people who were here last night or in the vicinity. I’d like to get as many of them as possible to account for their movements last night—and I’d like to have a list of those who can’t.”
“It’s a tall order,” Melloy said.
“It’s a big case,” Kresh replied. “Can you imagine the consequences if we don’t solve it?” Kresh hoped Cinta noticed his use of the word “we.” He did not know if she was sincerely offering her cooperation, but he was determined that he was going to rope her in as thoroughly as possible—while doing what he could to keep her away from more sensitive areas of the investigation.
Getting her people involved in dull, slogging, but essential spadework might be no bad thing at all. But there was no need to be utterly transparent about it. “Can your agents do some of that ID and interview work? I’ve got teams of my deputies flying in right now. I was planning to turn some of them loose on photographing and interviewing the airport detainees—but the more bodies we have on the job, the faster it will go. And, after all, it is your jurisdiction. It might be smart to make sure your people are on the scene.”
Cinta sat down, moving slowly into the seat without taking her eyes off Kresh. “We’d be delighted to help out,” she said, speaking in a measured, cautious voice.
“Good,” Kresh said. Kresh was rather proud that he had thought of using the SSS for all the grunt work on the case. Not that processing the people at the transit center was makework, far from it. He really did need to know who was trying to leave the island. “There’s every chance that someone at the transport center was at the reception and saw or heard something—perhaps without even being aware of it. For that matter, I wouldn’t be surprised if the perpetrator is out there with the rest of the stranded passengers.”
“That would be pretty sloppy work,” Cinta said. “Sure, the killer would want to get off the island, but wouldn’t he or she have found a way to get off without being caught? Hell, all you have to do to escape this island is disguise yourself as a rustback.”
The cheap shot about rustbacks annoyed Kresh, but he didn’t allow himself to show it. “You’re right, except that the killer—or killers—weren’t expecting Grieg to be found so soon. They went to some trouble to insure that he wouldn’t be. If his body had been discovered in the morning, I’d agree with you that the killer would be long gone by now. As it is, maybe—maybe—we were able to shut down the transit system in time.”
“But what good does the killer being there do if you don’t know who the killer is?” Cinta asked.
“Maybe a lot. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the killer will make a slip or panic. But even if the killer doesn’t reveal himself, or herself, and manages to slip through our fingers for now, having a photo and name and address—even a false one—could be damned useful later on.”
“Hmmph. Yeah. Your killer might be the only one with a phony name. Maybe. Do you expect any sort of trouble from the people out at the transport center?” Cinta asked.
“Well, Infernals aren’t used to being told where they can and can’t go,” Kresh said. “They might get a bit unruly. We’re going to need all the help we can get in crowd control and air patrol operations to keep things under control.”
“You planning on my people being anything but traffic cops and crowd control in all this?” Melloy asked, a little of her old assertiveness showing through.
“Oh, of course,” Kresh lied. If and when he had cleared her of complicity in the plot, then maybe he would give her people something a bit more challenging. But not just yet. “I want—I need—your agents involved in every phase of this thing.” So I can have them tied down and where my people can keep an eye on them. “But right now we have several hundred people to deal with at the transport centers, maybe a couple of thousand. We’re going to need all the help we can get to sort through them all. I can’t tell you what else we’re going to do because I haven’t figured it out yet.”
Cinta grunted and folded her arms in front of her chest. “You just see that you keep me posted. No more surprises, all right?”
“Absolutely,” Kresh said, having not the slightest intention of holding himself to that. Devray had finally given him the Huthwitz lead from Ranger Resato. That he planned to sit on for a while. The one Ranger who happened to be killed guarding the Governor, the Ranger wherein Cinta Melloy had known his name without being told, just happened to be a Ranger involved in the rustbacking trade that the Governor wanted to shut down. That was just too much of a coincidence. There had to be a connection.
But damnation, when would he get a chance to deal with Huthwitz? Suddenly Kresh realized just how exhausted he was. He no longer had the slightest idea what time it was, or how long he had been awake. He wanted to keep going, to press on, but he knew that would be a mistake. This case needed a chief investigator who could think clearly, not a muzzy-headed fool playing the hero. “Look, Cinta,” he said, “I’m just about to drop dead at my desk. I need to find a bed somewhere and get some rest. Can we meet a little later, when I’m awake?”
Cinta nodded. “Of course. You’ve been up all night. But there is one other thing. Something that seems incredibly suspicious to me, but no one else seems to be bothered by it.”
“What’s that?”
“The empty house. Grieg was all alone in this—this palace. No one else at all. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
“This Tierlaw Verick fellow was here,” Kresh said. “But there’s nothing unusual about there only being one person in a house. If anything, Verick spending the night is the unusual thing.”
“Let me understand this,” Melloy said. “Apart from Verick and the Governor—and the assassin—there was no one in the house? In a house this large? There were no other humans at all? Just robots?”
“That’s right,” Kresh said, a trifle bewildered. “What is it you’re getting at?”
“What I’m getting at is that there wasn’t a room to be had in Limbo last night. The city was packed to the rafters—and yet Grieg’s enormous residence stands empty on the night he wanted to play the host. If that happened back on Baleyworld, and the host woke up dead, I’d be damned suspicious. I’d think someone had arranged to keep the place empty so the killers would have a clear field.”
Kresh frowned. “That honestly never occurred to me. Sharing your home—giving up some of your own turf—is a very difficult and unusual thing for a Spacer to do. We value our privacy very highly. Probably too highly. I suppose from the Settler point of view, it does seem very implausible. Not to a Spacer, though. We’ll feed you dinner, care for you if you’re hurt or sick, rescue you from danger, defend your civil rights to the hilt. We’ll even put you up for the night—someplace besides our own home.”
“Hmmph. Some things about you Spacers I never will get used to. I’m sure you’re right, but it still seems more than a little odd to me.”
“Well, it couldn’t do any harm at all to look into the point,” Kresh said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Grieg was used to a house full of people and last night was the aberration.”
“Mind if I take enough people off traffic duty to check it out?” Cinta asked.
Kresh hesitated a moment. Sandbagged. She had set him up and knocked him right over. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was let her choose what part of the investigation to head up. Suppose this was the very point she needed to muddy up in order to protect herself? How Grieg’s choice of slumber-party guests could possibly matter, Kresh could not imagine, but never mind that. The problem was he could not see any way of saying no to Cinta without flatly stating that he didn’t trust her. And he was far too tired to deal with the twelve kinds of hell that would be sure to kick up. “No, Cinta,” he said. “You go right ahead.”
But even as he spoke, he found himself wondering if he had just made the first big mistake of the investigation.
10
FREDDA LEVING POINTED her finger at another party guest and watched him disappear. It was a strange sort of game, but one that needed playing. She rubbed her eyes and sighed.
“That’s as many as I can get in this pass. Run it back again, Donald,” she said. “Let’s try that sequence again.”
The integrator’s three-dimensional images scrolled back to the beginning again and started over. Fredda sat and watched as the party guests started to filter into the Residence. By now well over half of the people at the party were missing. Every time Fredda or Donald or the computer managed to identify a person, they would
