ARC: The Buried Life (4 page)

Sundar rubbed the curve at the back of his own head. “Below the bump? That would be hard to hit accidentally unless he fell backward into a desk or shelf or something.”

“Right,” Malone said, cutting Sundar off and continuing before Johanssen could protest further. “And Cahill was slumped against the wall when I found him. No blood, skin, or hair on the furniture. That suggests a blunt instrument, something that the murderer took with him. No bruising around the wrists or forearms. No attempt to restrain him.”

Johanssen’s lower lip pushed into a momentary pout as he sucked his teeth, thinking. “The motive?”

“Theft, sir.”

“Of what? Cahill’s street is filled with merchants and bankers. All more tempting targets.”

“The murderer wanted information, not valuables. Dr Cahill was a historian, and he was working on something before he was killed.” Malone described the scene in Cahill’s study, and the corner of the Johanssen’s mouth twitched when she mentioned the history books and the empty desk.

“If I may,” Sundar said, clearing his throat, “the sweeps mentioned the broken gates, but according to them, the gates were bent outwards, and they said they saw shattered glass on the steps outside. Isn’t this the opposite of what would happen if someone broke in?”

“If someone broke in,” Malone said. “No one had to.” At that, she produced the key she had found near the elevator.

Johanssen squinted at it. “Go on.”

Malone crossed one leg as she continued, putting the key on Johanssen’s desk. “How the murderer got this is the real question, but it tells us that he planned. It also tells us that he’s not a professional. Whether he panicked or stumbled, he dropped his key on the way up the elevator, and he couldn’t take the time to return for it. Or couldn’t see it in the dark. The gate was rusted enough for him to break it open with a few good kicks or a couple blows from his weapon. He only had to break out.”

“Why not leave through the subterranean door?” Sundar asked. Every business and residence had one, whether or not it had its own veranda. Recoletta, after all, was built around its subterranean thoroughfares and warrens. “He wouldn’t have had to break that one to open it from the inside, would he?”

“Have you ever been to East Eton? The subterranean avenue is one of the main roads into the Vineyard, and Cahill’s domicile is twenty yards from a railcar stop. The assassin would be in plain view for three or four blocks with nowhere to hide.”

“Easier to slip among the buildings on the surface,” Sundar said.

“Obviously.”

Exhaling, Johanssen furrowed his brow. “And all this for a stack of papers?”

Malone laced her fingers, waiting.

“What concerns me is where the murderer got a key. Assuming you’re right,” Johanssen added. “You know how people are about security, especially on that side of the city. There’s hardly a locksmith in Recoletta who would’ve made that.”

He scratched a cheek with his knuckles. “Farrah should have the contract by the end of the day, Malone. In the meantime, Sundar will assist you.”

The moment she’d been waiting for. “Respectfully, sir, getting the bureaucrats to talk will be hard enough without a rookie in tow.” She sighed. “No offense.”

“None taken.” And he looked like he meant it.

The chief stared down at his desk for a long moment. “Sundar, wait outside.”

The younger inspector disappeared behind the double doors. Chief Johanssen turned his gaze to Malone.

“I know this isn’t how you’d have it, but make an exception for this contract. He needs your experience, and I need to know where that key came from.” Johanssen leaned forward, shadows pooling under his heavy brows. “Besides, Inspector Sundar has a few talents you don’t. People skills are chief among them.”

She gritted her teeth. “I’ve noticed, sir.”

He nodded. “You also know that we don’t see murders in Dr Cahill’s district. Expect that charm to come in handy.”

Malone rose and bowed. “Yes, sir.” She left and followed Sundar into the hall, noticing Farrah’s hopeful gaze in his direction.

“The coroner’s report won’t be ready until tomorrow,” Malone told her new partner as they paced toward the rotunda. “In the meantime, we should try to locate some of Cahill’s old acquaintances.”

“Don’t we need to wait for the Council to approve the contract?” The Municipal Police received contracts from the Council to investigate crimes, petty theft and serial murder alike. They provided the formal authorization to proceed.

“It’s not that strict,” Malone said. “We don’t wait on a case like this. One of the benefits of not working directly under the Council is that we can be more efficient.”

“That’s what separates us from the City Guard, right? They take their orders from the Council, and we just liaise?”

“That, and most of them have scat for brains,” Malone said, relishing Sundar’s discomfort. And that’s why we’re the investigators and they’re the muscle, she thought.

“Oh.” Sundar paused, digesting this new information. “We could start with the Directorate of Preservation.”

“Getting information out of the directorates is a nightmare, and Preservation is the worst. We’ll need the contract and, probably, additional signatures from half a dozen councilors.”

“Can we afford to wait?”

“We don’t have a choice.”

He smiled, fixing his eyes down the hallway. “If you’ll allow me, Inspector Malone, I think I can handle this.”

She glanced sideways at Sundar. Casual confidence wafted off of him like a scent. Nurtured, she guessed, by all the entitlements of expensive schooling, attentive parents, and easy good looks. She resigned herself to this one concession. Either he’d botch this and the chief would finally have to listen to reason, or he’d succeed and they’d get something useful.

“Alright, Sundar. Show me what you do.”

#

News of the murder uptown had already seeped through the city, and the Municipals’ secrecy only fueled the rumor mill. Jane’s central concern, however, was replacing the pearl button before her evening deliveries.

She worked her way toward the center of town. At Tanney Passage, the capillary tunnels opened into a cavernous conduit. Her walkway overlooked a window-speckled chasm. Homes and offices were built into the chasm walls below her, where silhouettes bobbed behind windows and laundry fluttered over the abyss. It all looked so precarious.

She drew back from the gulf. A notice board in the passage advertised the Cahill murder on a garish red sheet. The shreds of crimson hanging around the announcement suggested that someone, most likely in the City Guard, had already removed several installations of the same. She pressed on.

Arching bridges spanned the chasm ahead of her, and railcar tracks punched through the rock below. The railcars dove through soot-blackened boreholes in the stone like great metal worms, and the lights in the nearest windows blinked whenever they thundered by. She boarded one bound for the Spine.

When the railcar finally wheezed to a halt, Jane emerged at Recoletta’s central thoroughfare.

Almost half a mile in diameter and stretching from one end of the city to the other, the Spine always left her feeling small. Eight different avenues lined the Spine’s curving walls, and a network of railcars and trolleys ran along it. Unfortunately, she was realizing that even something small could create a big problem. She quickened her pace, moving in and out of pools of light from the skylights above.

She took a lift to a higher street and passed one of the fire-lined trenches carved into the tunnel. The trenches didn’t stand out this early in the afternoon, but at night, they glowed all the way from the edge of town to the Council’s seat at Dominari Hall. They looked like burning ribs, as if some serpentine behemoth had swallowed them all. Jane preferred the evening view near the top, where suspended radiance stones mirrored the eclipsed night sky.

As she drew nearer to the center of town, tiny arbors and gardens sprouted from the wide walkway at the bottom of the Spine, and the gleaming threads of cable cars spanning the tunnel grew more numerous. She turned into a warren of smaller passages that wound through the market.

Jane came to a large cave amidst the tunnels and saw the tiers, stores, and stalls of the market proper, spread over three levels: raw materials and tools on the bottom level, wrought goods on the second, and foodstuffs on the top, where the ventilation drove the odors of fish and cheese quickly to the surface. Hope quickened within her as the hubbub reminded her that one could find almost anything here.

The wares on display came from near and far: from her own neighbors and from cities whose names she could not pronounce. Here, Jane could find dyes made in the factories near her home, buy fabrics woven in cities hundreds of miles away, and browse, if not purchase, jewelry from lands separated by waters and mountains. It was the closest she, and most other city-dwellers, got to travel.

Goods on the top level originated closer to home. Foodstuffs came from the farming communes, settlements established dozens of miles outside the cities, where people lived aboveground and cultivated the plants and animals that nourished most of civilization. For such a vital link in Recoletta’s economy, the farmers themselves were notably absent. Their only contact with city-dwellers came in the trade that followed the railroads. In the minds of most Recolettans, farmers were little more than figments, and given the general disrepute with which city-dwellers viewed surface-dwellers, most were glad to keep it that way.

Jane found the bead and button stalls quickly. Forcing her eyes to slow down, to comb each bin and display, was an act of sheer willpower. Her mind was focused on a carefully rendered image of the remaining buttons, and each specimen she saw in front of her was an inferior imitation. Too light, too opalescent, too fake. Goaded by the double edges of hope and dread, she ventured to the jewelers’ stalls. Even there, she realized that none of the specimens resembled the missing button closely enough. It was a small relief to be free of a solution she couldn’t afford.

She was leaving the jewelry stands when she saw two overcoats of a similar cut and quality to the frock coat hanging in her apartment. The men wearing them were getting closer.

Moving toward her through the crowd were two men dressed in inconspicuous but spotless suits. Their stride set them apart, as did the manner in which people instinctively created passage for them. Arguing in hushed voices and gesturing privately, they were attempting discretion, though not successfully, in Jane’s opinion. She knew before looking that their hands would be impeccably manicured, the nails trimmed to a fashionable length a half-inch past the fingertips. Jane wondered what whitenails were doing in the market when they had hordes of servants to run their errands for them. She sidled up next to a turquoise stall and pretended to examine the wares while she listened.

“Of course I’m concerned, the man was slaughtered in his home last night,” said one.

The second voice followed in more controlled tones. “Don’t be ridiculous. That was a complete anomaly. An accident.”

“Can you honestly believe that? You know as well as I that this was no accident.”

“All I am saying,” said the second man, “is that he was old, certainly a tad eccentric, and in poor health as it was.” His voice adopted a harder quality. “More importantly, he was not in the same position as you or I. You need not worry yourself about this.”

The first voice returned, sounding more subdued. “I’m just beginning to wonder…” He paused.

“Wonder?” There was quiet menace in the second man’s voice, like the muted hiss from a covered pit of serpents.

“…if this is such a good idea after all.” The first man trailed off, and his companion cut in quickly.

“Not a good idea?” he said, raising his voice. “Not a good idea? You have picked a most inopportune time to articulate your doubts, Phineas.” He nearly shouted at his fellow.

“Not so loudly, please! Anyone could–”

“You are the one who requested this little soiree in the first place. And I have already told you, there’s no one here to listen.” He swept an arm at the passing currents of people, gesturing as though they were little more than livestock milling about them.

“We’re much safer discussing matters here than we would have been in the Council chambers or the directorates,” the second man said through clenched teeth. As if to prove a point, he gave a cursory glance around the booths. Haggling merchants and encumbered pedestrians paid them no heed. In fact, the cacophony of voices, the rattle and clang of goods, and the gritty shuffle and thump of a hundred footsteps all around them drowned their voices beyond a radius of a few yards. The second man looked past Jane and continued speaking.

“The decision has already been made,” he said to the man called Phineas, “and it’s too late to undo this. Besides, you recall well the other misfortune.” He leaned close to his friend. “And as I remember, you had no qualms with that incident,” he whispered silkily.

Jane saw both men clearly, now, and there was something familiar about the pair that she could not quite place. Phineas was a short, round, balding man with a swab of white hair behind his ears and tiny spectacles that he kept adjusting with unsteady hands. Shining with perspiration and rocking anxiously in place, he looked like an oversized, frowning egg. His companion was a tall, thin man with curly white hair crowning his head and gracing his chin like a dollop of cream. For his arched nose and assertive strut, he reminded Jane of a rooster. The rooster cocked an ear at the egg.

“Yes, I remember that,” said Phineas, avoiding the rooster’s beady stare. “And maybe it was the wrong thing to do. But you’re right, we’re beyond the point of second-guessing ourselves – on both counts – and I suppose I would not really be in favor of halting everything anyway. It just concerns me, that’s all I meant.”

The other man straightened his posture again and rubbed his pharaoh’s beard. “I am well aware, and let me assure you again that you do not need to worry. Even if what happened last night is at all related to us, and allow me to say again that such a coincidence is highly improbable, it cannot touch you or me. We are perfectly insulated.” The rooster almost cooed the last word, smiling.

Phineas grinned. “Yes, I’m sorry for carrying on like this. It was just the shock, really.” He hesitated and looked up at his companion. “But, look, I don’t think there will be any need–”

“I won’t breathe a word of this to the rest of the Council. We can, as you said, chalk this up to shock.”

“Yes, shock. Good…”

The taller man guided Phineas by the shoulder, leading him once more into the sea of people. As she watched them go, Jane saw the rooster give his companion what could have almost been a reassuring pat on the back.