“So was she assassinated?” Laura wondered, interested.
“I don’t know yet,” Nick admitted. “It’s much too soon to be able to tell anything; I just started digging this afternoon. Lee kinda didn’t believe it at first, but I think, when Daggert admitted to doubts, he changed his mind and thought it needed to be looked at.”
“When will you know something?” Alexandre asked, as interested as his wife.
“Don’t know for sure,” Nick said, tying into his own dessert. “I’ve dug through things at the Imperial Residence, specifically the medical center there, and I have some inquiries out with the various drug manufacturers. But until something comes back from them, I don’t know much of anything. Except that I’m not seeing anything that says she wasn’t killed. But I’m not seeing anything that says she was, either.”
“That poor woman,” Laura said. “I hope she wasn’t.”
“But Nick has good instincts, Laura,” Alexandre pointed out.
“I know, Alex. But I can still hope.”
“Well, let’s go into the den and let the kids play, while we have drinks and talk,” Cally suggested. “I’ll get the dishes later, once the kids are in bed. It doesn’t sound like it’s a secretive case or anything, Nick…”
“No, I talked to General Daggert about that,” Nick admitted, as they all rose from the table and headed for the den. “And, while we don’t necessarily want to make a big deal out of it if it turns out it was a bad thing, there’s a plan to announce it – but first, to ensure that justice has been duly served to everybody who participated that we can find. But in the meantime, we sorta need to not spread it around that I’m looking into it…”
“Right,” Cally agreed, and Laura and Alexandre nodded their understanding.
“Who do you think did it, if it was done?” Alexandre asked.
“Well, I think all of us – me, Lee, General Daggert, Consul Saaret, Emperor Trajan, and Empress Amanda – figure the ultimate authority was likely to have been one or more persons on the Council,” Nick elaborated. “And they’re all gone, of course. It was essentially Emperor Trajan’s first act as Emperor. But even if they ordered it, somebody had to carry it out. And we need to make sure it’s understood that nobody does that and gets away with it.”
“Exactly,” Cally contended. “You break the law, there are consequences.”
The next morning, Ashton went to his office and took the shift reports from the day before, compiling them into a complete shift report for the entire Investigations division. Then, as he had essentially fallen into the role of Field branch lead and never been relieved of it – had in fact become the official branch lead – he accepted the division reports for the Special Teams and Field Officers divisions, quickly splicing them together into the report for the entire Field branch, before popping it to Director Carter.
Then he checked to see if he had any messages from General Daggert, Dr. Topske, or the pharmaceutical companies.
The second company he had contacted, Kinameer Pharmaceuticals, already had a message waiting for him that indicated nothing unusual for the batch lots that had gone to treating the Empress. Moments later, the third company – the pharmaceutical subsidiary of Waldrop Medical – sent a similar message.
But the first company he had contacted, Physike Manufacturing, didn’t reply to him until well after lunch that day, and it was a request to meet with their point of contact in VR.
“And that… is interesting,” he decided.
Ashton accepted the invitation to meet, and dropped into the VR channel at the time requested, where he found a simulated laboratory. A woman stood there in a white lab coat, waiting.
“Are you Inspector Ashton?” she asked.
“I am,” he said. “Doctor Graham?”
“Stephanie Graham, yes.” She held out a hand, and they shook.
“What have you got for me, Dr. Graham?”
“A bit of a mess, I’m afraid,” she said, apologetic. Her avatar appeared to pale slightly.
Uh-oh, he thought. This looks like being bad. I might have nailed things, here.
“Tell me,” was what he said.
“Well, it seems that there were some errors in the Empress’ medications,” Graham admitted.
“In what way?”
“Have you looked at Ilithyia the First’s medical records? Not the Second, the First…”
“I have, yes. By the permission of the Emperor, the direction of General Daggert, and with the assistance of one of the Palace physicians.”
“Good. So you may be aware that Ms. Song had a tendency, when she was the heir apparent for Adonnaya III, to spend too much time inside the Palace, and her schedule often kept her too busy to eat on a decent, normal schedule. She lived in the Palace proper, so she rarely left the building, frequently missed meals, grabbed junk food snacks – chips, pastries, sugary drinks – when she couldn’t get anything else, and that meant she tended to be low in certain vitamins and minerals. So her physician on the Palace staff prescribed a nutritional supplement for her.”
“Yes, I remember seeing something about that. But she wasn’t Empress yet; how would you…?”
“She was heir apparent by then,” Graham reiterated. “Named by the Empress, accepted by the Imperial Guard, and approved by the Imperial Council. As soon as an heir presumptive is named by the Empress, the protocols go into effect. The same protocols must apply, since she would one day become the Empress.”
“Oh, I see,” Ashton said then, understanding. “So you keep track of things for her, too,
