“I understand that.”
“Look, this is coming from upper levels, you understand that?”
“I do understand that, yes…”
“This is getting to be a damn mess, is what it’s getting to be. The girl’s mother is after that kid and the whole company’s on its ear. We’ve got contracts to meet. We’ve got schedules. We need that release. We need this case settled.”
“I’m advising him to sign it, Mr. Payne.” Salvatore took a deep breath—of unadulterated office air, this time. God, who was Payne talking to? “We’re working on it. There’s a possibility, the way I see it—” He took another head-clearing breath and took a chance with Payne. “There’s an indication the kids might not have been where their log said they were. It could have been a mistake, it could have been deliberate. I think they may have been skimming.”
There was a long silence on the other end. God, he hoped he’d not made a major mistake in saying that.
“What we have,” Payne’s voice said finally, quietly, “is a minor incident taking far too much company time.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I can’t be more plain than that. We don’t need an independent involved in the courts, especially a kid with camera appeal. I’ve got the data on my desk, I’ll send it over to you. There was no ’driver. We have the log. There was no such entry. I’ll tell you what happened out there, captain, these two kids were up to no good, very likely skimming, probably scared as hell and taking chances with a rock way too large for their kind of equipment. Dekker either screwed up and had an accident that killed his partner, or there was a mechanical failure—take your pick of the safety violations on that ship. Maybe we should be prosecuting on negligence and probably on skimming, but I can give you the official word from Legal Affairs, we’re not prosecuting. The kid’s been through enough hell, there’s no likelihood that he’s going to be competent to testify, or that he won’t complicate things by raising extraneous issues in a trial, and we’re not going to have this drag on and on in a lawsuit, Salazar’s or his. There’s people on this station would love that, you understand me, captain?”
“I do, sir.”
“So get this damn mess cleared up. You hear me? I want that release. I’m sending you the accident report. You understand me? We have elements here perfectly willing to use somebody like Dekker. I don’t want this blown out of proportion. I want it stopped.”
He thought about the recorder on his desk. His finger hesitated over the button. He thought better of that move. But he wanted to make Payne say it. “Stop the investigation?”
“Put out the fire, Mr. Salvatore. We have a damage control situation here. I want this resolved. I want this problem neutralized. Hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” Salvatore said—which was pointless, because Payne had hung up. He punched in a number, the outer office. He said to his aide: “Get me Wills on the phone. Now!”
Dammit, if the kids were slamming—charge them. You skim from the company, you get busted. Period. But the girl’s mother insisted not. The girl’s mother insisted her daughter wouldn’t involve herself in a shady operation. Beyond a doubt Dekker had murdered her daughter for the bank account.
Good point, except it was one doggedly determined killer, who’d wrecked his ship and sent himself off the mental edge for an alibi. He’d seen miners do crazy things, he’d investigated one case that still gave him nightmares, but nobody had held Corazon Salazar here at gunpoint and nobody had any indication Dekker was after money, By what his investigation had turned up, the girl had quit college, taken money from a trust fund, paid Dekker’s way out here and laid down everything she had for an outdated ship and an outfitting—
A mortal wonder they’d gotten back alive the first time—and if anybody’d been kidnapped out here, it sounded more like Dekker… who was just damned lucky to have been found: physics had been in charge of that ship, the second those tanks ruptured: damned sure the kid hadn’t—and God and the computers knew why it had stayed in the ecliptic, but it didn’t sound like good planning to him.
Hell, Dek didn’t handle money, one of the interviewees had said, in the investigation on Rl. He just flew the ship. Always tinkering around with it…
Social? Yeah, he’d be with Cory, but he’d be doing vid games or something—he used to win bar tabs that way. Real easy-going. Sometimes you’d get a little rise out of him, you know, showing off, that sort of thing, but he always struck me as downright shy. The games were his outlet. He’d be off in the corner in the middle of a crowd, Cory’d be at the table talking physics and rocks, yeah, they were a real odd pair, different, but it was like Cory did the headwork and Dek was all realtime—
Yeah, Dek had a temper. But so did Cory. You never pushed her.
Yeah, they slept together—but they weren’t exclusive. Minded their own business—didn’t get real close to anybody. People tried to take advantage of them, them being kids, they’d stand their ground… Cory more than Dek, actually. She’d draw the line and he’d back her up… not a big guy, older guys used to try to hit on him—he’d stand for about so much, that was all, they’d find it out.
Honest? I don’t know, they weren’t in anything crooked I ever heard…
There was a ’driver out there. He had the up to date charts. Company records had it arriving March 24 and the accident as March 12. But the ships’ logs were tied up in BM regulations and the mag storage had been dumped. A panel by panel search of the two ships hadn’t turned up any illicit storage, and Wills hadn’t found any datacards in the miners’ rooms.
Which didn’t mean no datacards had gotten off the ship. Hell of a case for customs to wave past. Administration could come blazing in demanding answers on that.
But no one had told him early on there was any question about the charts; and he consequently hadn’t told Wills. And now the evidence was God knew where. Or if it still existed. You tried to do some justice in this job. There was a kid in hospital in more trouble than he was able to understand, up against a woman with enough money to see him hauled back to Sol—and into courts where Money, the military, dissatisfied contractors, and various labor and antiwar organizations were going to blow it up into an issue with a capital I.
Salvatore understood what they were asking him to do. Found himself thinking how they didn’t demote you down, just sideways, into some limbo like an advisory board no one listened to, out of the corporate track altogether.
He had a wife. A daughter in school, in Administrative Science—a daughter who looked to her father for the contacts that would make all the difference. Jilly was bright. She was so damned bright. And how did he tell her—or Mariko—this nowhere kid in hospital was worth Jilly’s chances?
He took another deep breath from the inhaler, thought: Hell, Dekker’s been no angel. He’s got a police record on Sol, juvenile stuff. Mother bailed him out. Nothing he’s done that we can prove…
But kids don’t know what they’re doing. If the kid can’t use good sense, use it for him.
He felt the slight giddiness the inhaler caused: don’t overdo it, his doctor said, and rationed the inhalers: his doctor didn’t have William Payne on his back. Or a wife and daughter whose lives a recalcitrant kid could ruin.