8
POST-MORTEM
There was another flurry of yells, with the Pearlmans and the stewards demanding to know what Philip had meant by that, Jason trying to tell them that it didn’t matter right now, Jelaine telling everybody to talk one at a time, and the Porrinyards trying to calm them all down so we could move on.
Dejah Shapiro seized control, by slamming her palm against the bar just once, the impact a thunderclap. She waited for the chaos to collapse in the face of the order she had demanded, then spoke with repressed fury. “Yes. For those of you who didn’t already know, Counselor Cort and the Bocaian people have had a violent prior history. Yes, the story’s a long and unpleasant one and is not new intelligence to myself, or to our hosts. Yes, if you want details, I assume you’ll hear them real soon. But this is not the moment.” She stared down every face in the room, before glancing at me. “Andrea? You were saying?”
Any of the Bettelhines would have made an appropriate target for my next words, but Philip seemed to be my opposition here, so I went for him. “Sir. We need to organize a full investigation.”
He looked like a man who had just bitten into something foul. “Now?”
“Well, you can wait until we don’t have a murder victim, but that would make no sense.”
He spared another nauseated glance at the Khaajiir. “Don’t we have more pressing concerns right now? Like survival?”
“None,” I said, “within our current powers to address.”
“Yes.” Philip admitted. “But whoever did this…horrible thing…is stuck in here like the rest of us.”
“And damn you,” Jason muttered. “Whoever you are.”
Jelaine didn’t offer that much restraint. “Oh, he’s damned all right. “The Khaajiir was our friend. He was a personal guest of our father. His blood is our blood. Whoever did this… will never be able to run far enough.”
I took their personal grief as very much beside the point, and answered Philip. “The corollary, sir, is that we’re stuck in here with him. Or them.”
His eyes narrowed. “Just how many killers do you think there are?”
“I have no idea, sir. But the possibility of more than one is worth considering, given that Mr. Pescziuwicz already has two in custody up at Layabout, and the existence of a conspiracy always suggests an unknown number of collaborators.”
“You still don’t have any reason to believe that’s true here.”
“Nor do I have any reason to rule it out. I once heard of a famous murder case, aboard another stranded vessel, where it was essentially every passenger on board. Right now we don’t know anything except that we all remain in danger until we know who’s guilty and who’s not.”
Philip gave me a disgusted look. “Yes, but of all the people in this room, you’re the only one known to have murdered Bocaians before. Why should we trust you?”
“Sir. I don’t consider myself above suspicion. I may know I’m innocent, and have faith that my associates are innocent, but I also know that I’m not about to persuade you of either proposition until I demonstrate to your satisfaction just who committed the crime. Similarly, I know that your family has killed any number of people over the years, even if the preponderance of those victims were slaughtered by proxy via the weapons you design, mass-produce, and sell. You’re all part of that enterprise yourselves, and so neither you, nor your employees, all the way down to the stewards, escape suspicion, either as the Khaajiir’s principal murderer or as fellow conspirators. Even the sole person here unaffiliated with either the Bettelhine organization, or myself—that would be Mrs. Shapiro—is a suspect. As you established earlier, she’s been an enemy of your family for years, and we all know she has financial resources that equal your own, and thus provide her with more than enough influence to arrange this. So we’re all under suspicion, and can cease taking that fact personally. The fact remains that, right now, we’re all the prisoners of somebody who can not only smuggle a deadly weapon on board, but also has the capacity to isolate us by arranging the complete communications shutdown after this so-called emergency stop.”
He licked his lips. “You can’t know those was arranged too.”
I raised my voice to a near shout. “Show of hands! Who within the sound of my voice is confident that the emergency stop, the loss of communications, and the murder of the Khaajiir all have nothing to do with one another?” Silence. “Don’t be shy, people! If you believe that, stand up for it!”
The silence, broken only by scattered sobs from Dina Pearlman, persisted.
Jelaine murmured something inaudible to Dejah, who whispered something back. Skye, who was beside them, twitched her lips in appreciation. Something to ask her about, when I had a chance.
“There’s something else that needs to be established,” I said, turning away from Philip and sweeping my gaze from one set of frightened eyes to another. “We have not yet confirmed that help is coming. If it is coming, we don’t know how long it will take to get here. We don’t know if the people at Layabout or at Anchor Point have any bigger problems to deal with. We don’t know whether the damage already done to this cabin poses any additional threat to our lives. We don’t know if the killer, or killers, is satisfied with the one corpse or if there are any remaining targets. And finally, we don’t know whether the answers to any of these questions will wait until help can arrive and take over the investigation…or whether we must race the clock if we hope to get out of here alive. The only thing we know is that we’ve been left with no other immediate possibility of helping ourselves. This is something we can do.”
Philip coughed. “And…I suppose…you want to run the investigation, yes?”
“Please, sir. I know I have no jurisdiction here. I don’t mean to overstep my bounds. Were your man Mr. Pescziuwicz or some other authority you trusted available, I’d shut up and defer to him. But who in this room, aside from my associates and myself, has had experience running criminal investigations? You?”
To my surprise, Dejah Shapiro raised her hand. “Ummm…I’ve had to do it, several times.”
There was silence as I gaped at her, my precious momentum derailed. I was not alone in that, either; just about everybody forgot our current predicament long enough to gather from her expression that she was entirely serious.
Of all of us, it was Jelaine who ventured, “Really?”
“Really.” For a moment Dejah just looked tired, less like a woman who had spent much of her life cocooned by extreme wealth than one who had known more than her share of struggle and heartbreak. It aged her, but only for a moment, and then the vitality came rushing back in. “Some of you already know that I once found myself saddled with a sociopathic ferret of a husband, one Ernst Vossoff, whose messes needed to be cleaned up on a regular basis. There were occasions, in places cut off from my usual resources, where…well, where I was the only one available to connect the dots.” She turned to me. “Just providing a footnote, Counselor. I’m not claiming my experience adds up to anything as distinguished as my own.”
“Appreciated,” I said. “Maybe it will prove helpful anyway.”
Philip glanced at his brother and sister, neither of whom had raised any objections to me taking command of the situation. They just met his gaze, giving him nothing. After a moment, he ventured, “Since you do admit you’re a suspect, how do you suggest we work this, so we can trust each other?”
Oscin stood beside the Khaajiir’s body, awaiting further instructions. Skye was still with Dejah and Jelaine. Neither had spoken a word, or made a move to interrupt the confrontation between Philip and me since the moment Dejah silenced the party. But I didn’t need to know them as well as I did to know that their shared mind was racing.