“Put me on with Lila.” The AID was impersonal.
“Epetar Group, how may I direct your call?”
“In the absence of the Darhel Pardal, the Tir Dol Ron’s office requests that you notify his attendants and the building staff to vacate the floor of the building that contains his office, put anything removed from his office in an empty, secure room for holding and allow no access to that floor or that room. Absolutely do not repair anything taken from his office, absolutely do not clean anything in his office.”
“I’ll need to know the purpose of this unusual request,” it said frostily.
“The Epetar Group has requested assistance from the Tir.” In a manner of speaking it had. “Because of Earth’s highly unusual nature, there are extra steps and protocols that must be observed for the Tir to render that assistance in a proper and timely manner. Oh, and under no circumstances is anyone to physically approach the Darhel Pardal’s… uh…” What did he call it? Was it a corpse? A body? It might or might not be dead yet. “Nobody is to approach his person. By the way, where is it?”
“It was apparently placed on the roof. I have no record of its retrieval and incineration, indicating the Darhel Pardal had not finished dying as of the most recent observation by his servants.”
“Thank you for cooperating with the Tir’s efforts to assist the Epetar Group. As his employee, I will be there shortly to carry out my assignment. Once I complete it, you should be able to resume whatever operations are standard for places other than Earth.”
“Thank you so much,” the device replied. It had certainly mastered sarcasm.
A quicker and more pleasant call to his cousin ensured he’d be met at the crime scene sometime today, however long it took to get there. Bobby wasn’t exactly prompt even in good weather. As far as Johnny was concerned, lintatai was “suicide,” and the place it happened was a crime scene. You didn’t just assume a suicide, you verified it. He had ordered enough “suicides” himself to be skeptical of all of them until proven otherwise.
Johnny took a cab rather than trying to drive. No way was he going to walk. A recent storm had left any shovel paths a risk of broken bones, not to mention the biting wind accompanying today’s Chicago Special of the Day — freezing rain. It was unpleasant enough just picking his way from the curb to the front doors. Some days a ton and a half of rock salt just wasn’t enough. He figured the wind chill was only about a gazillion below, and missed the hell out of Texas.
Ten minutes later he was busy trying to invent new curses, having run out of his ample supply of old ones. Indowy were damned thorough cleaners, and didn’t wait around to get started, either. He was left with minimal bits of luck. Thank god their voodoo tanks took awhile to fix stuff. They’d already fully repaired the drapes, but hadn’t gotten to the desk yet. The deceased’s — um, almost deceased’s — AID had not been tampered with, other than to turn the poor thing off. Lacking anywhere else to put it until competent authority reclaimed Epetar operations on Earth, it had been turned off and shoved back in the envelope where the Indowy had found it. Johnny filed that information away for future use. He hadn’t known it was possible to turn an AID off. He was darned sure the Darhel weren’t eager to have humans know that bit of information. Considering who he worked for, he didn’t plan to share. Besides, the Darhel wouldn’t use hush envelopes themselves if there weren’t a catch to this whole “turn it off” business. He’d love to know, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask.
Bobby arrived while he was going over the office and making notes. The first thing Stuart had him do was replace the packing tape on the floor with conventional yellow tape, where an Indowy had told him the Darhel was found.
“Good that they didn’t rip out the carpet yet,” the ex-cop grunted.
Robert “Bobby” Mitchell was medium-height, heavyset and dark with the look of a weight-lifter who had given it up for other pursuits. He’d been a Sheriff’s deputy in Silverton for ten years, eventually rising to detective sergeant, before one of the many, many IA complaints managed to stick. Picking up and then brutalizing a “hooker” who turned out to be an undercover police officer would do that.
“No, just trampled their little green feet all over it moving stuff out and around.”
“Yeah. Let me block off the desk. I know the leg marks are still there in the carpet, but it makes it easier to visualize the scene. I’ll also need a black light. I don’t think they cleaned the carpet. Look at the tear here. They probably meant to repair it. And get me one of those doohickeys to show window repairs. It looks like there might have been a struggle, but I’ve seen a Two-D of one of them going bughouse years ago in Panama. He could have easily done all this himself before going catatonic. Believe me you don’t want to see one of those bastards get pissed. Remind me the next time you’re over. I’ve got it on a cube somewhere. Let’s just say I don’t want your job, cuz.”
“Might not want to talk so frankly about our employer. It’s not a great idea.”
“Meaning no disrespect.” His eyes flicked uncomfortably to Johnny’s AID. “I don’t guess our boss minds if we’re a bit scared of him, you think?” He said it more for the benefit of the AID than his cousin.
“Nope.” Johnny kept his response as short as possible. Safer that way.
“We absolutely have to have an autopsy of the Darhel.”
“That might be a problem. Pardal isn’t actually dead yet.”
“If you really want to find out what happened, we probably need to fix that.”
“Um… Is a coroner going to know enough about Darhel physiology to determine much? They’re damned secretive.”
“That’s a problem, all right.” Bobby rubbed his forehead, looking for a solution to that very big problem. “Use an AID. It knows enough about Darhel physiology to know what to look for and answer specific questions. A good forensic pathologist will be able to tell us stuff we’ve got to know — maybe make the difference between cracking the case and not. Can’t investigate a suspicious death very well without an autopsy. Figure any information we get from the thing is more than we’d have if we didn’t even look. Besides, they’re just letting the prick starve.” He shrugged at the warning glance from Johnny.
“It’s a VIP death, screw it up and our asses would be in a crack for sure. That means I’m doing everything by the book. If the Tir denies permission for an autopsy it’s no skin off my nose as long as I can document that I asked. If something goes wrong, I don’t plan to take the fall for it.”
“Gonna be hell to get him to agree to this.”
“We’ve at least got to have proof that we tried. CYA, buddy.”
“I hear that. Okay, gimme a minute.” Johnny stepped outside and pulled the black box off his belt. Not that he needed to talk into it, it just felt wrong to talk to empty air like a head case. “Tina, get me Tir Dol Ron.”
“He’s a very busy person. I’ll try,” it said. “You’re in luck. Here he is.”
“Why are you interrupting me, Mr. Stuart?”
“I’m sorry, your Tir. I need special permission for something.”
“And that is?”
“Whenever we investigate a suspicious death on Earth, we can’t get enough information to tell what happened without an autopsy.” He made sure to put the why ahead of the what to try to head off a knee-jerk reaction.
“What’s an autopsy?”
“It’s where a specialist examines the body to get clues about what happened in the person’s last moments. Those clues are always a big part of reconstructing the circumstances of the death.”
“This is unacceptable. We already know what happened in the Darhel Pardal’s last moments. He failed to control himself and went into lintatai,” The Tir bit the words out, as if loath to admit the species’ weakness to a mere human. “However, if it makes your report more thorough to personally go look at the remains, do so.”