Which started the avalanche of people.

"Detective Nyquist?" said a man he didn"t recognize. "Are you on this case?"

"What case?" Nyquist asked.

"Detective Nyquist?" one reporter asked another. "Wasn"t he the guy who nearly died last year?" "Detective Nyquist?" a third reporter shouted. "Who murdered Ki Bowles?"

He kept his head down. He"d shoved his way through crowds before. A few times, he"d shoved his way through crowds of reporters.

It hadn"t made him nervous before, but it made him nervous now. He still wasn"t over that attack-and remembering it just a few moments ago, no matter how much it had served this case-only seemed to make him even more uneasy.

He wanted to brush away anything that looked ropelike. He hated the touch of hair or fabric against his skin.

His heart was pounding and the distance to the door looked like kilometers.

"Detective Nyquist, why would anyone want Ki Bowles dead?"

"You tell me," he shouted back at them, knowing that sometimes statements like that brought actual results.

"Is it true that she was returning to InterDome?" someone asked.

"Do you think this was an in-house rivalry?" asked someone else.

"How could anyone get killed on the grounds of the Hunting Club?" asked a third. "I thought they had the best security in Armstrong."

He finally made it to the door. Someone inside opened it for him and he slid through the crack. Then the two of them leaned on it so that no reporter followed.

The street cop inside looked even more harried than the street cops outside.

"Sorry," she said. "I"m told it"s only going to get worse."

"The story of the year," Nyquist said. "Nothing reporters like more than a story about a reporter."

He sounded more cynical than he felt. He was actually feeling sorry for Bowles. Especially if she had died for her profession. That showed more courage than he would have expected.

He adjusted his coat, made sure no one had stuck a tracking device or a microphone on him. "Can you see if I"m chipped?" he asked the street cop.

The cop grinned. She held out a gloved hand. He recognized the glove. It was black with gold lining, designed to catch most noninternal chips and tracking devices. She ran it across the air near him, but found nothing.

"Thanks," he said. He would still run the check himself when he got into the elevator. He hated it when some reporter got news that way. The courts always ruled such actions illegal, but that was long after the story aired and a case was ruined.

He stopped outside the elevator when Romey appeared in the lower corner of his left eye. He hated that, and wished he could shut off the feature, even though he knew better than to do so in the middle of an investigation.

"You secure?" she asked.

"G.o.d knows," he said. "I just ran a reporter gauntlet."

"Ooof." She rolled her eyes. He didn"t recognize the backdrop behind her. Improbably, it was all white. "I"ll try to phrase this as cautiously as I can, then."

"Okay." He decided not to step into the open elevator. He moved away from the doors and closer to the walls. "What do you have?"

"Did you tell me that a bodyguard is in custody?"

She meant a bodyguard of Ki Bowles, but she didn"t say so.

"Yeah," Nyquist said. "Someone"s doing preliminaries right now. I planned to talk to him when I got back to the station."

"Might be worth a conversation together," Romey said. "You want to meet me there?" "Now?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said.

"I thought you had to do hundreds of interviews," he said.

"Whitford Security is the most annoying organization," she said. "They parcel out information so no employee knows more than one thing. It"s like putting a puzzle together. I"d rather wait for the reports. h.e.l.l, I"d rather wait for a computer a.n.a.lysis of the reports."

"Well, I actually have something pressing," he said. "Why don"t you interview him?"

"Because I know something you don"t," Romey said, "but I"m pretty sure you know a lot of things that I don"t. The interview will relate more to your side of this investigation than mine. I need you there."

"You think this is crucial?" Nyquist asked.

"If my hunch is right," Romey said, "I might know the name of our killer."

"You think there is only one?" Nyquist asked.

"Don"t know that yet," Romey said. "But I suspect we"re going to find out."

42.

Something made Talia look up. She"d been lost in the data, finding the details of these court cases fascinating despite herself. She had no idea how someone could live happily from day to day when so many people hated her.

Maybe Ki Bowles hadn"t lived happily.

Maybe she had just lived.

Talia was beginning to understand that. She sometimes found herself thinking that she didn"t deserve to be happy-she couldn"t be, not with her mom dead.

And then she"d feel guilty when she was.

It was bad, but not as bad as some of the stuff she"d been reading about Bowles.

Talia had just been looking at an interview with some guy who"d followed Bowles around Armstrong for nearly a year before the police managed to find him, when her heart started pounding hard.

She had grown nervous and she wasn"t sure why.

She looked up and saw her father standing near the pastries, talking to four guys.

Why would her dad talk to four guys? And why now?

Talia almost sent for help along her emergency links, but she could just imagine her dad telling her that she was overreacting. They"re friends, Talia. Calm down. They"re friends, Talia. Calm down.

But she couldn"t calm down. And there was something about her dad"s expression that disturbed her. She tried to send him a message along her links-You okay?-but the message bounced back to her almost instantly.

It should have gone through.

He didn"t even look up at her.

Then some guy grabbed her dad"s arm.

Talia swore.

Her dad kept talking to these men and then they started walking with him. One stopped in front of him. Her dad raised his voice a little, but Talia couldn"t quite hear what he was saying.

The man still had his hand on her dad"s arm.

She didn"t need to hear. She wasn"t going to let something happen to another parent. Not now. She sent for help along all her emergency links. Police! My father"s being kidnapped! Help! Help! Police! My father"s being kidnapped! Help! Help! Then she activated her recording chip, lifting her hand so that she could catch the entire thing. Then she activated her recording chip, lifting her hand so that she could catch the entire thing.

The man behind her dad let go of his arm, and her dad started walking with them toward the door. He didn"t glance at Talia. Not once.

She cursed again. He was doing this to protect her. Help! We"re at the cafeteria in the law library. Please help! Help! We"re at the cafeteria in the law library. Please help!

But no one moved. The students didn"t seem to notice anything and no one answered on Talia"s links. She got out of the booth.

In Valhalla Dome, where she had grown up, there were police on every corner. Sometimes even in official buildings, like this one.

Someone would have answered her by now. Someone might even have made it down here. But Armstrong was a big city, and her dad once laughed when she asked why the police weren"t everywhere.

There can"t be that many police in a free society, Tal, he"d said. As if Valhalla Dome hadn"t been free. As if Armstrong was somehow better.

He"d thought it was. But she didn"t. Not now.

She set her help message on automatic and then she got out of the booth. The men were marching her dad toward the door. One man had his hand near her dad, probably using a jammer for his links. Didn"t any of the students notice? Weren"t their links momentarily checking in and out? The guys surrounding her dad were big, but all she needed to do was distract them. Her dad was tough. If she distracted the guys, her dad could fight back.

And when he did, maybe the students would help, too. This was her only chance. She"d never gotten the opportunity to save her mom. She could save her dad. And she had to do it now.

43.

Romey beat Nyquist to the precinct, which surprised her. Maybe he had stopped off at the Detective Division before coming to the interview area. She had thought he was closer to the City Complex than she was when she contacted him.

The interviews were still continuing at Whitford Security. She reviewed several of them, mostly by asking investigators what-if anything-they had learned that was of interest. Most claimed they hadn"t learned anything.

But a few of the investigators had discovered some interesting tidbits. Such as the fact that that bunker beneath Roshdi Whitford"s body wasn"t for human protection, but protection of a high-end computer system, one that wasn"t linked to anything else.

What if, the investigator postulated, someone discovered that the bunker existed, figured out how to break in, and got caught by Whitford? Maybe that was why he died.

It was a good theory, although it was as yet unprovable. The evidence hadn"t yet shown whether Whitford was home when the break-in occurred or he had opened the door to someone he knew (who also knew how to turn off the alarm systems) or he had stumbled on some kind of major break-in in progress.

And as yet, Romey couldn"t even tell if someone at Whitford Security had been notified that the boss"s house was being broken into. Even that information was parceled out.

Still, she felt encouraged by something one of her other investigators had said: You know, when we"re done with all this talking, we"ll know more about Whitford Security than anyone who works there. You know, when we"re done with all this talking, we"ll know more about Whitford Security than anyone who works there.

And they would. It was the downside to the parceling out information. If a determined someone put all of that information together, then that someone would know more than anyone who worked for the company-and might be unstoppable.

In fact, as Romey headed to the interview room to see Pelham Monteith, she turned that very idea over in her head. Maybe her team wasn"t the first to come up with the idea that one person could know more than all of Whitford Security combined.

All it would take would be some careful conversations-a bit of information here and a bit of information there. In fact, it might be relatively simple.

A conversation could go like this: I heard you"re handling the Bowles case. I heard you"re handling the Bowles case.

Naw. I"m taking care of XYZ case. I have no idea who is handling other cases.

And so on and so forth.

She let out a small breath. If that someone worked for the company, then the other employees might be willing to divulge information. Just as Medora Lenox had to her friend Gulliver.

Maybe she hadn"t been the only one to give him tidbits of information. She certainly wouldn"t have known if he spent time with someone else.

He had only spent midnight to six with her.

The interview room where they had stashed Monteith was at the end of a long hallway. The room was one of the larger units, designed for long-term interrogations. It had the most equipment and the most environmental controls.

Romey could play all kinds of games if she wanted to, cutting down the oxygen, amping it up, making the room warmer or colder, depending on what she wanted to do.

But she wasn"t going to play any of those games-not yet. Maybe not ever.

She knew that the street cops who had brought Monteith in had placed him here because the case was high profile. High-profile interviews often got stuck here because they could be easily monitored.

Romey peered inside the interview room before she went in. Two extremely junior detectives sat on either side of Monteith.

Monteith himself seemed calmer than she expected. He was also older. He sat between the two detectives, answering each question with a deliberation that was obvious even with the sound off. He was balding. All of his enhancement money seemed to have gone to his muscles, which bulged out of his black suit. Or maybe he had somehow done that on his own.

Romey didn"t want to think about it.

And she didn"t want to start without Nyquist.

But she would if he didn"t get here soon.

She had a feeling that interviewing this man was the key to the entire case.