Harriet remained silent as Legroeder watched the initial part of Jakus’s testimony. It was a fairly straightforward account of the raider attack, with one critical omission: any mention of the sighting of the lost starship Impris. Legroeder stared, tight-lipped, waiting to see how his old shipmate would explain the L.A.’s entrapment by the pirate ship. The Jakus on the recording looked like a different person from the one Legroeder had served with on the L.A. For one thing, he seemed far more tentative and cautious, and—Legroeder thought—old. Or perhaps not so much old, as worn. His time in servitude with the pirates had taken a heavy toll. A datachip implant flickered on his left temple—a gift of the pirates, no doubt. Legroeder wondered how he’d been received here on Faber Eridani with that implant; there was a lot of prejudice about that sort of thing on many of the Centrist Worlds—or at least there had been seven years ago. Not for the first time, Legroeder uttered a prayer of gratitude that he had been spared that particular indignity.
Eventually someone on the inquest panel had asked Jakus why the Ciudad de los Angeles had slowed enough to make it vulnerable to attack in the first place.
“Watch Jakus’s face here,” Harriet murmured.
The haggard-faced man on the screen hesitated before answering. Jakus looked as though he were running two or three possible scenarios through his mind. Twice, he seemed about to speak, before biting back words. He scratched at the implant on his temple, cocking his head slightly. Finally he answered in a gravelly voice, “It was because of a bum image from our stern-rigger. He had some kind of crazy idea he’d seen a vessel in distress.” Jakus seemed to be trying to laugh at the idea; but the laugh couldn’t quite get out. “The rest of us and the skip—we saw right through that. It was just a clumsy deception thrown up by the pirates to confuse us.”
“And were you confused?” asked an offscreen voice.
“Well, yeah—things got pretty damn hairy pretty fast.” Jakus barked a laugh, almost a cough. “But still—”
“What?”
“Well, you know. If our stern-rigger hadn’ta fallen for it, we could’ve steered clear. The pirates didn’t come after us ’til after we’d slowed.”
“But if you and the captain saw through it, couldn’t you do something?”
Jakus shook his head. He seemed to gain a measure of self-confidence, now that the lie was out. “You got to understand about rigging—it’s a team thing. It only takes one person pulling the wrong way, or getting confused, to bring the whole thing down around you. And that’s what happened—we got bad input from the stern, ’cause our guy there kept sayin’ he saw something. And even though the skip said—well—” Jakus’s voice faltered. “Well, he said to stay right on course, but we couldn’t—couldn’t do it—”
“Because of the stern-rigger?”
“Yeah.”
“And his name was—?”
“Oh, uh—” Jakus hesitated, swallowing. “Groder, I think it was. Is that right?”
A different voice from the paneclass="underline" “There was a Renwald Legroeder listed on the rigger crew. Is that who you mean?”
Jakus’s voice shook a little. “That’s it.”
“Thank you—”
“Legroeder,” Jakus repeated, his voice gaining strength. “It was Renwald Legroeder.”
The recording ended.
Legroeder stared at the blank screen. “I’ll be a God-damned son of a monkey.”
Harriet turned off the monitor and settled into the wingbacked chair behind her office desk. The sunlight coming in through the window was turning golden orange with the approach of sunset. “What do you think?”
“I think,” growled Legroeder, “that I’d like to have a talk with my friend Jakus.”
“Well, I’m not sure that would be very productive.” Harriet lowered her glasses to hang from the chain around her neck. “That was two years ago. The inquest is history now. But if we could prove that there was falsification—”
“Prove it? The sonofabitch lied through his teeth because he thought he’d never have to answer to me.” Legroeder tried, with difficulty, to keep his anger under control. “You don’t happen to know where he lives, do you?”
“I haven’t really kept track—”
“You aren’t going to bullshit me now. My lawyer?”
Harriet scowled. “All right. As your lawyer, I strongly recommend that you not attempt a personal confrontation. You’re out on bail, if you haven’t forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten. But something rotten’s going on, and we aren’t going to find out what by sitting here. So do you know where Jakus is, or not?”
Harriet stared at him for a moment. “Let me see what my PI’s latest files say.” She put her glasses back on, tapped on a small screen on her desktop and studied it before looking back up at Legroeder. “According to this, he lived for a short time in a RiggerGuild complex on the outskirts of the city; then he left the Guild and moved out into a small condominium. He hasn’t flown since, though he’s done some work for a maintenance outfit at the spaceport.” She studied the screen again. “What would a rigger do for a maintenance company, I wonder.”
Legroeder rubbed his chin, remembering many days on maintenance details at the raider outpost.
“Whatever it is, he spends a lot of time at it. According to this—and I must commend my PI for staying current—he’s moved out of his condominium and is spending all of his time with that maintenance outfit.”
“You mean he’s sleeping at the spaceport?”
“Apparently so.” Harriet closed the screen again. “The question is, what should we do?”
Legroeder rose, shaking, and not from the coffee. “I know what I have to do.”
“That’s not what I meant, Legroeder. Will you please let me do this right—and keep you out of jail? Let my PI make the contact.”
Legroeder closed his eyes, as the memory of all that had happened to him welled up, bringing his rage with it. He struggled to push the rage back under. “I’m sure you’re probably right. But this… is something I have to do myself.” Jakus Bark. My friend. Backstabbing bastard. He forced a smile at Harriet. “I’ll be good. I’m not going to start a fight with him or anything. But I am going to talk to him. I mean, we used to work together. That counts for something, right?”
“Legroeder, please—”
“And after this, I’ll follow your advice. I promise.”
The spaceport field was a sprawling place, bordered with countless hangars and repair shops and administration buildings, and few signposts for strangers. Legroeder had traveled in and out of this port before, but he still had trouble finding his way around; the place had changed in seven years. They’d taken his RiggerGuild ID away from him, but as it turned out, security was nonexistent on this part of the field.
Legroeder stood at the edge of the decayed plasphalt pavement of a parking lot and squinted across the complex into the setting sun, trying to figure out from Harriet’s notes just where the maintenance hangar might be. He was at a remote corner of the field, and it looked more like a down-at-the-heels industrial park than a spaceport.
Harriet’s words echoed in his mind. What are you going to do if he won’t talk to you? She’d given him a good, long stare. If his own grandmother had still been alive, she couldn’t have conveyed greater sternness.