Honor of the Clan (10 page)

Ten minutes later he was busy trying to invent new curses, having run out of his ample supply of old ones. Indowy were damned thorough cleaners, and didn't wait around to get started, either. He was left with minimal bits of luck. Thank god their voodoo tanks took awhile to fix stuff. They'd already fully repaired the drapes, but hadn't gotten to the desk yet. The deceased's—um, almost deceased's—AID had not been tampered with, other than to turn the poor thing off. Lacking anywhere else to put it until competent authority reclaimed Epetar operations on Earth, it had been turned off and shoved back in the envelope where the Indowy had found it. Johnny filed that information away for future use. He hadn't known it was
possible
to turn an AID off. He was darned sure the Darhel weren't eager to have humans know that bit of information. Considering who he worked for, he didn't plan to share. Besides, the Darhel wouldn't use hush envelopes themselves if there weren't a catch to this whole "turn it off" business. He'd love to know, but it wouldn't be a good idea to ask.

Bobby arrived while he was going over the office and making notes. The first thing Stuart had him do was replace the packing tape on the floor with conventional yellow tape, where an Indowy had told him the Darhel was found.

"Good that they didn't rip out the carpet yet," the ex-cop grunted.

Robert "Bobby" Mitchell was medium-height, heavyset and dark with the look of a weight-lifter who had given it up for other pursuits. He'd been a Sheriff's deputy in Silverton for ten years, eventually rising to detective sergeant, before one of the many, many IA complaints managed to stick. Picking up and then brutalizing a "hooker" who turned out to be an undercover police officer would do that.

"No, just trampled their little green feet all over it moving stuff out and around."

"Yeah. Let me block off the desk. I know the leg marks are still there in the carpet, but it makes it easier to visualize the scene. I'll also need a black light. I don't think they cleaned the carpet. Look at the tear here. They probably meant to repair it. And get me one of those doohickeys to show window repairs. It looks like there might have been a struggle, but I've seen a Two-D of one of them going bughouse years ago in Panama. He could have easily done all this himself before going catatonic. Believe me you
don't
want to see one of those bastards get pissed. Remind me the next time you're over. I've got it on a cube somewhere. Let's just say I don't want your job, cuz."

"Might not want to talk so frankly about our employer. It's not a great idea."

"Meaning no disrespect." His eyes flicked uncomfortably to Johnny's AID. "I don't guess our boss minds if we're a bit scared of him, you think?" He said it more for the benefit of the AID than his cousin.

"Nope." Johnny kept his response as short as possible. Safer that way.

"We absolutely have to have an autopsy of the Darhel."

"That might be a problem. Pardal isn't actually dead yet."

"If you really want to find out what happened, we probably need to fix that."

"Um . . . Is a coroner going to know enough about Darhel physiology to determine much? They're damned secretive."

"That's a problem, all right." Bobby rubbed his forehead, looking for a solution to that very big problem. "Use an AID. It knows enough about Darhel physiology to know what to look for and answer specific questions. A good forensic pathologist will be able to tell us stuff we've got to know—maybe make the difference between cracking the case and not. Can't investigate a suspicious death very well without an autopsy. Figure any information we get from the thing is more than we'd have if we didn't even look. Besides, they're just letting the prick starve." He shrugged at the warning glance from Johnny.

"It's a VIP death, screw it up and our asses would be in a crack for sure. That means I'm doing everything by the book. If the Tir denies permission for an autopsy it's no skin off my nose as long as I can document that I asked. If something goes wrong, I don't plan to take the fall for it."

"Gonna be hell to get him to agree to this."

"We've at least got to have proof that we tried. CYA, buddy."

"I hear that. Okay, gimme a minute." Johnny stepped outside and pulled the black box off his belt. Not that he needed to talk into it, it just felt wrong to talk to empty air like a head case. "Tina, get me Tir Dol Ron."

"He's a very busy person. I'll try," it said. "You're in luck. Here he is."

"Why are you interrupting me, Mr. Stuart?"

"I'm sorry, your Tir. I need special permission for something."

"And that is?"

"Whenever we investigate a suspicious death on Earth, we can't get enough information to tell what happened without an autopsy." He made sure to put the why ahead of the what to try to head off a knee-jerk reaction.

"What's an autopsy?"

"It's where a specialist examines the body to get clues about what happened in the person's last moments. Those clues are always a big part of reconstructing the circumstances of the death."

"This is unacceptable. We already know what happened in the Darhel Pardal's last moments. He failed to control himself and went into lintatai," The Tir bit the words out, as if loath to admit the species' weakness to a mere human. "However, if it makes your report more thorough to personally go look at the remains, do so."

Johnny grimaced. The Tir wasn't for a minute going to admit that the Darhel didn't want humans to know any more about them than they had to. And he clearly didn't understand the nature of the procedure. This was going to be delicate. "Sir, I know the security situation is delicate, and I do have ideas about how to protect your interests. The examination would be primarily conducted by an AID, with the specialist only present to tell the AID what kinds of things to examine, then your security employee, Bobby, would instruct the AID in how to analyze the results for the final report."

"The degree of observational opportunity to the human physician is unacceptable. It would be a human physician, correct?"

"Sir, while a human physician specializing in deaths would be necessary, steps could be taken to ensure anything sensitive he learned about Darhel in general was . . . contained. Completely contained."

He could hear the Darhel breathing hard before it asked, more collectedly, "You have several days before this must happen, for your death expert to do his work?"

"Uh . . . sir, to get the information we need, waiting would . . . Sir, do you
really
want to know?"

"No! No I don't. You may do your . . . work, provided you guarantee information security in . . . some way that preserves our interests. I cannot emphasize enough how displeased I would be at a security breach of this nature."

"I understand, sir. I understand completely."

"This did need my personal attention. Try to avoid other incidents of this kind. I find the interruptions distasteful." The Darhel's breathing exercises were still audible in the AID network's transmission. He hated getting the boss upset—for the sake of his own skin rather than any liking of his employer. Bobby was right, though. When two risks to his safety conflicted, he just had to guess which one was smaller and go with it. He grimaced and walked back into the office.

"So do we have a go, or not?"

"We've got a go. But we need a pathologist who's good enough, but expendable."

Bobby winced. "Gotcha," he said. "I'll try to find one who doesn't have too many people to scream when he's gone. And keep the assignment itself confidential. We might need to do this again someday, and I'd hate to have trouble finding help next time."

"Good point. So we pick somebody who likes money enough to get stupid."

Johnny Stuart ignored the muffled
pop
sound from the morgue and looked at the report projected by his AID. He sat in the ground floor breakroom customarily used by the former pathologist and his staff, also ignoring the flunkies going past to help Bobby clean up the mess. The Darhel corpse, of course, had to be removed completely.

Interesting results. The Tir was going to be extremely pissed. His chief of trouble prevention was torn between having an extreme plum of information to show for his efforts, and vindicating his call for an examination, versus nervousness about delivering the news. He had had to have a less intimidating staffer interview the Indowy who had cleaned the room.
That
report told him more about Darhel and lintatai than he'd ever wanted to know—specifically that he never wanted to be in the room when it happened, and that whoever had been was some kind of superman or something. A superman with a taste for blue silk shirts, judging by the scraps of fabric the departed doctor had pulled from Pardal's gut. It never for a moment occurred to him that the killer might have been a woman. The sheer athleticism it had taken to get out alive ruled that out.

His cousin had emerged from the autopsy room, leaving the scutwork to the less well-paid help. It was amazing how fast you got used to money and power. Despite appearances, Bobby wasn't on the payroll because he was Johnny's cousin. Bobby was on the payroll because he combined a solid background in law enforcement with one very special, crucial talent. Bobby was what you'd call a well-socialized sociopath. He could follow the rules of his employer without deviation when he wanted—because getting caught was a certainty, and he knew it. Someone without his talent would be tempted by all kinds of feelings, from love, to family ties, to friendship, to guilt.

Johnny could do the job, even enjoyed the job, but the nightmares were a stone bitch. He probably kept three researchers employed at Smith-Kline-Reynolds all by himself keeping him in sleeping pills. It was rare for the job to bug him, but the times it did he was torn between wondering whether he never should have taken the Darhel's dollar at any price, or whether he just plain liked it too much. The dead doctor in the other room didn't bug him, but he was just as glad that Bobby was the one to cap the prick.

Johnny's talent was management, especially of useful personalities. He kept Bobby unbored and made sure he had no hassles about getting laid. Easy arrangement. Bobby screwed whoever he wanted, Johnny had the girls checked out, before or after, and dealt with if they were a risk. Worked out for everybody.

Just now, Bobby was cursing at the coffee machine. In the present economy, it was unsurprising to find a pre-war junker of a machine, technically an antique, still in noisy, clunking service in the basement of a modern hospital. The offending machine had taken his money, and was straining noisily, but had failed to deposit the requisite paper cup in the appropriate slot. Johnny obliged by going over to the machine to exercise one of his own special talents—a mostly useless one, but still a talent. He could hear exactly where the problem was and somehow just sense where the problem was likely to be. He obligingly thwacked the machine on just the right spot to make it disgorge the cup and fill it with the doubtless crappy coffee.

"Thanks," his cousin said.

"No problem. Everything all right?" Johnny jerked his head towards the morgue.

"No problems. Where do we ditch the Darhel and the other dude?"

"Back where we found him, on top of the building. Nobody's allowed up there, and if we stick him in the right place, my understanding is that the Indowy will neatly haul them to the in-building trash incinerator. As easy as inserting tab A into slot B."

"Reminds me, I need the name of a new pimp. Freddie's girls are getting a bit long in the tooth." His cousin's tone was bland. The brief adrenaline rush had obviously worn off already.

"Sure. Tina, send him the next three on the list." He had warned his cousin about the circumstances of his predecessor's demise, but it went in one ear and out the other. He was
almost
clean in his operational habits.

His cousin didn't need conversation; in fact would prefer not to be distracted from his computer game, so the room was silent. He himself was preoccupied deciding exactly how he was going to present his findings to the Tir.

He had ample time, as the cleanup took several hours. Thank God for federal agents, who had the entire area tightly locked down. The former forensic examiner would be "involved in a sensitive murder investigation" permanently. The agents, believing it themselves, would handle inquiries down the road with the excuse of witness relocation. In a way, that was even true. His ashes, along with those of Pardal and whatever trash was in the building that day, had to end up somewhere. He supposed being murdered counted as involved in a murder investigation. Minus the investigation part. Whatever.

Chapter Five

Saturday, December 26, 2054

Johnny Stuart sat behind his cheap plastic desk, one that looked a lot more like wood than its forebears of nearly a century ago, and surveyed his cousin grimly. It was a good idea. It was just the kind of plan he'd asked for. It was also damned cold. He felt ghostly tugs at the remnants of a conscience he didn't know he still had, and couldn't help picturing his daughter, Mary Lynn, as one of the victims. The pang was fleeting; he did have a job to do.

"How are you going to prevent early discovery of the bodies? Or news reports of the disappearances?"

"It's not that hard. People generally don't fight the first day or two of a missing persons case when the police are insisting on waiting. Oh, they bitch, but they don't go all out calling the media and lawyers. If a seemingly kind cop or two is surreptitiously checking things out despite the rules, or appears to be, families think they've won something. They bitch, they panic, they're pissed—but no calls to the media or lawyers. In other words, over the time span we've got, we pick the right targets in the right order and we can keep a lid on the hits until January first. Then the various anonymous tips make sure everything breaks at once. Families don't want to give up hope until they identify the body. Right targets, right order, and we're golden," Bobby assured him.