Crimes of the Grey Detective

Chapter Four

Dickens turned around just as Daniels poked his head out into the hallway.

The old man raised a thin grey eyebrow. “Everything alright?”

“Not even a little.” Dickens put his hands on his hips and looked up at the obnoxiously pleasant. “He’s f*****g innocent.”

“Huh? How can ye tell?”

“You ever had a hunch before, Daniels?”

“Not about a murder, no, can’t say I have.”

“Well that seems to be the only sort of hunch I’m capable of having.”

“You’re kidding.” Daniels stepped into the hallway in earnest now. “Seriously, though, how can you tell?”

“Because if he got thrown into jail, he’d cry. Not single-tear, he’d weep like he was trying to make a river to swim to freedom in.”

Daniels shrugged. “I’d cry too, if I was being thrown into jail for murder.”

“But that’s the thing, Daniels, he wouldn’t be crying because he got convicted – he’d be crying for his Lenore.”

The old man raised both his eyebrows this time. “People do that?”

“The innocent ones do,” Dickens said. “The innocent, dumb, lovesick ones who’re too stupid to wipe their fingerprints off the poisoned wine glass because they’re too busy trying to find justice for the Lenore that choked on her own vomit in their shared bed.”

“Oddly specific.”

“They’re an oddly specific type. So now you see the mess we’re in. All evidence points to the only man I’m sure is innocent, and if I can’t prove that he is, there’s a potential silent war that’ll eat up the Orbitals.” Dickens let his hands fall to his side; they seemed to climb back to his hips of their own accord. “We need to interview the staff.”

“I’ll join ya’ as soon as Sera’s done inspectin’. She’s fired up some E-grade cleansing acid. I’ve always wanted to see what a beaker of the stuff does to human skin.”

“Why are you the only one having fun?”

“Because I spent eight years waiting to be beat up on this very day,” said Daniels, “and now I’m rolling with a member of the Guild of Inspectors, strutting about a councilman’s residence, investigating a murder.”

“I’m here too.”

“And you’re bringing down the fuckin’ mood.” Daniels shooed him – actually shooed him. “Go find the staff, we’ll catch up.”

***

The East Wing was as impressive as whatever part of the residence Dickens had just been in. As he strolled through a high-ceiling lobby with the Councilman at his side, he was keenly aware of the feeling he often had back at Third Orbital Light Correctional. Every station in the Five Orbitals was infinitely larger than the people currently in it.

The Trills planned for three hundred years of future expansion and each station base was fitted with Lego-like ports to make further expansion infinitely easier. Dickens had no doubt that in five hundred years or so, the Orbitals would be teaming like frontier towns during the Gold Rush. But for now, every prison block, every residence wing, every Force station, every port, every maxi shuttle felt just a little too big. And Dickens just a little too small. It was like every building was trying to swallow him, or suffocate him with too much space.

“This is really damn big,” he said to himself, if only to take a jab at the hollow silence of the lobby.

“Mr. Charles.” Councilman August cleared his throat nervously. “I assume by your eagerness to speak to my staff and the sudden end to your broken faucet stream of questions on my involvement, that you presume my innocence.”

“I’d like to say I don’t presume anyone’s innocence,” Dickens said. “But sometimes I do.”

“Did you presume O’Malley’s guilt?”

“Aggressively. Now, about your staff. Where were they at the time of the murder?”

“Cynthia was in the kitchen, a hundred yards away,” the Councilman said, ticking off his fingers. “Earlander was in the gardens, seventy yards away. Valynne was in the garden too, according to her.” He elaborated when Dickens gave him a sideways glance. “The schedule says that she should have been mending a mini shuttle in the service bay, which would have put her even further away from the offices.”

Dickens said nothing.

“Oh, and none of them are cleared for so much as a concealed penknife, let alone Disablers.”

Still, Dickens remained silent. He could actually hear the sound of his own teeth grinding against each other.

“So who do you want to interview first?” asked August.

“All three at once.”

“But won’t that give them more room to formulate a lie?”

“You’d think so.” Dickens stood aside as August swiped his thumb on a sensor that sent a door swinging back into yet another hallway. “But the way I see it, when there’s only one ball to juggle, it’s hardest when you try to get three people to do it at once.”

“A Force technique?”

Dickens clicked his tongue. “The Force is the one spreading the idiocrasy of divide and conquer. It’s more efficient to pressure cook your veggies at once.”

“You know,” said August, “when I’ve found justice for Merida, I may just be able to get you back on the Force.”

Dickens slipped his hands back into his pockets again. “f**k the Force.”

***

The room that August had herded his staff into was large and tastefully furnished with warm wooden tables, walls painted a pale gold, and synthetic leather couches that looked as soft as the real deal. His three staff members sat on individual couches, solitary.

A short blonde woman in a crinkled black house uniform and apron looked at him through ocean-blue eyes from the left-hand couch. The only male of the three sat to the right, the knees of his white pressure suit green with grass stains. The woman in the middle looked the most annoyed as she smoothed down the front of her overalls.

Dickens took his time eyeing each one as he stood by the door. He let the silence of the room seep into every pore and settle into the deepest marrow. Once, at the peak of his powers, he could simply step into an interrogation room and stare at his subject for three minutes straight, without so much as a word or a scratch of his beard. The only thing that would stretch the interrogation out longer than fifteen minutes was the fact that the perp had a slow writing hand and he kept misspelling names in his confession.

But here he didn’t have the authority of the Force building behind him. He had no equally intimidating Sera serving in the rank just below his to underpin his own dark powers. He had a glorified exterminator’s badge and a secret not even the staff he was about to interrogate could know about – if they’d even done it. He only had one trick up the padded sleeve of his pressure suit, and he decided to play it early.

“Cynthia, Valynne, Earlander?”

Each nodded in turn, but he’d guessed their identity by their attire alone.

“I’m afraid I’ve kept you here under false pretences,” August said in his most placating councillor’s voice. “We’re not truly under quarantine, but it was of the utmost importance that I prevent anyone coming or go—“

“Anyone of you kill anyone this week?” Dickens asked. “I’m talking straight up murder. Any takers?”

The look on all three of their faces told him everything he needed to know. He turned around and went back into the hallway, something like disgust dragging his lips into a scowl. Councilman August caught up to him a moment later but by then Dickens was already at the door, waiting for the Councilman to swipe his thumb to open it.

“What was that?” August asked.

“They’re innocent and I knew it going in, but I had to be sure,” Dickens said. “You said it yourself; the closest wasn’t even seventy yards from the offices. No opportunity. We already know the conditions around the murder weapon and none of them are cleared for Disablers.”

He shrugged his shoulders. His mind was racing ahead and the Councilman simply stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Even if someone smuggled in a bootleg Disabler,” Dickens continued, “it would need to be activated within twenty yards. But this is a council building. Nothing bootleg makes it onto this station, so no means. And motive? Did they know about Mrs. Langard?”

“No one knows.”

“Well, there you go. Once again, the only person I can plausibly point a finger to is you, Councilman.”

The Councilman’s face gained a healthy and angry pallor. “Not this again!”

“Aye, not this again.” Dickens leaned back against the wood panelling of the hallway. “I said I cleared ya’, didn’t I? But conscience and a hunch won’t absolve you in any court of law in the known universe. Councilman, if you want to walk away Scott free here, you’re going to have to pull a miracle so huge out your arse that—”

August held up a hand. “I understand the analogy. So what do we do?”

“There is no ‘we’ to this. I’ve cleared you but I know for a fact Sera hasn’t and she won’t until she has an actual murderer in front of her to throw in a cell.”

“So what do we do now?” August asked again. “And by that I mean, what do I do and what do you do?”

“You start briefing your staff on the importance of what’s going on here,” Dickens said. “You let them know that nothing that’s going on here ends well if it ever leaves these walls by the wrong channels. You grill them on secrecy the way you tried to grill us by the service elevator and you hope like hell it’ll do until this whole matter’s resolved.”

“Right, that covers me,” August said, at last scanning his thumb. This time, the door opened out into the lobby. “What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“I’m going to pour a drink and sip it very angrily,” Dickens said. “Which way’s your bar?”