CHAPTER 015
FOOTSTEPS ECHOED
I returned to my room and spent the rest of the wee hours tossing and turning in my bed, waiting for the chief medic’s summons. I passed time by trying to make sense of what I’d found over the course of examining the crime scene. The items themselves were innocuous—tufts of singed carpet, a bit of tape, and a miniature gemstone—but they were my only hints toward what had happened to him. When those didn’t add up to anything, I turned back to the other passengers and crew members I’d encountered. Untangling their messily intertwined stories was my only hope for progress.
Vatel seemed easiest to cross off the list. His role as a last-minute replacement had initially caught my attention, but the story about Chef Boiardo’s cybernetically enhanced stomach failing had checked out. The open kitchen itself provided an iron-clad alibi, as I, along with countless other diners, could personally attest to his presence throughout the dinner service. Had he attempted to step away, there would be no shortage of footage of him attempting to make his way through the dining hall, no doubt fending off countless admirers. If he was the culinary backup plan, I could only imagine what we’d missed out on.
There seemed to be no love lost between Dillon Fox and Matteo Russo, but I hesitated to think that the captain’s animosity rose to the level of murder. He was insistent on running a tight ship, something directly threatened by Matteo’s erratic behavior and Denaro-backed privileges. Dealing with a loose cannon unaccountable to him and his orders would no doubt have rubbed Fox the wrong way, but then why would he have been so cooperative with my investigation? Unless, of course, he thought we were working for the same team and that I was somehow in on it. Considering I still couldn’t figure out who Fox thought I was working for, that would be even trickier to sort out.
Wilder, of course, seemed like the ground level option. He had definitely been in touch with Fox and keyed him into our working relationship. If Wilder was indeed hellbent on seeking revenge for being disrespected by Frankie Denaro, taking out one of his personal guards and turning the captain of his vessel to his side would both be instrumental to the process. Until I learned more about Fox, there was little sense in guessing at his motivations, but that still begged the question of why Wilder would involve me in his plot.
If, as Wilder suspected, he was the one being set up, then him being the most obvious choice to kill Russo would slot into the scheme perfectly. Their preexisting rivalry aside, I had barely prevented a spectacle involving the two from breaking out the last time Matteo was seen in public. Had that been part of the killer’s plot, or just one of the many strange coincidences endemic to any unsolved crime that disappeared from memory upon its resolution? I doubted that Frankie Denaro would go so far as to write off one of his unofficial sons as collateral damage in a business rivalry, but I had yet to see the full power of his machinations unleashed. If rumors were true, that would barely scratch the surface.
Denaro’s revelation that Michelle was related to his slain ex-employee had also raised alarm bells for me. In the abstract, I could see the respected journalist, driven by a need for answers, taking her questioning a bit too far. Accidents happened. But Matteo made his bones as a professional enforcer. He may have had a bit too much to drink, smoke, and who knows what else, but he was still armed and, assuming his mood hadn’t yet subsided, quite dangerous. I toyed with the concept that she’d led me to the body intentionally, relying on superior acting skills to throw everyone off the scent, but it still seemed far-fetched. After all, the pen was mightier than the sword. If she’d wanted to lash out at Denaro or Wilder, she had far more effective and legal avenues for doing so.
Finally there was Tamsworth. At first glance he seemed preposterously ill-equipped to handle his own dirty work, but there were certain advantages to hiding in plain sight. He’d admitted to working for Madison Defense before leaving for Stellar Engines, which introduced the question of any remaining loyalties. Could he be a mole for Vance posing as a defector? Or could he have been a long-time informant for Denaro, whose usefulness expired around the same time as Harvey Wilder? That put him in the crosshairs from both directions, and therefore on a theoretical collision course with Matteo Russo in half of them.
Other nameless faces joined into the procession—the sleepy-eyed bellhop, the exquisitely mustachioed bartender, the uncannily alert cocktail server—swirling in with the relevant figures until it was impossible to tell them apart. When everyone seemed like a suspect, no one did. I forced my eyelids shut, praying they’d stay that way until I was summoned to the medical bay.
My wish was granted immediately, though not in the way that I’d intended. My comex buzzed with a message from Captain Fox on behalf of his chief medic. She was ready for me.
The next thing I remembered I was back at my own quarters, my head leaned against the unlocked door. In deference to my sleep-deprived state, professional autopilot must have kicked in somewhere along the way. Having sat in on half a career’s worth of autopsies and consultations with medical examiners, my brain and body knew exactly what thin sliver of resources needed to stay online in order to keep my mouth shut, nod my head when necessary, and take copious notes.
Out of sheer curiosity, I recited as much I could of what the grim-faced medical technician told me without checking my comex. There were no signs of severe physical trauma. Preliminary tox screens had ruled out poison or overdose. The latter eluding me as a theory was further testament to how far my reasoning skills had slipped since leaving the SDA. Either that or since I’d gotten a full night’s rest.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
A series of small, superficial electrical burns found at Matteo’s throat, armpits, and groin seemed consistent with cyberware malfunction as well as the melted patches on the rug. Scans, however, showed no traces of any implanted devices. She theorized they could have been evidence of torture, but we both agreed they were too small to be disabling in and of themselves. Absent any other evidence of restraint or signs of a struggle, it was unlikely they would have been enough to incapacitate Matteo on his own. He would have fought back, or at the very least gone for his gun. Which reminded me.
No, she’d said, there was no gun on the body. When he’d shown up on her slab, his holster was already empty. Now the phantom murderer capable of getting in and out of guestrooms undetected was in possession of one of the only firearms on the ship not currently stored away in the baggage compartment. Great.
“Trouble with your door?”
I peeled my forehead away from the cool glass globe of the peephole to find Michelle Benoit appraising me with a mix of concern and pity. She’d traded her glamorous eveningwear for a more sensible daytime ensemble, but the glimmering pendant necklace remained. I could have been wearing my car as a scarf with my suit and her outfit still would have been worth more than mine.
“Something I can help you with?” I grumbled.
“It’s come to my attention that you’ve been looking into the…unpleasantness from last night. I have as well. I thought it might be prudent for us to get together and compare notes.”
Her cooperative attitude was a stark reversal from her dismissiveness outside her room the night before. I tried to pinpoint whether she sounded more like an enterprising journalist prying for a lead or a suspect trying to gauge whether or not I was onto them. Unable to decide, I opted to kick the can down the road until I got a better read.
“Captain Fox said he doesn’t want us talking to anyone about it.”
“Fox said he doesn’t want us talking to anyone else,” she shrewdly countered. “But you and I already know about it, and it isn’t like we are running to tell the others.” As far as I was concerned, that was an admission that she had as well. Clearly, I was in no position to judge.
“Ms. Benoit, even if I knew anything that you haven’t already scrounged up, I’m sure you’ve dealt with law enforcement long enough to know that they won’t comment on an open investigation.”
“And if I were dealing with an officer of the law I would take that into account. But private detectives aren’t held to the same standards, even if they do happen to be ex-SDA. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Miller?”
Her coy grin was as flirtatious as Tamsworth’s, her tone outwardly conspiratorial. She was looking for a partner in crime. Whether it was to violate Fox’s gag order or for something magnitudes more sinister was yet to be seen. My best bet was to play it safe, to stick with the truth.
“I would say that’s an open-ended question at best, one that requires more than a simple yes or no answer.” I cracked my door open and heard CAT jump off the bed. I spotted his leash hanging from a coat hook just inside the door. “But if you’ll excuse me, I need to go walk my dog.”
“Remember what they say about two heads being better than one,” she teased.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I slid inside and grabbed the leash, holding it up for emphasis. “For now, duty calls.”
As the door closed, my comex hummed the long, single indicator of a contact being dropped to it.
“I’m available for dinner this evening,” she offered from the other side.
I’m sure you are. I waited until her footsteps beat a path down the corridor before moving from the abbreviated foyer to the room proper. I found CAT sitting on the bed, tail wagging, staring hypnotically at the twinkling panorama in the picture window. He barely looked up.
“And here I was ready to apologize for taking so long after you’d troubled yourself getting up to greet me. How silly of me.”
“Friend?”
“Jury’s still out on that one, bud. She seems like one of the good guys but there’s still a lot to unpack there. You see, her sister—”
“Friend!” CAT’s yap was so forceful that it pitched his whole body forward toward the window. If he really was seeing a person out there among the satellites and stars, chances were he’d gotten into Matteo’s stash while I was preoccupied. When I turned to get a better look, I realized it wasn’t anything within the window frame that was cause for concern. It was the rolling window shade above it. Somehow the tapestry had become wedged in the window’s seal, leaving a dimly glowing halo around its outer edge. I didn’t have time to worry about what had sucked it out or how. Any second now the room would explosively decompress. If we didn’t get shredded on the way out, we’d black out in fifteen seconds, then asphyxiate within three minutes. Our lifeless bodies would hurtle onward through the void indefinitely.
What should have been our final moments ticked by once, and then again. After a third time, I released my death grip on CAT and went to the window to investigate. I ran my fingers along the edge of the exposed panel. There was definitely a crack in the wall where there hadn’t been one before. In it, where I would have expected to find nothing but the black vacuum of space, there was a glimpse of dulled metal and the musty smell of a janitor’s closet. From this oblique angle, the supposed view from the window went pixelated. A video screen.
It hadn’t occurred to me that none of the windows located throughout the Lunar Express featured views of its central support structures. My quarters must have been located on the inward-facing portion of the ring, with its boring view of the rest of the craft replaced with a video feed taken from a separate vantage point. I dug my fingertips into the seam beside it and pulled as hard as I could. With a defeated whuzz, an electromagnetic locking mechanism released its partial grip and the disguised door opened into a narrow maintenance shaft.
Designers had cleverly used the false window to camouflage the entrance to a service hallway, not unlike the secret tunnels built into high-end hotels and commercial properties. This one likely served an identical function, affording easy access to housekeepers, plumbers, and electricians without broadcasting to the clientele that something was dirty, leaky, or on the fritz. The condition of the hallway itself suggested that perhaps some expenses had been spared in the restoration of the Express after all. The overhead lighting throbbed asynchronously from cheap bulbs hanging at inconsistent intervals. Paint flaked from girders and support beams while the reverse sides of the room walls remained curiously bare, creating the effect of being behind the scenes on a movie set. Scrawled graffiti, some of it quite crude, was everywhere.
A set of rapid footsteps echoed in the distance. Not wanting to give up my position, I signaled for CAT to stay put, pulled the door almost closed behind me, and took off after them.