Part 7 (2/2)
”Maybe we should put someone else on the case, then,” she said.
”And what?” he snapped, not caring whether he offended her or not. ”Give them less to work with? I at least saw the bodies. I was able to examine them along with the techs and take some conclusions from positions and the order of the wounds. Someone new would miss what little we have.”
Gumiela shrugged one shoulder. ”I'm not sure you're up for this, Bartholomew. You just got back.” ”I know.” He made himself take a deep breath, trying to stay calm. ”I think I bring more than just my years of expertise, my judgment, and my observation of the crime scene to this case.”
”Oh?” She slid back onto the corner of the desk, crossing her legs again. This time she didn't tug on the skirt and it rode slightly up her thighs. He tried not to look. He hated it when she tried to distract the male detectives with those fantastic legs.
”I've met Bowles,” he said, ”and I've seen her in her home. In fact, I saw her when she was the most vulnerable, right after she had been fired. I have a sense of the woman, not just the media star.” Gumiela finally tugged at the skirt. She wasn't looking at him, which was a bad sign.
”And then, just before I left, one of the techs told me that Bowles had just run her comeback story last night. That story-and the series it was supposed to start-is about corruption at Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor.”
”I know,” Gumiela said. ”That's one of the reasons I'm thinking about taking you off this case.” He shook his head, biting back hasty words. He didn't want her to think he was desperate-although he was beginning to believe that he was.
He hadn't realized he wanted the case this much until he started into this conversation.
”It's precisely why you shouldn't take me off the case,” he said. ”I've met Justinian Wagner several times. I got injured trying to save his father's life. That should open several doors that other detectives would find closed.”
Gumiela smiled. ”Justinian Wagner? The man everyone believes hired the Bixian a.s.sa.s.sins to kill his father? Why would he want to talk with the man who nearly thwarted him?”
”Unlike some of the other senior detectives in this department,” Nyquist said, ”I never spoke to Wagner after his father died. I never let him know that I thought he'd try to have his father killed.” ”Yet you're the one who saw him just before the a.s.sa.s.sins took out his father and figured out where they were going to go,” Gumiela said.
”I already knew where they'd go. I just let Wagner tell me where his father lived. The man thinks he's smarter than I am. That's an advantage for me.”
”Have you ever thought that perhaps he is smarter?” she asked. ”After all, he's never been charged with the murders of his father or his mother.”
”That's not a failing of our department,” Nyquist said. ”That's a failing of the Earth Alliance. We have no way to find out who hired the Bixian a.s.sa.s.sins. We can only guess. They operate outside the law, and any records we could find, we're not ent.i.tled to because of the various Earth Alliance agreements.”
”I still don't see your presence as an advantage,” she said. ”I think your emotions will be too involved.” ”Because Wagner hired the a.s.sa.s.sins?” Nyquist asked. ”You think I'll go after him?” ”Won't you? Isn't he a prime suspect, given what Bowles did yesterday?”
”First, I don't know what she did yesterday. I came to see you before I watched her pieces on WSX. Second, I never make up my mind about the case until I've studied the evidence.”
”But now you say there's no evidence to study.”
”There's very little to study, at least at the scene,” Nyquist said. ”Which makes my reason for talking to you all the more important.”
”I thought I'm the one who called this meeting,” Gumiela said with a slight smile.
”You are.” And he didn't want to add that he might have stalled the meeting if he hadn't thought he could get something out of it. ”But I had an agenda when I walked through that door.”
”Staying on the case,” Gumiela said.
”Honestly, I never thought you'd take me off it,” he said. ”I'm surprised you're considering it.” She brushed that off as if he hadn't spoken. ”What, then?”
”I don't want you to make an announcement to the press for twenty-four hours.”
”I can't hold them off that long.”
”The longer you hold them off, the more evidence I can gather,” he said. ”They won't be watching my every move. They won't be speculating on all those Gossip shows why I'd driven down Street A versus Street B or why I spent three hours inside Bowles's apartment or talked to an old college professor. I'll have the benefit of surprise with the interviews and the ability to collect some evidence that might disappear if the press tramples it or gets to it first.”
Gumiela frowned. ”I don't know how to forestall this. It's going to leak.”
”So send the press in the wrong direction,” he said. ”Say that the two victims are impossible to identify with any certainty. Blame the Hunting Club and talk about the fact that no links or cameras or any equipment can be used on their grounds. Believe me, that'll get the press busy. They hate the Hunting Club restrictions because those things are aimed at the press, not at the rest of us. And now they've backfired. Two people are dead.”
”Two hard-to-identify people,” she said slowly.
He nodded. ”The evidence at the scene gave us one name, but we have no way to confirm. Because the Hunting Club security system destroyed evidence, and the bodies were too marked up for precise on-scene identification.”
”We never release names without a coroner's okay,” Gumiela said. ”We don't do official on-scene identifications.”
”We know that,” Nyquist said. ”They don't. Give them some things to run after, give them some stuff to chew on, and that'll send them away from me.”
”You're not going to go after the Hunting Club?” Gumiela asked.
”Later maybe,” he said. ”Right now the techs are getting all they can from the grounds and, I hope, from the security system's filters. But that's half-a.s.sed at best. I want just twenty-four hours to get ahead of them.” ”I can give you twelve,” Gumiela said. ”That's how long I can fake not knowing for certain who our victims are.”
Nyquist smiled for the first time. ”Twelve is good enough.”
10.
The two clones Talia found had Flint's curly blond hair. He should have expected that. Talia had his hair, after all, and his blue eyes. But he wasn't quite prepared for the reality of them, which was probably why he'd been thinking of them as ”clones” instead of ”girls.”
They were girls. He'd put up images of both of them on the screens that rose out of his desk. He hadn't made those images into holoimages-he couldn't quite handle a 3-D representation of two more of his children.
Two more matching children.
Talia sat beside him behind the desk. She'd had to wait until he'd opened several systems, and then she had walked him through the steps she'd taken to find these girls.
They didn't quite look like twins. One wore her curly hair short. It exploded around her face, which was narrower than Talia's. Apparently in the next twenty-nine months, his daughter would lose the last baby fat and would look more like a woman.
This daughter-her name was Gita Havos-had sparkling blue eyes and a pleasant expression as if she were sharing a joke with someone just off camera. Those eyes had a sharp intelligence, and the mouth had a wry turn, which suggested just a trace of self-awareness.
Or maybe he was reading too much into it.
She wore a black coat and a silver necklace with matching earrings. They looked expensive to him, as did that wayward hairstyle. He got a sense of a self-confident, happy girl who was ready to face her future.
All that from one image. He knew if he asked Talia, he would find more. He wasn't sure he was ready for them.
The second girl, Kahlila El Alamen, had somehow straightened those blond curls. She had tamed her hair and grown it long. She had pulled it away from her face with some kind of clips, and the clips managed to hold the waves that she hadn't quite been able to get rid of.
The hairstyle accented the leanness of her face. She was thinner than the other two-her cheekbones and her chin stood out in sharp relief against her generous mouth. He glanced at Gita, because he didn't want to check against Talia. The mouth would look bigger when there was less flesh on the face. He hadn't realized that his daughter had her mother's mouth-wide and angular, like a slash across her face.
This girl, Kahlila, wore a s.h.i.+rt with a ripped collar and no sleeves. The collar's ripping was too even to be anything but an affectation, and the lack of sleeves showed off beautifully drawn tattoos on her biceps. Those biceps were well formed. Kahlila, unlike her-what was Talia's term? Sisters?-was some kind of athlete.
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