Chapter 27
A Second Interview with Lieutenant Keller
Lieutenant Keller was clearly annoyed at having been summoned back to the restaurant quarters for a second time. His face wore a forbidding expression as he sat down.
"Well?" Was all he deigned to say.
"My apologies for troubling you for a second time," said Plormot. He tactfully tried to pretend as if he truly were apologetic for troubling him a second time. Inwardly, he felt a perverse sense of pleasure at irking the rigid man. "But there is still some information in your possession with which I think you will be able to help us."
"Really?"
"To begin with, you lied to me about knowing Jonathan Archer. You tried to give the impression your knowledge of him extended only as far as his fame." He paused ever so briefly for a reaction and got none. "In fact, you weren't any stranger of the sort. You served with him. You were one of his closest friends. One of the people he trusted most in this world. Why did you lie?"
"Why do you say I lied? Check my service record once we've done with this phal. You'll find no overlap between our service histories."
"So you did not kill Mr. Evered for revenge?"
"If I had, I should hardly be likely to tell you. But since you're obligated to ask, no, I didn't murder the man."
"Ah, well," Plormot sighed. "It is of no consequence." For once, the human's brows raised in surprise at the comment.
"Because, you see, I am more curious about you, than about Evered."
The human's entire person became more taut. He was a coil ready to spring.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, it's rather convenient, that, don't you think?" Plormot braved those flint-like eyes.
"What is?"
"You're a career Starfleet officer. You've clearly seen some amount of service in various sectors here and there. Captain Archer has crisscrossed all over the known quadrant, and beyond. You seem certain there will be absolutely no crossover between your histories. How is anyone so certain they haven't so much as shared a duty station, even briefly, with someone else?"
"You're fishing," Keller replied. His gaze raked over Plormot with the hardness of duranium. "You've gotten lost in all this and now you're trying to see what shakes loose."
"Me, sir?"
"Yes, you. It's a simple enough tactic. I'm a Starfleet officer, so was he, so we must know each other. Generalizations you state with an air of certainty.
"You hope I'll be shocked into admitting something more." He sat back. "You're right, of course. Starfleet is big, but it isn't that big. It's more than likely we share a few acquaintances. Even, as you say, a duty station here and there."
"Generalizations?"
"Yes."
"Allow me to be a little more specific, then. This leads me into the other issue with which you can help me."
Somehow, impossibly, he coiled even tighter.
"What I really wish to know regards something I overheard in Ahuok, while the Taurus Express was stopped for supplies. Miss Lee may have told you?"
He gave no reply. He simply waited.
"I overheard the pair of you in conversation. She said, 'Not now. When it's done. When it's behind us.' Do you know to what those words referred?"
"Yes." Plormot briefly waited for elaboration, but the man opposite was stalwart.
"What?"
"I refuse to answer that question, Mr. Plormot. I apologize." His apology was the emptiest Plormot had heard in a long time, but it was certainly clear enough.
"Why?"
His answer was stiff:
"I suggest you ask her for the meaning of those words."
"I have done so already."
"And she refused to tell you?"
"Yes."
"Then that's that. I won't tell you."
"You will not betray a woman's confidence?" Plormot's attempt to flatter the man earned him a sharp look.
"You can put it that way, if you like."
"Miss Lee told me that they referred to a private matter of her own."
"Then why not take her word for it?"
"Because Miss Lee is what one might call a highly suspicious character."
"Nonsense."
"It is not nonsense."
"Why are you asking after the meaning behind a fragment of a private conversation, then? Because you have yet to figure out that the murder case doesn't involve it. Therefore, it's nonsense. You have nothing against her."
Plormot had had enough of the man's smooth dismissals. He pounced:
"Nothing? Not the fact that she is traveling with a man who is himself traveling under an alias? That she travels with Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, a most esteemed member of Captain Archer's crew, who now disguises himself as some David Keller? Not the fact that this Hannah Lee is, in truth, also an alias? The fact that her name is Hoshi Sato, who served in Starfleet alongside both Archer and Reed? And the fact that she was a tutor to the Archer household at the time of the abduction of Daisy Archer?"
There was a minute's dead silence. The man across from him had frozen. Plormot tipped his head gently.
"You see," he said. "I know more than you would think. If Miss Lee – well, if Miss Sato is innocent, why did she conceal that fact from me? Why is she carrying a fake passport?"
Eventually, the human managed to clear his throat.
"Aren't you possibly making a mistake?"
"I make no mistake. Why did Miss Sato lie to me?"
Inexplicably, the coil inexplicably slackened, the shoulders settled back and the lieutenant shrugged, somehow striking a relaxed pose.
"You had better ask her."
Plormot raised his voice and called for an attendant to fetch the human woman. The man nodded and left, leaving the four men sat in silence. Lieutenant Reed's face looked as though it had been fashioned out of duranium, rigid and impassive. The man returned.
"She is coming, sir." A moment or two later, she entered the restaurant quarters.