An hour later Alice is still standing in Nikki’s tiny hallway, but now she has been joined by Boutsikari, Captain Jaganathan, medical examiner Dr. Samira Hussein and a Seguridad officer named Phil Lito. Lito is looking vertiginously apprehensive from finding himself in a situation as high above his pay grade as Heinlein Station is above the Pacific Ocean. With her lens and comms system still inoperative, Alice needed somebody to call in the situation and he was the first officer she encountered out on Mullane.
Boutsikari’s first action upon arriving at the scene was to stress to Lito how imperative it was that he keep his mouth shut, while Alice’s first words to Boutsikari were to convey how this would be pointless.
She could see the impact as she described her encounter with the startled witness. It was a kick to the gut, but he went from dismay to acceptance with practised speed. Like most political animals, Boutsikari’s primary survival skill was adaptability. His agenda turns on a dime, and he is already formulating new strategies, altering priorities. Right now it’s all about information, getting the details clear in his own mind.
“Nikki brought you back here?” he asks. “Knowing what you were likely to see?”
“It wasn’t her idea. She was backed into a corner but I think she reckoned she could get me in and out without seeing what was in the bedroom. Nonetheless, I saw what I saw, and she ran.”
“As innocent people always do,” says Jaganathan.
“So what do we know about the victim?”
“Her name is Gillian Selby,” Lito responds redundantly, drawing a glare from Boutsikari. He knows that much from his lens.
“I’d estimate she was killed sometime in the last six to eight hours,” Dr. Hussein replies. “Death by strangulation, chokehold with bare hands rather than any kind of ligature. Beaten about the face, defensive abrasions on the hands. Looks like she put up a fight, or maybe it started as a fight and she lost.”
Six to eight hours, Alice calculates. It most likely happened while she was unconscious, and definitely during the window while she and Nikki were separated.
“The files say she worked automated production maintenance at a multi-purpose fabrication outfit,” Boutsikari observes. “But I doubt that’s what got her killed. Is she connected to Ben Haim or Martinez?” he asks Jaganathan.
“Not that I’m aware of.”
Boutsikari’s expression indicates a deep scepticism as to whether Jaganathan would be aware of it either way. Alice can imagine Nikki scoffing at how far the captain is from both his jurisdiction and his comfort zone.
Boutsikari fixes Lito with a piercing stare, impaling him to the spot.
“You work Mullane. You know her face?”
Lito swallows, mouth dry. He doesn’t look like he’s used to speaking truth to power, or speaking anything to power for that matter.
“I think she was a prostitute,” he answers apologetically, his cringing fear of being the shot messenger indicating that he fully understands the ramifications.
“Fuck me. A dead hooker, found in the home of, and most likely killed by, Seedee’s dirtiest cop, and someone’s probably got a grab of the body. This is going to be leading the news planetside in a matter of hours.”
Boutsikari lets out a long sigh at the escalating awfulness.
“I actually can’t think how we could possibly air more of our dirty laundry in one go. I mean, that’s unless anyone can suggest how we might make this worse.”
Dr. Hussein clears her throat.
“Would the victim being pregnant do the trick?”
“Jesus Christ, you’re kidding me,” Boutsikari says, glaring at Dr. Hussein like she said this just to piss him off. “How can you tell that from a cursory examination?”
“I wouldn’t need her to pee on a stick. She’s four months gone, maybe five. That’s unless she had one bitch of an abdominal abscess.”
The ensuing moment of silence is punctured by the arrival of another Seguridad officer, rapping his knuckles tentatively on the doorframe to attract his bosses’ attention.
“Sir, we’ve been showing Selby’s picture to people in the building. A Mrs. Li Pang confirms that she saw her here with Freeman on multiple occasions. Said they were friends, implied they might be more than that.”
“Yeah, well, Nikki didn’t get her pregnant,” Boutsikari observes. “Could be something to fight over, though.”
“And someone else in the picture,” Jaganathan says. “We need to find out who.”
Boutsikari glances into the bedroom, looking at Hussein rather than Selby. The victim isn’t his primary concern: that will be Jaganathan’s problem. Boutsikari has multiple wider battles to fight, and is currently weighing up which front to shore up first.
“Okay, it’s public, the genie’s not going back in the bottle, so we have to make that work for us. We need to get messages out on all feeds that Freeman is wanted and extremely dangerous. Offer a reward for information but warn people not to approach her. The last thing we can afford is Freeman offing some have-a-go-Joe civilian when the eyes of the world are about to be trained our way. We need to bring her in asap, it’s the only way to put a lid on this, but even then we’re in damage limitation mode.”
“Yes, sir,” Jaganathan responds, then heads out the door, already relaying orders.
Boutsikari turns to Alice and lets out a baleful sigh.
“I really thought we were going to get away with it,” he tells her.
Get away with what? she wonders, then remembers that success for Boutsikari was defined by preventing news of a murder on CdC reaching Earth. It was always a long shot as far as she was concerned, but the clock had not run out until this second murder changed the game.
“We caught a major break on the Omega killing while you were gone,” he explains.
“What?”
“Our analysts discovered Korlakian recorded a grab before he died. Because we don’t know the time of death, it could have been ten hours before the killing or ten minutes, but it’s the only thing he recorded in weeks, so we’re guessing it was important.”
“Yes, but you can’t access it,” she points out. “Or are you telling me you can hack his personal cache?”
Grabacións are private, protected by unbreakable DNA-based encryption unless you choose to unlock them. In certain circumstances the law can compel an individual to do so, but once they die, anything they chose not to disclose is effectively locked away for ever.
“No, but Korlakian approved a share. That’s why we reckon it was a Hail Mary, or more like a bequest.”
“If he was recording his assailant, why didn’t he broadcast it at the time?”
“Don’t know. We’re guessing the signal was blocked. But the break for us is that the file was tagged for his legacy archive, and he had a nominated recipient.”
“Who?”
“A sister, back down below. If we can contact her, we’re confident we can persuade her to share the file so we can give him justice. We’re assuming that’s why he tagged the file for legacy: knowing that if the worst happened, someone he trusted would see it.”
“So why are you saying ‘if’? Are you having difficulty persuading her?”
“We’re having difficulty finding her. Korlakian was from LA but his family hails from Armenia. Turns out the sister went back there years ago, after she got divorced. Left no forwarding address. We’ve got people on it, though. Reckoned another couple of days and we might have had all we need. If the grab showed Yoram, or even better, Nikki Freeman, we could have wrapped up Seedee’s only ever murder case with a ribbon and a bow before anybody down below even heard about it.”
“But then …” Alice says, casting a glance towards the bedroom.
He looks imploringly towards her.
“Unless that’s something you can help us with?”
Alice has an instinctive desire to assist, driven in part by her concerns regarding how her superiors back on Earth are likely to react when they find out about this. For the first time, she feels a commonality with these people who are effectively her new colleagues, rather than with her old ones at FNG: a solidarity in protecting themselves against the forces below who can exercise power over CdC but have no first-hand understanding of the realities up here.
Us against them. Secrecy, conspiracy, mendacity. This is how it begins, she realises: going native.
“I helped you contain the Omega murder, and this is where it led us. How FNG responds is out of my hands now. In fact, if I don’t report in full on this, I’m going to be on an elevator home before I’ve even officially taken up my post.”
Boutsikari’s expression remains neutral. He might be disappointed, but he must know she’s right. This was taken out of her hands the moment that neighbour came downstairs and saw the body.
“When was the last time you got any sleep?” he asks her.
It suddenly hits her that she’s been on her feet for around thirty hours, minus an indeterminate period spent drugged unconscious, which is not the same as rest.
“It’s been a while.”
“Sounds like one hell of a shift you’ve had. You should go get your head down. Maybe by the time you wake up, this will all be sorted,” he adds with grim humour.