Chapter 13

Dan Keenan just about had a panic attack when Brown and Kostopoulos confronted him in his quarters about the laser pistol.

"C-C-Commander, I assure you, M-Ms. Bird asked me to collect lots of different samples from the vendors." The young man shakily gestured to the bedroom. "I-I have more in there."

Brown held up a hand. "No one's accusing you of anything, Mr. Keenan. We just need to see that pistol."

"Certainly." Keenan eagerly rushed into the bedroom.

Brown carefully followed, standing in the doorway, and saw that there were indeed several items from the expo floor. He recognised the levitation boots, the multi-spectrum goggles, and the anti-grav clamp, among others.

Keenan was furiously searching through the storage unit. "I kept everything in here for security. I fully intended to return it all the next day, but, um…"

"That's alright, Mr. Keenan," said Brown. The murder had disrupted a lot of things. "But why did Ms. Bird want to see this tech without speaking to the vendors themselves?"

"I… I'm not sure," said Keenan, still searching. "Maybe if anything had shown promise, she would have arranged more meetings. I suppose we'll never know now."

Brown sighed. Another mystery.

Keenan started to nervously wring his hands and turned to face Brown. "Um, I'm not sure how to say this, Commander, but… the laser pistol isn't here anymore."

Brown and Kostopoulos looked at each other in alarm, then back to Keenan. "What?" Brown asked. He pushed into the bedroom and looked around himself.

"I-I promise you it was here the night before…" Keenan said, trailing off in distress.

Grabbing a hold of Keenan's shoulders, Brown asked him, "Has anyone else been in here since you took the pistol?"

"N-No," Keenan said.

They would verify this via the security footage, of course, but Brown felt that Keenan was being truthful.

"Am I, um… Am I in trouble?" Keenan asked.

Brown shook his head. "No, but… We don't even know if this laser is the murder weapon, so finding it would really help set things straight. Until we find it, Mr. Keenan… I'm going to have to confine you to quarters. Different quarters, while we search these ones."

He continued before Keenan could panic again. "I'm sure this will all be worked out soon, but we can't rule anything out for now."

Keenan nodded, swallowing. "I… I understand."

Brown patted the young man on his shoulder and led him to the front door. There, he asked the security guard outside to escort Keenan to new quarters and keep him there for the foreseeable future. He then ordered a search team sent up via the intercom, not that he expected to find the laser in here.

He paced back into the centre of the room, where Kostopoulos silently waited.

"What're you thinking?" she asked.

"If it was him, why did he leave such an obvious trail? Lennoc could have told anyone that Keenan had the laser. On the other hand though…" Brown scanned his eyes along the wall adjacent to Bird's quarters. "Could he have somehow fired the pistol from in here? Without damaging the wall? The radiation would transmit through, wouldn't it?"

Kostopoulos shook her head. "I trained with laser weaponry. Still needs line of sight for the beam to do any damage. Radiation would transmit, but it wouldn't be focused enough to overload the implant from in here.

"Besides, her quarters aren't right through the wall. There's about a half-meter of space filled with conduits and circuits between them."

Brown chewed this over a moment. "It has to be the murder weapon though. It has to be.

"We just need to find it."

"I know nothing of a laser pistol," said T'Ves.

Pacing the interview room again, Brown stopped to loom over the young woman.

"Why should we trust the word of someone who's already living a lie?" he said, his face closer to T'Ves' that she would like. "Vulcans are supposed to always be truthful, y'know."

Kostopoulos shifted uncomfortably in her seat, but trusted Brown's approach.

He continued. "You think you're better than the rest of us, don't you? Us 'mere Humans.'"

"That is not-" T'Ves started to protest.

"Or are you ashamed of what you are?" Brown interrupted. "Can't handle those pesky emotions, so you shut them out. Emotions like anger, grief… Revenge?"

"My… lifestyle is not a commentary on anyone else's," said T'Ves, her features twinging ever so slightly. "Nor on my previous… existence. This is simply who I am."

"No one's an island," said Brown, his voice gruff. "Everything we do is a result of the influence of others, and, in turn, influences others."

He spoke softer and leaned in closer, to T'Ves' mild irritation. "Such as murdering someone because you blame them for your parents' deaths."

"I did not-"

"She made you cry!" Brown shouted suddenly, startling both women. "She broke your facade! And that only made you angrier, didn't it?"

"No…"

"So you stole a laser pistol, snuck back into her quarters, and shot her dead! This cold-hearted Vulcan act has gone too well; you've become a monster! You didn't care about her dying at all!"

"That's not true!" T'Ves shouted, her youthful face now twisted in emotion as tears welled up in her eyes. She covered her face in shame at her outburst.

Now Brown felt like the monster. He regretted having to break her, but he was desperate.

He slowly took the seat next to Kostopoulos as the colonel asked, "What happened, T'Ves?"

T'Ves, having recomposed herself somewhat, lowered her hands but kept her gaze fixed on the table.

"For approximately one year," she began, "Abramson Industries has been trying to contact me. I presumed this was to pass on belated condolences for my parents and offer some sort of compensation, neither of which I was interested in, so I always declined their approaches. I had no desire to… reconnect with my past.

"Then Ms. Bird herself contacted me directly a few weeks ago. She told me that she had personal information and invited me to meet her. She said that, after imparting the information, she and AI would leave me alone in future, if I so wished. I declined to return to Earth, so Ms. Bird informed me of the expo and suggest it as a venue. Eager to put an end to their repeated requests, I accepted.

"When I then met with Ms. Bird, she informed me that… that she and my mother had been friends. She had recruited my mother into AI and recommended her for the conference on Vulcan. As such, she… felt a sense of responsibility for my parents' deaths."

T'Ves' expression faltered for a moment again, but quickly resumed its stillness, and she continued. "She offered to tell me stories about them… Even offered me a position in the company. That was when she discussed the Quadros Project. Something my mother had been working on.

"I did not lie, Commander. I told you that I worked for the Vulcan Science Council and that I was asked to come here to collaborate with AI. Both statements were true, albeit unrelated."

Brown thought that this was stretching the truth a bit, but did not interject.

"I… I had not dwelt on my… tragedy for quite some time… I have learned Vulcan techniques to cope with the trauma and integrate it into my psyche without the associated emotional turmoil… But being confronted with a piece of my past… it overwhelmed me and I had to leave."

T'Ves then went silent, so Brown gently jumped in.

"T'Ves…" he said, using her chosen name, "why didn't you tell us all this before?"

She looked him in the eye with a maturity beyond her years. "To say this was a deeply personal matter is an understatement. It undoes everything I've spent the last six years trying to accomplish - undoes me. If you had solved this murder without my revelation, then my privacy would have remained unbreached."

"And if we hadn't got this out of you?" said Brown. "If you had gone to prison because you didn't want to share?"

T'Ves considered this a moment. "That would have been preferable…"

"There's no shame in admitting what you are," said Kostopoulos. "It doesn't stop you from trying to be… something else."

"It is irrelevant now in any case," said T'Ves, her voice heavy. "With Reena Bird dead, the last connection to my Human past is gone… I am only what I choose to make myself now…"

Brown and Kostopoulos exchanged a look.

There was something ominous about the way that T'Ves had said that.

T'Ves had been returned to her cell. Brown was not yet content with letting her off the hook altogether.

"I think she's telling the truth about her meeting with Bird," said Kostopoulos. "And how she felt about it."

"Yeah," said Brown. Despite her stoicism, T'Ves' account had been too heartfelt to be false. "Doesn't mean she's not lying about being the killer though."

Kostopoulos frowned, uneasy with this.

"You heard her: Her connection to her 'Human past' is gone now," said Brown. "Maybe that's why she got rid of Bird."

"I can't deny that she's still the most likely suspect…"

"So why doesn't it feel right?" Brown asked, folding his arms.

After a moment in thought, Kostopoulos spoke again. "I can respect her lifestyle, but she clearly hasn't fully mastered the Vulcan emotional control. It's not good for a young Human to keep things bottled up. You saw her outburst. It helps to vent like that sometimes."

Something suddenly awoke in Brown.

Vent.

He stood and beckoned to Kostopoulos.

"Follow me…"