“We together on this?” Maggie asked, her jaw set, her eyes fixed.
She had such purpose for someone so young, such drive. It was hard to understand where it came from, this unyielding determination to clean up KOP. I suspected it had something to do with her father's murder. I'd have to ask her one day, but not today. Today, I let her strength soak into me, my spine firming, the knot in my stomach uncoiling.
“We're together one hundred percent,” I said. “It's you and me against the world.”
Maggie walked in after a short stint at the office.
“Did you place it?”
“Yeah,” Maggie said. “I pretended to shoo a fly off his head and dropped it in his hair.”
“Good. Let's see what we're getting.”
I made short one-handed work of setting up the recording equipment on the hotel bed. I'd spent the afternoon avoiding the hospital by getting the stakeout ready, picking a room in a high-rise but low-profile hotel, sneaking up to the roof and finding a primo spot for the receiver, placing it behind the aircon vents. You couldn't see it from the stairs, but it still had good line of sight to a relay tower. The reception would be good even in the rain. I checked to make sure that the unit was receiving a signal, then aimed the projection unit at the wall and flicked it on. The wall lit up with a view of the street that bobbed with Ian's footfalls. I found the volume control and turned it up just as Ian entered a shoe store.
“Well done, Maggie.”
Maggie smiled. “That shoe store is just down the street from KOP station.”
“He must've just left the office.”
“You were right about the cam. The image quality's not bad.”
After our meeting, Maggie and I had bought the cam from an offworld tech shop whose outrageous prices were indicative of the fact that the shop catered almost exclusively to offworld tourists. The offworld owner tried to talk us into a higher end unit, but I convinced Maggie that we didn't need to spend the extra coin, even though she was the one paying. Since the medical bills started rolling in, I'd become as frugal as my mother.
Besides, this unit had everything we needed. Even though it was the cheaper model, the unit still cost Maggie close to six month's worth of KOP paychecks. The flea-sized cam was designed to crawl through the hair and make its way to the hairline where it would attach itself to the scalp, a lot like the biomon I'd dropped into Niki's hair, except this one was even smart enough to match its shell to Ian's hair color.
Ian was going through the women's shoes, picking them off the wall and turning them over, looking at prices, stopping when he found the most expensive. He held the shoe up for the owner, who hustled into the back room.
Maggie tilted her chair back, putting her feet up on the bed. “What did you think of Adela when you met her?”
“She acted like a scared little girl.”
“Acted? You don't still think she killed her parents, do you?”
“I do.”
Maggie was incredulous. “How can you possibly think she did it?”
“I watched her confession. It looked genuine to me.”
“If she really did it, then why would Ian be so sensitive about you interviewing her?”
“I don't know. Listen, I don't know if she did it or not; I'm just saying I believed her confession. She didn't admit to being abused, but I think that's what happened.”
Maggie went from incredulous to annoyed. “Since when did you become such an expert at identifying abuse?”
And now I was getting a little annoyed myself. “Hey, you asked me what I thought, and I told you.”
The conversation ended there.
Ian paid cash for the shoes and hit the street. Heavy rain blurred the image coming from the cam as Ian approached Surf, the seafood place with a fishnet over the door. He strode through the door and into the restaurant. Waitresses were busy folding napkins and setting tables. He snatched up a towel and dried his hair, making the camera view go black for a few seconds. He tossed the towel in a hamper and walked across the floor and into the kitchen, which was alive with the sounds of prep cooks chopping squid and lizard. Fresh spices hung from the ceiling; bundles of green leaves dangled down. Ian stopped and sampled the soup bubbling in a large pot over a roaring flame. He pulled off a couple leaves from a bundle of spice and dropped them in before moving on to the back stairs, sprinting up and knocking on a door at the top.
The door swung open a few seconds later. Liz had a robe tied loosely on, and her hair was up in curlers. The camera moved in close as the two exchanged a kiss. Ian held out the shoe box.
“You shouldn't have,” said Liz as she took the lid off. “Oh, Ian, these are wonderful.”
“I thought you'd like them. You have to try them on.”
She sat down in the living room. Ian's view focused in on her partially open robe, taking a good long look at a half-exposed breast before dropping to his knees. She lifted her left foot, her robe parting, exposing her thighs all the way up to where they came together in shadow.
I could feel my pulse pounding as I watched Ian slip the shoe over her foot. He fiddled with the strap, running it around her ankle, his hands playing up her calf. She switched feet and Ian took his time putting on the other shoe, petting and stroking her toes and her ankle and then finally her calf. She stood up, her robe falling back into place over her legs, hiding all but her feet. Liz walked back and forth, stopping every couple steps to look down at her feet. “I love them,” she said. “Thank you.”
She threw her arms around Ian and moved in for a long kiss, the camera showing nothing but the corner of one of her curlers for a moment before Liz ran off to her bedroom, coming back a minute later with a handful of stockings. “You have to tell me which stockings match the best,” she said to Ian.
Maggie asked me, “You up for room service?”
I looked at the time, thinking I should go to the hospital. Then I looked at Liz, who was pulling on a pair of fishnets. “Is there a menu in here somewhere?”
I swallowed the last bite of a very bland 'guana sandwich, typical hotel fare.
“He's waiting for somebody.”
I nodded. At Ian's table were two place settings besides his own.
From the vantage of Ian's scalp, we could see most of the restaurant. He'd left Liz's place shortly after the fashion show, saying he had some business to attend to. He told her he'd see her later at Roby's.
I was starting to feel sleepy. I wondered if Maggie would mind if I took a nap. It could be hours, maybe days before we caught him doing anything, but then I decided I might as well try sticking it out until I saw who his dinner mates would be.
Ian ordered a drink and flipped through the menu. The restaurant was one of those touristy places on the Old Town Square. Its walls were covered with hand-painted jungle scenes that featured masses of thick greenery with lizards on every perch, each of them lit by magical beams of sunlight that twinkled through holes in the jungle canopy. It was the kind of thing that Lagartans would call classy, but offworlders would probably find tacky. Lagartans were always missing the mark when they tried to attract tourists.
The vodka arrived, and I watched as Ian brought the glass up to his lips. My mouth watered, but I resisted the urge to pull out my flask. I didn't want Maggie thinking poorly of me. Ian set an empty glass back on the table.
The view from the Ian-cam swung to the door, and in came a heavier-than-average man who waved at Ian. The guy looked familiar despite the fact that he had a painful-looking double shiner marring his face. I was already wracking my brain, trying to remember who he was as he took a seat across from Ian. “How's it going, Ian?”