The team headed from Imperial Police headquarters in the Catalonia capital on an official Imperial Police shuttle. They set down on the shuttle pad on the grounds of the sector governor’s mansion, where they were met by a staff member with an electric cart. He drove them around the back to a door, and led them to the sitting room in the residence portion of the mansion in the early twilight.
The body of the sector governor lay in the middle of the floor, shot three times in the chest. A pool of blood had formed under the body and spread, staining the tile flooring and the corner of a nearby area rug.
“Hello. Anyone here?” Ashton called, seeing no one else. A scrabbling sound came from behind a sofa against the wall, and Bernardo Palomo de la Gallego, husband of the deceased – Ashton recognized him from various media imagery – crawled out from the cubbyhole behind it.
“Thank God, you’re here!” he exclaimed. “It was terrible. We were talking, and then someone came in from the balcony and shot her. I ran for my life, and he missed me.”
Ashton raised an eyebrow.
“All right, Mr. Palomo de la Gallego,” he said. “Just have a seat. We’ll need to get a statement from you.”
“Of course, of course,” Palomo agreed, placating. “Poor Renata.”
But Ashton noted that he moved to the far side of the large room before sitting down.
Ashton met with Sergeant Fernando Garza and made sure that the forensics team was organized and under way with the investigation, then he went over to Palomo and sat in an armchair; Palomo had chosen another sofa. Ashton pulled out a small device and placed it on the end table between himself and Palomo, activating it in VR.
“What’s that?” Palomo asked, gesturing at the object with his left hand.
“Oh, it’s an audiovisual recording device,” Ashton explained. “It’ll enable me to record my interview with you so I have it on file. It’s intended to protect you and me from inaccurate memories and accidental transcription errors.”
“Ah. I see.”
“So, Mr. Palomo de la Gallego–”
“Just Mr. Palomo.”
“Ah. That is easier. Mr. Palomo, please tell me exactly what happened.”
“But I already told you. Someone came in from the balcony and started shooting.”
“In detail, please. What were you and your wife doing?”
“We were talking. I told you already.”
“About what?” Ashton asked, thinking, This is gonna be like pulling teeth. And just as much fun.
“Um, about the crowd outside,” Palomo said.
“What about the crowd?”
“Oh. We were wondering when General Walder was going to send some troops to disperse the rioting crowds.”
“Riots? Is that what you call a riot?” Ashton wondered, amused.
“Well…yes. Wouldn’t you? They were not happy,” Palomo pointed out. “They were yelling and screaming insults at us. We could hear them from inside.”
I’ll bet you could, Ashton thought, and let the distinction slide, for the time. “And then what happened?”
“And then a man shot from the balcony,” Palomo said, his eyes starting to wander to and fro. “We had the doors open for the breeze, you see, and he apparently climbed up and over the railing, and starting shooting. Renata went down almost immediately, but I ducked and dodged, and then ran for my life! I don’t know how I managed to avoid getting shot, too! He finally ran out of the room, back onto the balcony, and I hid behind that sofa–” he pointed at the sofa behind which he’d been when Ashton’s team arrived, “until you got here.”
“Who called us about the attack?”
“I don’t know. I guess it was one of the staffers who heard the gunshots.”
Palomo’s eyes were still dodgy, darting here and there, and Ashton bit his tongue to stifle the sarcastic comment that wanted to come out.
“I see,” he did say, deactivating the small recording device and stowing it in his jacket pocket. Then he waved over one of the regular beat cops that Walder had sent along for just such purpose. “Officer Mendez, please take Mr. Palomo into an adjacent room and watch over him while I see about finding the staffer who called us.” A quick, subtle hand signal added the command of, ‘Stand guard, and don’t let him out of your sight.’
“Yes, sir,” Mendez said, as she escorted Palomo out of the room.
Ashton wandered up to the forensics team. “What have you got so far?” he asked.
“No bullet casings, and no weapon,” Luis Garza, the lead forensic scientist, told him. “Powder here and there, by the look. We’ll have to wait until the autopsy report comes in to determine caliber, but I don’t think it was a very large-caliber weapon. Something a bit more than a plinker, but not much.”
“We’ve got bullet holes in the wall, there,” Ashton pointed, “so we ought to get some caliber estimates off that.”
“Oh damn, how’d we miss that?” Garza said in disgust.
“Probably because of the dead body in the middle of the floor, and the guy hiding behind the sofa. The fact it got dark on us hasn’t helped.” Ashton glanced out the balcony door, then rolled his eyes. “Talk about melodrama.”
“Yeah, no shit. Patricia, hit the overhead lights, then get over there and see what you can find on those!”
“Yes, sir!” the junior investigator said, heading to the wall with the pockmarked surface.
“Is there anything else you see, sir, that my team hasn’t?”
“No, I don’t think so. More a case of wanting to know some specific things, Sergeant,” Ashton decided.
“Name ‘em.”
“Since we don’t have casings – likely an old-style revolver was the murder weapon – I want to know where the gunpowder is, exactly, to the best of your ability. I want to know where it stops, where it starts, and what the angles are on every one of these bullets. I
