He considered Dion a liability and wanted him gone, but needed a good excuse, so he’d decided to place him in a stressful situation — the big-city crime scene — to watch him come apart.
The fourth possibility kept Dion awake nights: he was being investigated. Bosko was working a crime, had a theory, was putting his suspicion to the test, and to test it properly he needed his suspect close at hand.
Down on Level 2, at the desk he’d been given, Dion set aside his doubts and focussed on the Lius. He listed his thoughts on paper. First on the list, he made a call to the Justice Department for a telephone warrant, doing Jimmy Torr’s job for him, then to the Corporate Registry of Companies, and fairly soon had the information he was looking for: the names of all partners in the company, which totalled two, each owning fifty percent of L&S Electric.
He guessed the “L” was Lance Liu. The “S,” he knew now, would be a Sigmund Blatt. The company had been incorporated only three months ago. Its address was a PO box, and its phone number was the one he had tried earlier without luck. Now he made more calls, tracking down the unlisted contact information for the surviving partner.
Within the hour he took the information a few desks down to Jimmy Torr. He sat and waited for Torr to finish a call, then told him, “I’ve got a line on Sigmund Blatt, the missing man’s partner. You want me to follow up?”
He had known Torr for years. Torr was in his middle thirties, built, irritable, and insecure. He had never liked Dion, and vice versa. But animosity felt good to Dion. It meant for a while he could drop the cheek-numbing smile.
“I’ll take care of it,” Torr said coldly, reaching for the note. “Thanks.”
“It’s priority. Lance Liu’s our best bet right now, and he’s missing. If you’re not going to deal with it straight away, I will. Paley’s given me the go-ahead.”
Torr looked at the paper. He said, “Call him up, tell him I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“I tried. Got an answering machine.”
“Did you leave a message? Tell him to get back to you A-SAP?”
“No. Better to cold-call him anyway,” Dion said. “I could head over there now.”
Torr said sourly, “What meds they got you on?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but stood and grabbed his suit jacket, making a statement with the set of his shoulders that he was going alone. Dion followed.
Four
Echoes
Leith had seen what he had to see in the house on Mahon, and as the place filled with Ident members buckling down for an in-depth search, he thought he would leave, make himself useful back at the office. He was heading down the stairs toward the front door when he heard a commotion, a kind of collective gasp, then a murmuring of excited voices.
It was so unlike any other commotion he had heard at crime scenes over the years that he returned at a jog to the top of the stairs and followed the sound to the kitchen. Here he saw half a dozen white-clad Idents clustered about the lower corner cabinet next to the kitchen sink. All were peering into the darkness, and one was speaking gently to it.
Dog or cat, Leith thought.
“What’s up?” he asked the member closest to him.
“There’s a child in there,” she said. “A boy, we’re thinking. He’s crouched way at the back. He won’t come out.”
A child, Leith thought. Alive. He added a mental wow. “Is he hurt? Is he stuck?”
Nobody thought the kid was hurt or stuck, but nobody knew for sure.
Leith told the group, “Everybody clear out. Except you,” he told the female member, because women were nicer, and kids knew it. “What’s your name?” he asked, as the others left the room.
“Constable Kim Tam, sir.”
“Try to coax him out, okay? I’ll wait over here.”
He stood in the corner of the room and watched Tam crouch down by the open cabinet doors. She leaned over so her head almost touched the floor, and cooed in at the boy. Must be a terrifically small human to fit in there, on the lower shelf, far back among pots and pans, Leith marvelled.
“It’s all good now,” Tam was saying, in a warm, smiley voice. “The bad man is gone,” she said, and Leith sighed. He’d have a talk with her later about planting false memories. But too late now; the bad man had come and gone. She nodded encouragement into the shadows. “We’re going to take care of you now, okay? You must be so cold! I have a blanket here, and we’ll get you a nice cup of cocoa, how about that?”
Finally there was movement and a shifting of cookware. A little face appeared, caught sight of Leith, who was working hard to look like safe harbour, and ducked back inside. Tam turned and glared at Leith, letting him know safe harbour was the last thing he looked like. He stepped further away, and she went about undoing the damage.
At last she had the little survivor gathered in her arms, hugging him tight. There were tears in her eyes as she stood and turned to Leith, and a flash of outrage, asking what kind of monster could tear this little darling’s world apart like this.
Any decent person would feel that outrage. Children left parentless, parents left childless, families shredded. Leith knew the outrage most viscerally. In his line of work, anger was a valuable but delicate resource, possibly not renewable, not to be overused. He had learned the lesson maybe too late, because his anger these days felt like a worn tire, dulled by age and subject to bursting. As hers would, too, in time, if she didn’t watch out.
“What’s your name, little guy?” Tam was asking the child. He was somewhere between three and four years old. He wore flannel pyjamas that smelled of stale pee. He wouldn’t talk. Nor did he cry or fuss; he just huddled in Tam’s arms. Whatever he’d seen in this place last night had shocked him numb.
“Maybe he doesn’t speak English,” Leith suggested.
Tam said, “I’m sure he speaks perfect English.”
Leith wasn’t sure how she could know, but trusted she was right. He got on the phone, calling Paley to send in a female GIS member to help get the kid to the hospital. The one who showed up a few minutes later was a bit of a disappointment, not the kind of female he had in mind. He had worked with her before in a passing way. JD Temple was tall, about thirty years old, with short brown hair. Her face was marred by a birth defect, a cleft lip that had never been properly repaired. She had a skinny build, fierce dark eyes, and an air of macho impatience. Leith would have preferred the soft femininity of Kim Tam, but Tam was Ident, and her job was here at the scene, combing and picking up lint with her team like an OCD housemaid.
Problem? JD’s stare asked him as she plucked the reluctant child from a reluctant Tam, reading the doubt on Leith’s face and resenting it.
Yes, there was a problem, because right now this little survivor was Leith’s best clue, and he wanted that clue to be as comfortable as possible. He wasn’t sure JD was capable of giving that kind of comfort. “Great,” he said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Sigmund Blatt’s stats said he
