“Alex,” said Detective McCrae. “What’s going on?”
I took a deep breath; I needed to give him something so he wouldn’t shut me down. “Reiko Takahashi is Dennis O’Reilly’s granddaughter.”
Fernandez’s eyeballs looked like they were going to pop out. I went on. “Dennis O’Reilly didn’t die when his ship burned up on re-entry. Rather, he was marooned here by Simon Weingarten. Reiko had a hard copy of a diary written by her grandfather, which he transmitted back to Earth before he was marooned, but she loaned it to Lakshmi Chatterjee, who is the writer-in-residence here in town.”
Mac sounded incredulous. “We have a writer-in-residence?”
“That’s what I said! They have to advertise these things better.”
“So, this Lakshmi person has the diary?” asked Mac.
“No. Not anymore. It’s somewhere safe—but that big bruiser, Trace, thought I had it; that’s why he broke into my apartment.” I turned to Fernandez. “I was told during the Wilkins case that there were no security cameras upstairs.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“But do you have them down on this floor?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Can we see a playback?”
“This way.” He led us through the sliding door again; beyond the workshop there was a small office. He turned on a wall monitor and spoke to Keely. “Camera two playback, quad speed, starting thirty minutes ago.”
The camera was obviously mounted above the cash desk and showed the transparent door that led outside. The door slid open and—well, the expression “I thought I saw a ghost” perhaps didn’t apply when a transfer was involved, but there, in the doorway, illuminated rather dramatically from behind, was Trace—or rather an exact duplicate. There wasn’t just one Moose; there were Meese.
“Well,” said Fernandez, “it is an off-the-shelf face. Keely, normal speed.”
I’d been so intent on the mug’s mug I hadn’t initially noticed that he was packing heat. But Miss Takahashi clearly did, for she froze in the video. Moose the Second rapidly closed the distance between him and her and signaled for her to be quiet.
Pickover had initially been oblivious, but he soon spotted the man and then the gun. The big transfer couldn’t do much to Pickover, but he could kill Reiko, and Pickover clearly realized that. He looked back at the door to the room we’d been standing in, as if wondering whether to call for help, but after a second he decided against it. The camera had recorded audio, too, but none of them said a word. Pickover was flexing his legs ever so slightly; now that his ankle was fixed, I think he was trying to decide if he could leap across the room and tackle the other transfer.
But just then the door slid open again, and a third transfer with Dazzling Don Hutchison’s face came in. That was enough to make Pickover think better of trying to be a hero; either one of the giants could rip his metal skull off his titanium spine. It was galling that all of this had been going on just meters away from me. The transfer who had entered first gestured with his gun, and Reiko headed out the door, followed by Pickover.
Mac was already on his phone, calling the police station to see if the strange party—two giant twins, a transferee paleontologist, and a hot little biological—had been seen by any of the public security cameras, but, of course, most of those had long ago been smashed.
“Who’d want to kidnap Professor Pickover?” Fernandez asked.
“Maybe they wanted Miss Takahashi instead,” Mac said.
“Why would anyone kidnap her?” asked Fernandez.
“Ransom?” I suggested. “If they knew she’s Denny O’Reilly’s granddaughter, they might have figured there was money to be had.” I turned to Fernandez. “Did you know?”
He crossed his massive arms in front of his chest. “Are you accusing me?”
“No. No. I’m just asking. You looked surprised when I mentioned it.”
“I was surprised. I mean, she’s Japanese; he was Irish. I’d never even suspected.”
“Right,” I said. “I doubt anyone did. But she told me.” I walked closer to the wall. “And she told me when I was standing right about there.” I pointed to a spot in the image, which now showed the empty showroom. “Which means a record of her telling me was made, by the same security camera that made this picture. You could have reviewed it and found out.”
“I had no reason to go over the security recordings,” Fernandez said.
“Does anybody else have access to them?” asked Mac. “Any of the other employees able to call them up?”
“Well, the Wilkinses could, of course—the previous owners. But Cassandra’s dead, and Joshua has gone off to be a fossil hunter.”
“Anyone else?” asked Mac.
“Reiko has access, too, but she’d hardly be spying on herself. None of the other employees can unlock the security footage, though, and I swear I didn’t know who Reiko’s grandfather was.”
Mac pulled out a handheld sensing device and headed into the showroom. Transfers didn’t leave behind DNA, but they might still shed cloth fibers or have unusual dirt in their footprints that could be useful. While he busied himself with that, I gestured toward the staircase. “Horatio,” I said, “there’s something I want to see up in the scanning room.”
Fernandez shrugged. “Okay.” I let him lead the way to the second-floor landing. He went into the left-hand room, and I followed him, closed the door behind me, pulled out my gun, and, as he turned around to face me, I aimed it at the middle of his chest.
THIRTY
All right,” I said to Horatio Fernandez. “Spill it. Where is Rory Pickover?”
His eyes were wide, but he was showing commendable composure for a guy with a gun trained on him. He spread those massive arms. “I have no idea.”
“You know what he does for a living, right?”
“Sure. He’s a paleontologist.”
“And you know he recently came into some wealth.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Little academic suddenly had the money to transfer.”
“Well, yeah, I guess.”
“And you just opened up his chest to do repairs.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And while you had him open, you put in a tracking chip.”
“That’s illegal.”
“Yes, it is. But you did it.”
“Why would I?”
“You figure he’s found the Alpha Deposit, or some other major cache of fossils, and you want to know where it is. Rory had himself scanned for tracking chips after he initially transferred, but he’d all but told Joshua Wilkins that he was going to do that, and so Wilkins hadn’t put one in. And he could clearly see what was in your hands as you worked on his face before, so you couldn’t put one in when you were doing those repairs—but he had himself checked, just to be sure. But this time you were working in his torso, and he hasn’t had a chance to be scanned since leaving here, which means the chip you just put in is active. So where is he?”
“I tell you, I did no such thing.”
“You may, or may not, give a damn about Dr. Pickover. But Reiko was your coworker, and maybe your friend. Tell me where they are.”
“Mr. Lomax, honestly, I swear to you—”
“This argument ends now. There’s no security camera up here, is there? That’s what you said. So, I’ll tell the NKPD that you went nuts and came at me, and I had to shoot you in self-defense. It’ll get sticky for a while, sure, but I’ll get off—and you’ll be dead. Unless you tell me right now where Dr. Pickover is.”
I let him think for a few moments, then cocked the hammer. “Well?”
He blew out air then spoke over his shoulder. “Keely? Locate Rory Pickover.”