Inferno

“If you’re right,” Devray said, “then how was the body supposed to be discovered? The plotters had to have thought about it. What were they expecting?”

“Well,” Fredda said, “all the regular household robots had been ordered to clear off to an outbuilding for the night of the party. There are two deputies interviewing them now, but I doubt they’ll get anything. They would have returned this morning-right about now, I suppose-to resume their normal duties.”

“So a robot was supposed to discover Grieg was dead,” Kresh said. “What would have happened then?” he asked.

Fredda thought for a moment. “It depends very much on the robot’s preexisting and contingency orders, of course, but most likely, all hell would break loose. It would call for help, attempt resuscitation, call for reinforcements, request a security alert, and who knows what else. ”

“All the proper things to do in terms of the Three Laws, but that would have set off absolute chaos,” Kresh said. “If that had happened, every kind of cop within two hundred kilometers would have been over the Residence, banging into each other and the news media and whatever political leaders managed to get involved. The devil only knows what sort of hell that would have stirred up. And all an attempt to revive Grieg would have accomplished would be the muddling of the evidence. Just the sort of chaos and confusion a coup plotter would want. ”

“Maybe,” Devray said. “Maybe. There’s a lot of guessing in there, but it might be right.”

“Sir,” Donald said, “if I may interject, there are other vital issues that must be considered before we establish any sort of motive for other hypothetical suspects.”

“What other issues?” Kresh asked.

“There is the question of the weapon. ”

“Hell’s bells, the weapon. I am getting old. ”

“What about the weapon?” Fredda asked.

“There are energy sca

“Or did it get out?” Devray asked. “Why risk taking it both ways through the sca

“Hmmph. It’s a possibility,” Kresh said.

“I beg your pardon, Commander Devray, but there is one point that argues against such a possibility,” Donald said. “The energy-discharge curve.”

“What’s that?” Fredda asked.

“By examining the Governor’s wounds and the blaster damage to the robots, and by establishing range, it was possible to note the relative power of each shot, and thus the weapon’s charge level for each shot. For any given blaster, each shot is less and less intense as the blaster’s charge is expended. For the weapon in question, the intensity of the blaster shots declined precipitously with each firing, clearly indicating an unusually small power cell. The discharge pattern was quite unlike any of the common makes and models of blaster. ”

“And an undersized power cell suggests a weapon intended for concealment, “ Kresh said. “A custom job. And custom-made weapons can be traced. You’re right, Donald, that needs looking into.”

“Yes, sir. I think we must also ask ourselves about the assault on Tonya Welton, and the subsequent arrival of the false SSS agents. Was it indeed some sort of diversion linked to the attack? And if so, who was it supposed to divert, and what was it supposed to divert that person from?”

“Especially as we established almost immediately that it was bogus,” Kresh said. “Why stage a diversion that would make us more suspicious?”

“Maybe because at that point it didn’t matter anymore,” Devray said. “Maybe the thing it was supposed to divert attention from wasn’t the Governor’s death at all. And maybe it wasn’t you it was meant to distract.”

“Huthwitz,” Kresh said. “The murder of Emoch Huthwitz. You’re suggesting that it was sheer chance that it happened the same night as Grieg’s murder.”

“It’s possible. Maybe the Welton attack was meant to divert the Rangers away from the attack on one of their own. ”

“That won’t work,” Fredda objected. “From what you’ve told me, this Huthwitz was found hours after he was killed. No one noticed he was missing. And it doesn’t sound like much of anyone in the Rangers responded to the attack on Welton.”

“All good points,” Kresh agreed. “But Huthwitz’s death doesn’t make sense as a coincidence, either.”

“Coincidences never make sense,” Fredda said. “They happen by chance, not logic.”

“But there’s a point beyond which chance is an awfully weak explanation. In fact, it’s always a weak explanation.”

“Well, suppose Huthwitz was the diversion?” asked Fredda. “While you were out looking at his body, the Governor was being killed. ”

“That doesn’t work, either,” Kresh said. “Huthwitz was killed hours before the Governor. Our best estimate was he was killed before the attack on Tonya Welton. As for the discovery of his body as a diversion, he could have been discovered hours later or hours before he was. And the Governor had been dead for about an hour before we found Huthwitz. And besides, we just got through agreeing that the plotters intended Grieg to be discovered some time in the morning, hours from now. ”

“But it was Huthwitz’s death that led you to check on the Governor,” Leving said.

“But no one could have predicted it would cause me to check, and my discovery of the body didn’t do anyone any good,” Kresh said. “Beyond all that, if Huthwitz was killed as a diversion, it didn’t much matter who they killed. But Commander Devray has as much as told me he thinks someone might have had very good reasons to kill Huthwitz, and Huthwitz alone.”

“So what are you saying?” Fredda asked.

“I’m saying that the two murders are related-but I haven’t the faintest idea how. Right now Donald is the only one with a theory of the crime. ”

“Sir, I would submit that I have much more than a theory. I have means, motive, and opportunity. I have two suspects.”

“Donald, you want them to be guilty,” Fredda said. “If they killed Grieg, it would confirm all your strongest fears about New Law robots. But I’m no investigator, and I can see all the holes in the case against them. I agree with Sheriff Kresh that it seems extremely unlikely that Grieg’s murder was unrelated to everything else that happened last night. How could Caliban and Prospero have killed Huthwitz-and why would they do it? How and why did they arrange the attack on Tonya and the phony SSS agents that took away her assailants?”

“I ca

“I agree,” Kresh said. “We need to bring them in. But we also need to work on finding ourselves some other suspects as well. We’re going to have to go over the access recorder records. And we need to get hold of all the video imagery shot by all the news outlets. We need to go over it frame by frame, and if we can spot anything or anyone who shouldn’t be there.”

“I can attend to that, Sheriff,” Donald said.

“Good. “ Kresh glanced up at the wall clock again. Time was moving. Moving too damned fast. “I need to draft some sort of statement,” he said. “We’ve waited long enough. We’re not going to get things under any more control than they are right now. I have to notify the government, and then the public.”

He stood up, rubbed his face with a tired hand, and ran his thick, stubby fingers through his white hair. “It’s time to tell the world that Chanto Grieg is dead. ”