Extremes Read online

  Wagner looked down at the floor. Flint missed the moment of eye contact. He wanted to see Wagner’s true reaction.

  “Technically,” Wagner said. “She’s my brother’s responsibility.”

  “Your brother will pay her the inheritance, let her help in her own defense, and maybe help her Disappear again.”

  Flint stood for the first time since Wagner had come into the office. The movement seemed to startled Wagner.

  “But think this through,” Flint said.

  Wagner’s shoulders were hunched forward, as if he didn’t want to hear this.

  Flint stepped around the desk. Wagner looked up, swallowing hard.

  “If I find Tey, and I can prove that it’s Tey, and she’s the one who made Rabinowitz sick, even with a lesser version of her virus than the one that killed all those people in that dome, this means that she’s guilty of the crimes she’s charged with.”

  “No,” Wagner said, a little too quickly. So he had thought of it. “It doesn’t mean that. It means that she’s guilty of this crime. One case of manslaughter if she didn’t know the virus would kill him.”

  “Homicide if she did,” Flint said. “And she would have done it to save herself. People usually don’t use elegant diseases to kill other people. Elegant diseases generally rule out a crime of passion. If what you’re telling me is true, Rabinowitz died slowly. Tey would have had a chance to back out once her passion cooled. To warn him, to warn others. She didn’t.”

  Wagner was watching him, expression completely neutral. Flint couldn’t tell if Wagner was really letting in the information or not.

  “A person who kills in cold blood, for intellectual reasons, is precisely the kind of person who would allow a domeful of people to die to get the results of an experiment.” Flint leaned against the desk. “So I ask you again. What do you want from me if this scenario plays out?”

  “Are you telling me you could kill her?” Wagner asked.

  Flint started. He hadn’t been saying that at all, although he could understand how Wagner had misunderstood him.

  “No. I’m saying that if we give her to your brother, and if she Disappears again, she will continue to kill.”

  “I thought you’re not a Tracker,” Wagner said. “I thought you don’t care what a Disappeared has done, and I thought you’d never turn one in.”

  “I’m not a Tracker,” Flint said. “It’s not my job to turn anyone in. But I do care what a Disappeared has done. And if this woman is guilty, she’s very dangerous.”

  “Then you stay away from her,” Wagner said. “Don’t let her get you like she got Rabinowitz.”

  Flint felt a flash of annoyance. Wagner wasn’t answering him, not in the way he wanted, and Flint knew what that meant. It meant that if Flint found Tey, Flint would have to chose what to do with her. Wagner didn’t want any part of that.

  Flint was not willing to accept this case on those terms.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “If I find Tey, I won’t let her know I’m onto her. I’ll let you know who she is and where she is. She becomes your responsibility then.”

  Wagner took a step backward, as if even having this part of the conversation was toxic for him. “I’d have to turn her over to my brother. And you know what would happen then.”

  “You’d have to?” Flint asked.

  “I’m ethically bound to. You know that.”

  “Actually, I don’t,” Flint said. “You’re ethically bound to keeping the confidentiality of your law firm’s cases as well, and you decided finding out what happened to Rabinowitz was more important. It’s not that much of a leap, then, to doing the right thing with Tey.”

  “I’ll do what I have to,” Wagner said.

  Flint suppressed a sigh. What had seemed straightforward not half an hour ago no longer seemed that way. Perhaps Wagner did have a hidden agenda, one that Flint couldn’t see. Maybe it had something to do with the power struggle in the law firm, or maybe it had something to do with Tey herself.

  Flint would investigate all of that. He would have to, before he even considered looking for Frieda Tey.

  TWENTY

  DERICCI COULDN’T GET THROUGH to the coroner. Instead, she left a message for him. DeRicci explained that the filter had been down when Zweig last appeared on camera, and it was up after she had died.

  DeRicci also mentioned the lack of rigor, and her concerns about time of death. She figured a few messages on this issue wouldn’t hurt, and it might actually get the coroner to contact her with some speed.

  The race still showed on the wall. She tried not to stare at it. It seemed so unimportant now.

  After she finished with the coroner, she’d contacted van der Ketting for the names of the runners who had passed the body before Coburn had arrived. Van der Ketting had gotten the information by scanning through the images between Zweig and Coburn and writing down the singlet numbers.

  Not surprisingly, all of the people who passed Zweig—with the exception of one—had finished in the top twenty of the race. The one exception had broken her foot at mile thirteen. DeRicci would either have to go to the medical tent to interview her or to send someone else there.

  What was surprising was that van der Ketting reported that all the other runners showed up in the second camera, the one that Coburn had showed up on when he was looking at Zweig’s body. That camera, however, didn’t seem to be working when Zweig came by.

  “I think the killer might have shut it off,” said van der Ketting. “Maybe he was waiting for her right by it.”

  DeRicci had been noncommittal. The theory had a nice logic, but it didn’t make all the details mesh.

  She had given the singlet numbers to the uniform outside the room, and had him track down the people she needed to talk to. The first one was the woman who had won the race, Shira Swann.

  Swann was a large, powerfully built woman. Her tight, curly hair was cut so short that for a moment, DeRicci actually thought Swann might have been bald.

  Swann strode into the room, not looking the least bit tired from the day’s ordeal.

  “What is this about us being kept here?” she asked DeRicci before DeRicci could speak. “We should be free to go.”

  “A woman was murdered. We’re interviewing everyone.” DeRicci indicated one of the chairs.

  Swann ignored the gesture. “Do I need a lawyer then?”

  “I don’t know,” DeRicci said. “Do you?”

  They stared at each other for a moment. It was clear that Swann wasn’t going to make this easy.

  Finally DeRicci had to make the concession. “This is just a preliminary interview, mostly for informational purposes, so that we can put a timetable together. Everyone is a suspect, but that’s mostly a formality. You can get a lawyer if you want, but that’ll only prolong the experience, especially since we’re only going to have to talk to you once.”

  Swann was staring at the screen behind DeRicci, and for a moment DeRicci wasn’t even sure the woman had heard her.

  “You know,” Swann said in her deep voice. “It has always been my dream to win this marathon. The Earth marathons were important, but this one—it is the one I grew up watching. It is the one I value. And the day I win it, I am also a suspect for murder.”

  Swann was excellent at manipulation. If DeRicci had been a bit more tired, had a bit less experience, or hadn’t been paying attention, she might have reassured Swann that she wasn’t a suspect, making the entire interview invalid.

  “At least you have the victory,” DeRicci said. “Jane Zweig never finished the race.”

  “Is that her name, then? Jane Zweig?”

  “Yes,” DeRicci said. “Did you know her?”

  “I knew of her.” Swann pulled back the chair as if sitting down had been her idea all along. “Dangerous woman, that.”

  Interesting. Only the second interview, and both people had referred to Zweig in unfavorable terms. “Why?”

  “You don’t know about her company, the one tha
t lets people try anything so long as they sign their rights away?”

  “Extreme Enterprises?”

  “That’d be the one.” Swann turned her chair so that she could see the race still playing on the wall.

  DeRicci walked behind Swann, and turned the controls so that the race showed up on a different wall. DeRicci made certain the screen was so small that she would have to look carefully to see what was going on.

  “Did you have experience with Extreme Enterprises?” DeRicci asked as she walked back into Swann’s line of sight.

  “Now what would I want with jumping off cliffs into fiery seas on planets so far from here that I’d spent half my life getting there?” Swann shook her head. “I’m a runner. I don’t need to try risky things to prove my strength to myself.”

  “Seems to me that running this marathon is risky.”

  Swann raised a single eyebrow at DeRicci. “I suppose. And I suppose what you do is risky, dealing with criminals from day to day. But they’re acceptable risks, if you know what I mean. People have made them for years.”

  DeRicci sat down, not taking her gaze from Swann.

  “It seems to me,” Swann said, “this other thing is people taking unacceptable risks for no real gain. Doing extreme things to themselves or their bodies because they’re rich and bored or too cowardly to take risks that’ll mean something.”

  “Like running a race Outside? That means something?” DeRicci couldn’t resist the question, even though she felt slightly offtrack.

  “To me it does, but to you, no, I don’t suppose it means much. This was an indulgence, and nothing more. The fulfillment of a dream. But then I go back to London where I’m living now, and I design races for charities, something that’s gone on for generations now. People collect money for each mile they run, and give that money to needy folk. It takes care of the rich and bored by giving them something to do while they put their money in the hands of those who need it.”

  Swann leaned back in her chair, and as she did, DeRicci could see the muscles in her stomach and chest move beneath her shirt. DeRicci didn’t know anyone who was as in shape as Swann, not even the new recruits on the police force. It made DeRicci, with her diet of anything-whenever-she-could-grab-it, and fake caffeine whenever she couldn’t find real caffeine, feel like a slob.

  “I had another reason for being here.” Apparently Swann had taken DeRicci’s silence for disapproval. “I wanted to work with the Moon Marathon committee to see if they would be willing to let us sponsor another marathon on their course, for charity. But you people here don’t have the same attitude toward the poor that we do.”

  That statement surprised DeRicci. She had never been to Earth, so she wasn’t certain what could be different. “We don’t?”

  “No. You seem to think that if they can’t fend for themselves, then they’ve got some sort of character flaw. I get the sense that if you could ship people out of the poor areas in your fair city, you would do so.”

  Even though DeRicci knew that Swann’s use of the word you wasn’t personal, she still took it that way. People who lived on Earth with its open land, and unlimited resources, didn’t understand dome life. Inside a dome, if you didn’t contribute, you were wasting precious resources and interfering with other people’s survival.

  But DeRicci didn’t say that. She had to focus on the investigation, not some philosophical argument with a woman who was too wrapped up in her own agenda to understand that the universe was a diverse place.

  “So the committee wouldn’t work with you?”

  “No. Once they found out what I was about, they wouldn’t even meet with me. They thought I was going to interfere with their major tourist event.”

  “Wouldn’t another marathon do that?”

  “Of course not.” Swann sounded so sure of herself. “The Moon Marathon is the one with cachet, and that wouldn’t change. We’d just be pretending to be a practice run for it, and raising some funds for the needy at the same time.”

  “You were trying to expand your company.” DeRicci finally understood now.

  “Yes.”

  “So of course they’re protective.”

  “We’re a nonprofit. We were not going to interfere.”

  DeRicci wondered about that. She’d come across a lot of nonprofits over the years who had interfered with other businesses.

  Would they have killed Jane Zweig to make their point, to shut down the Moon Marathon so that they could revive it and establish their own?

  It sounded unlikely, but DeRicci had seen too many unlikely things to rule it out entirely.

  “But they might have seen it that way,” DeRicci said. “Right? That you were going to interfere?”

  “No ‘might’ involved. They did see it that way. And they weren’t so very happy when I won today. They saw that as a threat as well.”

  “Or perhaps they were preoccupied with the murder victim who still lay on their course.” DeRicci’s tone was sharper than she intended.

  “Perhaps,” Swann said, but it sounded as though she doubted it. DeRicci’s pointed reminder—that there was a bigger picture here, and it involved a woman’s death—seemed to have passed Swann by.

  DeRicci decided she was going to stop handling this woman as if she were someone important. “You passed Jane Zweig’s body, didn’t you?”

  Swann shrugged. “I passed a number of people down on the course.”

  “So much for charity,” DeRicci said.

  Swann’s cheeks flushed. “We’re told not to stop, that everyone has panic buttons, that it’ll be taken care of by the volunteers and the medics. You learn, Detective, that people get injured when they run, here and on Earth. It’s part of the sport. You can’t help them all, and you don’t succeed if you do.”

  DeRicci let Swann’s last sentence echo in the room. Swann’s flush grew deeper.

  “I think there’s a difference between someone who is injured and someone who is unconscious,” DeRicci said. “There’s no way anyone would have taken Zweig’s body for a simple injury.”

  Swann’s fingers tightened on the arm of the chair. DeRicci wouldn’t have noticed if Swann wasn’t in such spectacular shape. The muscles in her arms moved as the fingers increased their grip.

  “I’m not on the medical staff,” Swann said. “I don’t know how to evaluate these things.”

  Defensive again. DeRicci found that she liked that.

  “Huddled in a fetal position, not moving, right smack in the middle of the course. You didn’t think that was worth maybe a notice along the link, a warning to the other runners, a request to the volunteers to move her? You could have sent for a medic without stopping.”

  “I thought perhaps someone else already had,” Swann said.

  “Who would that have been?” DeRicci asked. “At this point in the race, there weren’t many people ahead of you.”

  Swann shrugged. “I do not keep track of who is ahead of me.”

  That, DeRicci knew was a lie. “Not even at the end? You’re telling me that little burst of energy you had at the very end was just spontaneous. It had nothing to do with the fact that you knew you could win this thing?”

  “I pay attention in the last few miles,” Swann said. “But in the first few, it’s not worth my time.”

  DeRicci wasn’t going to get Swann to talk openly this way. She needed to take better control of this interview.

  “Look.” DeRicci deliberately softened her tone. “I’m mostly talking with you as a witness, and all I want to know is what you saw when you came up to mile five.”

  Swann shrugged. “Nothing unusual.”

  Not the body on the course? Was that nothing? But DeRicci bit back those words. She was trying the conciliatory tack this time. It was difficult to play both good cop and bad cop, but she was trying.

  “Well,” DeRicci said, choosing her words with care. “Maybe you don’t realize that you did see something.”

  Swann’s eyes narrowed.

  “
For instance,” DeRicci said, “there were cameras located throughout the course, which were activated by sensors. When Jane Zweig came up to mile five—and she was ahead of you, right?”

  Swann nodded. “She usually was at this point in the Moon Marathon, but every year, I’ve beaten her.”

  DeRicci was surprised. For some reason, she thought this was Swann’s first time in the race. “But this is the first time you’ve won.”

  “I came in third twice,” Swann said, “and have been in the top ten all the other times. Most of the time, I was a few places ahead of Zweig.”

  “So you did know her.”

  “I knew of her,” Swann said again. “I don’t think we spoke more than fifty words in all the years we’ve competed.”

  “Because you didn’t like each other?”

  “Because there was no point.” Swann crossed her arms. Her biceps muscles bulged. “Besides, this was the only race I saw her at. Have you tried to talk to someone when you’re wearing those suits? It’s pretty near impossible.”

  Unless you were linked. But again, DeRicci didn’t say what she was thinking. Still, this brought up a few other questions. “Why didn’t you go to Zweig with your idea for a charity marathon Outside? She would seem like a logical candidate to help you.”

  “We’re on opposite sides, detective,” Swann said. “Zweig’s business is for profit. Mine is not. She would want a take, and I wouldn’t want to give it to her.”

  So Swann had thought of it. DeRicci made a mental note of that, deciding that either she or van der Ketting would check to see if Swann had had an appointment with Zweig in the last few weeks.

  “Just curious,” DeRicci said in that lighter tone. “As you can see, I’m not a specialist in this area. I’ve only been to the marathon when someone dies.”

  “There have been other murders?” Swann sounded startled this time.

  DeRicci shook her head. “All accidental deaths, which is what I expected this one to be. Obviously, it was not.”