Paloma Read online

  “When did you get the message about the building?” Flint asked.

  “I didn’t get it,” Nyquist said. “It came into the department.”

  “Don’t play with me.” Flint was suddenly tired. “If you’re not going to tell me something, be up-front. But don’t play word games with me.”

  Nyquist’s expression flattened. He was a good cop. Whatever emotion Flint had provoked wasn’t going to show in his face.

  “All right then,” Nyquist said. “I’m not giving you any information that isn’t going to the press. I did you a courtesy bringing you up here, but that’s it. That’s all I can do.”

  “You wanted to see my reaction,” Flint said.

  “That too,” Nyquist said.

  “You suspect me?” Flint asked.

  “We don’t have enough information to suspect anyone right now,” Nyquist said.

  Flint smiled coldly. “You mean, you suspect everyone right now.”

  Nyquist nodded. “That’s the other way to put it,” he said.

  Four

  Flint took his time leaving the apartment. He studied the spatter pattern, which grew thicker and more elaborate the farther into the hallway he got, and that puddle near the elevator door.

  Nyquist wouldn’t let him look in the elevator itself, but Flint used as many tricks as he could to get his own internal cameras to zoom into the evidence. He wouldn’t get much of it, but he would get some.

  Maybe it would be enough.

  The techs worked around him. The woman glared at him. Occasionally, she would look at Nyquist as if she couldn’t believe what he was doing.

  Nyquist also kept an eye on Flint, but he seemed less interested than he was. That could be a cop trick; Flint had used it himself on occasion.

  Flint couldn’t get any closer to the real evidence. Finally, he decided to let the crime scene techs finish their job, and he took the stairs down.

  He didn’t remove the suit. He would keep that, just like he had told Nyquist he would. Maybe it had picked up some external trace, things he could investigate.

  He had a few others, as well. In addition to the vid footage he just took, he had one rather large lead. Nyquist had told him that the building had an internal security system—one that had worked well enough to contact the police when there was a problem.

  Flint could hack into that. He would have to be careful, to make certain he didn’t leave any trails or trigger any alarms that the police department techs set.

  For all he knew, Nyquist could have told him about this to tempt Flint to access the system. Maybe Nyquist would see that as a sign of guilt.

  Flint didn’t know. For all his understanding of the other man’s techniques, he didn’t know Nyquist at all. Nyquist seemed like a good detective and a good man, but Flint based that on a few encounters and a few favors.

  Encounters and favors were enough for a casual friendship, but not enough to know how the man conducted his investigations.

  Flint pushed open the door to the lobby and stepped into it. A few street cops still milled about, but he didn’t see any employees. This building prided itself on human service—no robots, no alien workers (at least in the public areas, which was how they got around the discrimination laws)—and it couldn’t run without some kind of help.

  Maybe it had an automated backup.

  Maybe the residents were all evacuated.

  If that was the case, why? Why would people have been thrown out of their homes?

  The entire building was a crime scene. The only part of it that Nyquist hadn’t protected were the stairs. He’d carefully led Flint inside, probably walking him on an already established path.

  One of the street cops looked at him, as if wondering who he was. Street cops didn’t know everyone in their department, let alone every police employee in the city.

  Flint had to be careful—he didn’t want too much more attention on himself, not from Nyquist or the investigation—but he was willing to take a risk. He didn’t even look like himself. With the help of that suit, his blond curls were pressed against his skull, and his clothing’s cut—certainly not affordable by anyone in the department—wouldn’t be as obvious.

  “When was the building evacuated?” he asked as he approached the nearest street cop.

  She was slender and young—maybe twenty-five. She had regulation-length cropped black hair and skin so white that it was almost translucent. He’d never seen anyone with skin as white as his before.

  “Two hours ago,” she said.

  “Did you help supervise it?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” she said. “I just made sure they stayed within the marked area as they left. These people were mad. They wanted to know what would happen to their belongings.”

  “They’re not going to be gone long enough to worry about that,” Flint said, guessing, hoping that would elicit more information from her.

  “We didn’t know that then, sir. That report of some kind of biochemical goo—that really spooked everyone.”

  Biochemical goo. He couldn’t ask for a more specific term. That would show he truly was out of the loop. But biochemical goo might give him another in into this investigation, one that might provide him with more help than he could get through the department.

  He wondered how much Noelle DeRicci knew about the so-called biochemical threat, or how much of it was being handled by her underlings. If DeRicci knew about it, then she would help him.

  She owed him.

  Although she might not do much, considering that this case involved Paloma.

  “When are the residents going to be allowed back?” Flint asked.

  The street cop blushed. One of the disadvantages of being so light-skinned. “I didn’t pay attention, sir. It was after my shift, so I really didn’t…”

  She waved a hand instead of finishing the sentence. To imply that she hadn’t cared was one thing; to say it was another.

  He nodded. “When do you get off shift?”

  “An hour, sir.”

  He thanked her and headed to the main desk. No one stopped him. No one seemed to pay any attention. Whatever part of the crime scene this had been—and it had been some kind, or they wouldn’t have had the precaution of people leaving a specific way—it was no longer.

  He glanced at the elevators. They were stopped on Paloma’s floor.

  When he’d come in, he’d seen crime scene techs near the elevator doors. None were there now.

  Still, he stayed back. He went behind the long black desk, noted the kind of security system the building had, but didn’t touch any surfaces. Better to keep his hands off things.

  Better not to give Nyquist any clues as to what he’d been doing.

  Flint took one last look at everything in the lobby—memorizing it as well as recording it—and then headed out the way he’d initially come in. The front door, even though it was now marked as a crime scene, wasn’t that well protected.

  The street cops just shut off the security lights, nodded at him, and then went back to staring at nothing, probably wishing someone had automated the system so that they could get home.

  The front yard was empty too, except for police footprints and some equipment waiting to be picked up. The vans were still there, but no one milled around.

  A few curious people watched from across the street, but didn’t come any closer. The crime scene lights had warnings on them—a mild electric shock to anyone unauthorized to cross.

  Flint leaned back in the door. “I’m parked across the street,” he said to one of the guards. “Can I get through that?”

  The guard shook his head slightly, but followed Flint outside. As Flint reached the red beam of light, the guard stepped into it first, his chips deactivating it.

  The cop didn’t even question Flint’s inability to step through on his own. A lot of detectives refused to wear those deactivation chips, feeling they compromised any undercover work.

  Flint passed through the little gap in the l
ight, then hurried to the building where he’d left his car. So much to sift through. So much to do.

  He wondered what would have happened if he had gotten Paloma’s message the moment she sent it instead of hours later.

  Would he be dead now, too?

  Or would she still be alive?

  He had to know.

  But first, he had to know what happened—and that would take some work.

  Five

  Nyquist stared at the spatter pattern, wishing he could see what Flint had. Techs swarmed the hallway, their equipment climbing over the walls, finally taking samples from various places in the ruins of what had once been a life.

  Nearly three hours before a single sample was taken. That was how deep the scare had been.

  He sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. His ex-wife used to tell him if he left his hair alone, he’d have hair left. Of course, she’d urged enhancements—some kind of cell replacement so that his hair would grow again.

  But he didn’t have the time for that. He barely had the time for this—a study of an inexplicable crime scene, one that could have caused a panic through the entire city.

  “He left with the suit.” Mikaela Khundred said in a disapproving tone.

  “I told him he could.” Nyquist continued to study the spatter. He suspected Flint had recorded the entire scene, and that didn’t bother him as much as it should have. If Flint had been involved, he wouldn’t need the recording.

  If he hadn’t been involved, he might help Nyquist solve this.

  It was one of the most savage killings Nyquist had ever seen. He’d seen some Disty Vengeance Killings and a few other alien ritual deaths, but this seemed different. The spatter alone suggested that Paloma—whose last name he hadn’t yet been able to find—put up a terrible struggle.

  Flint had been shaken. He’d nearly passed out when he saw the body, but he had recovered quickly. Too quickly? Nyquist didn’t know. He’d never brought another professional onto a scene where the professional had known the victim.

  “You were wrong to do that,” Mikaela said.

  Nyquist suppressed a sigh, trying to remind himself that she was new. Promoted from the Space Traffic police because of her great collar rate. She’d saved lives more than once with some creative thinking—something the brass liked to see.

  She’d been allowed to pick her promotion path, and like everyone else, she wanted to be a detective. Somehow everyone outside of the detective unit saw this work as glamorous.

  In all his twenty years detecting, he’d never use the word glamorous to describe the job. Difficult, yeah. A grind, sure. But glamorous? Never.

  “He’s a former cop,” Mikaela said. “He bends the rules. Hell, I saw him manipulate one of the toughest people in Space Traffic to get a yacht out of the port. He takes advantage, you know? And I’d hate to see that on your record. I’d hate it if—”

  “It were on your record too?” Nyquist turned slightly.

  Her green eyes were cool. She had pulled her red hair back with some kind of barrette and then placed a covering over it. She was wearing a suit as well, even though she hadn’t earlier.

  “You don’t like me much, do you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know you,” he said, and turned back to the spatter. That much was true. She’d been assigned this case because the brass believed he needed a partner. He preferred to work alone.

  They’d been working together only three months, and if he based everything he knew about her on those three months, then, yeah, he’d say he didn’t like her.

  “All I’m saying is that you should’ve taken the suit, and you should’ve interviewed him—formally—on the record. I mean—”

  “What’s to say I haven’t?” He couldn’t concentrate on the spatter, so he turned all the way around. A couple of techs scurried past. One gave him an odd look, as if he, too, disapproved of letting Flint on the scene.

  Flint had arrived just in time. The biohazard had been cleared—it had been a false reading from the building’s security system—and people could come and go in the building again.

  Of course, Nyquist was using the quarantine to his advantage. He wanted to finish evidence-gathering and start cleanup before the residents returned.

  He hadn’t told anyone else that, either.

  “Does that mean you have interviewed him?” She crossed her arms. She was still young—maybe thirty—with a quick intelligence and an even quicker temper.

  He liked the temper.

  “I mean,” he said, trying not to speak too slowly so that she would know he was talking down to her, “that I recorded Flint’s entire reaction. We’ll have it analyzed, maybe even by that department profiling thing.”

  “The program? What about the shrink?”

  “Her too.” Even though Nyquist didn’t put too much stake in human expertise outside of his own.

  “You did all of this on purpose?”

  He almost snapped, What’d you think, that I felt kindly toward the man? Instead, he said, “In an investigation, I do everything on purpose.”

  Including keeping Khundred out of the loop. Initially, he’d figured she was too green. But now he was thinking she was too literal.

  She wanted things by the book, on the record, aboveboard. Which wasn’t the impression she’d given the detective squad when she’d been bucking for promotion. Despite what the regs said, the detectives who were the most creative in their interpretation of the rules closed the most cases, and, ironically, had the fewest convictions overturned.

  “I wish you would’ve told me what you were doing,” she said.

  “In front of Flint?” Nyquist asked. Not that it would have matter. Flint knew what Nyquist was up to. The simple tricks, the one that fooled civilians, hadn’t fooled Flint at all.

  For a while, Flint had played along. Then he had seen Paloma’s body, and his entire attitude changed. There had been that momentary breakdown, and after that, Flint had gathered himself, become cold, if a little distracted.

  And he had stared at the spatter.

  Which Nyquist was going to do if Khundred would just leave him alone.

  “Not in front of Flint,” she said. “You could’ve pulled me aside—”

  “And left him alone,” Nyquist said.

  “Or not let him up here at all.”

  “Then I would’ve missed his reaction.” Nyquist glanced at the spatter. Part of it wasn’t dripping. That bothered him. The rest was slowing drying, but still suggested the extreme violence that had brought Paloma to her end.

  “That fake near-faint?” Khundred said. “Please. I could do that.”

  “So could I,” Nyquist said. “But it wouldn’t be my choice of a fake reaction.”

  She tilted her head, encouraging him to go on.

  But he didn’t. If she didn’t know how hard it was to fake buckling knees—that slow-motion movement was something that only happened in deep shock—then she didn’t understand what he meant.

  Most fakers cried or teared up or gasped theatrically.

  Flint had done none of those things.

  He had paled—which Nyquist would’ve thought impossible given his already pale skin—and then he’d lost control of his legs, catching himself in such an awkward way that Nyquist knew that part was real.

  What Nyquist didn’t know was how much of it was shock over Paloma’s death—or shock over the way an expected death actually looked.

  He’d seen Flint near a death scene before: he’d had to break the news to Flint about the loss of one of his clients. That day, Flint had reacted with barely a flicker of emotion. Mostly irritation—some of it at Nyquist, although he didn’t voice it—and most of it at the client herself.

  This was different.

  This was interesting.

  “He’s gone now,” Khundred said.

  “Good,” Nyquist muttered.

  “You didn’t set up a formal interview.”

  “Nope.”

  “You
didn’t arrest him.”

  Nyquist bit back another irritated response. “On what grounds?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The fact that he was the last one to visit her.”

  “Says some guy at the front desk. And no one asked him what he meant by last. He might’ve meant last human. He might’ve meant last person he’d seen. He might’ve meant last person he recognized. That’s not enough for an arrest.”

  “It’s enough for questioning.”

  “Grilling actually,” Nyquist said. “By you.”

  She frowned. The look added lines to her forehead, lines she was probably vain enough to remove the moment she noticed them.

  “Are you saying I should question him?”

  “I’m saying you should stop questioning me. I’m senior on this investigation. I’ve closed more cases than you’ve read. This thing is a lot more complicated than it looks.”

  “It looks pretty simple to me,” she said.

  “It would,” Nyquist said, then shook his head. She wasn’t going to get it unless he was blunt. “Look, we don’t just follow rumors and gossip. If we decide to take action against Miles Flint, I’ll do it.”

  “Because you’re his friend?” Khundred asked.

  “Because he’s too smart for you, little girl,” Nyquist snapped, and then wished he could take the words back. Those were the kind of words that got him warnings. Those were the kind of words that had prevented his own promotions.

  Those were the kind of words that would someday get him fired.

  Khundred’s dusky skin turned even darker, and her green eyes narrowed. Her entire expression told him that she’d take him down for that if they were somewhere else. If they were other people entirely.

  She was still too green to take him on.

  “He is your friend, though, isn’t he?” she asked, a little too loudly, apparently trying to set up some kind of case against Nyquist—separating herself from him because she believed he was doing this wrong.

  The techs would overhear, and she probably believed they’d back her. The techs didn’t back anyone. They overheard but they didn’t get involved.