"Bayta, we were talking at dinner about telepathic overlap between the Modhri and Humans," I said. "Presumably, Humans can't sense the Modhri—or vice versa—any better than you and the Spiders can. Right?"
"I assume so, yes," she said. "There's certainly never been a case I've heard of where the Modhri and any species had that kind of communication."
"Okay," I said. "But what if the Human in question was herself telepathic?"
Bayta's eyes flicked back toward the room. "Rebekah?"
"Why not?" I said. "You seem able to sense her, at least well enough to know when she's four meters under your feet. And it's starting to sound like she and the Modhri can sense each other, too."
"Except that Humans aren't telepathic," she said tartly. "I'm not aware of a single documented exception."
"Okay, so that's a soft spot in the theory," I conceded. "But there's a first time for everything. Maybe there's something in the air or water here that switched on a gene."
She shook her head. "There must be a more reasonable explanation."
"Like what?" I asked. "She's afraid the Modhri will detect her if she moves. He's not seeing, hearing, or smelling her." I cocked an eyebrow. "For that matter, neither were you earlier today."
Her lip twitched. "Let's assume you're right," she said. "What do we do about it?"
"I'll show you." I pulled out my comm and punched in McMicking's number. "It's me," I said when he answered. "How's the analysis going?"
"I've got a list of Veldrick's alien contacts," he said. "The hacker program's still working on the city's utilities records."
"Any of the alien data jumping out at you?"
"One bit is, yes," he said. "A group of six Filiaelians showed up on New Tigris about six weeks ago. Since then, they've done some very impressive business with Veldrick."
"How impressive?"
"About ten times that of any other Crown Rosette customer," McMicking said.
I chewed my lip. And Veldrick had rather bragged about how gifts of his coral had helped with his business contacts. "Forget everyone else for the moment," I told McMicking. "Concentrate on the Fillies."
There was a short pause. "You once told me the Modhri hadn't penetrated the Filiaelian Assembly," he reminded me.
"That was the information I was given," I confirmed. "It may turn out to have been incorrect. It could also turn out that the Fillies are innocent pawns in the Modhri's scheme."
There was another pause, a longer one this time. "All right," he said at last. "If you're sure you want to start poking sticks that direction."
It was an oddly squeamish comment for a man of McMicking's history and reputation. But I didn't really blame him. The Filiaelian Assembly filled a significant fraction of the far end of the galaxy, with colonized worlds and systems reputed to number in the thousands.
That all by itself put them at the top of the social and economic food chain. Add to that their utter alienness, plus their habit of casual genetic manipulation of their own kind, and you had a group of horse-faced, satin-skinned people you did not want to irritate or offend. "We go where the trail leads," I said. "Right now, it's leading to those six Fillies."
"All right," he said again. "But unless there's something solid—"
"Hold it," I interrupted. The curtain beside me had rippled slightly, as if catching a puff of air from the other side.
"Mr. Compton?" Karim's voice stage-whispered from the direction of the shaft. "Mr. Compton?"
"I'll call you back," I murmured to McMicking, and broke the connection. "Stay here," I added to Bayta, pulling the kwi out of my pocket and pressing it into her hand. Drawing my Beretta, I slipped past the curtain into the passageway.
I reached the shaft just as Karim made it to the bottom. "There you are," he said. Even in the dim light I could see that his face was pale. "Did you see any police officers on your way in here tonight?"
"No," I said. "Are there police officers out there now?"
He swallowed visibly. "Come and see."
Oved was waiting on the walkway when Karim and I emerged from the tavern. His face was even paler than Karim's. "Over there," he said, pointing toward a service alley leading away into the shadows on the opposite side of the street.
I frowned as I peered down it. The alley itself was unlit, but there was enough backwash from the streetlights and storefronts that I could just make out the outline of a car halfway back facing my direction. It was hard to tell, but it looked like two men were sitting in the front seat.
Sitting with unnatural stillness.
I looked back at Oved. The boy was trembling slightly, I noticed now. Probably the first time he'd ever seen death up close. "Stay here," I told him and Karim, and headed across the street.
No one attacked me as I approached the car. No one jumped from the shadows, either, yelling bloody murder and pointing accusing fingers in my direction. Whatever had happened here, the goal hadn't been to either lure me in or to frame me. I reached the car and looked in.
The two cops were sprawled slightly in their seats. Not like men who'd been killed where they sat, but rather who'd been killed outside the vehicle and then shoved back in.
There was a marked difference in their expressions, though. Sergeant Aksam looked almost serene, as if death had caught him completely unawares. Officer Lasari, in contrast, had a startled expression frozen on his face.
The cause of death in both cases was probably connected to the wide bloodstains in the centers of their chests.
I studied them from outside the car for a minute, taking in their expressions, positioning, and everything else I could see. Then, using a handkerchief to keep from smudging any fingerprints the killer might have left behind, I opened the driver's-side door.
From the lack of any mention of shots, I had already concluded the bloodstains were the result of stab wounds. Gingerly opening Aksam's shirt, I found my assumption was correct. But it was an odd wound, triangular with smaller tears coming off two of the three corners.
I frowned at the mark for a moment, my brain sifting through mental images as I tried to come up with something that could make a puncture like this.
And then, it clicked. Leaving Aksam's door open, I pulled out my comm and punched in McMicking's number.
The connection clicked. "Is something wrong?" McMicking asked.
"Pretty much everything's wrong," I said grimly. "I'm standing beside a car with a couple of dead cops in it. The same two cops, interestingly enough, who tried to spoil our dinner earlier."
"In front of a dozen witnesses," McMicking said. "I hope they weren't shot with your gun."
"No, our murderer was a little more creative than that," I said. "It looks like Aksam and Lasari were stabbed with a Filly contract pen."
I could hear his frown right over the comm. "That makes no sense," he said. "Contract pen ink is genetically linked to its owner. He might as well have left family photos at the scene."
"Which implies the murderer didn't care if he got caught," I said. "Which strongly implies in turn that our information about the Modhri and Fillies not working and playing well together is indeed out of date."
"Indeed," he agreed heavily. "You have a read?"
I looked back down the alley. In general, hanging around a murder scene wasn't the brightest thing a person could do.
On the other hand, I had more privacy here than I was likely to get anywhere else in the neighborhood at the moment. "The killer probably approached the car from the front, from near the tavern I told you about earlier," I said. "Both cops appear to have had time to get out to meet him. He approached them, probably asking for directions or some such, and when he was close enough he stabbed Sergeant Aksam. He then pulled the pen out of Aksam's chest and threw it across the hood into Officer Lasari's."
"Either man draw his sidearm?"