Part 4 (1/2)
Tammy stuck her head in the door. ”I hear you got a Kdaptist confession.”
”Sort of. What we didn't get was a culprit.”
”I heard that too. What's up?”
”Hunter tracked down this kzin who claimed he'd killed Miranda. It turns out all he really did was buy her skin from a human and try to claim credit.”
”So he's an accessory after the fact. Why did you send him to Wunderland?”
”You hear a lot.”
She grinned. ”I keep my ears open.”
”He was set up and framed, pure and simple. Now that his honour is compromised he's an outcast up here. I thought I'd give him another chance.”
”What about using him as a witness?”
”Wunderland is still the safest place for him. How long would he have on Tiamat?”
She winced. ”Good point. Well, I have to say I'm glad to hear it wasn't a Kdaptist after all.”
I c.o.c.ked my head. ”Why is that?”
She held up her beltcomp. ”Here's all the data I've tracked down on the Kdapt cultand current Kzin intelligence operations.” She held her other hand up, thumb and forefinger forming an empty circle.
”Zero.”
”Sorry for the goose chase.”
She smiled. ”Don't be.” She waved the beltcomp. ”I've got a new contact and some leverage for a couple more out of it anyway. So where are we now?”
”We know there are at least two people involved. They must have planned to frame Machine Technician in advance of the killing-that's not the sort of detail you work out while you're hiding in a transport tunnel with a corpse. So Miranda wasn't chosen at random. That puts us back to Vorden and Koffman the love-birds, unless someone-somegroup -wanted her dead for a specific reason.”
”It can't be the couple.” She waved at the composite holo on the screen. ”This is a male.”
”We only have their testimony to say there's a second male. Anyway, I think it would be pretty easy to fool Machine Technician on that aspect. Loose clothing would be all it would take.”
”Visually, yah, but he couldsmell the difference. But you're right about the testimony.”
”Suppose it's a group for the sake of argument. They must have had a specific reason they wanted her dead.”
”So what's the reason?”
”That's what we need to know. Something she knew or something she'd done. She just wasn't up here long enough to have become involved in anything serious. Trist Materials doesn't handle anything worth killing for and if they did the target wouldn't be their brand-new exchange student.”
”So it must have been something she was already involved with down on Wunderland.”
”Right. Especially since a Wunderlander is a major suspect.”
”What groups operate both groundside and in the Belt?”
I considered. ”Anyone could send up an a.s.sa.s.sin. Any of the crime rings, the Isolationists, Kzin intelligence, collabo underground, collabo hunters. Even a few branches of the Provisional Government if she crossed the wrong people.”
She shook her head. ”We know it's not the tabbies at least. The killers are human.”
”But they could be working for the kzinti.”
”Get serious. They tried to frame a kzin for the crime and ruined his honour in the process. If they were working for the kzinti, their bosses wouldeat them when they found out. Alive.”
”Good point.”
”We've got a lead, though. If she was killed by Wunderland a.s.sa.s.sins, they must have come up between her arrival and her death. That's a narrow window. Cross-check the Inferno's attendance list with the pa.s.senger manifests for every s.h.i.+p that arrived during that time period.”
I entered the search request and we watched the screen while it collected the data and compared it. It came up no matches.
”Maybe they knew she was coming. Try the previous six weeks.”
I tapped in the query. It took a little longer this time because there was more data to retrieve and sort.
The result was the same. no matches.
”d.a.m.n!” I cleared the screen.
”Not d.a.m.n. Now we know the killer was already here. That means we've got to be dealing with an organization that's already in the Swarm. Smugglers for one of the crime rings probably.”
”We'll have to get the Provopolizei involved. Get them to dig out a contact list for us.”
”Attack it from both sides. Run a movement trace on every person who went through the Inferno that night too.”
”I already thought of that. It'll take hours to run and weeks to a.n.a.lyze.”
”So what have you got to lose? Run it overnight and we'll start the Goldskins on it in the morning. If we get a match, we'll refocus. At least you won't be totally reliant on the Provos.”
She was right, of course. I wrote a cable to the ARM on Wunderland instead of the Provopolizei. It was adding another bureaucratic step, since they'd have to go to the Provos anyway, but I knew people I could trust in the ARM-people who could smell an evolving coverup. Then I set up my board to run the trace and let it go. Somewhere in the ma.s.s of data that it would generate would be the critical clue. I'd just had to find it-ifthe murderer was in fact the man she left with andif he didn't have a false ident. It would be hours before the trace was done. I screened Suze and made a date for dinner.
We met at the same Earth cuisine restaurant as before. Why not? The atmosphere was intimate and the menu inviting. Suze was already waiting when I got there. She greeted me with a kiss and asked, ”How's the case going?”
”Well, we got a kzin who confessed to the crime.”
”So you're done?”
”Well, not exactly. It seems he was confessing because he thought he'd gain status by it. He didn't actually do it.”
”I don't understand.”
”I don't think he understood himself.”
”So where do you go from here?”