“Are you here to watch me sleep?”
Mentally, I tipped him a salute. His eyes still appeared closed, but I could see now the small slits he was watching me through. Professional, indeed. “Sorry—-just me,” I said. “I gather you were hoping for someone else?”
“Indeed,” he said, opening his eyes all the way and shifting back up to a sitting position on the chair. “Still, a clever perpetrator seldom tries the same trick twice on the same person.”
“You know something about perpetrators, do you?” I suggested, pulling out my multitool and flicking out the small knife blade as I walked toward him. “I thought you probably did.”
He drew back as he watched me approach, his eyes on the knife. “What do you do?” he asked cautiously.
“Not what you’re thinking,” I assured him. Setting the blade against the safety webbing tying his left wrist to the crate stack, I carefully sliced through it. “I think I know what’s going on,” I said as I stepped to his other side and cut his right arm free, too. “But I need your help and expertise to prove it.”
“What expertise is that?” he asked suspiciously as he massaged his wrists.
“The kind I’d expect,” I said, “from a fellow cop.”
He stiffened, just enough to show I’d hit the mark. “You misread,” he said. “I am not an enforcement officer.”
“Former cop, then,” I said. “Come on—we both know I’m right. Back in my compartment you talked about not believing something until you had evidence of its existence, and of needing to reach the required legal bar for action. Those are both phrases I’ve heard before from Filiaelian security officers.”
“That hardly constitutes compelling evidence.”
“We Humans are pretty good with hunches,” I said. “And of course, your current evasiveness just adds weight to my conclusion.”
For a moment he eyed me. “Very well,” he said. “I was indeed once an enforcement officer. But no longer. I am retired, with no official authority from any Filiaelian governmental body.”
“Close enough,” I said. “Let me try another hunch on you. Before your retirement, you were a forensic investigator.”
His nose blaze darkened with surprise. “That was indeed my specialty. Remarkable. May I ask how you reached that conclusion?”
“It was a combination of things,” I said. “You seemed very interested in my technique as I was taking samples from the air filter in Terese German’s car. You also didn’t fall for that ‘congenital disease after-elements’ soap bubble I spun for the rest of the passengers, either. More interestingly, you knew roughly how big a standard spectroscopic analyzer was, which was why you were studying my luggage last night in my compartment. You were trying to figure out if I’d lied about that, too.”
I gestured behind me. “But mostly because Bayta and I nearly caught you snooping around back here a couple of days ago. My first thought was that you were returning Master Colix’s ticket to him after having used it to steal the lozenges from his storage compartment.”
“The tablets were medicine?” Emikai asked, looking surprised again. “Ms. German said they were foodstuffs.”
“Ms. German is not the most observant person in the galaxy,” I said dryly. “Though to be fair, Master Colix wasn’t exactly advertising it, either. Speaking of Ms. German, what exactly is going on with her, anyway?”
He shook his head. “I cannot tell you.”
“Come on, Logra Emikai,” I cajoled. “This is just between two ex-cops, remember? By the way, what kind of title is logra? It obviously doesn’t come from lomagra, as my partner thought.”
“It is a new rank, a title given me by my current employers,” he said. “It refers to the ancient Filiaelian name for a bulwark, or a protector of the people.”
“Ancient Filiaelian, eh?” I commented. “We have people who like mining old languages, too. Anyway, the point is that I already know Ms. German is pregnant, which is why you were concerned enough about the air quality in her car to try to break into my compartment to see what I’d found out about that. I also know that you and Dr. Aronobal are escorting her from Earth to Filiaelian space. I just want to know why.”
He gazed at me for a long moment. I waited, keeping my best encouraging expression in place. Finally, he shrugged. “I suppose it cannot hurt. Several weeks ago Ms. German was assaulted near her home in the Western Alliance and impregnated by her attacker. Dr. Aronobal and I were already on Earth, seeking Human subjects for genetic testing, and we received orders to offer her our assistance and invite her to accompany us back to the Filiaelian Assembly for medical treatment and study.”
“Who exactly did these orders come from?” I asked.
“One of Dr. Aronobal’s superiors, I presume,” he said. “I was never shown the actual message. We offered Ms. German our assistance, which was accepted, and we are now returning to the Filiaelian Assembly with her.”
“Interesting timing, you being right there in the vicinity of this attack and all,” I commented. Actually, the timing struck me as more suspicious than interesting, but this wasn’t the time to go into that. “Dr. Aronobal’s part I understand, kindly physician and all that. Where exactly do you come into it?”
“To be honest, I am not entirely certain,” he said hesitantly. “I was asked to come out of retirement and accompany Dr. Aronobal to Earth as assistant and protector.”
“Someone thought she needed protecting?”
“Apparently so.” Emikai smiled suddenly. “It was apparently thought that I had the necessary skills for the position.”
“And correctly so,” I assured him, rubbing my throat. “So what kind of genetic testing are they planning for Ms. German?”
“That I also do not know,” he said. “But it must be highly urgent for us to have been hired to bring her all the way across the galaxy.”
“So it would seem,” I agreed. And that, I sensed, was all I was going to get out of him on this subject. Time to move on. “But as I was saying, my first assumption was that you were returning Master Colix’s ticket. But I know now that you stole neither the ticket nor the lozenges. Ergo, you must have come here for some other purpose.” I raised my eyebrows. “You were examining the bodies, weren’t you?”
He inclined his head. “I was attempting to do so,” he said. “You interrupted me before I could complete my investigation.”
“I presume you got far enough to notice the needle marks on the three Shorshians,” I said, mentally crossing my fingers. Ninety percent sure …“Anything interesting about them?”
He smiled tightly. “You would not ask unless you already knew,” he said. “Your unstated hunch is correct: the needle marks were made after the victims’ deaths.”
I felt my stomach tighten. “You’re absolutely sure about that?”
“I am,” he said. “I also suspect the tip of the needle is still buried within di-Master Strinni’s skin.”
“Not anymore, but it was,” I said. There it was, the last ten percent of doubt. “Thank you, Logra Emikai. I believe you’ve just helped me identify a killer.”
His eyes locked hard into mine. “Who?”
I reached into my pocket and tossed him his first-class pass. “Come to the first-class dining car tomorrow at ten o’clock,” I told him. “I’ll introduce you.”
“Thank you,” he said softly as he slid the pass into a pocket. “I will be there.”
“Good.” I gestured in the direction of the bodies. “In the meantime, I have a couple of final tests to run on the bodies. I was hoping you would assist me.”
He inclined his head. “I would be honored.”
An hour later, our tests completed, we left the baggage car. I dropped Emikai off at his seat among the sea of privacy-shielded sleepers and continued on forward. I hoped he would get a good night’s rest.