"It almost seems like she"s here, doesn"t it?" Nyquist asked.

Leidmann nodded. "She spent a lot of time here."

"Or at least, she did after she got fired," Nyquist said, and told Leidmann what he had observed six months before.

"Well, this clearly became home base," Leidmann said. "She used this to stage everything." Nyquist nodded. "What do you make of the bedroom?"

Leidmann grinned. "Still not married yet, huh, Bartholomew?"

"I was married once," he said, almost defensively. "Why?"

"When a woman lays three outfits across the bed, she can"t decide what to wear."

"Yeah," he said dryly. "That"s obvious."

"And what she is going to wear is an unusually important decision, because on this day, she thinks someone will notice."

"You"re saying she wore special clothes because she was involved with someone?" he asked. Leidmann grinned at him. "You"re a little too literal. I"m saying she believed she was going to have a big day today."

He frowned. "Didn"t that piece run yesterday?"

"Yes, but she was going to face the reaction today." Leidmann touched the bathroom sink with the edge of a brush. "There"s extra makeup in here, but none on the vanity or in the cracks along the floor like there would be if she always applied a ton of makeup."

"Even with bots cleaning up after her?" he asked.

"Especially with bots cleaning up. Makeup is the hardest thing to clean. Is that little pile of dust something that the woman is using to paint her face or is it just a pile of dust?"

"Most women don"t wear makeup," Nyquist said. "And those that would have once upon a time now use enhancements."

"Ki Bowles was in a profession where the personal image constantly changed. She didn"t dare get an enhancement that might outdate itself in a year or less."

"If the studio paid for it, she could," he said.

"And have some recovery time?" Leidmann shook her head. "You need to do some study of reporters. She didn"t have the time to recover."

"It usually only takes a day or two."

"A day or two is too long, especially if some story is breaking. She needed to follow trends with a minimum of fuss."

"Seems like makeup would be a maximum of fuss," he said.

"To us, maybe. But it was part of her job. And she put some on this morning, again, for that big day." Leidmann touched the edge of the sink with a gloved hand.

"You feel sorry for her, don"t you?" Nyquist asked.

"Yeah," Leidmann said. "I"m not finding any evidence of any other person here."

"We knew she lived alone," he said.

"But even people who live alone have evidence of the other people in their lives-holos on tables, two-D images on the wall, rotating images in little frames. Or gifts, something that doesn"t quite fit-a toy, maybe, or a shirt that"s the wrong color. Or messages on the household computer system. I"m not finding anything."

"It"s that guest room that got you, isn"t it?"

Leidmann braced her gloved hands against the edge of the sink and turned toward Nyquist so that she faced him directly. Her mouth turned downward.

He"d never seen her so disturbed, at least at an empty scene like this one-the one without the body. "Why does she have a guest room?" Leidmann asked. "In antic.i.p.ation of a guest that never came?"

That would be sad. He"d never seen the use for a guest room. When his mother had come after he went into the hospital, she stayed at his place for a few days. Then, when he was conscious enough to realize she was there, he insisted she get a hotel room-and he paid for it.

He supposed it was possible that Bowles kept the room for a guest that never came, but she didn"t seem the type. Of course, he didn"t know her all that well. He"d judged her on her media persona and the handful of encounters he"d had with her.

"Maybe a guest used to come, and stopped," Nyquist said. "Or several guests. I know almost nothing about her personal life. Does she have family? Was she married?"

"That"s the whole point," Leidmann said. "There"s no evidence of parents or siblings or college friends. No evidence of a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a pet. And certainly no evidence of a divorce." "Except an empty apartment she never came home to," he said softly.

"Or maybe she was just a hardworking woman who had never made time for a relationship in her life. It"s not that unusual."

Nyquist peered at Leidmann. Was she talking about herself?

"Relationships take time." He was learning that with DeRicci. She was one of the busiest professionals on the Moon, and he hadn"t been busy at all until just recently. He"d spent a lot of time waiting for her, which irked him. He didn"t want to be the kind of person who waited for anyone.

"You got techs coming in for the handhelds, right?" Nyquist asked. "I got a tech for the household system," Leidmann said. "But I"m taking the handhelds back to the lab. There"s something about the sheer number of them that has me intrigued."

Nyquist flashed on the diagram in Bowles"s studio. "I"d look at them here," he said. "She may have them in their places for a reason."

"Like some kind of trail of information?" she asked. "Maybe," Nyquist said. "I found some other information she"d been working on, and it was in the form of a diagram. We can"t dismiss the idea that she liked patterns, and used them in her work." Leidmann made a sound of disgust. "My teams are spread thin as it is. Two major murders in one day-"

"Two?" Nyquist asked. "I take it you"re not just meaning the man killed with Bowles?" "No," Leidmann said. "I"m talking high-profile murders. First Ki Bowles and now Roshdi Whitford."

Nyquist froze. He hadn"t been monitoring his links since he was called to the crime scene. He"d downloaded the chatter, figuring he would run through it at the end of the day instead of letting it distract him now.

"Roshdi Whitford of Whitford Security?" he asked.

Leidmann nodded. Nyquist tapped a chip on the back of his hand. Someone had mentioned Whitford Security to him earlier in the day.

He searched through his notes. They were cursory- something he usually improved when he returned to the office-but cursory was good enough.

Edvard Jaeger of the Hunting Club had mentioned that men from Whitford Security had cleared the place in antic.i.p.ation of Bowles"s visit. When Nyquist had asked to meet with them, he was told that the men were already gone.

He"d made a note to contact Whitford Security during the course of the investigation, see if he could get the men"s names, and find out what kind of threat they were antic.i.p.ating against Bowles.

But he couldn"t wait now. He needed some information and he needed it fast.

"Excuse me," he said to Leidmann, and left the room. He went down the hallway to the living room, realizing as he did so that he hadn"t inspected the kitchen yet. It would have to wait.

First he had to get some questions answered, questions he was going to investigate when he was done here.

He linked to the coroner"s office first. One of the lower-level examiners appeared in front of his vision. "Who"s handling the Bowles case?" he asked without preamble. "Chief Examiner Brodeur," she said. "Put me through."

For a moment, his vision was normal and then Brodeur appeared in front of it. He was wearing a drape over his clothing to catch spatter, and unlike most people when speaking on a visual link, he did not try to clean up.

He appeared to be leaning on a desk, peering at a screen rather than using his internal links like Nyquist was.

"I know, I know," Brodeur said. "You caught the Hunting Club case. We"ll deal with it when you get back here. There"s too much to discuss on a secure link."

Meaning he didn"t want to risk leaking information, even on a supposedly secure link. Not that Nyquist blamed him. What it meant, though, was that Gumiela hadn"t yet announced Bowles"s death, which was good for him.

"I"ve just got one question for you," Nyquist said.

"Cause of death should have been obvious," Brodeur snapped, and Nyquist almost smiled. Once DeRicci had told him how much she hated Brodeur and his preemptory manner, but Nyquist found it amusing.

"At least let me ask the question first," Nyquist said.

Brodeur sighed. "Quickly."

"Have you identified the other body yet?"

"Not entirely," he said.

Whatever Nyquist had expected, it wasn"t that. Brodeur was usually very certain of himself. "What does that mean?"

"It means our second corpse has history under various names."

"Which one came up first?" Nyquist asked.

"Enzio Lamfier."

"Which means nothing to me," Nyquist said. "Is he from Armstrong? Did he just come through the port? Was he a guest at the Hunting Club?"

"Those questions are for detectives to answer," Brodeur said. "But I do know that he has other ident.i.ties as well. I"m just not able to confirm them as yet. You do know that we have a spate of celebrity bodies today."

"Spate?" Nyquist asked. "I thought only two." "Two is plenty," Brodeur said. "In fact, it"s too many. I have press everywhere, and I haven"t even gotten the Whitford body yet."

"Do they know about our first victim?"

"No one"s asked yet," Brodeur said.

"The second one-"

"Whitford?"

"No," Nyquist said. "This Lamfier or whatever his name is. In your initial scan, did you turn up any ties to Whitford Security?"

Brodeur nodded. "I thought you already knew that part."

"What part?" Nyquist asked.

"Apparently he was a.s.signed as a bodyguard to our other victim. He might have died trying to save her." "Might have?" Nyquist asked.

"The wounds aren"t clear, and I"ve been too busy to examine them closely. Besides, I find these shadow ident.i.ties suspicious, especially for a bodyguard. Now, may I return to my work?"

"Sure," Nyquist said, and shut down the link.

He remained in the living room for a moment, staring at the handhelds without really seeing them. Two people with ties to Whitford Security dead, as well as Bowles. And without stretching things, she could be seen as tied to them as well.

Obviously Gumiela hadn"t thought of that or she would have contacted him when Whitford"s body turned up. Nyquist needed to contact her, and then he had to insinuate himself into that investigation. "Let me know what you find," he sent to Leidmann through his links. Then he left Bowles"s apartment and headed back to the precinct, hoping that Gumiela was in a receptive mood.

18.

Flint was too nervous to sit in Van Alen"s office. He paced across the cream-colored carpet, skimming his fingers against the back of the upholstered chairs.

Van Alen leaned against her desk, watching him.

"We have to a.s.sume that Ki Bowles"s death is linked to the story," Flint said.

Van Alen didn"t move. "I know. I"m wondering if we did something wrong. We knew that she wouldn"t be totally safe. I just never expected her to die."

"You knew it was a risk," Flint said, his fingers still skimming. "We talked about it." "A risk is one thing," Van Alen said. "An actual murder is another."

Through the opaque gla.s.s, he could make out a coffee, blue, and blondish blur. That blur was Talia. He had asked Van Alen to set up the waiting room perimeter alarm and to shut off the room"s external computers.

If Talia tried to go to another part of the office, the alarms would go off. If she tried to access one of the computers, she couldn"t because there was no obvious way to hack in. Flint had updated the system for Van Alen six months before.

"We don"t know if Bowles"s death was random or if it was connected to the story," Flint said. "We have to a.s.sume it was connected. Don"t you think it odd that she died today of all days?" "Yes," he said, "I do."

He stopped pacing and frowned at Van Alen. He had a sudden realization.

"She shouldn"t have died so quickly," he said. "If Justinian Wagner was going after her, he wouldn"t have done it like this. He would have tried to find out where she got the information first."

"Maybe he did," Van Alen said. "We don"t know what happened just before she died." Flint flopped into a nearby chair. "Thuggishness is not his way. He"d"ve tried to finesse it. Unless he already knew she was working on the story."

He was talking more to himself than Van Alen. But she didn"t know that. She answered as if he were speaking directly to her.

"He had to know something," Van Alen said. "She corroborated the facts you gave her with some of his former employees."

"And the stuff they gave her was stuff they"d given other reporters," he said.

"So he killed her for the uncorroborated stuff? At least, the stuff that seems uncorroborated? Isn"t that odd?"

"It"s all odd," Flint said, "and yet I feel like I shouldn"t be surprised. I picked . . ."

He let the sentence trail off. He wasn"t going to admit to anyone that one of the many reasons he had chosen Ki Bowles to report this story was that he didn"t like her. He had hoped it wouldn"t bother him much if something happened to her.

But it did bother him. And not just because it had happened so much sooner than he expected, but because Bowles had done a good job.