Taziri caught a nurse’s attention and the young man confirmed that this was the detective’s room and that the patient was still unconscious. Three hours of surgery had closed up the cuts and stitched together the hole in her shoulder, but the blood loss had been considerable. Taziri let the nurse go and felt her legs turning to cold tin and her chest constricting.
Isoke had been cut. Maybe badly, maybe not. Near a fire. Taken to a hospital.
But she knew there weren’t a dozen figures in orange jackets clustered outside her door. There was no one left to worry over her. There was only her husband and their two little boys who liked to hide behind their mother’s legs when Taziri came to visit.
Kenan found a bench just down the hall and they sat on it, staring silently at their hands and at the wall and the doctors and nurses quietly going about their work. None of the police officers asked them who they were or why they were there, but all of them took turns casting cold stares at the intruders wearing orange and red.
After half an hour, Taziri leaned forward. “You know, we could be waiting here all day, all week, and this detective might never wake up. Even if she does wake up, she might not be able to tell us anything. I think we need another plan.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking.” Kenan sniffed. “I mean, I still want to try to talk to Massi here, but there’s got to be something else we could be doing to find Medina, or Chaou, or the major.”
Taziri shrugged. “Any ideas?”
Kenan stood. “I’m going back to the marshal’s office. I reported the major as missing and the ambassador as a fugitive last night, but who knows what they’re doing about it. I’ll get the whole force moving on this. At least, I’ll try to.”
“What about the whole conspiracy problem?” Taziri asked. “Remember, they’ve got people everywhere. They had a police captain in Chellah. They might have someone in the marshals. You can’t trust anyone to help. In fact, if you talk to the wrong person you could end up like this detective by the end of the day.”
“Well, what do you suggest?” Kenan massaged his injured shoulder. “We don’t know enough. Hell, we don’t know anything! All we know is that an ambassador went crazy and stole an airship and killed some people, and she’s got friends all over the place, and there’s some doctor putting metal plates and electrical devices in people. What does that add up to? What? Tell me what it means, tell me what to do!”
“Calm down.” She stood beside him and placed her hand against his arm to make the young man stand still. She glanced at the police officers, but they seemed to have closed ranks and were ignoring everyone else. “We can figure this out, one thing at a time. Now, there’s no obvious way to find the major. We don’t even know for sure if he was on the ferry, and even if he was, he could be anywhere by now. Same goes for Chaou. The only lead we have right now is Medina. So I’ll stay here a little while and see if I can learn anything from the detective if she wakes up. Meanwhile, you can try to track down the doctor. She’s obviously popular, judging from the crowd this morning. I’m sure someone can tell you where she lives. Maybe even someone in this hospital. If you can find her, maybe you can sort out if she’s a part of Chaou’s little circle of mayhem or not.”
“What if she’s not?” Kenan looked puzzled.
“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out when we get there. Plan to meet back at the B-and-B tonight around six, okay?”
He nodded and retreated down the hall toward the stairs. When he was gone, Taziri stood up and shuffled through the police officers until she was standing by the open doorway to the detective’s room and she stared at the woman on the bed. All she saw were brown arms on white sheets. It wasn’t a person, not to Taziri, not yet. She couldn’t find the energy to care about this detective. She was full. Full of fires and knives and blood, full of worried families and frightened strangers, full of fear and anxiety for too many people already. There was no room in her for another victim. Not yet.
“How do you know the detective?”
Taziri was about to turn away when she realized the question was directed at her. She looked into the weary face of a young man in a gray coat sitting just beside the open door. He was staring quite sternly at her.
“I don’t. Sorry. I don’t know her at all.”
“Then…why?”
“Why am I here?” Taziri absorbed the question for a moment. “I wanted to ask her what happened. What she saw. Who was there.”
“You’re, what, in the Air Corps?” The officer leaned forward to peer around the corner into the room as though hoping the detective would open her eyes at just that moment. “So why do you want to know what happened? What’s it to you?”
“The people who did this may be the same people who burned the airfield in Tingis and killed a lot of people up north. People I know. Knew.” She swallowed. “I’m helping the marshals with the investigation and they left me here.” She stopped talking. It felt rude somehow. But suddenly she was aware that the eyes and ears of every officer in the hall were fixed on her. She tried to not look at them, but she could feel them staring, waiting, hungry for answers about their comrade lying in the next room. The silence was unnerving. “But if any of you know what the detective was doing at that building last night, it might help the investigation.”
“Actually, that’s what we all want to know,” the young man said. “Last night was pretty crazy. Massi came into the station saying that there were professional assassins in the streets. A lot of officers went out to sweep the district, but Massi never came back.”
“Did she say anything about the killers? Who were they?”
“She didn’t say.” The officer crossed his arms tightly across his chest, as though to keep himself warm. “A short while later, we got a report about a fight in the street outside a bakery. The officers who got there first bumped into Massi as she was leaving. She was out of uniform. The officers found a dead detective in the street and a body in the basement, butchered with a knife. The knife was still at the scene and it looked like Massi’s knife. A big folding one.”
“You think Massi killed those people?”
“Not a chance. Massi’s a hardliner. Old school. She’s been on the force for twenty-five years and never broken a single regulation. It’s a setup. We all know it. Some bastards from the second district came down here a few hours ago to put irons on Massi. We told them what they could do with their irons.” The small crowd of officers shook their heads and muttered under their breath.
“So after the fight at the bakery,” the man continued, “we heard about the fire. The fire brigade got Massi straight here. The doctors say she was cut up real bad. Arms, stomach, chest. And a stiletto in her shoulder. Good money says that the person who sliced up the detective also sliced up Usem and the girl at the bakery.”
Taziri turned the story over in her mind, wondering what any of it had to do with Tingis, Chaou, or her battery. The only connection she could see was Medina, and it was a connection so thin it vanished if she thought about it too hard. “Does the name Medina mean anything to you? A doctor called Medina?”
“The Espani? Sure.” The officer nodded. “She runs the shop that burned down. We send accident victims there all the time. I’ve never met her, but everyone always says she’s wonderful. She helps anyone who comes in, even if they can’t pay. It’s all thanks to Lady Sade, she’s paying the bills. But it’s a damn shame that folks around here have to go to a foreigner for help. The companies should take care of the men who get hurt, and if not them, then the queen should do something about it. But I guess Medina is better than nothing. Why do you ask? Was she hurt in the fire?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Any idea where I can find her?”
The man shrugged. “Nope. Maybe later we can go by the station and I can look up her address for you.”
Taziri nodded. “Okay. Thanks. Thank you.”
The other police officers still hovered around her, still watched her closely, but they said nothing and allowed Taziri to saunter back down the hall to her bench. She sat down and tried to imagine why anyone would ever want to put a battery inside a human being.
Why would that even cross someone’s mind, except in a nightmare? And what are the odds that an Espani doctor invented a battery like mine all on her own?
She shook her head.
There are coincidences and then there are ridiculous coincidences. No one cares about batteries. Medina had to read about my battery and then do a lot of work to build her own. She wanted to do these things. And what does that make her? A scientist or a psychopath?
Medina had read a paper about metal plates and acid baths and electrochemical properties. She had learned
