“George, you got another crime scene on the rooftop across the street,” Ashton told the forensics lead. “Catty-corner south, northwest corner, ish. The shooter had a sniper rifle over there. Given that nobody reported any gunshots, I’m figuring it was an air rifle, so I don’t know that there’s a lot to find. I did find this, though.” He produced the bagged air tank.
“Right,” George Plover said. “You want me to take that, or you got it?”
“I got it, no prob. I’ll turn it over to Evidence once I have a look-see.”
“Jan, you and Greg grab kits and get over there to the rooftop. Nick, did you get up any crime scene tape?”
“Didn’t have any,” Ashton replied. “But we notified the building’s super to keep the rooftop clear until you got there.”
“Right. Greg, grab a roll of tape.”
“Yes, sir.”
“GO!”
“Gone, sir!”
To: General Brian Daggert
From: DXA
Subj: Quick visit
Do you have time for me to run by in the next half-hour and drop something off with you that may be classified? I can’t tell if it’s junk or not, but you or your people should know.
~DXA
From: General Brian Daggert
To: DXA
Subj: RE: Quick visit
Can you just pop me the file in VR?
~B. Daggert
To: General Brian Daggert
From: DXA
Subj: Re: RE: Quick visit
No. It’s handmade sketches. Of something that doesn’t need to be sketched. Found at a murder scene.
~DXA
From: General Brian Daggert
To: DXA
Subj: RE: Re: RE: Quick visit
Oh damnation. Come by as fast as you can get here. I’ll have my people keeping an eye on you until you arrive.
~B. Daggert
To: General Brian Daggert
From: DXA
Subj: Re: RE: Re: RE: Quick visit
Hoping you’d say that. On my way. Haven’t even gone by HQ yet.
~DXA
Ashton stood in Daggert’s office in the Palace, having been escorted straight there as soon as he reached the Palace West entrance. He pulled the sheaf of papers, which he’d placed in an evidence bag, from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Daggert.
“Can I take them out of the bag?” Daggert wondered.
“Yeah. Our junior investigator was already handling them, so it’s unlikely we’ll be able to get much off them,” Ashton noted. “I’ll take care of educating her on that later. But I can confirm that there are two people’s handwriting on the notes and arrowed annotations, and one of those is hers, based on the other items on her desk.”
“So she was working on diagramming these for someone, or with someone.”
“Right.”
“Which argues that she was working on it for someone else.”
“I’d say so.”
“Was this another takedown of what some of my people are calling the ‘Vigilante Patriot’?”
“Sure looks like it to me. But what I need to know is... well, I personally don’t need to know. But somebody in the intelligence hierarchy needs to look at those,” Ashton nodded at the sheaf of papers, “and determine if they were being fed the faked stuff, or got their hands on actual plans.”
“Point,” Daggert said. “I’ll put them under a classified header and call in some of my people, then let you know how we decide to handle it. Because, if these are actually classified, I can’t let you have ‘em back...”
“I understand,” Ashton said, “and I’ll let Lee know. But that’s why I brought them straight here.”
“Then you done good, my young friend.”
“Heh. I’m not so young any more, Brian.”
“Compared to me, you are, Nick,” Daggert chuckled. “I’ll say it again: I’m getting too old for this job.”
“Nah. You’ll be taking care of the Emperors and Empresses forever. You’re just that good. They can’t possibly let you go.”
“We’ll see. I’d sort of like a retirement soon enough that I can enjoy it, maybe travel a little.”
“Got a traveling companion in mind?”
“I might, young scamp; I might.”
By the next day, Ashton had several new bits of information about the Vigilante Patriot’s latest kill.
First of all, there was no evidence that pointed to the identity of the murderer – no DNA, no fingerprints, no latents of any kind. Not even the drink rings on the roof ledge gave any clue, because they were entirely water marks; no part of the drink had been spilled, and there was no DNA from saliva or any other contact. There were, however, two small scratch marks on the concrete ledge that indicated where the rifle bipod had rested, and next to those, tiny fibers that had likely been scraped from the sleeve of the sniper. The fibers were being analyzed.
Second, Daggert verified that the ship sketches were a kind of hybrid of real ship details and faked. More, he had identified the source of the other handwriting, ascertaining that it was a worker in the Department of Defense called Jan Duzan who had access. She had already been picked up by the ICPD for the Imperial Guard, and interrogated. It seemed that she was trying to counter faked plans that Carson had been given, by sketching out the design and illustrating the differences. She had fought the interrogation the whole way, and in the process, generated something called a ‘severe carotid artery dissection’ with a subsequent stroke. This stroke left her conscious but paralyzed and on life support overnight until Emperor Trajan could do a brief review of the case and render judgement. She was subsequently executed for treason.
Third, he was able to identify the small tank, laying the bagged object on his desk for comparison, then doing a search on company catalogues in VR. It was a compressed air tank from the HotShot line of airguns. This line, manufactured by Akerman Sporting Goods, ranged from handguns all the way up to sniper rifles intended for varmint hunting on rural farming worlds. Almost all of the parts were interchangeable among the HotShot
