Incredibly, though, especially after all that care, they were still wandering the twisting pathways and staircases an hour later, the shoulder bags they'd brought with them still empty. At that point they'd been surprised by Künstler himself, who had apparently come in to commune with the Old Masters. He'd sounded the alarm, and in the resulting very one-sided fracas all six burglars had been killed.
But not before one of them had found the strength to ask Künstler where the Nemuti Lynx was.
"Well, if we still had any doubts the Modhri was involved, this pretty well clinches it," I told Bayta as I handed her the reader.
"Which part?" she asked, frowning at the text.
"The part where one of the perps wastes his dying breath asking where the Lynx is." I pointed to the place.
I saw Bayta's throat tighten. "The walkers weren't all inside the grounds," she said. "There was at least one still outside."
"Exactly," I agreed. "Hoping Künstler would tell him where he'd stashed the Lynx."
"Unless the inside man had an open radio channel to someone?" Bayta suggested.
I shook my head. "Standard procedure in a case like this is to immediately jam all communications except the private rolling-link system the security people themselves are using. No, the only messages getting out right then would have been across a Modhri mind segment."
"I just hope Künstler didn't tell him."
"He didn't," I assured her grimly. "His lethal interrogation aboard the Quadrail proves that much."
Bayta shivered. "What in the galaxy does he want with these things?"
I shrugged. "Between our attack on his homeland and the pressure Fayr's been putting on his Belldic outposts, he has to be finding himself a bit on the ropes these days. Every good soldier knows that the first rule of retreat is to have someplace to retreat to. Could be he's made a deal with one of these ultrarich collectors to trade the complete Nemuti collection for a chunk of cold-water territory he can call his own."
Bayta stiffened. I didn't blame her. The thought of the Modhri going underground, regrouping, and relaunching his campaign against the galaxy on his own terms and with his own timing was very much at the top of my Things We Don't Want To Happen list. "How do we stop him?" she asked.
"We start by ignoring the big. scary view and focusing on the immediate job at hand," I told her. "Künstler's murder shows the Modhri's still after this third Lynx. We have to make sure we get to it first." I took back the reader and scrolled to the next file. "And we start by finding out what they've got on this person of extreme interest."
The third file on the chip, as expected, was a brief biography of one Daniel Josef Stafford.
He was twenty-six years old, the son of one of Künstler's top business managers. Born into the Künstler inner circle, he'd spent a lot of time on the estate when he was growing up, hobnobbing with the rich and powerful among his father's friends. The usual pattern in these cases, I knew, was for the kid to be groomed for golden-cog status, then inserted into some cushy midlevel corporate job as soon as he graduated from college.
That might still be the plan, but as yet the big event hadn't happened. Stafford had taken to the collegiate lifestyle with a vengeance, so much so that he'd apparently decided to make a full-time career of it. In the past eight years he'd bounced his major around like a fumbled football, switching from business to economics to art appreciation to psychology. If the attached course schedule was up-to-date, he was currently splitting his class time between the odd duo of alien sociology and techniques of advertising.
His free time was equally well packed. During his teen years he'd become adept with both skis and lugeboard, and every chance he got he was off Earth and onto the Quadrail to match his skills against some of the galaxy's most challenging slopes.
Despite his unfocused ambitions, relations with his parents seemed to have remained good. He still dropped in on them at the Künstler estate a couple of times a year, where he also made a point of touring Künstler's art gallery to see what the boss had added since his last visit. Showing off his art appreciation classes, no doubt.
His last visit had been the weekend of the abortive burglary. He hadn't been seen or heard from since that night. Nor had his ID been logged through at any air, sea, or land entry portal, nor had he used any of his credit tags anywhere in the Terran Confederation. As far as ESS could tell, Daniel Stafford had simply dropped off the edge of the universe.
"Do you think he was killed?" Bayta asked.
"I doubt it." I told her. "His body wasn't found on the scene, and I can't see the Modhri dragging him all the way across the grounds just to kill him somewhere out of sight."
"Unless the Modhri thought Mr. Stafford had the Lynx," Bayta suggested.
"Which is a pretty good bet anyway," I agreed. "Stafford on the estate; Stafford and the Lynx no longer on the estate. Hence, person of extreme interest."
"I don't know," Bayta said doubtfully. "It sounds like the Lynx had been sitting around there for years. Why wait until now to steal it?"
"The simplest and most obvious answer is that the Modhri got to Stafford with an offer too good to pass up," I said. "That's probably ESS's current reasoning, too. Except the Modhri part, of course."
"But you don't believe that?"
I shrugged. "Cops like simple answers," I said. "And to be honest, most crimes do end up shaking out that way. But this case has a few too many unanswered questions."
"Such as?"
"Such as why Künstler was on the Bellis Quadrail," I said. "Was he chasing Stafford, or was he on some mission of his own? He was certainly doing something underhanded—there's no other reason for him to be running alone and under a false ID. And whatever he was up to, if the Modhri already had the Lynx or knew it was on the way, why beat him to death?"
"Maybe Mr. Stafford is planning to sell the Lynx to someone else," Bayta suggested. "Maybe the Modhri realized that and needs to find him before the Lynx disappears into another private collection."
"That's sort of where I'm leaning on the whole thing," I agreed.
"You think Mr. Stafford is the Daniel Mice Mr. Künstler spoke about?"
"I'd say it would be straining the bounds of probability to have a second Daniel running around this case," I told her. "But since we can't find Daniel Mice and ESS can't find Daniel Stafford, it would seem he's got at least one other name in his collection."
"So we're basically stuck."
"At least as far as his name goes." I raised my eyebrows as a sudden thought struck me. "Unless we don't need his name. Could the Spiders locate him if we provide them with a photo?"
Bayta pursed her lips. "Probably not," she said regretfully. "Conductors can learn to distinguish Human faces—they can recognize the two of us, for instance. But they aren't going to be able to pick a random Human face out of a crowd."
I grimaced. But I really should have expected that answer. "In that case, we're back to old-fashioned detective work," I said, scrolling to the next page. "Let's see if ESS was kind enough to provide us with a search platform."
They had. The next two pages of the file listed Stafford's relatives, closest friends, classmates, and fellow lugeboard junkies. It was, I noted cynically, a considerably longer list than Künstler's own. Apparently there were social advantages to being only slightly obscenely rich.
The three pages after that included Stafford's favorite hot spots, on Earth and elsewhere, a list of every place he'd visited during his wanderings, plus every travel, work, and play habit anyone had been able to statistically dredge up from his life's history. "I can't believe how fast they pulled all this together." Bayta commented when we finally reached the end.