Four or five rows of cubicles in they found the team assigned to the case, or at least three of its members. One set of four cubicles, arranged in a square, was notable amongst its neighbors for having a truly disreputable-looking ficus in the middle of it, its every skinny, straggly branch decorated with paper ornaments and less identifiable objects hung by strings: crayoned Christmas balls, foil dreidels, cellophane Jul fires, crumbling Day-of-the-Dead bone cookies, and here and there the occasional stranded paper plane. Under the spreading Whatsit Tree, in one of the cubicles, a young, short, round, dark-haired, dark-skinned man sat staring at the high-res vision plate set into the cubicle wall, with his hands in midair before him, seemingly twiddling with nothing. On the plate was an image of what seemed like a piece of thick rope.
Lee came up softly behind him and stood still, looking at the “rope,” as the seated man worked with the virtual glove box program. “Silk,” the man said, without turning to look at them. “Hi, Lee. Hi, Gelert.”
“Hi, Telly,” Gelert said. Lee said nothing as she watched Telinu Umivera manipulate the fiber under the scanner—definitely something worth watching, as he was possibly one of the best materials people in the department.
“Alfen silk?” Lee said.
“Yup,” Telinu said. “Look at the bump ratio.” The definition on the scanner’s enlargement changed, so that the “rope” filled the view. A pattern of shallow semi-hemispherical bumps became visible all across the view area. “It’s a dead giveaway: Earth-sourced silk fibers don’t bump that way. I teased this out of a thread someone left on the back of dil’Sorden’s jacket. Fifty-fifty blend: Alfen silk, Earth-New Zealand merino wool. Spun in Auckland, woven in Singapore.”
“But not from dil’Sorden’s suit?” Gelert said.
Telinu shook his head. “Wrong color, wrong age, wrong everything else. Someone he’d seen within the last…”
“Could have been a week,” said a voice from the other side of the cubicle. A head looked over the cubicle wall—blond, green downturned eyes, fluffy short hair: Stella de la Roux. “This guy wasn’t real good at taking care of his clothes,” she said in her soft breathy little voice. “I don’t think he even brushed the suit down when it got stuff on it—just shook it off.”
“Sounds like a gold mine for you, Stella,” Gelert said.
“More like a mudhole,” she said, and vanished behind the partition again. “It’s going to take hours to classify it all.”
Telinu pushed his chair back a little from his desk, stretched his arms above his head. “You have a chance to look at our raw findings yet?” Lee said.
Telinu shook his head. “I had a look ten, fifteen minutes ago, but the system hadn’t processed them through. Things are running slow today.”
“Well, there was definitely another Alfen at the murder scene,” Lee said. “I saw him, and Gel smelled him…at least a witness, if not otherwise involved. This might possibly have come from his suit.”
“Let me know if the interviewing makes it sound that way,” Telinu said. “I’d be glad of whatever psych corroboration we can get, because there is simply too much physical evidence on this body. Stelladella wasn’t kidding about his coat: half the county’s plastered over it. Mikki is having to macro some of my custom search routines so that the system can start sorting and flagging some of the eight million samples the guys in the clean room have pulled off it already…”
“Alfen fiber, Tierran fiber, Earth fiber, Alfen hair, Alfen fur…” came a voice from the third cubicle.
Lee and Gelert walked around that way. “Fur?” Gelert said to the long lean silver-haired man who was sprawled in that cubicle’s seat, watching line after line after line of code scroll up the display plate in front of him.
“Somebody’s cat,” Mikki Uiviinen said, looking over his shoulder at Gelert. “God only knows where he picked it up, and the problem is that we’re going to have to figure it out.”
“Did you know we found the murder weapon?” Gelert said.
“Yes indeed,” Mikki said idly. “Good boy.”
Gelert stepped forward, leaned his head over sideways, and took Mikki’s upper arm gently between his jaws. “I invite you to restate that,” he said, grinning around the arm.
“You bite me, I’ll bleed on you, I swear,” Mikki said, not moving. “Okay. Good ‘mancer.”
“Woof woof,” Gelert said dryly, and let him go.
“How come his report gets up here before mine does?” Lee said, slightly aggrieved.
“Because the weapon did,” Telinu said. “The eternal victory of the material over the immaterial, Lee. Sorry. Three sets of prints so far, they say in the clean room. One is Alfen: the characteristic double whorls and ‘barred spirals’ are clearly present. Ballistics is standing in line behind the dusters to get its hands on the weapon for barrel and muzzle work. Metallurgy has already pulled a sample for the registration.”
“Okay,” Lee said, breathing out. “Good.”
“So this isn’t just some mugging, you think,” Mikki said.
“No,” Lee and Gelert said in unison.
“Robbery?”
“No one touched the body after it fell,” Gelert said. “The assailant took off down the street, ran a few blocks down, a few blocks over, ditched the gun, ran some more, then caught a bus.”
“He wait long?”
“Not too long,” Gelert said. “It suggests that the murderer may have known the timing of the bus…”
“It also suggests that someone else might have been operating to make sure that dil’Sorden was in the right place at around the right time,” Lee said.
The others looked at her. She shook her head. “Conjecture,” she said. “I have interviewing to do yet. We’ll see if the facts support the theory.”
“Revenge? Retaliation for something going wrong?” said Mikki.
“Nonpayment for drugs?” Stella said. “Or a gambling debt?”
“Not enough data,” Gelert said. “We’re a ways off motivation yet. But I’m glad there’s at least some physical evidence supporting the idea that this was a joint Alfen-human job. Perceptual evidence may stand on its own in court these days, but it stands a whole lot taller with physical evidence to support it.”
“Well, we’ll stay on it,” Telinu said, turning his attention back to the strand of silk. “This one’s gonna take a lot of figuring out.”
“Not that we mind,” Stella said. “It’s certainly interesting enough. Been a while since I’ve dealt with an Alfen murder.”
Lee nodded…and then stopped. “Really?” she said. “A long while?”
Stella nodded. Telinu stopped a moment, thinking. “Yeah,” he said. “There was that case, what, three years ago? That rape and murder. But nothing since.”
Mikki looked over at him. “Not that you see them as perps all that often either,” he said. “But they usually seem to be on the other side of the gun, or knife, or whatever.”
Lee stood still and frowned at that for a moment. “Mikki,” Lee said, “seemings aside…exactly how often are Elves murdered? It’s statistics I’d be interested in. Worldswide, if possible.”
Mikki looked at her with a somewhat bemused expression. “Lee,” he said, “is it possible that you notice any news story in which you’re not mentioned?”
“Self promotion is nine-tenths of a career,” Gelert said. “You heard it here first.”
Lee gave Mikki a look, though she knew he was teasing. “This is a poor moment to descend into personalities,” she said.
“I’m not kidding,” Mikki said. “All right, maybe I am, you’ve been busy. But the FiveInterpol interspecies crime study is finally, finally about to be made public. After five, maybe six postponements. It was beginning to stink to high heaven; I think they just couldn’t find any way to postpone it anymore after the UN&ME started breathing down their necks. I would have thought you’d heard. It’s been all over the news.”
“The case we just finished really has been taking a lot of my time,??
? Lee said, “and I’ve had less time for the news than usual. Mea culpa. So can you get me a copy?”
“Not the slightest chance,” Mikki said. And winked.
Lee had little time for the winking. “Mikki, are you trying to suggest that the report suggests the distribution of such crimes is not standard statistical distribution for a population in a given universe? Maybe not even Monte Carlo! Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“I couldn’t say,” Mikki said, acquiring an expression of unusual innocence, even for him.
“That look of naked greed suggests that he could if the price was right,” Gelert said. “But he’s trying to maintain some poor semblance of innocence. He’s going to take it out of you in cookies, Lee.”
Mikki gave Gelert an annoyed look. “If word gets out,” he said, “nobody will feed me this stuff anymore, Lee. That would be unfortunate. It’s occasionally useful to be able to pick up bits and pieces of information this way…”
“It’s the gingerbread you’re after, isn’t it,” Lee said, resigned. “All right. Two dozen.”
“Three. With the gilding.”
“Don’t ask me for cute shapes.”
“I wasn’t going to. But service has to be paid for in kind, Lee, you know that. Especially when you think it’s going to make a difference to your case.”
She let out a breath. “Mikki, I’d be lying if I said I knew how it was going to make a difference. But I have a feeling it’s going to matter. If it’s too much trouble, forget it.”
“Not at all,” Mikki said. “Three dozen, gilt, no cute designs. I’ll have a word with my source.” He cracked his knuckles and looked at his screen again, where the code continued to pour by.
“When will you be done with the findings on dil’Sorden?” Gelert said.
“At this rate,” Stella said, “no sooner than the day after tomorrow. We’ll call if anything surprising comes up.”
Lee and Gelert said their goodbyes and made their way downstairs again. “You having another of your famous hunches?” Gelert said, as they came down the last escalator.
“You always tell me to trust them…”
“So I do,” Gelert said as he padded out ahead of Lee, into the blazing sun. “So. Lunch first? Then we’ll go check out that nightclub.”
“Right,” Lee said. As they headed across the plaza, she kept losing the brilliance of the day in that image of the dark body-shape falling past her; and as she turned to look over her shoulder, the still, slim shadow stood there by the corner of the building, watched another Alfen go down with his life running out of him, and slowly, unmoved, pulled back out of sight.
The man with the gun we’ll track down soon enough, Lee thought, not understanding her own anger, half-afraid to try. But you I am going to find with extreme prejudice…and after that, watch out.
*3*
Inside the nightclub it was dim, and dimmer still from the observer’s point of view. Here and there shapes were hunched over tables, pulled into themselves: but not many. A high wailing, like the keening for the dead, filled the air.
At a table near the front of the room, a shape sat by itself. A plate had been pushed off to one side, a crumpled paper napkin lying on it. A glass stood nearby, empty. The dark shape put some banknotes down on the table, some coins too, then got up slowly.
At the door he stood silent, hesitant, for a few moments. Then he pushed the door open. The orange light of the sodium-vapor streetlight outside threw his shadow against the wall near the door, sharp and distinct. He looked out the door, didn’t move for several breaths: then eased out into the evening.
Inside the dark room, no one followed him: no one noticed the door closing again. The keening of the jazz band went on, muted as the song came to a bridging passage.
Outside, to a tracker with keener ears, the music seemed as loud as it had inside, and a waft or confluence of scents from within the club drifted out past the dark shape. The tracker, though, perceived the shape itself also as a tangle of scents and aromas; deathlessness, strangely melded with fear, concern, unease, now moved away from the door, looking down Melrose. A metallic scent as it looked over its shoulder, saw nothing, felt in its pockets for the source of the metal smell—
The second set of scents, present from the beginning but not at the forefront, stronger and coarser than the first set, now slipped out of a doorway farther down the street and presented itself fully to the night.
The smell of gunpowder, blasting cap, barrel oil, pierced the dark air like a knife. The small grating sound of a footstep on the sidewalk alerted no one: but then sharp in the darkness, unmistakable, came the sound of the shotgun cocking. That sound lanced through the first tangle of scents like a missed heartbeat, made it turn, look behind, then break into a run, slide, go wide around the corner, vanish around it. The scents of gun and quiet enjoyment went after the smell of fear, fast, not afraid, anticipating. Then came the crash of the gun firing. And the second crash. Satisfaction, amusement, and the need to hurry, spread on the air. They faded away down Eighteenth Street, into darkness folding itself in on darkness, as scents of alarm, shock, surprise spread down the street after; and in the midst of them, in one spot, the smell of blood, of death, made itself all there was in that place—all there would be for a long time.
Then came the strange thing, the impossible thing: a scent that simply came from nowhere. The tracker always has a hint of every scent first—faint, then increasing until in full presence, then decreasing again to nothing. But this one drew itself as abruptly across the air as a trumpet note. Another scent of deathlessness stood at the corner, looking down Eighteenth Street at death. Its composure was not complete. Scorn lay on the air, and frustration. Yet it was pleased, for this was one more of several things that had needed to occur for some time. Soon the list would have been completed, and other things, even more final, could be brought about. Satisfaction filled the thinker, colder than that of the tangle of scents which had held the gun and pulled the trigger.
And abruptly as a trumpet note that does not fade, but simply ceases, the scent of satisfied deathlessness was gone.
Lee leaned back in her chair and let out a long breath. “That’s the third time I’ve run through it,” she said, turning her back on her commwall, “and I still don’t understand it.”
“You think I do?” Gelert said from his own office.
The wall between their offices was down. It was after seven in the evening. Mass had gone home for the day, and the two of them were going through the recordings of their “sniff” of the Vida Loca nightclub scene.
“Lee,” Gelert said, “I’m telling you that that perception is of someone simply vanishing. Not going away, not walking off. Simply not being where they were anymore.”
“And they do that how?” Lee said, getting up and starting to pace. It was her third outbreak of pacing for the evening, most unusual for her. “These are Elves we’re talking about here, Gel, not the Tooth Fairy! They don’t just fizzle out into nothing, any more than you or I do. The DA sees that attached to a prosecution case, he’s going to throw it out. Or us, on the grounds that one or the other of us has taken leave of our senses.”
“Or both,” Gelert said. “You’re going to have to review your own perception of that angle, and you don’t like the idea much, do you?”
She didn’t bother answering, because he was right. “Lee, stop stonewalling,” Gelert said. “If we both see it, then—somehow—it happened. Whether we like it or not! It’s both our business to perceive the truth, and we’re both good at it. So stop assuming I’ve had some kind of brain failure. Assume that I smelled what I smelled. How do we explain it?”
“I can’t,” Lee said.
“So for the moment let’s concentrate on what we can explain, and leave the inexplicable to the DA: it’ll be his problem anyway, once discovery is over. Let’s take it all from the top.”
Lee leaned back, and Gelert brought up the image of Omren dil’Sorden that appear
ed in his ExTel personnel file. “So here he is,” Gelert said. “Born in the Alfen equivalent of Rio de Janeiro, birth date sometime in the 1970s if the computer is converting correctly between our dating systems. Standard educational history—taught at home until seven, fostered out to a relative on his mother’s side in exchange for her own son, educated at what passes for a public elementary school and then a fast-track private secondary—”
Lee turned to her own commwall. Gelert had already brought the precis up on it, and the “long” version of the data was flowing by in a larger window to one side. A name stopped her. “Laurin—” She blinked.
“Wait a minute. The Elf-King was on his school’s board of governors?”
“Don’t get excited. Apparently he’s on all of them. There’s some ceremonial connection—I think the Laurin is supposed to be ‘patron of learning’ for all Alfen children, directly or indirectly. Even private schools get a lot of funding from the central government, such as it is, in Aien Mhariseth—Geneva, as we would think of it. Except it’s not Geneva; it’s somewhere in the Dolomites instead. An imperfect congruence.”
Lee nodded, went on to the other data. “University afterward,” Gelert said, “at Mehisbon, which corresponds to our Chicago. Another government-funded school, this one like the Sorbonne: strong on physical sciences and art.”
“Interesting conjunction.”
“Not for Elves: they don’t see them as separate. Dil’Sorden took a joint degree in computer sciences and economics. Afterward he did some postgrad study in intra-universal economics at their version of Columbia, which strangely enough is a religious school in Alfheim.”
That made Lee blink. “What religion?”
“I wondered about that myself. It’s some local sect that worships a deity called Alma Mater—a variant on Herself, to judge by the name. The mainstream Alfen faiths consider this one kind of flaky, I take it, but their schools are highly thought of…Then dil’Sorden took an interim year—got a medium-access visa for Xaihon and planethopped in their space for a while, the usual ex-student stuff. When he got back, someone headhunted him for ExTel. And there he’s been ever since, working like crazy. Six promotions since he came.”