Part 34 (1/2)

WSX. And Paloma had meticulously copied those files along with all the others.

Flint rubbed a hand over his forehead. He could comfort himself with the knowledge that the families were vetted, like the other adoptive families. Gramming employees found no history of child abuse or alcoholism anywhere in the family's past, made sure the financial records were in order, demanded a written commitment to education, and a determination to raise the child within the best guidelines of the family's community.

The rules had come from Gramming's early days. Then it had had a political mission. It had wanted clones to become the best human beings in the universe. The corporation wanted to prove that clones were as good as and sometimes better than their originals.

The initial founder of Gramming had wanted to help clones obtain their legal rights all over the Earth Alliance.

Then he'd retired and someone else had taken over and the mission got lost.

Then Kinoy became CEO.

And sold babies.

”You all right?” Van Alen asked. She was standing beside her desk.

”I don't know,” Flint said.

”Were you injured earlier?”

He shook his head. ”Just some information I found.”

Van Alen knew better than to ask him what that information was. ”Well, they tell me that the food is here. Can they bring it up?”

”Of course.” He darkened the screen, but not before checking his own logs.

He hadn't given any of this to Ki Bowles. He'd given her some material on ESI and some on Aleyd, but nothing on Speidel and Gramming.

He moved to one of the other nonnetworked computers, where he kept Ki Bowles's interview lists and her own research material-things he had insisted on having from the beginning of her work, so that he could monitor her.

He found three former legal a.s.sistants to Justinian Wagner. They had told Bowles that if she wanted a scandal that would break WSX open, she should investigate Gramming.

And that was all she had.

She'd used it as a threat in her first piece without knowing what she was digging into.

Kinoy had made millions selling babies. Clones. If Bowles had completed her investigation and reported it, the news would have destroyed families.

Families that had paid too much for their children, but families that had, so far as Flint could tell from the small sample Talia had found, kept up their bargain with Gramming. They'd educated their children, raised them to be solid citizens, and given them the best advantages within the Earth Alliance. ”How bad is it?” Van Alen asked as she raised the etched-gla.s.s door.

”Bad,” Flint said. And he wasn't sure exactly what he could do.

57.

Nyquist stopped outside the interrogation room and watched Romey work. The elation he'd felt with Wagner's arrest still hovered at the edges of his emotions. He needed to calm down. He had to remind himself that things could go very wrong with the Wagner case.

If Wagner were anyone else, the interrogation room that Nyquist would be about to enter would have Wagner in it. And Nyquist would be able to get him to answer each and every question he asked.

Instead, Wagner had one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the Earth Alliance on his way here from Cairo on Earth, and a surrogate who just happened to be the best criminal defense attorney in Armstrong standing in until the other attorney got here.

Nyquist would probably lose his prize.

But he'd make sure the press knew each and every detail of his case. He'd already leaked the arrest and the reasons for it, along with parts of Talia's recording.

That kid was brilliant. She'd gotten everything, from the men encircling her father to the ride to WSX and the ”talk” with Wagner himself.

If WSX survived that little recording, then there was such a thing as miracles.

Or maybe, to put it more accurately, if Wagner survived it. The law firm might have a life of its own, but it wouldn't be as powerful as it had been, and it certainly wouldn't have that man at its head. Not with all he'd admitted to in the privacy of his own office.

And Nyquist had to admit he found some satisfaction in that. Even if Wagner hadn't killed Ki Bowles-and Nyquist wasn't yet convinced of that-the poetic justice was still nice.

Wagner, in trying to get rid of a media gadfly, was going to be brought down.

By the media.

And one kid he'd called barely human. Talia was certainly a lot more human than Wagner could ever be. And smarter, too.

Nyquist would have to think of a way to let her know what she'd done was great. She'd been too shaken in the car for him to really talk with her-not about what happened, she'd been clear about that-but about how she felt about it.

Not that it was his concern.

But he'd gotten to know her a little in the months that she'd lived here, and while he'd always liked her, he never really realized what a thinker she was.

Which shouldn't have surprised him, given that she was Miles Flint's daughter. Whom Wagner had called a clone.

Nyquist hadn't released that part of the recording to the media. He'd keep that as quiet as he could. He'd been surprised by it, but it made more sense than Flint's story-that Rhonda had had a second child and kept that child hidden from him.

Still, not everyone would be understanding if the word got out.

And not everyone would treat Talia with the kindness that she deserved.

Nyquist turned up the sound from the interview room. Romey had been going through Illiyitch's fake history with him, the stuff the man had put on his resume. The resume hadn't been that deep. If Whitford Security had done the kind of background check that the police department did, they would have found that Illiyitch was using one of his many false names.

They would also have found a half dozen arrest warrants from all over the Earth Alliance, many for murder, and a few for murder for hire.

Romey hadn't had that information when she started the interrogation. She'd asked a junior detective to do the research and he'd handed it to Nyquist as Nyquist finished with Wagner.

Now all Nyquist had to do was bring it inside.

He wondered how many other cops had tried to interview this b.a.s.t.a.r.d, how many cops had failed to get information from him, how many times charges had been pressed only to be dismissed later on.

He didn't have the time to look all that up.

He just had to a.s.sume that the other cops all over the sector had failed with this guy. So he wouldn't.

Nyquist pushed the door open. Romey was leaning over the table, her hands splayed, Illiyitch cuffed to the chair near her. The fact that he didn't complain about his treatment proved that he had been arrested a number of times before.

Nyquist plugged the chip that the junior detective gave him into the table screen. Images of Illiyitch appeared all over it-some with blond hair, some with brown, some with dark skin, some with light.