Witness in Death

"They ever get you that far?"

"Hmm?" He glanced up. "You've seen my records. No arrests."

"I've seen what's left of your records after you played with them."

"Lieutenant, that's a serious accusation." Still, a smile flirted with his mouth. "But no, I've never had the pleasure of defending myself in a court of law on a criminal matter. How's the boy?"

"Who? Oh. Ralph. A little shaky." She climbed the stairs to the dock. "I had a couple of uniforms take him home. We shouldn't need to talk to him again. And after he recovers, he'll have all his pals buying him a beer to hear the story."

"Exactly so. You're a fine judge of human nature. And how's our Peabody?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're a good teacher, Lieutenant, but a fierce one. I wondered if she'd recovered from the bruising you gave her."

"She wants to make detective. She wants to work murders. First rule, you go on a scene, you don't bring anything with you. No preconceptions, no conclusions. And you don't take what you see at first glance on face value. You think Feeney didn't slap me upside the head with that a few times when he was my trainer?"

"I imagine he did and had plenty of bruises of his own when he hit the rock of it."

"If that's a fancy way of saying I'm hardheaded, it doesn't insult me. She'll learn, and she'll think more carefully next time. She hates screwing up."

He reached up idly to brush his knuckles over her cheek. "I thought the same myself. Now, why don't you think this is self-termination?"

"I didn't say I didn't. There are a number of tests to be run. The ME will make the call."

"I wasn't asking for the medical examiner's opinion but yours."

She started to speak, then set her teeth and jammed her hands in her pockets. "You know what that was down there? That was a fucking insult. That was a stage carefully set for my benefit. Somebody thinks I'm stupid."

Now he did smile. "No. Someone knows you're smart – very smart – and took great care, right down to the bottle of what will undoubtedly turn out to be Quim's own home brew."

"I've checked his locker. You can still smell the stuff. He kept a bottle in there, all right. What did he know?" she muttered. "Head stagehand? That means he'd have to know where everything needs to be and when. People, props, the works."

"Yes, I'd assume so."

"What did he know?" she said again. "What did he see, what did he think? What did he die for? He wrote down stuff in this little notebook. The handwriting on the death note looks like a match. If the ME doesn't find something off, he's likely to rule it self-termination."

Roarke rose. "You'll be working late."

"Yeah. Looks like."

"See that you eat something other than a candy bar."

Her mouth went grim. "Somebody stole my candy bars again."

"The bastard." He leaned down, kissed her lightly. "I'll see you at home."

If Eve's preconception that theater people led richly bohemian lives had taken a dent after a look at Michael Proctor's living quarters, it suffered a major blow when she reached Linus Quim's excuse for an apartment.

"One step up from street-sleeping." She shook her head as she took her first scan of the single, street-level room. The anti-burglar bars covering the two grimy, arrow-slot windows were coated with muck and caged out whatever pitiful sunlight might have struggled to fight its way into the gloom.

But bars and muck weren't enough to keep out the constant clamor of street traffic or the uneasy vibrations from the subway that ran directly under the ugly room.

"Lights on," she ordered and was rewarded with a flickering, hopeless yellow glow from the dusty ceiling unit.

Absently, she stuck her hands in her jacket pockets. It was colder inside than it was out in the frisky, late-winter wind. The entire place, such as it was, smelled of old sweat, older dust, and what she assumed was last night's di

"What did you say this guy pulled down a year?" she asked Peabody.

Peabody pulled out her PPC, sca

"And chose to live like this. Well, he was either spending it or stashing it somewhere." She strode across the bare floor to the computer unit. "This piece of crap's older than the piece of crap I just got rid of. Computer on."

It coughed, wheezed, snorted, then emitted a sickly blue light. "Display financial records for Quim, Linus."

Password required for data display…

"I'll give you a password." Halfheartedly, she rapped the unit with her fist and recited her rank and badge number.

Privacy Act protects requested data. Password required…

"Peabody, deal with this thing." Eve turned her back on it and began riffling through the drawers in a cabinet that had the consistency of cardboard. "Arena ball programs," she a

She moved on to the next drawer. "Well, well, look at this. Brochures of tropical islands. Forget the financials, Peabody. See if he went searching for data on Tahiti."

She moved onto the closet, pushed through a handful of shirts, feeling the pockets, checking for hiding places in the two pairs of shoes.

As far as she could see, the guy had kept nothing – no mementos, no photographs, no personal discs. Just his notebooks.

He had a week's worth of clothes, obviously old, which included one wrinkled suit. His cupboards turned up several dehydrated single packs of hash, several bottles of brew, one jumbo bag of soy chips, as yet unopened.

She took the bag out, frowned over it. "Why does a man so obviously tight with his money spring for a jumbo bag of chips, then hang himself before he eats them?"

"Maybe he was too depressed. Some people can't eat when they're depressed. Me, I head right for the highest caloric content available."

"Looks to me like he ate last night and again this morning. Autopsy will confirm that, but his recycler's overstaffed." Wincing, she reached into the slot and pulled out an empty bag. "Soy chips. My guess is he finished them off yesterday and had his backup bag ready for his next nutritious meal. There's a half bottle of brew chilling in his friggie box, and two backups in the cupboard."

"Well, maybe… Good call on Tahiti, Dallas." Peabody straightened. "It was his last data search. We've got pictures, tourist data, climate scans." As she spoke, the machine began to play exotic music, heavy on the drums. "And half-naked dancing girls."

"Why does our urbanite do scans of faraway islands?" Eve walked back over, watched the native women shake impressively in some tribal dance. "Computer, replay most recent search for transpo choices and costs from New York City to Tahiti."

Working… Last search for transpo data initiated oh three thirty-five, twenty-eight March, 2059, by Quim, Linus. Data as follows: Roarke Airlines offers the most direct flights daily…

"Naturally," Eve said dryly. "Computer hold. Quim spent time just this morning researching flights to Tahiti. Doesn't sound like a guy suffering from guilt and depression. Computer, list Quim, Linus, passport and/or visa data."

Working… Quim, Linus: Request for passport initiated fourteen hundred hours, twenty-six March, 2059.