Final Inquiries Read online

  "I am not calling you off the case," said Hannah. "I don't see how I can, in the situation we're in. But you know as well as I do that you should not be investigating this matter, for all sorts of very obvious reasons."

  "I agree. But it was bad enough that Flexdal had to send a QuickBeam message reporting Emelza's death. He did not wish to face the further dishonor and loss of face that would be involved in making the slightest suggestion that I might be a suspect. That would be extremely difficult on a professional level, but that is only part of it. He is a distant connection of both my family and Emelza's, and was part of the group that arranged for us to be espoused. To take me off the case would, in effect, be to admit to a large group of high-social-status Kendari that he had introduced her to her killer, and arranged for them to be together. He also has family ties to the office that would have dispatched a replacement investigator and would have faced grave embarrassment there as well, on similar grounds. He was instantly convinced that Milkowski did it, or that some other human made it look like Milkowski did it. There was also the time element. The Vixa were going to give us one round-trip on the Eminent Concordance--but not two. As I understand it, it takes a dozen or so days to replenish the ship between journeys. That meant we had to choose, quickly, between getting in human or Kendari investigators.

  "For all the reasons I just listed, my Superior chose humans. He dispatched me to collect you in order to assert his official confidence in me, and to establish me as the senior, leading partner in the investigation. My job, as he sees it, is to force you to reach the conclusion that a human did it and force humans to absorb the full humiliation of declaring yourselves guilty. He is, obviously, a fool, but those were his intentions."

  "And maybe you should do what he says," said Jamie Mendez. "If that's the way evidence is pointing, and we're heading another way, you push us back. You keep us honest. But your boss is right, at least up to a point. You can't be the lead investigator on this."

  "Agreed. I can assist. I can provide support. But you two are the only ones here who aren't suspects. You must lead the investigation. And if you conclude that the best way I could help would be to lock me up in solitary confinement starting right now, so be it. If I am innocent--and I am--then I have the strongest possible motives--personal, professional, and patriotic--for wishing you to succeed."

  "I think we can find better uses for you than locking you up," said Hannah Wolfson. "But you remind me of another point. Your xenologist and our ambassador both put all of their personnel in voluntary confinement. I've got a few ideas about how we're going to deal with it, but it's going to be a huge nuisance. I frankly don't see how we can manage interviewing your people as well--and I don't think it would be such a bright idea for either side to have enemy aliens in the room for those sessions. I'd like to suggest that we simply do sight-and-sound recordings of all interrogations and provide the recordings to the other side."

  "Agreed. I was planning to suggest the same idea to you."

  "How are you going to deal with interviewing your entire staff?"

  "It is actually a fairly trivial problem. It is our custom for all of our staff to take their last meal of the night together. Only three embassy staff Kendari--myself, Emelza, and a maintenance worker--were not present at the meal. What that means, of course, is that everyone else has the rest of the dinner party to provide an alibi for the period around the time of death. I was present for the entire meal myself--except for when I went to collect Emelza. I planned to chide her for working late again. Instead, I discovered her body."

  "So you have an alibi as well," said Hannah Wolfson. "That's certainly something."

  "Unfortunately, I left for about twelve minutes just about at the time of--of the murder. There will be several witnesses who noticed my departure, I am sure."

  "Where did you go?"

  "I spilled some bloodsauce on myself, and went to my own quarters to clean up before it could stain my body felt." Brox looked from one human to the other, and decided to press ahead, play no games. What point in pretending not to notice what they would see instantly in any event? "And you are not fools, and are of course well aware that staging an accident like that--especially one that would account for my returning with mussed body felt, or with damp, recently washed portions of my body--is exactly what someone wishing to provide himself with a chance to slip away and commit a crime that might involve violence or struggle might do."

  Jamie Mendez frowned. "You said it. We didn't."

  Hannah Wolfson spoke up in a brisk tone of voice. "Getting back to your own people. How do you plan to proceed?"

  "I will work up a written interview form for all of them to fill out, describing where they were and what they did during the evening, without drawing any sort of special attention to the time during which the murder was committed--and see if I can determine who else went away from the meal and came back, or arrived late. I'll then go back and interview the appropriate parties directly."

  "That's more or less how we'll be proceeding. We'll want to see copies of all your interview forms, and recordings of the live interviews."

  "Will you wish to have them translated first?"

  "Frankly, our security rules say we can't rely on outside translation. We'd have to have our computers translate them anyway. The translator programs might miss a few things that we'll need clarified, but otherwise, don't waste your time."

  "Likewise, provide us--or, rather, me, I suppose--with your materials without bothering to translate."

  "It looks as if we're all going to have a lot of boring written statements to wade through," said Jamie Mendez in a cheerful tone of voice. "But speaking of information--that datapad you've got--you mentioned something about first fruits of the investigation?"

  Brox slid the human-made datapad across the table. "I'd appreciate it if you'd get that information transferred as rapidly as possible and get that datapad back to me. We don't have many of them."

  "I should be able to do it here and now," said Jamie Mendez, reaching out to take the pad.

  "Hold off on that just a moment, Jamie," said Hannah Wolfson.

  "Why?"

  "Just indulge me for a little bit." She turned to address Brox. "What is the data on that pad?"

  "Medical tests and studies concerning the cause and time of death. All the raw data is there, along with a discussion of the procedures used by Medical Technist Remdex 290 to arrive at his conclusions. I would expect that in your service, the medical technist would normally just give you final numbers, without going into a great deal of detail about how they were obtained. However, given the current circumstances, I assumed your people would want to work through from the raw data and confirm our procedures."

  "They will, if our people are still speaking to us," Hannah said. "Thanks, Brox."

  Brox looked from one of them to another. "Might I ask why your own people might not be speaking to you?"

  "We just had to tear a couple of heads off," said Hannah.

  Brox jerked his head back in surprise. "I beg your pardon?"

  "It's just an expression," Jamie said with a smile. "It means we had to yell at the ambassador and Dr. Zhen Chi. Let's just say they weren't following proper procedure."

  "And I will just say that sometimes your experiences parallel my own," Brox said, allowing himself a small moment of entertainment. "But getting back to the matter at hand, I can give you a verbal summary of the hard data. Your side can, must, and should verify all this, and we'll preserve the evidence for later confirmation and so on--but the matter is so straightforward that I doubt there will be any difficulty."

  "Before you do--have you got anything on the coffee mug yet?" asked Hannah Wolfson. "Were you planning to brief us on that right now? Is the data on it in that pad?"

  "Medical Technist Remdex is doing that work now, I believe." And Medical Technist Remdex is practically at the boiling point, ranting that his working conditions are intolerable, and he can't work for such long period
s without rest. "I was not aware that you wanted the data on the container first." Brox's tone of voice made clear the unstated and annoyed addendum because you never told me.

  "No, just the opposite. I don't want the analysis of the coffee mug just yet. We're not going to be ready for that information for a bit anyway."

  "Ready for it?" Jamie Mendez echoed.

  "Indulge me, Jamie, indulge me," Hannah said again. "It would be useful to our side if you kept the medical data separate from whatever you get on the mug and delivered all the information on your analysis of the coffee mug in its own package. I place no restrictions on our analysis of the samples we took from the cup, and of the broken chip of cup. You may have that information as soon as Dr. Zhen Chi has completed it."

  "Forgive me, Special Agent Wolfson," said Brox, "but I must point out that you are being a trifle mysterious."

  "Yes I am," Hannah Wolfson agreed. "I wish to avoid planting preconceived notions or causing misdirection. It is because I wish all sides to proceed with open minds, and open eyes, that I do not say more. It is for the benefit of the investigation."

  "It doesn't sound like it's for our benefit," Jamie Mendez said. "That evidence is important."

  "It certainly is," said Hannah. "And we'll get to it. I'm even going to risk the wrath of the catering staff and get the ambassador's permission to make use of the food supplies in the canteen to make sure we can make the best use of the information we get off that coffee mug--and how's that for being mysterious? For the time being, you just go ahead and pull everything off the datapad Brox brought in."

  "Yes, ma'am. Whatever you say, ma'am," Mendez muttered in English as he reached for the datapad.

  Brox observed that the two human investigators were not in perfect harmony. One had ideas or information the other did not. That in and of itself was of interest. "I will handle the report on the coffee mug in the manner you have requested," he said. Remdex will be glad of the break. "Shall I proceed with the summary of our other information?"

  "Please," said Hannah Wolfson.

  He exhaled, and forced himself to speak with the same calm and professionalism he would have brought to any other case. It was not easy. He consulted his information plaque and read off the data it displayed. "Emelza 401 did in fact die of acute caffeine poisoning, brought on by a massive dose of the substance received through the mouth. The time of death can be fixed fairly sharply. She died at roughly 1950 hours, in your units of duration measure. Converting to your units once again, Medical Technist Remdex estimates there is a ninety-two-percent chance she died within plus or minus twenty-two minutes of that time, and a ninety-seven-plus-percent chance she died within plus or minus forty-four minutes of 1950.

  "One slightly unusual feature of the case was that she apparently did not have time to swallow. There were chemical burn marks and so forth in her mouth and oral cavity, but not in--I am sorry, I don't know of a good word for this term in Lesser Trade--her swallowing tube. I expect we'll run into a few problems with technical and medical terms as we go."

  He paused to steady himself, and continued. "The absence of any damage to any tissue below about this point"--he gestured to about a handbreadth below where his neck met the base of his jaw--"suggests that death was quite rapid, and came about as a result of direct absorption of the caffeine through the membranes in her mouth and oral and nasal cavities."

  "Just a moment," said Hannah Wolfson, speaking carefully. "Forgive me for discussing unpleasant details, but it is necessary. In humans, at least, many sorts of trauma are not possible after death. There are other definitions for other purposes, but if this was a human who had been murdered by a fast-acting poison, we'd declare the moment that the person's heart--the person's circulatory fluid pump--stopped as death. The poison would travel around the body in the circulatory fluid, the blood. Once that heart, that pump stopped, the blood would stop moving almost instantly. The poison would therefore also stop spreading through the body. It might be transported by some other means, but only very slowly, and probably not very far."

  "All that is quite similar to how things work in the Kendari body," said Brox. "I do not quite see what you are leading up to."

  "Forgive me once again. Perhaps your personal involvement has caused you to miss a point. Perhaps it is a nonissue, and I am assuming Kendari are too much like humans. But let me be careful and thorough." Agent Wolfson checked her datapad and her handwritten notes. "Here we are. I wrote down some notes, and I have photos as well. I don't think you need to see them again, but if you do, I have them. I noted down 'apparent chem burns on the skin around back of mouth, also on visible int. mouth tissue. Inside of mouth, extensive inflammation.'"

  "That is all just what I got done saying."

  "Yes, but my notes go on. 'Also some discharge/irritation around visible eye and ear,'--she was lying on her side and I couldn't see the other eye and ear--'and inflammation and discharge from nasal openings.' It's pretty significant damage in all three areas. My photos show that."

  Agent Mendez checked his datapad. "Mine too," he said. "I guess what Hannah is asking is, if death was that fast, and if the Kendari equivalent of a heart stopped and the circulatory system stopped, how did the poison get transported to the eyes, ears, and nose fast enough to do that much damage? In humans at least, that sort of inflammation and discharge is driven directly or indirectly by the flow of blood, or else by things like breathing and blinking and swallowing that can serve to move fluids--and whatever poisons are in those fluids--around. And none of those things happens after death."

  Brox was stunned. How had he and the medical technist missed that? They had seen the discharge and inflammation, of course. Only a blind fool could have missed those. But they had forgotten that the processes that caused them ceased at death. How? "You are quite right," said Brox. "If anything, it sounds as if human bodies might be subject to more postmortem trauma than Kendari. For us, at least, they stop in effectively the same moment that circulation stops."

  "Okay. Again, my apologies for dwelling on unpleasant details, but if she doesn't have burn marks in her throat, which means she didn't swallow, yet she does have trauma to her eyes, nose, and ears, which means she was alive for some time after the poison got in her mouth--that can only mean that she was holding the poison, the caffeine, the coffee, in her mouth for a fairly extended period before she died. Or am I missing something?"

  "No, you're not," said Brox. "But it would appear I was."

  Hannah Wolfson drummed her fingers on the table--a common signal of agitation and uncertainty among humans. "All right," she said. "I'm probably about to divulge something that's classified. It's one of those damned fool things where we know something that you know, and we even know that you probably know we know it--but they slap a secret label on it anyway.

  "Here's the thing. We know various of your guys carry suicide pills on this or that sort of mission. The pills are pure caffeine--but they're coated with some sort of material that dissolves in about five seconds after it is swallowed. That coating is there because Kendari don't have internal nerves that respond to the sort of damage done by caffeine. The stuff will still kill you--it just won't hurt. The reason the coating is there is that the burning sensation in the mouth is so painful that no Kendari can suppress the gag reflex. The body instantly insists on your spitting the stuff out because it hurts so much. Is that all about right?"

  "I don't know your sources," said Brox, "but they don't appear to have let you down."

  "And you can report back to the Inquiries Service that the BSI has made the startling discovery that being poisoned can be very painful. I don't think I've just given away anything much. The point is that Emelza somehow or another held this stuff in her mouth long enough to cause damage to her eyes, nose, and ears without spitting it out. That might have happened if the killer held her mouth shut or something--but I didn't see any sign of any sort of struggle. Her fur--sorry, body felt--wasn't even mussed. Or was there something I missed?
"

  "No. There were no signs of a struggle. The various distortions of the body--the arched back, the rigid fists, the fixed grin, are all common features of a phenomenon that, once again, I don't believe even has a name in Lesser Trade. 'After-death paralysis' would be close enough."

  "Human bodies often react in very similar ways after death. We call it rigor mortis, two words from an archaic human language that translate more or less as 'death stiffness.'"

  "Excellent. I doubt the processes in humans and Kendari are identical, but near enough. But in any event, there was nothing about the body that indicated any sort of fight or attack."

  The room was silent for a moment. "And here I thought we were getting together to clear up a few questions," said Jamie Mendez. "Instead we invent new ones."

  "Wait a second," said Hannah Wolfson. "What about that handprint? That's a sign of a struggle."

  "A battle with the dead, perhaps," said Brox, deeply puzzled. Then he understood. "Another mistake on my part," he said. "Something so well-known among Kendari we assume that all others know it. There are even sayings that derive from it. 'A touch only the dead would notice,' meaning something that happens late that is noticeable but doesn't change things, and 'a light touch leaves a deep mark,' meaning that even doing something small can have a big result later on."

  "That's all very interesting Kendari folklore," said Jamie Mendez, "but what are you talking about?"

  "It's a phenomenon related to death stiffness. If left undisturbed after death, the skin of a Kendari becomes rigid and tends to swell up a bit--but it is only when something happens to disturb the swelling that it becomes noticeable.

  "The amount and duration and severity of the phenomenon vary depending on a number of different conditions, but everyone knows not to touch a dead body between, oh, let's see, in your measures it would be a period starting no sooner than a bit less than two hours after death, and lasting about three to five and a half hours from that time. If a body is touched during that period, some hours later, when the postmortem swelling and stiffening of the skin takes place, any place where the skin was disturbed won't swell up. The touch induces a set of subskin adhesions. The result is just what we saw--any point where the body was touched in that period after death will later show as an indentation when the postmortem skin swelling sets in."