Polaris (23 page)

The picture went off, and the AI brought the lights up. “Well, that was interesting,” I said.

Alex looked at me as if I were the slow kid in the classroom.
“You didn't notice?”

“Notice what?”

“Teri Barber.”

“I'm sorry?”

“I thought you'd pick her out right away.”

“Teri Barber was there?”

“Well, not Barber herself. It might have been Agnes.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “Where?” I asked.

“Take another look.”
He told Jacob to rerun the last two minutes. Dunninger and Mendoza and their satellites trying to squeeze through the door. Maddy allowing Juano to kiss her. He hung on, chastely pressing his cheek against hers, as if he knew they were in the center of the picture.

“Freeze it,” I said.

“Well, what do you think?”

I stared at Maddy. At the same blue eyes, the perfectly sculpted jaws, the pert nose, the half smile playing about the full lips. A few more lines. Otherwise—“Yes,” I said. “If she were younger, they'd be very close.”

“Make her twenty-three, Jacob. And change her hair color. Go with black.”

Her features softened. The intensity gave way to a leisurely innocence. The creases that were just appearing on her brow and at the corners of her mouth went away. The skin around the jaws tightened.

Add the black hair, shorten it.

“You thought Teri Barber resembled Maddy?”
he said.

Well, I'd been right. She
was
Maddy. They were identical.

The record said that Madeleine English had never borne a child. But there was an army of nieces and cousins, and when we looked through the pictures of current family members, we found three who resembled Teri Barber and seemed to be about the right age. One in particular, Mary Capitana, was a dead ringer. But Mary was a medical intern at a Kubran hospital in the middle of the Western Ocean, and the other two also had careers that would have prevented their living on Trinity Island in their spare time.

We couldn't find any record on Agnes Lockhart Shanley prior to her superluminal certification in 1397. Whatever she'd told the board about her background was subject to privacy laws. Her only known address was in a resort town with the ominous name Walpurgis, eleven hundred kilometers up the coast. She'd left there two decades ago, in 1405, according to the data file. After which there was no further record.

Current residence was unknown.

Walpurgis is one of those places that was bypassed in the boom of the last ten years. For whatever reason—you'd have to find a sociologist to explain it—the crowds have abandoned the northern coastal resorts for the islands.

Not that the area is poor. But when Alex and I got there it looked as if most of the inhabitants lived off the minimum subsistence income and
didn't do much else. The center of town was anchored by large crumbling hotels built in the last century, a few restaurants done up in gaudy colors, and some sporting palaces. A plethora of walks and ramps overlooked the ocean, and the entire south side was dedicated to a vast warpark, which had probably gone bust when big-time gaming faded a few years ago. Nothing was moving in its streets.

We were riding Rainbow's new skimmer, purchased to replace the one that had been lost. It located Shanley's old address and brought us down onto a public pad near a fading, two-story house on a corner near the western edge of town. An elderly woman with a white dog was coming out of a store, her arms filled with packages. A few kids were playing in a nearby schoolyard. Otherwise, there was no sign of life.

“This place has seen better days,” said Alex.

Well, I thought, so have we all.

Lawns were overgrown and full of weeds. The houses leaned in one direction or another. Creepers were strangling the trees, and it didn't look as if anyone had touched the hedges for years. It was a gray, dismal day, threatening but not delivering rain, and we could see lights in most of the windows. A cheer went up from the schoolyard. Kids are amazing. Feed them, give them a toy, and they never notice the wreckage around them.

The walkway wound past the school and a run-down park with climbing bars and a ball field. The house Agnes and her husband had lived in stood near a cluster of stacia trees. It was green and white, but the colors had faded. The front porch sagged, the shutters needed replacing, and a post light leaned at an unseemly angle.

“Yes?”
said the AI as we approached.
“May I be of assistance?”

The front door was big, heavy, and scored by too many years of wind and sand. “Yes,” Alex said. “My name's Alex Benedict. I'd like very much to talk with the occupant. I'll only take a moment of his time.”

“If you'd care to state your business, Mr. Benedict, I'll inform her.”

“I was admiring the house. I'm interested in a possible purchase.”

“One moment, please.”

“You have no shame,” I said.

“What do you suggest? Tell him we're here to ask questions about a missing starship captain?”

“I could see
you
living here.”

“It's a nice out-of-the-way place.”

“
That's
true.”

Alex stepped down off the deck and looked up, pretending he was inspecting the roof. Abruptly the door opened and a tired-looking woman in her fifties appeared. She looked suspiciously from one of us to the other. In this part of the world, visitors were never good news.

She resembled the neighborhood, listless, passed-by, dilapidated. In an age when no one is hungry, no one need go without shelter, and in which one need not even work if he, or she, chooses a life of leisure, I remain surprised that there are still people who seem unable to put their lives together. Or maybe the lack of necessity is the reason. “Mr. Benedict,” she said, throwing a suspicious glance my way, “the house has not been put up for sale.”

“I'm interested nevertheless.”

She studied us, decided she had nothing to lose, and stepped aside so we could enter. The interior was more or less what you would have expected: worn furniture, no curtains, bare floors. A few family pictures decorated the walls. Everyone was either very young or very old.

“My name is Casava,” she said. “Casava Demmy.”

We completed the introductions, and Casava showed us around. The house was musty, but not disheveled. While we walked, we asked about the property. How much would she want for it? What kind of neighbors did she have? How long had she been living there?

“Eighteen years. It's a nice house. Needs some work, as you can see. But it's very solid.”

“I can see that. Yes.”

“Close to the beach.”

“Yes. It
is
quite nice. It looks as if the former owner took good care of it, too.”

“Yes, he did. Tawn Brackett. Good man, he was.”

“Before Tawn was here,” said Alex, “a couple owned the house. Ed and Agnes Crisp.”

Casava's expression hardened. “Is that what this is about?” she asked. “The murder?”

Alex did a double take. “What murder?”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “It was supposed to have been an accident. But I doubt it.”

“Who got murdered?”

“Why, her husband. Ed.” She shook her head at the depravity of the world. “You knew about the Crisps, but you didn't know what happened?”

“No. What happened?”

“He died in a fall. Off Wallaba Point. She was with him at the time. They'd only been married a few years.”

“Did you know her?” asked Alex.

Suddenly she looked reluctant. “Just in passing,” she said.

Alex showed her his comm link. He transferred some funds. I couldn't see how much. “What can you tell us about Agnes?”

She took a moment to retrieve her own link, which was in a table drawer. She checked her account, looked at both of us as if trying to decide what our interest was, and shrugged. “Yes. I knew her. We were the same age. Dated some of the same men, in fact. Before she got married, of course.”

“Of course. Was she a friend?”

“I wouldn't go that far.”

“What kind of person was she? Why do you say she killed her husband?”

“It's a long time ago, Mr. Benedict. I never really knew her that well.”

“It's okay,” he said. “It won't go any farther.”

We were back in the living room. She was looking closely at Alex, then she turned her gaze on me, and I could have sworn she was asking me whether she could believe Alex. I nodded yes, of course. “I wouldn't want you to think,” she said finally, “that I don't trust you, but a moment ago you were telling me you wanted to buy my house.”

We waited. A dog started barking outside.

“It just seemed strange. They went walking one night, and he didn't come home. I think she got tired of him.”

“Did she give you any reason to believe that?”

“She struck me as someone who'd get tired of any man pretty quick.”

“What else can you tell us?”

“She was a pilot of some sort. She had a pretty high opinion of herself. Thought she was better than everybody else. I was living over in Brentwood when she first came to town. I was at that time just out of school. We both belonged to a theater group. That's how I met her.”

“You did some shows together?”

“Yes. I had a good voice then.”

“Do you know what she piloted?”

“I was a singer,” she said. She listed a few of the shows she'd been in. We listened, tried to look impressed, and Alex asked his question again. “Starships,” she said. “Like I told you. She used to be gone for long periods of time. Off to the stars. She'd drop out of sight for months. Even after she got married.”

“Did they have any children?”

“No. No time for kids, I guess.”

“Did they have any family that you knew of?”

“I really don't remember, Mr. Benedict. Actually, I'm not sure I ever knew.” She shook her head. “The only thing I can tell you is that she was gone a lot. Then her husband died. And not long after that she took off for good, and we never saw her again.”

“But she sold the house first.”

“I guess so. I don't know.”

“Did she tell anyone she was leaving?”

“If she did, I didn't know about it.” She shrugged again. This time I thought I saw regret. “Don't know what happened to her.”

“How long did she live in Walpurgis? Do you know?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe ten years.”

We went down to the city hall, logged in, and began scrolling through the public record.

The first item of interest was the dead husband. We found that easily enough in news accounts dated over a twelve-day period in late autumn, 1404.

And, eight months later:

There were pictures of Agnes, in uniform and in civilian clothes. Some wedding pictures. She and Ed made a handsome couple.

Ed had been a young worker at one of the casinos. The reports jibed with what Casava had told us. They'd gone out walking one night. To Wallaba Point. According to friends, they went there frequently. It was part of a workout routine. But on that particular evening Agnes admitted there'd been a quarrel. Apparently there was some pushing and shoving, although Agnes denied that she'd sent him over the edge.
“He lost his footing,”
she'd insisted.
“I loved him.”
Apparently the police uncovered no convincing evidence to the contrary. No arrest was ever made.

What had the argument been about?

“We were trying to decide about kids. I didn't think we were ready to do that because he didn't earn that much, and I'd have to give up my career.”

We checked the almanac. It had been a moonless night, dark and overcast.

Crisp had had the build of a moonball player. Young, athletic, good features. He wore his black hair cut short in the style of the day. He'd had dark, penetrating eyes, a broad forehead, dark skin. Neatly clipped beard and mustache. Was employed as a host at the Easy Aces Casino. He didn't look like the sort of person who would accidentally stumble off a cliff.

There was no avatar available.

Police had questioned Agnes for several days. People who knew them said there were no problems between them. They were good together, everyone seemed to think. (I wondered if anyone had questioned Casava.) Nevertheless, suspicions in the town ran high.

Ed Crisp reminded me of somebody.