“You’re telling me you’d rather have the boss think you’re missing work because you’re on a dysfunctional, heartbroken bender than that you’re doing the work she assigned you? I don’t get it.”
Miller licked his lips and leaned forward, elbows on the smooth off-white table. Someone had scratched a design into the plastic. A split circle. And this was a cop bar.
“I don’t know what I’m looking at,” Miller said. “There’s a bunch of things that belong together somehow, and I’m not sure yet what it is. Until I know more, I need to stay low. A guy has a fling with his ex, hits the bottle for a few days? That’s not going to light up anyone’s panels.”
Havelock shook his head again, this time in mild disbelief. If he’d been a Belter, he’d have made the gesture with his hands, so you could see it when he had an environment suit on. Another of the hundred small ways someone who hadn’t grown up on the Belt betrayed himself. The wall monitor cut to the image of a blond woman in a severe uniform. The external relations head was talking about the Martian navy’s tactical response and whether the OPA was behind the increased vandalism. That was what he called fumbling an overloaded fusion reactor while setting up a ship-killing booby trap: vandalism.
“That shit just doesn’t follow,” Havelock said, and for a moment Miller didn’t know if he meant the Belter guerrilla actions, the Martian response, or the favor he’d asked. “Seriously. Where’s Earth? All this shit’s going on, and we don’t hear a damn thing from them.”
“Why would we?” Miller asked. “It’s Mars and the Belt going at it.”
“When was the last time Earth let anything major happen without them in the middle of it?” Havelock said, then sighed. “Okay. You’re too drunk to come in. Your love life’s a mess. I’m trying to cover for you.”
“Just for a couple days.”
“Make sure you get back before someone decides it’s the perfect chance for a random shooting to take out the Earther cop.”
“I’ll do that,” Miller said, rising from the table. “You watch your back.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Havelock said.
The Ceres Center for Jiu Jitsu was down near the port, where the spin gravity was strongest. The hole was a converted storage space from before the big spin. A cylinder flattened where flooring had been set in about a third of the way from the bottom. Racks bearing various lengths of staffs, bamboo swords, and dull plastic practice knives hung from the vaulted ceiling. The polished stone echoed with the grunting of men working a line of resistance machines and the soft thud of a woman at the back punishing a heavy bag. Three students stood on the central mat, speaking in low voices.
Pictures filled the front wall on either side of the door. Soldiers in uniform. Security agents for half a dozen Belter corporations. Not many inner planet types, but a few. Plaques commemorating placements in competitions. A page of small type outlining the history of the studio.
One of the students shouted and collapsed, carrying one of the others to the mat with her. The one still standing applauded and helped them back up. Miller searched through the wall of pictures, hoping to find Julie.
“Can I help you?”
The man was half a head shorter than Miller and easily twice as broad. It should have made him look like an Earther, but everything else about him said Belt. He wore pale sweats that made his skin seem even darker. His smile was curious and as serene as a well-fed predator. Miller nodded.
“Detective Miller,” he said. “I’m with station security. There’s one of your students I wanted to get some background on.”
“This is an official investigation?” the man asked.
“Yeah,” Miller said. “I’m afraid it is.”
“Then you’ll have a warrant.”
Miller smiled. The man smiled back.
“We don’t give out any information on our students without a warrant,” he said. “Studio policy.”
“I respect that,” Miller said. “No, I really do. It’s just that… parts of this particular investigation are maybe a little more official than others. The girl’s not in trouble. She didn’t do anything. But she has family on Luna who want her found.”
“A kidnap job,” the man said, folding his arms. The serene face had gone cool without any apparent movement.
“Only the official part,” Miller said. “I can get a warrant, and we can do the whole thing through channels. But then I have to tell my boss. The more she knows, the less room I have to move.”
The man didn’t react. His stillness was unnerving. Miller struggled not to fidget. The woman working the heavy bag at the far end of the studio went through a flurry of strikes, shouting out with each one.
“Who?” the man asked.
“Julie Mao,” Miller said. He could have said he was looking for the Buddha’s mother for all the reaction he got. “I think she’s in trouble.”
“Why do you care if she is?”
“I don’t know the answer to that one,” Miller said. “I just do. If you don’t want to help me, then you don’t.”
“And you’ll go get your warrant. Do this through channels.”
Miller took off his hat, rubbed a long, thin hand across his head, and put the hat back in place.
“Probably not,” he said.
“Let me see your ID,” the man said. Miller pulled up his terminal and let the man confirm who he was. The man handed it back and pointed to a small door behind the heavy bags. Miller did as he was told.
The office was cramped. A small laminate desk with a soft sphere behind it in lieu of a chair. Two stools that looked like they’d come out of a bar. A filing cabinet with a small fabricator that stank of ozone and oil that was probably where the plaques and certificates were made.
“Why does the family want her?” the man asked, lowering himself onto the sphere. It acted like a chair but required constant balance. A place to rest without actually resting.
“They think she’s in harm’s way. At least, that’s what they’re saying, and I don’t have reason to disbelieve them yet.”
“What kind of harm?”
“Don’t know,” Miller said. “I know she was on station. I know she shipped out for Tycho, and after that, I’ve got nothing.”
“Her family want her back on their station?”
The man knew who her family was. Miller filed the information away without missing a beat.
“I don’t think so,” Miller said. “The last message she got from them routed through Luna.”
“Down the well.” The way he said it made it sound like a disease.
“I’m looking for anyone who knows who she was shipping with. If she’s on a run, where she was going and when she was planning to get there. If she’s in range of a tightbeam.”
“I don’t know any of that,” the man said.
“You know anyone I should ask?”
There was a pause.
“Maybe. I’ll find what I can for you.”
“Anything else you can tell me about her?”
“She started at the studio five years ago. She was… angry when she first came. Undisciplined.”
“She got better,” Miller said. “Brown belt, right?”
The man’s eyebrows rose.
“I’m a cop,” Miller said. “I find things out.”
“She improved,” her teacher said. “She’d been attacked. Just after she came to the Belt. She was seeing that it didn’t happen twice.”
“Attacked,” Miller said, parsing the man’s tone of voice. “Raped?”
“I didn’t ask. She trained hard, even when she was off station. You can tell when people let it slide. They come back weaker. She never did.”
