He smelled of sweat. His eyes were wild, but if he had found three bodies as he claimed, he had every right to be upset.

"You were on protection duty for Ki Bowles?" Flint asked.

The man glanced at Van Alen.

"It"s all right," she said to the man. "It"s Mr. Flint"s money that hired your firm."

The man frowned. "Yes."

"What"s your name?" Flint asked.

"Pelham Monteith."

Flint used his links to check the man"s name against Whitford Security"s current public database, which he had downloaded as he headed to meet Van Alen.

It didn"t take him long to find Monteith.

Flint cross-checked the name against the police databases that he could access with his own network. "I check out, don"t I?" Monteith said.

"I understand you left two crime scenes today," Flint said.

"I have a duty to my clients."

"Which you clearly failed at, considering Ki Bowles is dead."

Monteith flushed.

Flint"s personal links found nothing about Monteith in the database, but he would check from his own system later. He had a way to get into the police records that he didn"t want to try from here.

"Ms. Van Alen is right to call the police. You were wrong not to go to them in the first place," Flint said. "You"re saying that because you used to be a detective," Monteith said. "I"m a detective who is now a Retrieval Artist," Flint said. Monteith started. He obviously knew that Retrieval Artists worked at the edges of the law. "Then you should understand why I don"t want to go in," Monteith said.

"You"ll go in," Flint said. "You"ll let them talk to you. You"ll answer all the questions you can about the deaths of Ki Bowles and Roshdi Whitford."

"And the other security guard?" Van Alen asked.

Flint looked at her, surprised. He hadn"t heard of the other guard.

"He was Bowles"s guard," Van Alen said. "He was with her."

"Enzio Lamfier," Monteith said softly. He seemed more broken up about his colleague than he was about Bowles. Which made sense. He had worked with the other man.

"You"ll answer every question you can without violating your contract with Whitford," Flint said. "Any talking I do to the police violates my contract," Monteith said.

"Not if it"s what the client wants. I"m the client. You"ll talk to them."

"What if they arrest me?"

"You"ll do what any other suspect does. You"ll call an attorney. I"m sure Ms. Van Alen can provide names."

"She"s an attorney."

"She has a conflict of interest. She brokered the deal between me, Bowles, and your firm. She"s not going to handle your case, nor will anyone from this office."

Monteith squirmed. Van Alen gave Flint a sideways smile. She could have just told him this was what she wanted him to do. Instead, she let him figure it out on his own.

Which was probably smart. She hadn"t imparted any information across any link, and she hadn"t done anything that someone could use against her in some kind of case that came out of this meeting.

"You guys set me up," Monteith said.

"That"s not possible," Van Alen said, "since you came to me."

"Because you"re on the list. That"s where I"m supposed to go if something went wrong." "If you couldn"t find Whitford," she said.

He nodded, looking miserable.

"But you did find Whitford." Flint took a step closer. "Where was he?"

"In his house. In the living room." "You went in?"

"We all have access," Monteith said. "He was dead. In the middle of the floor. Someone slaughtered him."

"Was the death tied to Ki Bowles"s?" Flint asked. Monteith shrugged. "Was Enzio Lamfier usually on Ki Bowles detail or was he just there for the day?" Monteith looked surprised. "How did you know that?" "What exactly did I know?" Flint asked.

"That he was just there for the day." Monteith glanced nervously at Van Alen. "This is all confidential, right?"

"No," she said. "But I"m sure your lawyer can argue it anyway." "Then I"m not saying any more."

"Yes, you are," Flint said, "or Maxine won"t vet your attorney. You"ll have the same representation as Whitford and if the murders are tied to the company instead of Ki Bowles, you might have some serious conflict of interest problems."

"What do you mean?" Monteith asked. "How many of the other people on Ki Bowles detail were there just for the day?" "Most of them," Monteith said. "We stepped up the numbers after she ran that news story."

Flint sighed. "Had most been moved as a permanent a.s.signment or were you planning to rotate people in and out?"

Monteith looked at them both. "We were going to rotate people in and out. Sometimes a.s.signing them the entire time makes them get lax."

"You were in charge of the a.s.signments?" Flint asked. "I was in charge of the people on the street," Monteith said. "In the Bowles case only." He nodded. "I wasn"t going to be rotated in and out." "Do you know of any threats to Whitford himself?" Flint asked.

Monteith shook his head. "But it wouldn"t surprise me. We get threats all the time when we"re handling big cases."

"How about any connection between him and Enzio Lamfier?" Flint asked. "You mean besides the fact that they were both part of Whitford Securities?" "Besides that," Flint said. "No," Monteith said. "I thought you guarded in pairs," Flint said. "We do." "So you were the second on Bowles?" "That was Gulliver Illiyitch." "Where is this Illiyitch now?" Flint asked. "I don"t know," Monteith said. "He should have been with Bowles and Lamfier." "But he wasn"t." "But that doesn"t mean he"s not on those grounds somewhere." "Alive?" Flint asked. "I don"t know that, either," Monteith said. "Aren"t you supposed to defend your clients?" "Yes," Monteith said. "Then shouldn"t Illiyitch have been there?" "Yes," Monteith said. "Something happened, I"m sure." "You didn"t check?"

"When I saw Bowles"s body, I tried to let Whitford know. When I didn"t reach him the normal way, I went to the business. He wasn"t there so I went to his house."

"You didn"t look for your missing guard?"

"I wasn"t supposed to. I was supposed to follow procedure."

"What about Illiyitch? If he"s still alive, what"s his procedure?"

"Same as mine."

"So you don"t know if he tried to contact Whitford."

"I don"t know anything!" Monteith looked at Van Alen. "Really. I"m not lying about that."

"I know," she said gently. Flint looked at her in surprise. He wasn"t so certain that Monteith was telling the truth. Then Flint saw her expression. She had no idea, either. She was just soothing him so that he would talk more.

Flint wasn"t sure he needed much more. He had enough to start with. Maybe enough to get ahead of the police investigation.

"Go with the police," Flint said. "Cooperate. You"ll be fine."

"I"ll lose my job," Monteith said. "You may have already," Flint said. "Because I lost a client?" Monteith asked. "Because your boss is dead. The business might go along with him." Monteith moaned. He clearly hadn"t thought of that. "Doors up," Van Alen said.

They rose to reveal the police officers leaning against the walls of the waiting room. Talia was standing near one of the men, talking with him.

She looked relieved when she saw Flint. He winked at her, then turned to the officers. "Mr. Monteith will go with you now. He"s going to tell you what he found and what he saw. You don"t need to put him in custody."

"We"ll decide that," one of the officers said. "We"ll be sending an attorney," Van Alen said, clearly warning the officers that they had limited time with Monteith before someone official would arrive and end the questions.

"I"m . . . I"m going to go voluntarily," Monteith said from inside the office, although he hadn"t moved forward. "I"ll tell you what I know."

The officers looked at one another; then one of them shrugged. Two walked over to Monteith and took his arms, leading him into the waiting area.

Talia watched with real interest, even though she still leaned against the wall. Flint had started toward her when one street cop held out a hand to stop Flint.

"What did you do?" the cop asked. "Mediated, like I said I would." Flint kept his voice even. "Should we take you along as well?" "If you think it"s necessary," Flint said.

The cop blinked at him. Van Alen was watching closely. Talia had bit her lower lip, looking nervous. Monteith glanced at Flint.

The one thing Flint had forgotten to tell Monteith was to keep the ident.i.ty of the paying customer quiet. Well, Monteith was going to tell what he knew. If he told them that Flint was the paying customer, then he wasn"t violating Flint"s instructions, and it would be Flint"s own fault.

"We need your name in any case," the street cop said.

"Sure," Flint started. "It"s Miles Flint. I"m still pretty well known at the precinct. You can check with most anyone in the Detective Division. I retired from there about four years ago. My partner was Noelle DeRicci."

"She"s the Chief of Security for the United Domes of the Moon," Van Alen said.

Flint wasn"t going to mention that part. He was going to let the street cop find that out on his own. "Oh," the cop said, obviously in awe. "I"m sorry, sir." "No need," Flint said. "I told you. I do know my way around an investigation."

The other cops were leading Monteith down the hall. The remaining street cop nodded toward Flint, and thanked Van Alen for calling them. Then he followed his colleagues out of the law firm.

"What was that all about, Dad?" Talia asked. Flint put his hand on her shoulder. She was so tense her muscles felt like wire. "It"s related to something I worked on before I met you," Flint said. "What?" He shook his head slightly. "I"m afraid it"s confidential." She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "Sure it is." "I can vouch for that," Van Alen said. "Most anything that happens in a law firm is confidential." "Except when some guy comes in here and confesses," Talia said.

"Mr. Monteith didn"t confess to anything," Van Alen said. "He came to inform me that a friend was dead."

"So you called the police?" Talia asked. "It turns out I was under a legal obligation to do so when I figured out that he had left two crime scenes." "Is leaving a crime illegal?" Talia asked. "It is if you don"t report the crimes," Van Alen said. "So he did break the law."

"In a minor way," Van Alen said. "All your father did was convince the man to talk to the police. I hadn"t been able to."

"You"d think you could, being a lawyer and all," Talia said.

Van Alen smiled and then looked at Flint. "She"s got your sense of irony and outrage." "What does that that mean?" Talia asked. mean?" Talia asked.

"It means," Van Alen said, "that you could grow into someone I could like very much." Then she turned around and headed back into her office.

"Should we have that meeting?" she asked Flint.

"I think we are going to have to," he said. "Everything is different now."

17.

The techs were already inside Bowles"s apartment. Nyquist stopped in the hall and stared at the open door.

He remembered the first and only time he had come here. He had stopped in front of Bowles"s security system, about to press a fingertip against the identification panel, when the panel insisted on a retinal scan.

He"d been pleased with that. He figured that Bowles had a security system that was good enough for her needs. Because he"d worried when he entered the building; he"d initially been afraid that there wasn"t enough security in this place for someone of Bowles"s level of fame.

Now her door stood open. Police line lasers marked an area just outside. Anyone who broke the beam would set off an alarm.

He put his hand through one of the beams, knowing that with his identification, the alarm would not go off. Then he stepped into the apartment.

None of the techs were in the living room, although two of Bowles"s personal robots were, hovering as if they were distressed at the invasion of their personal domain.

The living room actually had a lived-in look: There was a blanket on the couch, over an indentation made by someone sitting there a little too often. An empty mug sat on an end table, and one of the nearby chairs had a handheld crossways on the seat, as if someone had set it down during a moment of distraction.

He distinctly remembered how uncomfortable the living room had seemed six months ago. Then he had the impression that Bowles never spent any time in it.

He walked past the hovering bots and down the hallway that led to the bedrooms. He hadn"t been this way before. Bowles had never let him out of the living room. She"d answered his questions-looking uncomfortable at being the subject of the interview instead of the interviewer-and then she had ushered him out the door.

He felt odd going down the hallway now, as if he were invading her privacy.

The first room was an office. Handhelds, papers, books, and lots of jewel cases littered the floor, shelves, and desk. Another empty mug sat on the floor beside a st.u.r.dy ergonomically correct chair. Only one wall remained clear. It had a slight blue tinge and it took him a moment of staring to realize that the wall was designed to be a backdrop to close-in reporting done away from any studio. He"d need to make sure the team looked at all the handhelds and the computers in here. Then he went down the hall to find a bedroom. It was the neatest room in the apartment, and it smelled musty. A bathroom opened off the back, with neatly folded towels and not a single personal item. No one used this room. If he had to guess, he would a.s.sume it was a guest room-one that no guest had stayed in, or at least, had not stayed in for a very long time.

Finally he walked into the bedroom. It smelled of Bowles"s perfume. The scent struck him as forcefully as she had. She still seemed alive in here, in the unmade bed, the three separate outfits resting on the sheets, and the matching shoes neatly placed on the carpet.

A tech was inside yet another bathroom. Nyquist peered in. It was Leidmann. "Her bots didn"t clean up after her, did they?" Nyquist asked.

To her credit, Leidmann didn"t even jump at the sound of his voice. But she probably had the police line set to notify her whenever anyone else tried to enter.

"I already checked the programming," Leidmann said. "They were to clean surfaces and bathrooms and the kitchen. They were to make the bed, unless they had instructions otherwise, and they were to handle general maintenance, including washing her clothing, upgrading her wardrobe, and cooking small meals if she so desired."

"So why am I seeing handhelds everywhere and empty mugs beside tables?"

"Because the programming also specifies that they can"t touch any work in progress. Since they"re bots and not human a.s.sistants, they can"t tell if a dirty mug is important to her work, so they just leave it until she tells them otherwise." Then Leidmann frowned just a little. "Told them otherwise." them otherwise."