ARC: The Buried Life (6 page)

Gowlitz’s guilty silence only enraged him further. “Back to your desk, and keep your mouth shut.”

Ashen white, the researcher mumbled a vague formality and retreated. The furious man returned his attention to the inspectors, his eyes popping.

“This is all quite unnecessary. I’m Dr Rodriguez and this is my colleague, Roane,” Sundar said. “We’re here from South Haven to meet with Dr Hask.”

“Not a chance.” The words came before the angry man could open his mouth again. The speaker, a woman with a melodious but controlled voice, had materialized in the midst of the confusion, and she regarded the two detectives with a gaze every bit as unflinching as Malone’s. “But I shall be eager to learn how you managed to get down here in the first place, as poor liars as you both are,” she said. Sundar looked offended.

Malone shrugged. “Then as inspectors of the city, we demand to speak with Dr Charley Hask.” She presented her seal.

The woman gave it a cursory glance. “I’ll have someone see you out.”

Malone took a step forward. “I’d hate to make the kind of exit that would upset your researchers. I’d really hate to tell them about my current theory regarding their colleague’s death. Perhaps Dr Hask could clear things up for me. We won’t take much of his time.”

The woman looked as if she had bitten into a lemon. “I am Charley Hask. Follow me to my office and we can sit down.”

Charley Hask looked young, particularly with her petite stature and short blond coif, but Malone estimated that she couldn’t be a day under fifty. From her perfectly linear stride to her serene expression, Dr Hask radiated confidence and calculation. She also looked like the type of woman who could deliver a withering insult with a pleasant word and a smile.

When they reached her office against the back wall, Dr Hask opened the door and motioned them inside. “VERITAS” was inscribed above it, the recessed letters filled with gold paint. Malone looked at Hask.

“What is ‘veritas’?”

She smiled. “Our directorate’s motto. It means ‘truth’, Inspector.”

Sundar peered at her. “With a big ‘T’ or a little one?”

Hask gave him a languorous head-to-toe twice over. “You’re clever for eye candy.”

The office was organized and well-lit. A gaunt, older man was already standing inside, now gazing at the newcomers in puzzlement. In his arms he carried long, bundled rolls of paper like baguettes. Seeing the inspectors, he clutched his papers a little more tightly against his chest. Hask turned to him.

“I apologize, but we’ll have to continue our discussion at a later date. Dominguez, please escort Mr Fitzhugh to the surface,” she said to the mustachioed man.

Fitzhugh and Dominguez brushed past the two inspectors, the latter with a final contemptuous glance over his shoulder.

“Now,” Hask said, sitting behind her desk, “I take it you have a few questions for me.”

Malone took Fitzhugh’s empty chair. “We’re investigating the death of Dr Werner Cahill.”

“Of course. Yes, Cahill worked under my direction until his untimely death. We were all much grieved to hear of it,” Hask said, her placid eyes unblinking.

“Then he worked here, on this floor?” Sundar asked.

“Typically, yes.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“Cahill was one of our senior researchers. His work occasionally called for light travel,” Hask said.

“What did he do here?” Malone said.

“Why, he did what we all do in this directorate,” said Hask, her palms open. “We reconstruct the past, using clues from what texts we have managed to recover.”

“The state of Dr Cahill’s study suggests that he was working on something just before he died.” Malone said. “What was it?”

She crossed her legs. “Only he could have told us that.”

“Why would he have been working so late and away from the office?”

Hask said, “I think I will have to give you the same answer.”

“You’re not answering me at all.”

Hask’s eyes narrowed. “Inspector, let me be frank. I don’t know what Cahill was working on, and I couldn’t tell you if I did. You saw the study where he died, what did you find there?”

“Nothing. Whatever he was working on was gone when I arrived.” Hask blanched and folded her hands. Malone continued. “What kind of project could have incited a murder, Dr Hask?”

“Separating the truth from fiction is a dangerous labor, Inspector,” she said.

“Veritas,” Malone said.

Hask smiled again. “Precisely. As I said, it’s our motto.”

Next to Malone, Sundar sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Could this be the work of someone within your directorate?” Malone said.

“Absurd. What would give you an idea like that?” Hask dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand, but she inclined toward the inspectors.

Malone decided not to mention the key, and she silenced Sundar with a quick look. “The rumor mill is already churning, Doctor. This incident has disturbed some of the other scholars. Why, if there’s no connection?”

“They spend their days in a cave filled with books, trying to make sense of old stories about murder, deceit, and war. What else would you expect?”

“I would expect you to be more cooperative, Dr Hask, seeing as we serve the same authority. Would you rather help me solve this or allow someone else to steal your secrets?”

Hask leaned into her chair’s padded headrest. “As always, you Municipals assume that there is some hidden agenda, some paramount evil that demands your attentions. It’s a tired story, and I’m afraid I’ve read it before.”

“All the same, I need to see what Cahill and his colleagues have been working on.”

“That’s confidential information,” said Hask, “which you would need a warrant to see. In fact, you will need one to continue this conversation. My time and patience for a courtesy interview have quite expired. Dominguez.” The haughty man reappeared in the doorway. “Please escort our guests to the surface.” Dominguez nodded and began marching the inspectors out of the office. Sundar elbowed past him.

“Someone’s got you on a short leash if that’s the best you can give us.”

“I’m in the business of giving orders, not answers. This is a bureaucracy, boy. Get used to your place.”

A silent Dominguez led Malone and Sundar to the surface, where he left them with a disdainful sniff. The sky had begun to darken, and clouds bruised the horizon.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Sundar said, looking over the skyline.

“I didn’t expect her to tell us anything.”

“I’m a little fuzzy on that. Why bother to talk to us in the first place? Did she even have to pretend to cooperate?”

“She wanted to know what we know about Cahill’s late-night project. Once she realized that the documents were taken, she was done.”

Sundar scratched under his collar. “Don’t know about you, but I feel used. What exactly did we get?”

“We know she’s scared. Did you see her face when she heard that Cahill’s work was gone?”

“Paler than yours.”

“She didn’t do it, and she isn’t helping whoever did.”

“Odd to think of her scared. For such a small woman, she knows how to throw her weight around,” Sundar said. A long breath whistled through his teeth. “Looks like I’ve got a bargain to fulfill. Not another peep out of me for the rest of the investigation.”

Malone watched their boots scrape across the cobblestones. “Top marks,” she said.

Sundar looked up.

“We were never going to get answers out of this one,” Malone said. “But you got us farther than I could have on my own. Partner.”

Sundar coughed, a blush rising from his neck, and Malone continued walking.

“Hask isn’t going to give us anything without the word of someone higher up, so we might as well start there tomorrow. Unfortunately, it’s too late for anything but dinner tonight. I’ll buy, if you can stomach something in Turnbull Square,” she said.

Sundar grinned. “You may be at the top of your game out here, but don’t think you can outdo me at the dives. I’ve survived them all.”

“Once again, you’re going to have to prove yourself.”

“Challenge accepted, Inspector.”

“Call me Malone.”

The pair strolled through the deserted surface streets of the bureau district in the waning light, before darkness swallowed them.

#

Sundar’s beer mug left a shiny, dark ring on a bar already stained with dozens of them. He set it back down with a heavy thunk, and the foamy beer inside sloshed up to the lip but didn’t quite spill. Nevertheless, Malone noticed that his tongue was still as nimble and his voice as clear as it had been when he interviewed the sweepers that morning.

“It’s not that different,” he said, rubbing the layer of moisture on his glass with a thumb. “Acting and inspecting, I mean. Is that what you call it? Inspecting?”

Malone shrugged, tilting her head back for a gulp of crisp, spicy, pale ale.

“Anyway, they’re not that different. You’re just tricking different people.”

Malone sat her own glass on the bar with a barely audible clink. “Except we fail when we’re found out. Your audience knows they’re being tricked.”

Sundar tapped a triumphant index finger on the bar. “But they still laugh. They still cry. We fail if they remember we’re actors.” He took another swallow from his amber-tinted pint. “No, there is a difference. The stakes. But don’t let my old company hear I said that.”

Malone snorted. “Heaven forbid.”

Sundar tilted his head. “I dunno, Malone. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t go back for all the mansions in the Vineyard, but consider their point of view. They have a successful night, and a hundred people may go home a little happier, a little kinder, a little more aware. But if we have a good night, what do we do? We send someone to the Barracks.”

“A criminal,” Malone said.

“And we make someone unhappy. We may give someone else satisfaction or justice, but we don’t make anyone happy.”

“We do what’s necessary,” Malone said, tightening her grip on her glass.

Sundar nodded. “But what’s more effective? Keeping people happy or keeping people satisfied? Won’t happy people be peaceful people?”

Malone raised an eyebrow. “I guess we could all join the players and find out.”

Sundar grinned wryly. He traced the Venn diagrams of mug stains on the bar with long, tapered fingers. “What would you rather have?” His brown eyes met Malone’s for a moment. “Happiness or satisfaction?”

Now Malone focused on her glass and on the thin layer of bubbles floating at the top of her ale. She turned the glass in her hand, staring into the golden liquid. The other patrons behind and beside them built a wall of sound, but Malone could only hear a piercing ring coming from her own inner ear.

“I know what I’d pick,” Sundar said, taking another drink. “But for now, I’ll settle for another one of these.” He slid his empty mug to the bartender. “One for you, Malone?”

She nodded, a faint sigh of relief escaping her lips.

Sundar pushed another pale ale toward her. “So, you know what got me into the black coat. What about you?”

Malone took a sip. The truth was, nothing else had ever occurred to her, but that answer made her uncomfortable for some reason she couldn’t place.

“It’s my best color,” she said.

Sundar snorted, a jet of liquid spurting from his nose. He swiped at it with the back of his sleeve. “Seriously, though. A righteous hunger for justice? Family in the Municipals?” He lowered his voice, grinning and looking at the tables around them. “Family in the Barracks?”

“All of the above,” Malone said. “At one point or another.” Sundar nodded, staring into his beer, and she guessed that he was, once again, searching for a new topic.

As it happened, one found them, crashing into the bar between them. A heavy man with a doughy face and a bald spot on the back of his head looked up at them, his eyes heavy with accusation. “You’d better watch where you’re going,” he said, each syllable colliding into the next, “or I’m gonna hafta show you whose bar it is.”

Malone’s hands were already on the cuffs linked to her belt. She and Sundar both wore their black coats, but so did half of the citizens of Recoletta. The only thing that clearly marked them as inspectors were the silver seals pinned to their lapels, and Malone doubted that their interloper would have noticed if they’d been covered in them.

“Back to your table,” Malone said, her fingers tensing over the cuffs.

“This is my table,” the man said, “and you better watch your tone with me.” Malone saw how it would unfold. She’d warn him again, he would get aggressive, and she and Sundar would have to haul him to the station to sober up under lock and key. The night would be over for all three of them in the next thirty seconds, but hopefully without any broken bones or missing teeth.

Apparently, Sundar had other ideas. “Sorry about the mix-up, friend. Next one’s on me.” He signaled to the bartender, who slid a glass of water down the counter.

Sundar’s hand came to rest on the drunk’s shoulder, and a light touch guided the man to his vacated barstool. The muscles in the man’s face had already started to relax, and the color that had started climbing his neck was subsiding. One of his hands was opening and closing over the bar, and Sundar nudged the glass of water into it.

The drunk took a sip. “Thanks, it just… wait, this isn’t mine.” He looked at the glass as if it had grown out of the stained wood.

“Whoops, sorry.” Sundar whistled and waved to the bartender again. Another glass of water slid his direction, and he switched it with the one in the drunk’s loosening grip. “Here you go. Cheers.” Sundar took the first glass of water, clinked it against the one in the drunk man’s hand, and they both tilted their heads back and gulped until the bottoms of their glasses held no more than a dewdrop. Sundar slapped his new friend on the back, clearing his throat manfully. “Damn good. Another?”

The drunk shook his head, looking almost bewildered. “I’ve had enough. It’s just… I just…” He sighed. “It’s so hard.”

Sundar nodded as if he already knew what the man was talking about. “Tell me about it.” And the man did. For almost an hour.

By the time it was over, Malone knew more about the man, his wife, his mistresses, and their demands, than she cared to, and Sundar was still nodding with encouragement. The man’s story wound down, like many such stories, with rambling deceleration. The bartender had already sent for a carriage and, glad to have avoided a scene, was happy to pay the fare to send the man home. After an hour of drinking nothing but water, Sundar’s new friend seemed able to remember his address, at least.

When they had sent the man home to recover and, hopefully, confess his crimes, Malone again sat next to Sundar at the bar, feeling more exhausted than she had by their visit to the Directorate of Preservation. The bartender served them another pair of pints on the house, and Malone accepted hers with relief.

“I think we answered your question,” Malone said. Sundar looked over at her, a swallow of amber in his throat and a question in his eyes. “Look around. What do you see?”

“The same thing we saw when we arrived.”

“No broken tables, no black eyes.” Malone took a sip of her ale, the taste cool and crisp on her tongue. “You may not have sent him home happy, but you sent him home clean.”