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Or sure you could. It just wouldn’t be easy. He squinted at the empty air of the station house. Now. How wouldyou cover up a surviving ship?
Miller pulled up a cheap navigation plotter he’d bought five years before-transit times had figured in a smuggling case-and plotted the date and position of the Do
He looked at the data for almost ten minutes, but the next step didn’t come to him, so he stepped away, got some coffee, and pulled up the interview he and Muss had done with a Belter ground-crew grunt. The man’s face was long and cadaverous and subtly cruel. The recorder hadn’t had a good fix on him, so the picture kept bouncing around. Muss asked the man what he’d seen, and Miller leaned forward to read the transcribed answers, checking for incorrectly recognized words. Thirty seconds later, the grunt said clip whoreand the transcript read clipper.Miller corrected it, but the back of his mind kept churning.
Probably eight or nine hundred ships came into Ceres in a given day. Call it a thousand to be safe. Give it a couple days on either side of the three-week mark, that was only four thousand entries. Pain in the ass, sure, but not impossible. Ganymede would be the other real bitch. With its agriculture, there would be hundreds of transports a day there. Still, it wouldn’t double the workload. Eros. Tycho. Pallas. How many ships docked on Pallas every day?
He’d missed almost two minutes of the recording. He started again, forcing himself to pay attention this time, and half an hour later, he gave up.
The ten busiest ports with two days to either side of an estimated arrival of an Epstein-drive ship that originated when and where the Do
Except no. Because there were ways to narrow it. He was only looking for Epstein drive ships. Most of the traffic at any of the ports would be local. Torch drive ships flown by prospectors and short-hop couriers. The economics of spaceflight made relatively few and relatively large ships the right answer for long flights. So take it down by, conservatively, three-quarters, and he was back in the close-to-four-thousand range again. Still hundreds of hours of work, but if he could think of some other filter that would just feed him the likely suspects… For instance, if the ship couldn’t have filed a flight plan before the Do
The request interface for the port logs was ancient, uncomfortable, and subtly different from Eros to Ganymede to Pallas and on and on. Miller tacked the information requests on to seven different cases, including a month-old cold case on which he was only a consultant. Port logs were public and open, so he didn’t particularly need his detective status to hide his actions. With any luck Shaddid’s monitoring of him wouldn’t extend to low-level, public-record poking around. And even if it did, he might get the replies before she caught on.
Never knew if you had any luck left unless you pushed it. Besides, there wasn’t a lot to lose.
When the co
“Miller? Muss with you?”
“Nope,” Miller said. “She’s got an interrogation.”
He was pretty sure that was what she’d said. The tech shrugged.
“Well, her system’s not answering. I wanted to tell you we got a match off the rape you sent us. It wasn’t the boyfriend. Her boss did it.”
Miller nodded. “You put in for the warrant?” he asked.
“Yep,” she said. “It’s already in the file.”
Miller pulled it up: STAR HELIX ON BEHALF OF CERES STATION AUTHORIZES AND MANDATES THE DETENTION OF IMMANUEL CORVUS DOWD PENDING ADJUDICATION OF SECURITY INCIDENT CCS-4949231. The judge’s digital signature was listed in green. He felt a slow smile on his lips.
“Thanks,” he said.
On the way out of the station, one of the vice squads asked him where he was headed. He said lunch.
The Arranha Accountancy Group had their offices in the nice part of the governmental quarter in sector seven. It wasn’t Miller’s usual stomping grounds, but the warrant was good on the whole station. Miller went to the secretary at the front desk-a good-looking Belter with a starburst pattern embroidered on his vest-and explained that he needed to speak with Immanuel Corvus Dowd. The secretary’s deep-brown skin took on an ashy tone. Miller stood back, not blocking the exit, but keeping close.
Twenty minutes later, an older man in a good suit came through the front door, stopped in front of Miller, and looked him up and down.
“Detective Miller?” the man said.
“You’d be Dowd’s lawyer,” Miller said cheerfully.
“I am, and I would like to-”
“Really,” Miller said. “We should do this now.”
The office was clean and spare with light blue walls that lit themselves from within. Dowd sat at the table. He was young enough that he still looked arrogant, but old enough to be scared. Miller nodded to him.
“You’re Immanuel Corvus Dowd?” he said.
“Before you continue, Detective,” the lawyer said, “my client is involved with very high-level negotiations. His client base includes some of the most important people in the war effort. Before you make any accusations, you should be aware that I can and will have everything you’ve done reviewed, and if there is one mistake, you will be held responsible.”
“Mr. Dowd,” Miller said. “What I am about to do to you is literally the only bright spot in my day. If you could see your way clear to resisting arrest, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Harry?” Dowd said, looking to his lawyer. His voice cracked a little.
The lawyer shook his head.
Back at the police cart, Miller took a long moment. Dowd, handcuffed in the back, where everyone walking by could see him, was silent. Miller pulled up his hand terminal, noted the time of arrest, the objections of the lawyer, and a few other minor comments. A young woman in professional dress of cream-colored linen hesitated at the door of the accountancy. Miller didn’t recognize her; she was no one involved with the rape case, or at least not the one he was working. Her face had the expressionless calm of a fighter. He turned, craning his neck to look at Dowd, humiliated and not looking back. The woman shifted her gaze to Miller. She nodded once. Thank you.
He nodded back. Just doing my job.
She went through the door.
Two hours later, Miller finished the last of the paperwork and sent Dowd off to the cells.
Three and a half hours later, the first of his docking log requests came in.
Five hours later, the government of Ceres collapsed.
Despite being full, the station house was silent. Detectives and junior investigators, patrolmen and desk workers, the high and the low, they all gathered before Shaddid. She stood at her podium, her hair pulled back tight. She wore her Star Helix uniform, but the insignia had been removed. Her voice was shaky.