The Cold Between (23 page)

Y
ou found him like this?”

“Yes.”

Greg stood in the cell doorway looking down at the body of Janek Luvidovich. The officer lay flat on his back, in a pool of his own blood, sightless eyes staring upward, the muscle and sinew of his neck sliced cleanly through. His arms and legs were straight, as if he had frozen and fallen, rigid and unresisting—not a natural pose for death. He had been slaughtered, and then arranged, whether out of respect or perversity Greg could not tell. All he knew was that, despite the lack of other cuts, the similarities to Lancaster's death could not be coincidence.

“How long had the alarm been sounding?”

“Less than three minutes.”

Greg glanced up at that, raising his eyebrows at Lieutenant Norin. Norin was young, and had almost certainly never expected to be left in charge; yet here he was, with Luvidovich dead, and Chief Stoya conspicuously missing and not responding to comms. Greg had seen a lot of youth and inexperience over the years, and he was far more forgiving of it than he ought to be, but in a building this size, three minutes was an eternity.

“What were you all doing for those three minutes?” he asked.

Norin's complexion warmed, and he shifted his gaze away. “We ran after them,” he said. “Nobody thought to come down here until they had lost us.”

No one had secured the crime scene. Greg rubbed his eyes; he would have Bob give the place a once-over, but he suspected the area was far too contaminated to tell them anything useful. All they had been able to fix was the approximate time of death: 1942, with about thirty seconds of slush on either side. Bob's instruments would be more precise. “Find out exactly when that alarm was tripped,” he told Norin. “I want to correlate it with time of death.”

Norin looked confused, but to his credit he seemed to be in the habit of obeying orders. He disappeared, leaving the two uniformed officers who had shown Greg downstairs to watch over Luvidovich's corpse.

He had known in the shuttle that something had gone wrong. He had commed Elena, figuring she would want to be with them when they pulled Zajec out of the clutches of the police, but she had not picked up.
Lusi
had clarified that her comm was deactivated: he had been broadcasting into the ether. He had had a moment of panic, and then thought to tune into the local news feed, where he saw the blurry footage from the spaceport security cameras. At that moment, his concern turned into anger. He knew her flying when he saw it. She had taken Zajec, and she had run away.

Away from Volhynia, and the Novanadyr police. Away from the Corps.

Away from him.

Luvidovich's death had not been on the news report. The
alert said only “armed and dangerous” and “do not approach.” But once they ran the gauntlet of rabid reporters at the police station door, Greg leaving Carter and his platoons to perform polite but firm crowd control, he had been allowed inside by a worried-looking uniformed officer and introduced to Lieutenant Norin.

He could not blame them for believing Zajec was responsible. They had not read Luvidovich's notes, and they could not know Zajec's alibi was unimpeachable. In this specific situation, he shared their goal of finding Zajec and Elena and bringing the pair of them home, and as far as he was concerned, that was all they needed to know

Greg allowed himself a moment of sadness for the dead man at his feet before he wondered if the crime was a copycat, or a follow-up.

He turned to one of the uniforms, a gangly young man who looked no more than sixteen. Greg wondered if they really made police officers out of such young people, or if he had finally become old enough to think anyone under thirty looked young. “I'd like to talk with Officer Keller,” he said.

The young officer looked grateful to have a reason to bolt from the room.

Greg followed him up the stairs and into what appeared to be a break room. A young woman was sitting there, wrapped in a blanket, staring blankly at a coffee table. Next to her another woman sat, holding her hand. She looked up when Greg came in, and frowned.

“Is this necessary?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, but he kept the threat out of his voice. He sat
down across from them and looked directly at Keller, striving to look sympathetic. Keller's ivory skin was mottled from crying, and her eyes were wide and miserable. It took her a moment to focus on Greg. “Officer Keller,” he said to her, “can you tell me what happened?”

She blinked once, slowly, but when she spoke, her voice was clear and strong. “He was torturing him,” she said.

“You mean Luvidovich was torturing Zajec?”

She nodded. “That was his task. They brought him in, and Chief Stoya said to Luvidovich, ‘Get his confession, and make sure it looks like you had to fight for it.'”

Charming. Not just state-sanctioned torture, but coerced confessions as well. “What did he mean by that?” he asked.

Her eyes lost focus again. “Zajec is a stranger, effectively an off-worlder,” she said, by way of explanation. “We are allowed, in cases of murder . . . If he confessed, we would stop.”

He tried to unravel that. “Meaning if he didn't confess, they were authorized to kill him?”

“Yes.”

“And put it on the record that he confessed even if he didn't.”

She nodded.

“Hell of a system you've got here,” he said, and he couldn't keep the contempt out of his voice.

The attendant glared at him. “She is a victim here, Captain,” she said, and Greg reflected that for a population who disliked Central in general and the Corps in particular, there were a lot of them who recognized his rank insignia.

“Tell me what happened after Luvidovich went down to interrogate him,” Greg prompted.

“I came down to check out something in evidence,” she said, her words stilted. “And I turned a corner, and she was there, holding a gun on me.”

“Commander Shaw?”

“Yes. She made me open the basement door, and she took my keys and my restraint controller. Then she hit me. I don't remember much else until I woke up on the floor of the morgue, tied up, and I started kicking and yelling.”

All on her own?
Even for Elena, that seemed unlikely. “How did she get in the building?”

Officer Keller looked away. “I don't know.”

Well, that was clearly bullshit. “What evidence were you checking out?” he asked her, still conversational.

“I don't remember. Something from the first murder, I suppose.”

“You didn't yell when you saw her?”

“I was startled. She had a gun. I thought she would shoot me.”

“Really?” He thought of the echoes of his footsteps in the huge open atrium. “That would've attracted some attention, wouldn't it? And pretty much destroyed her chance at a rescue.”

“I wasn't thinking. I've never had a gun pointed at me before.”

“Why were you carrying a key to the interrogation rooms?”

“We all do it.”

This time it was her companion who gave it away, unable to hide the startled look on her face. “Officer Keller—” he began, and was interrupted by his comm. “Excuse me,” he said, and stood, walking out of earshot of the two women. “Yes, Carter.”

“Sir, there's a reporter out here who wants to talk to you. Ancher. He's one of ours.”

Greg knew him: cheerful, dogged, utterly amoral, but not prone to frivolity. “What does he want?”

“He says he wants to show you something, sir.”

Greg had no patience for this shit. “Have him show it to you,” he said, “and if you think I need to see it, comm me again. If it's bullshit, shoot him.”

“Sir?”

He closed his eyes. He was definitely going to have to spend more time with Carter just so the man would know when not to take him literally. “Feel free to tell him I gave that order, Lieutenant. As far as actually following it—” He thought for a moment. “Use your own judgment.”

“Yes, sir.”

Greg turned back to Keller. She was watching him again, her eyes wary. That she was lying was clear, but her distress also seemed genuine, and he did not think she was faking how hard it was for her to focus. Making a decision, he walked back over and sat across from her again. This time he thought of Caroline, of his sister, of all the women whose hands he had held on bad days.

“Would it be easier if we spoke alone?” he asked her gently.

Her eyes widened, and immediately her focus improved. Her expression became nearly desperate.
Jackpot,
he thought, and she nodded.

The attendant was looking at Keller incredulously. Keller looked at her, squeezed her hand, and gave her a dismissive smile. “It's all right, Yana,” she said, and pulled her hand away. The woman stood stiffly and walked off. Greg waited until she was out the door.

“What really happened?” he asked.

To his shock, Keller's eyes filled with tears. “I didn't think they would kill him,” she said, and began to sob.

Greg had returned Reya Keller to the custody of her friend by the time Carter commed him back.

“You need to see this, sir,” he said, and Greg caught the urgency in his voice.

He found them outside, Ancher grinning like a Cheshire cat. He was dressed strangely, in snug trousers barely reaching his ankles and a tank top too thin for a cool evening. “What am I watching?” Greg asked.

“The big jailbreak,” Ancher said gleefully.

He had caught all of it, from Keller's discovery of Elena and Trey to the moment Elena used Keller's key to unlock the interrogation room door, armed with nothing but a cooking utensil. Greg watched the fight; it took less than forty seconds, but it was clear she would have lost it had Zajec not managed to clock the kid in the head with the chair. Elena's follow-up blow was equally decisive, but Luvidovich was moving when she stepped away from him. Greg watched her release Zajec and drop to her knees in front of him; he looked away when she kissed him.

“Cute, aren't they?” Ancher said. “This is going to play brilliantly.”

Greg decided not to punch him, and sped up the remainder of the vid. He only slowed it down to replay the flight from the spaceport hangar. It was a hideously reckless move, and she was lucky she hadn't killed someone. And yet, it didn't surprise him in the slightest. He couldn't think of another pilot who
could have pulled off that exit. He checked the time stamp on the vid: 8:07.

“This is it?” he asked.

Ancher nodded. “I'm sure you noticed the absence of either of them knifing the hell out of that sadistic bastard Luvidovich before they left.”

“Don't speak ill of the dead,” Greg said automatically.
What the fuck was going on?
“Did they say where they were going?”

“Captain Zajec told me I couldn't go with them, but I don't know if that means anything. I'm not sure he liked me much.”

“Who else has seen this?”

“No one. I promised the chief I'd sit on it for twenty-four hours.”

“The police?”

“I tried to show it to them, but with all that scrambling to deal with the crime scene, they didn't want to let any of us in.”

Greg rubbed his eyes.
Where did you go, Elena?
He activated his comm. “
Galileo,
do you have Commander Shaw's location?”

The lag in the response told him all he needed to know. “Commander Shaw is not in range,” the ship told him. He opened another connection, then turned to walk back toward the police station. Jessica picked up instantly.

“Did you find her, sir?”

“She's off-planet,” he told her. “Busted that pirate out of jail and stole a ship.”

“No shit.”

Greg knew he ought to chastise her for the admiration in her voice, but he found he shared it. Wherever Elena was, she was free. “I need the locations of all the PSI ships in the area.”

“Sending you the ship locations now, sir,” she told him.

“Thank you, Lieutenant. Jessica?”

“Yes, sir?”

He was not sure what he wanted to say to her, what connection he was looking for. He settled on “Keep your eyes open up there.”

“You watch your back, sir,” she said, and disconnected.

He commed Carter again, and outlined what he needed: one platoon to stay at the police station and make sure Lieutenant Norin saw the video—preferably with Keller's role excised—the other to head to Katya Gregorovich's place and keep an eye on her and her daughter. “They are not in custody,” he emphasized. “But I'm not sure if they're considered leverage on Zajec, and with Stoya missing I want them protected.”

“And if Zajec contacts them, sir, I'll let you know.”

“Good man.” Carter was catching on. “I want reports from both platoons every fifteen minutes, no exceptions. If Stoya shows up, if Zajec contacts someone, if anyone hears from the chief, I want to know right away, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Greg headed off into the shadows of the building to look at the data on the PSI ships.
Castelanna,
which had been his first guess, was hell and gone out by Shenzhu—a week, easily, even in a long-range ship.
Novoselov
was closer, just a day's journey at full speed; a much more plausible choice with a ship like the one they had stolen. And
Aspasia,
hovering on the other side of Volhynia's pulsar, was an even better bet. They'd be within minutes of her by now.
Aspasia
would be the logical place to start.

Penumbra
was out by the hot zone.

He stared at that. It didn't mean anything. The radiation belt wasn't a bad place for a PSI ship to sit; the Syndicate raiders tended to avoid it, and the Corps ships, who got constant updated information from the drones that patrolled the hot zone, had no reason to approach. It was coincidence that
Penumbra
was the ship that had hit
Demeter,
that Lancaster had been researching radiation, that
Penumbra
would have stayed put after being fired on by a Central starship. Elena ought to be heading for the closest safe port, and that was
Aspasia,
by a long shot.