message across the links? If so, she wasn’t discreet enough.

“You okay, Savita?” The voice was new, not one Romey had been hearing all day.

She looked up. Bartholomew Nyquist stood on the other side of the table.

She had never been so relieved to see his slightly mismatched face. He had no scars, but in the right light, he looked like he hadn’t been assembled properly. His rumpled clothes didn’t help. Nor did his slouch. He was one of the few people she knew who didn’t care at all about how he looked, no matter where he was or what he was doing.

And she found that oddly comforting right now.

“I’m glad you’re here.” She sounded a bit too relieved. But she felt very alone on this and she knew whose hide this entire mess would come out of if her investigation failed.

With Nyquist on board, it wouldn’t fail.

She had to believe that.

He gave her a small smile—an appropriate smile, given the circumstances they found themselves in, rueful and acknowledging and gentle.

“You need to see this,” she said, and forwarded DeRicci’s message to him.

His eyes widened, then his gaze met hers. He was too much of a professional to comment out loud, but he sent back: Crap.

Her sentiments exactly.

He bent over the screen. “What have you got?” he asked.

“Nothing yet,” she said. “Not even a preliminary coroner’s report. People are gathered everywhere and right now, I have uniforms interviewing them.”

He was staring at the list DeRicci had sent over. “And this is?”

“The substances that could have caused the death. Have you seen the body?”

He nodded. He still wasn’t looking up. That list seemed to fascinate him.

“What are you seeing?” she asked.

“Nothing yet,” he said. “But something’s close.”

“We have to move fast,” she said. “I’m not used to that kind of investigation. I want the time to talk to everyone, to put all the information together—”

“We can do that,” he said, “but our first priority is to find out what, exactly, is going on. We know a few things already. Whoever planned this is not a suicide attacker.”

She looked at him, then let out a small sigh. She was letting herself get overwhelmed with what hadn’t been done, instead of what she could do. She nodded, encouraging him to continue.

“And,” he said, “we know that whoever did this could blend in, which unfortunately, is a strength. We also know that he, she, it, whatever the hell it is, has access to some pretty exotic substances.”

She looked at him, still stuck at blend in. O’Malley’s was a human enclave. The people who came here were known for their love of politics. They also wanted to keep Armstrong’s city government as alien-free as possible—and by aliens, they didn’t mean humans from other places. They meant nonhumans. They wanted to keep nonhumans off the council and out of the mayor’s office.

“We’re looking for a human being,” she said slowly.

“Most likely,” Nyquist said, “although I’d want to find out who did food prep first. Whoever touched that food or any beverages that Soseki had might have a way in.”

“Or the hands he shook,” Romey said.

“We need to track his last movements,” Nyquist said.

“I already have someone on that,” she said. “And the crime scene techs are looking at everything he consumed. I’ll have that expedited.”

“And everything he touched,” Nyquist said. “Not with his hands. Jacobs tells me he was wearing SkinSoft and he had it on properly.”

“You talked to Jacobs?” Romey felt a twinge of discomfort. Jacobs should have talked to her before anyone else.

“Just before I came in,” he said. “She doesn’t know anything yet, which is why she hasn’t reported to you.”

Romey gave him a sharp look. He had noted her twinge and realized the cause of it. He was good, better than she could ever hope to be. The Chief of Police had made a mistake; Nyquist should have been in charge of this investigation, not Romey.

“The only thing she does know,” he said slowly, as if he was giving her time to process all of this, “is that whatever killed him isn’t something that is familiar to the Armstrong coroner’s office.”

Romey noted how he phrased that. He didn’t say it was unusual for Armstrong. He didn’t even say that it was unusual. Just that it wasn’t known in the Armstrong coroner’s office, which was an entirely different thing.

She let out a small sigh of relief. She hadn’t realized how deep she’d been inside her head until he arrived. “It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

“Someone smart,” he said, more to himself than to her. She heard the echo of every failed partnership in that sentence. She’d had a few failed ones herself, but not as many as Nyquist. Some of his failed partnerships were legendary in the department.

“Yes,” she said, “someone smart. Someone who understands investigation.”

“And urgency.” He finally looked up. “You want to coordinate, since you’re in charge, or you want to help me on the substances here?”

“You’re going to track them?”

“I think that’s our best lead,” he said.

“Go,” she said. “I’ll find out how whatever it was got into his system, and who had access.”

“Think you can cover that in an hour?”

He was turning this into a competition, so that they wouldn’t concentrate on the emergency, just on getting the knowledge. And that was brilliant. It took the emotions out of the investigation.

“I’m sure I can,” she said.

His smile was sadder than the previous one. “You’re on.”

And he was right: she was on.

She was the one in charge, the one the spotlight focused on. She was on. Not him, not anyone else. Just her.

And this was one investigation she had better get absolutely right.