Part 39 (1/2)

”If they could, Honolulu PD would have pulled a warrant and virtually extradited her. Him. I was contracted to look into the case ten days ago-” She tore off a piece of a cheese croissant and chewed it thoughtfully. ”It took the skip trace this long to locate her. Him.”

”Did she do it?”

”h.e.l.l yes.” She grinned like the American she was. ”The question is-well, okay, I realize the murder is your jurisdiction, but I don't get paid unless I either close the case or eliminate my suspect-and I get a bonus if I recover any of the stolen property. Now, 'killed by person or persons unknown,' is a perfectly acceptable outcome as far as the City of Honolulu is concerned, with the added benefit that the State of Hawaii doesn't have to pay Bengaluru to incarcerate him. So I need to know, one cop to another, if the inside-out stiff is Dexter Coffin.”

”The DNA matches,” Ferron said. ”I can tell you that in confidence. There will be a press release once we locate and notify his next of kin.”

”Understood,” Morganti said. ”I'll keep it under my hat. I'll be filing recovery paperwork against the dead man's a.s.sets in the amount of C$2,798,000 and change. I can give you the next of kin, by the way.”

The data came in a squirt. Daughter, Maui. Dr. Fang-Coffin really had severed all ties.

”Understood,” Ferron echoed. She smiled when she caught herself. She liked this woman. ”You realize we have to treat you as a suspect, given your financial motive.”

”Of course,” Morganti said. ”I'm bonded, and I'll be happy to come in for an interrogation under Truth.”

”That will make things easier, madam,” Ferron said.

Morganti turned her coffee cup in its saucer. ”Now then. What can I do to help you clear your homicide?”

Indrapramit s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably on the bench.

”What did Jessica Fang do, exactly?” Ferron had Damini's data in her case buffer. She could use what Morganti told her to judge the contract officer's knowledge and sincerity.

”In addition to the embezzling? Accused of stealing research and pa.s.sing it off as her own,” Morganti said. ”Also, she was-well, she was just kind of an a.s.shole on the net, frankly. Running down colleagues, dismissing their work, aggrandizing her own. She was good, truthfully. But n.o.body's that good.”

”Would someone have followed him here for personal reasons?”

”As you may have gathered, this guy was not diligent about his rightminding,” Morganti said. She pushed a handful of hair behind her shoulder. ”And he was a bit of a narcissist. Sociopath? Antisocial in some sort of atavistic way. Normal people don't just ... walk away from all their social connections because they made things a little hot on the net.”

Ferron thought of the distributed politics of her own workplace, the sniping and personality clashes. And her mother, not so much alone on an electronic Serengeti as haunting the virtual pillared palaces of an Egypt that never was.

”No,” she said.

Morganti said, ”Most people find ways to cope with that. Most people don't burn themselves as badly as Jessica Fang did, though.”

”I see.” Ferron wished badly for sparkling water in place of the syrupy coffee. ”You've been running down Coffin's finances, then? Can you share that information?”

Morganti said that he had liquidated a lot of hidden a.s.sets a week ago, about two days after she took his case. ”It was before I made contact with him, but it's possible he had Jessica Fang flagged for searches-or he had a contact in Honolulu who let him know when the skip trace paid off. He was getting ready to run again. How does that sound?”

Ferron sighed and sat back in her chair. ”Fabulous. It sounds completely fabulous. I don't suppose you have any insight into who he might have been expecting for dinner? Or how whoever killed him might have gotten out of the room afterwards when it was all locked up tight on Coffin's override?”

Morganti shrugged. ”He didn't have any close friends or romantic relations.h.i.+ps. Always too aware that he was living in hiding, I'd guess. Sometimes he entertained co-workers, but I've checked with them all, and none admits having gone to see him that night.”

”Sub-Inspector,” Indrapramit said gently. ”The time.”

”b.u.g.g.e.r,” Ferron said, registering it. ”Morning roll call. Catch up with you later?”

”Absolutely,” Morganti said. ”As I said before, I'm just concerned with clearing my embezzling case. I'm always happy to help a sister officer out on a murder.”

And b.u.t.ter up the local police, Ferron thought.

Morganti said, ”One thing that won't change. Fang was obsessed with astronomy.”

”There were deep-s.p.a.ce images on Coffin's walls,” Ferron said.

Indrapramit said, ”And he had offered his Ganesha an indigo scarf. I wonder if the color symbolized something astronomical to him.”

”Indigo,” Morganti said. ”Isn't it funny that we have a separate word for dark blue?”

Ferron felt the pedantry welling up, and couldn't quite stopper it. ”Did you know that all over the world, dark blue and black are often named with the same word? Possibly because of the color of the night sky. And that the ancient Greeks did not have a particular name for the color blue? Thus their seas were famously 'wine-dark.' But in Hindu tradition, the color blue has a special significance: it is the color of Vishnu's skin, and Krishna is nicknamed Sunil, 'dark blue.' The color also implies that which is all-encompa.s.sing, as in the sky.”

She thought of something slightly more obscure. ”Also, that color is the color of Shani Bhagavan, who is one of the deities a.s.sociated with Uttara Bhadrapada. Which we've been hearing a lot about lately. It might indeed have had a lot of significance to Dr. Fang-Coffin.”

Morganti, eyebrows drawn together in confusion, looked to Indrapramit for salvation. ”Saab? Uttara Bhadrapada?”

Indrapramit said, ”Andromeda.”

Morganti excused herself as Indrapramit and Ferron prepared to check in to their virtual office.

While Ferron organized her files and her report, Indrapramit finished his coffee. ”We need to check inbound s.h.i.+ps from, or carrying pa.s.sengers from, America. Honolulu isn't as prohibitive as, say, Chicago.”

They'd worked together long enough that half the conversational s.h.i.+fts didn't need to be recorded. ”Just in case somebody did come here to kill him. Well, there can't be that many pa.s.sages, right?”

”I'll get Damini after it,” he said. ”After roll-”

Roll call made her avoidant. There would be reports, politics, wrangling, and a succession of wastes of time as people tried to prove that their cases were more worthy of resources than other cases.

She pinched her temples. At least the coffee here was good. ”Right. Telepresencing ... now.”

After the morning meeting, they ordered another round of coffees, and Ferron pulled up the sandwich menu and eyed it. There was no telling when they'd have time for lunch.

She'd grab something after the next of kin notification. If she was still hungry when they were done.

Normally, in the case of a next of kin so geographically distant, Bengaluru Police would arrange for an officer with local jurisdiction to make the call. But the Lahaina Police Department had been unable to raise Jessica Fang's daughter on a home visit, and a little cursory research had revealed that she was unEmployed and very nearly a permanent resident of Artificial Reality.

Just going by her handle, Jessica Fang's daughter on Maui didn't have a lot of professional aspirations. Ferron and Indrapramit had to go virtual and pull on avatars to meet her: Skooter0 didn't seem to come out of her virtual worlds for anything other than biologically unavoidable crash cycles. Since they were on duty, Ferron and Indrapramit's avatars were the standard-issue blanks provided by Bengaluru Police, their virtual uniforms sharply pressed, their virtual faces expressionless and identical.

It wasn't the warm and personal touch you would hope for, Ferron thought, when somebody was coming to tell you your mother had been murdered.

”Why don't you take point on this one?” she said.

Indrapramit snorted. ”Be sure to mention my leaders.h.i.+p qualities in my next performance review.”

They left their bodies holding down those same cafe chairs and waded through the first few tiers of advertis.e.m.e.nts-get-rich-quick schemes, Bollywood starlets, and pop star scandal sheets, until they got into the American feed, and then it was get-rich-quick schemes, Hollywood starlets, p.o.r.nography, and Congressional scandal sheets-until they linked up with the law enforcement priority channel. Ferron checked the address and led Indrapramit into a ma.s.sively multiplayer Artificial Reality that showed real-time activity through Skooter0's system ident.i.ty number. Once provided with the next-of-kin's handle, Damini had sent along a selection of key codes and overrides that got them through the pay wall with ease.

They didn't need a warrant for this. It was just a courtesy call.

Skooter0's preferred hangout was a 'historical' AR, which meant in theory that it reflected the pre-twenty-first-century world, and in practice that it was a muddled-up stew of cowboys, ninjas, pinstripe suit mobsters, medieval knights, cavaliers, Mongols, and wild west gunslingers. There were Macedonians, Mauryans, African gunrunners, French resistance fighters and n.a.z.is, all running around together with samurai and Shaolin monks.

Indrapramit's avatar checked a beacon-a glowing green needle floating just above his nonexistent wrist. The directional signal led them through a s.p.a.ce meant to evoke an antediluvian ice cave, in which about two dozen people all dressed as different incarnations of the late-twentiethcentury pop star David Bowie were working themselves into a martial frenzy as they prepared to go forth and do virtual battle with some rival clade of Emulators. Ferron eyed a Diamond Dog who was being dressed in glittering armor by a pair of Thin White Dukes and was glad of the expressionless surface of her uniform avatar.