“Miss, you just described every hospital I’ve ever been in. It sounds to me like this Doctor Medina is developing some new medical devices or techniques for injured workers and she’s using some new machines that you are not familiar with. Which is not a crime. Tell me, Miss Amadi, are you a doctor?”
Jedira blinked and the look in her eyes hardened. “No. I’m a technician. I make prosthetic arms and legs, and hands and feet, too.”
Kella pretended to scribble on her pad. I’m sorry I have to do this to you. You don’t deserve it, but when does that mean anything anymore? “So you admit you’re not qualified to diagnose a patient, particularly one with unusual or exotic symptoms, and certainly not an animal. And your expertise does not extend beyond arms and legs, does it? But more importantly, you didn’t see any people being treated strangely, did you? Only these caged animals?”
Jedira lips wavered for a moment before any words could come out. “No, I didn’t. But if you would just come with me back to the workshop, I could you show you. Right now. Please, it’s only a few blocks.”
“Why? If you couldn’t assess these animals or identify these medical devices in their bodies, then I doubt I would be able to, and I’ve seen quite a bit.” Kella sighed. “Look, miss, I can tell that whatever you saw was very upsetting, but you need to realize that these things happen. Medical experimentation is often unsettling, but it is rarely inhumane and it is for the betterment of our people, in the long run. Believe me, I see it all the time. I investigate industrial accidents every day.”
“But aren’t you a specialist in medical crimes? That’s what the desk sergeant said.”
“Medical crimes?” Kella tried to smile politely. “I’m not sure there’s any such thing. I spend most of my time trying to determine whether accidents were really accidents, and whether a worker or a factory-owner is to blame. There is a fair amount of medical analysis involved, though.”
“Fine, then come to my office and tell me what happened to the animals in the basement,” Jedira said. “Just come and look. It will take two minutes. Please. Just look at them.”
Kella cleared her throat and stopped trying to look friendly. “Look, if I have some time tomorrow, maybe I’ll come by, but I can’t make any promises. We’re very busy with our current case load. I’m sure you’ve noticed all the fights, the vandalism, the injuries. It’s been a rough month for everyone.”
Jedira closed her mouth and nodded, her eyes downcast and long thin fingers curling back around her shoulder bag. “There’s something else. Nitroh. I smelled nitroh down there. Sometimes I smell it on the miners I tend to, so I recognized it. Detective, nitroh is an explosive, not a medicine.”
“I see. As I said, I’ll look into it. If I have time.” Kella led the woman back to the front desk and saw her out. The detective cleared her throat. “In the mean time, I suggest you refrain from exploring your employer’s private rooms, and from making serious allegations against one of the few pillars of our struggling community without any evidence. Good night, Miss Amadi.”
The young woman looked up at her from the bottom of the steps, a horrible mask of defeat and loneliness etched around her eyes and mouth. She nodded once and left.
Kella waited until Jedira turned the corner and passed out of view, and then the detective jogged down the steps and headed off in the opposite direction. Screw this. I’m never doing that again. Lady Sade can find someone else to cover up her shit.
Detective Massi strode through the quiet city streets with her fists clenched in her jacket pockets. She wound her way around slower pedestrians, silently cursing them for existing. Their only purpose in life was clearly to not reach their destinations and thus take up space on the street, just to be in her way. She took alleys and little lanes where grass struggled to grow between the cobblestones, darting through the light of the gas lamps and the shadows. Her steps quickened.
The neighborhoods changed radically, almost from one block to another. Houses alternated between one, two, and three stories, breaking occasionally for the open expanse of a park or square, and contracting into sheer canyons walled in by warehouses and factories. Voices echoed from every direction, along with the clinking of plates and the slamming of doors. People, everywhere. People going home, eating supper.
As they should be. Not poking about in basements.
Kella turned a corner and nodded to the guard at the front gate, who let her enter the courtyard of the private estate. She passed the gardens and fountain and climbed the marble steps in front of the stately manor house, its tall windows glowing with golden lamplight. She rapped as politely as her mood would allow, and when the doorman opened the door he took one glance at her and stepped aside, out of her way. “Supper has just concluded, detective. The lady of the house is in the study to your left.”
Kella crossed the foyer and passed down a narrow hallway where oil portraits hung in near darkness to a small study furnished with padded leather chairs, bookcases bowing beneath weighty tomes, and glass cabinets displaying old Indian crockery, primitive Europan spears and knives, and other exotic antiques.
The two people seated by the lamp in the center of the room looked up at her and set their teacups aside. Lady Sade motioned toward the couch. Kella sat down carefully, trying to look less like an angry police officer and more like an obedient citizen. It proved difficult.
“Detective, good evening,” Lady Sade said. “Have you come to tell us some exceedingly good news about the recent rates of street crime?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“No, I didn’t think so.” Lady Sade glanced at her companion, an older gentleman with a thick black beard, and she picked up her tea. “Is it Chaou? Any news of our missing ambassador?”
“No, I haven’t heard anything about her. This is another matter.” Kella folded her hands tightly in her lap to avoid curling them into fists. “A matter regarding the doctor you introduced me to this afternoon.”
Sade nodded. “And?”
Kella looked at the man, the stranger, but neither of them seemed at all concerned about discussing the doctor openly. “A young woman came to the police station tonight. I was on my way out, another few minutes and I wouldn’t have been there to catch her. She’s a medical technician working for your doctor. She says she saw the animals in the doctor’s basement being mistreated. She saw machines she couldn’t identify.”
“Indeed. Did she now? And what was this young woman’s name?”
The detective narrowed her gaze. “She described, in some detail, the various animals and machines that she saw. She wanted to show me, but I brushed her off and I tried to convince her that whatever she thinks she saw was nothing criminal.”
“Good.” Lady Sade sipped her tea silently. “Do you think she will let the matter drop?”
“No, I don’t,” Kella said. “She was terrified and disgusted. She came straight to the police as soon as she saw that room. I’m guessing she’ll probably tell her friends, or anyone who might be more supportive or sympathetic, and then go back to the police again, possibly with more evidence. She might even try to free the animals herself. She was very emotional.”
“Then we have a problem.”
“My lady, what is this doctor really doing?” Kella asked the question too quickly, before Sade had quite finished speaking. For a moment no one spoke, and the detective wondered if she would be chastised for speaking out of turn. She had heard rumors, only rumors but more than one, that Lady Sade frequently dispatched her private agents to punish those who were even slightly rude to her. Case files full of unsolved poisonings and stabbings washed through Kella’s mind.
But the lady only sipped her tea as before. “What did I tell you the doctor was doing?”
“Research, to help people.” Kella knew she was frowning, but she didn’t care anymore. “Is that what the doctor is really doing? Does she plan to help future patients by inserting these machines into their bodies? And by experimenting with explosive chemicals?”
“You seem upset, detective.” The governor tilted her head. “Why is that?”
Kella glanced down at her hands and forced them open to rest on the arms of the chair. “My lady, when you approached me about performing certain tasks for you, to help you with certain projects, I took that to mean I would be protecting the peace of this city and the security of the country. I was honored. And I understand that difficult times and circumstances require us to make certain sacrifices, to do what needs to be done, rather than what we would like to do.”
“But you no longer feel that way?”
The detective tried to put the words together in her mind as carefully as possible. “I am no longer certain that my actions are in the best interests of public security.”
