"Where's that twerp Vilondri?" Dubb complains. "It's not his day off, I know it ain't. It's mine, though, and yet I'm here."
Kiodd looks him in the eye: "Checking property files in Planning."
"What, for the lots?'
Kiodd, still looking him in the eye: "Yes."
"Could've sent me. Should've sent me, seeing that he's a sergeant now and all."
"Take it up with him."
"Will do, Lieutenant. Sure ain't taking it up with the major."
Vilondri is checking property files, but not in Planning and not for the lots.
"She paid her taxes all right," he tells Kiodd in the car. It's evening. "But on what—that's what's strange."
"Don't leave me hanging."
Vilondri produces a few dozen slips of flimsiplast. Hands them to Kiodd.
Copies—
Copies of tax notes—
"Went through three cars in five years?" Kiodd keeps shuffling the slips: one behind the other behind the other.
"And look what cars. A Troddi—"
"Two-years old at the time."
"That ain't it."
One behind the other—
"Twelve grand."
"Uh-huh. How much you figure a two-year old Troddi costs?"
"Forty, like. Thirty-something."
"More or less. Look. Everything is like this."
He keeps shuffling. Cars, expensive viewscreens, expensive jewelry—
No Desiderata gemstones, though—
All sold—
All sold from the year 6 BrS to the year 13.
"Laundering money through her?"
"That a reason to kill her specifically?'
Kiodd shakes his head. "I don't think so. Where did she get the money for all this?"
"Wherever it was, didn't make the taxmen's antennas prick up. I checked."
"Maybe they didn't have the time," Kiodd says, shuffling—
All sold—
All sold within a year or two of the year of its make—
"We need to know where she bought all this stuff from," Kiodd says.
"And I need to fuck Mermeia, but neither's happening. Nobody's keeping notes for so long—well, apart from taxmen."
"We can find out to whom she sold it, though."
"You for real? When should I expect a warrant to every apartment on Balosar to check the serial numbers on every screen that—"
"Cars. We can do cars, right?"
Vilondri thinks about it for a second. "Vehicle property tax. We can run the plates."
"You can run the plates."
"Shit. How did I not think—"
"Do it tomorrow."
Vilondri's grin is wide. "Do I get OT?"
.
.
.
Eight cars—
Eight cars in nineteen years—
All sold a year or two years after being bought—
All sold—
All sold to the same person.
"Dingham, A.," Kiodd says, his hands overfilling with flimsiplast. The name sounds like he should be recognizing it, but he isn't.
"A sat-dweller," says Vilondri.
That doesn't help.
They are in the war room, the war chest reinforced with more, more, more flimsiplast.
"Got an address?"
"The guy's dead," Vilondri points at the flimsiplast slips as if they confirm that somehow. "Been for eleven years."
"Got an address?"
Vilondri sighs. "I didn't… A fucking cemetery or something. Look, I can't go to the census office tomorrow. I've got my sergeant duties. The major's gonna be—"
"It's fine," says Kiodd. "I have a PN meeting in Suswate. I'll stop at the census bureau on the way there. It's the big square tower, right? On the 47th?"
"One that looks a bit like a cock and a pair of balls."
"Interesting-looking cocks you've seen."
"Jealous much?"
.
.
.
It is hot inside the cock and balls, same hotness as outside, same Balosar hotness.
Kiodd is sat in front of an ancient computer, neither its screen nor the input board made for humanoids. There is a holographic filter jury-rigged in front of the monitor that corrects its colors to remain largely within the diapason of a Balosar's eyes.
Kiodd feels like he just fucked—
Like he just was fucked—
As he sits there in apathetic frustration that should've, ought to have, must have been something pleasant.
He recognizes the name now:
Ash Dingham.
Cancer did him. But I'd lie if I said I don't wish sometimes I did.
Ash Dingham—
Born 46/9/3 BrS on Naboo, died 14/5/21 on Balosa I.
Kiodd wonders if the motherfucker was buried with his Desiderata stone around his neck.
Desiderata stones, used for currency by old-time gangsters—
Used for currency in sex trafficking—
Them stones were too dirty, so dirty I wouldn't touch 'em—
Stones turning up in the Stovares house stash—
Regina Stovares, shot in her sleep—
Too damn dirty.
.
.
.
"It's another whole-day trip," Vilondri tells him that evening. "Somebody will notice we take a day off the same day a second week in a row."
"That worries you?"
They're talking by the sinks, men's bathroom on floor 39 of the BPD Quadrant 30 station. Every stall door is open. The bathroom door is shut.
"Fuck off. The major might."
"He doesn't suspect a thing. If he did—"
Kiodd leaves it unsaid.
Vilondri: "Is it that or is it that we ain't stupid enough to walk into another tunnel with him?"
"We've been working under him for more than a year. You think he couldn't have set us up again if he wanted to?"
"Or… or he just thinks he scared us enough the last time. So we don't get bold again."
Kiodd, shrugging: "That's what I'm saying. He doesn't suspect a thing."
Kiodd, thinking: Or if he does, fucking let him. I'm done living in fear of him.
Fucking let him.
.
.
.
But the fear goes nowhere.
Still, they wait for two weeks until they take a Primeday off and head off to the local-flight spaceport.
The fear is still there—the third passenger and the first two as well.
It looks like a Desiderata stone from the orbit, the satellite does. They fall into it.
And from the atmosphere, Balosa I is green, green like all the green from Balosar was taken from its surface and planted here, five hundred thousand kilometers away.
It's hot on the moon, but the heat is not the heat of someone sweating on you like it is down below. It is the warmth of the sun caressing its favorite child.
Another Desiderata stone, it can be seen from here—clear and bright and not a shadow beyond a toxic fume.
They rent a hovercar at the spaceport and drive across the green rolling hills. There are few cars on the road, and the road itself is just two lanes in each direction, but the place doesn't look deserted.
Sleepy instead.
Balosa I was terraformed about two hundred years ago, but Balosa City is just over sixty. The old capital of Padnavevo is the haunt of artists and fashionistas, sitting comfortably in decidedly low mountains. Kiodd remembers the holomodel of it at their place back on Corellia.
Their—
He is thinking about Sorina when the hovercar enters Balosa City.
The hoverway flows into a larger one and takes them above the city—just short of the waterfront. Even factories down on their left resemble toys and not hells like on the planet. The sea they partially cover shimmers orangely with morning.
On the right of the highway there are skyscrapers thin and pointy like needles and unstunted by the smokes of the galaxy being produced right next to them wholesale and retail.
But the highway starts turning right to loop on itself, and their journey on it comes to an end. Vilondri turns right where the navigator tells him and a branch like a hundred other branches takes them down. They pass detached white houses with green lawns and shiny adipose cars in the driveways.
Where they are going is a poorer district: a line of two-story square houses under the main hoverway. The one they park by is exactly the same as all others:
A dream for anyone who lives down on the planet.
"Figure she's home?" Vilondri asks.
"No, let's go back. Fuck you expect us to do?"
"Chill, for fuck's sake."
Kiodd would like to, but—
But the fear—
They walk up to the stairs leading to the second-story entrance as the rental's doors slide in a slow and complicated fashion closed. Between this house and the next, in this little alley, there lie a child's hoverbike, a broken mattress, a droid chassis.
Takes just two rings for the door on top of the stairs to open, but—
But the fear—
But Kiodd's face gets prickly and antennae withdraw—
A forcefield blocking the apartment access—
A middle-aged woman—Human—stands behind it.
"Mrs. Guota?" Vilondri asks.
Her gloomy heavyset face grows gloomier. "What did he do this time?"
"Well," Vilondri starts, "that'd be—"
"We're here about your father," Kiodd cuts him off. "Mind if we talk inside?"
"Yes I do," she says.
No lemonade here—
"We are with the planetary police force," Kiodd explains as if she cannot tell from their suits and their demeanor.
The woman says nothing.
"Mrs. Guota," says Vilondri, "your father was Mr. Ash Dingham from Hudar Lane, 28, right?"
"So what?" she says, looking downward, "we don't choose…" until her voice fizzles out.
"Do you remember his associate, a Regina Stovares?" Kiodd asks.
"No."
"Please, Mrs. Guota, think."
"I didn't know his associates."
Kiodd, questioning their approach—
What if—a mistress?
Kiodd: "Do you have any recollections of your father driving a gold-tinted Troddi V96 back in 10?"
"Maybe he did. So what?"
"Who did he buy it from?"
"I don't know. He didn't tell me."
"How about a Reecon Double? Back in 9?"
"He didn't tell me where got his things. Is this all?"
She's holding her hand to the door panel, ready to—
"Do you remember," Kiodd gestures, "what he used to wear around his neck? A trinket, like?"
"So what," she says and shuts the door—
In their faces—
"What a fucking—" Vilondri starts—
Kiodd rings again.
No answer comes, so Kiodd rings again and again and again and again and a—
From the opening door: "What do you want?"
"It's important, Mrs. Guota. We need you to remember this, and if you don't now, we'll have to summon you through a court decision, and you will have to fly all the way down to Balosar—"
This does it, and the woman says, "A glowing diamond. He wore it on a chain."
"Where did he get it?"
"I don't have an idea."
"Mrs. Guota—"
"I don't have an idea! He never told me about work."
"Work? So it was work-related? Like a retirement present or something?"
"You better ask his employers, hadn't you?"
"And who would that be?"
"Who?" In her eyes, he reads contempt. "The Tegol'Naris."
Kiodd can't help but to look at Vilondri, and Vilondri is glancing back at him, face screwed up in the sun.
"Is this it?" the woman asks, her hand again on the control panel.
"Thank you, ma'am," says Kiodd, and they walk down the stairs.
As they wait for the hovercar's doors to retract, Vilondri says: "Fuck me. Figure they're gonna be more willing to talk to us than her?"
"We'll see."
"Well, at least we're on the moon already."
The door on the second story opens as they are getting in the car, and Mrs. Guota screams at them: "Very nice of you to finally start caring after all this damn time!"
Like played in reverse, Kiodd gets uncoils and stands up next to the car: "About what, ma'am?"
But the door is closed again.
.
.
.
Back past the spaceport they ride, the hills green and rolling, the sun high. The hoverway takes them further and further south until they have to abandon it for a narrower one yet that runs through a pine forest and away from the sea.
About half an hour on it—
And they are at the estate gates.
"Fuck me," says Vilondri, looking down a long alley framed by two rows of veshok trees so large they seem pushed down to the ground by their own weight. "A veritable plantation is what it is."
"What did you think," Kiodd says calmly, but he is impressed too: by the fields as far as the eye can see on either side of the alley, by the far, barely visible workers' houses on the left—
By the supremely visible manor down the alley—
To their car, a guard is walking, lazy in the shadows of the veshoks. He is carrying no weapons, but Kiodd knows that a few are being pointed at them—
Have been since the car showed up.
A glance up at the crones—
Finally, the guard reaches their earshot.
"You have business here, pals?"
"Police, pal," Kiodd answers, flashing his badge. "Who can we talk to about your employees?"
"I'd try Ms. Leary," the guard says, his voice polite, but his hand firm on Kiodd's badge and his eyes intense on it. "She's head of the Reverend's PR team."
"She here?" Kiodd asks, trying to keep his voice steady as the guard lets go of his badge.
"Sure thing. Follow me."
They drive—slowly, the guard is walking just as lazily as before right in the middle of the alley—to the manor, its transparent domes glittering in the afternoon light like gems. At the porch they get out and walk inside, Kiodd noticing two more guards at the entrance.
It's cool inside. A vaguely patriotic tune is playing almost on the hearing's edge.
Holograms in the entrance hall—
The Tegol'Naris—
Each bust twice a man's height—
The Tegol'Naris, larger than life.
The guard leads them into the left wing, where under a transparisteel dome at a long semicircular white table sits a single young woman.
Not much for a team, Kiodd thinks—before she gets up.
"Welcome to the Tegol'Nari estate," she says. Kiodd spots an earpiece under her white earlobe-length hair. "My name is Siobhan Leary and my honor is to assist Reverend Tegol'Nari on his mission."
She shakes their hands.
"We're here about a past employee of the… of the family," says Kiodd. "Not sure it's your province necessarily, Ms. Leary—"
"I am here to assist Reverend Tegol'Nari, and as I am sure you are aware, he always has been a great friend of the police—both here and on the planet itself. So please. What is it you want to know?"
"Ash Dingham. Used to work here, or work for the Tegol'Naris."
"Perhaps in an unofficial capacity," says Vilondri before Kiodd can shut him up with a stare.
Leary, back at her table, clicking away at her computer.
"Yes, Mr. Dingham did indeed work for the estate for nearly thirty years," she says, holograms dancing in her eyes.
"In what capacity?" Vilondri says, all glad.
"He was a valet of Mr. Arthur Tegol'Nari."
Kiodd nearly grunts with disappointment: Arthur died last year, was big news—
The last big news Big Arthur made—
"He have any friends around here?"
"Mr. Dingham lived here before my time," Leary says in a voice equal parts apologetic and no-bullshit, "but I am certain that he had—"
"He lived here?" says Vilondri.
"Oh yes. In one of the bungalows—"
"Mind if we go visit? Maybe talk to the neighbors?"
"I am sure the Reverend would love to give all possible help to law enforcement, but may I ask you what it is about?"
"We're part of the effort down on Balosar to see if any cold cases can be solved with today's technology," Kiodd smiles.
"Today's brains," says Vilondri, tapping on his temple.
Leary's smile is equal parts polite and no-bullshit.
"Anyway," says Kiodd, "we are looking into a mugging case from way back. A card game. We believe that Mr. Dingham was among the victims."
"Oh," says Leary, "I see." She pauses. "If this is it, please allow me to see you off."
She leads them back to the exit, stopping at each framed holopicture on the walls:
"And here is the Reverend with the CEO of Arakyd Industries. It was an extraordinarily large contract, I can tell you without exaggerating—"
Pictures, pictures, pictures:
Arthur and Goshter, half of Balosar's GDP—Balosar's lucky their parents didn't have two more kids. Arthur and Goshter: with J'fe Din. With Alexis Cov-Prim. With Mernul Avazbizakos.
With Amin Galingal. Smiling from the midst of a throng of industrialists.
With Vygo Alnam—before Vygo Alnam went insane and supported the Separatists.
With the Emperor—before he was the Emperor.
Arthur and Goshter: not a single centimeter of antenna sticking above their heads.
Not in a single damn picture.
.
.
.
The sun is starting to melt its way down the sky, toward the forest tops, when Kiodd and Vilondri get out of the hovercar at the row of bungalows.
Number 47: where Ash Dingham lived.
Number 47: unlived in since.
"Hard times," Vilondri quips.
Right as Kiodd rings the doorbell on the number 46, the door opens—
No forcefields—
Just a plump old lady, a white smile wide on her brown face:
"Help you, gentlemen?"
"Maybe," Kiodd smiles back. "You've been living here long?"
"Oh, since I married my Pete."
"Do you remember your neighbor, Ash?"
"Do I? Of course I do. We've lived side by side for at least two decades. Come in. No good talking under this sun, no sir."
She walks them in, her antennapalps merrily jiggling to the rhythm of her heavy steps.
Her bungalow is nice and airy despite its tightness. She sits them down in her kitchen, and a teapot is instantly in her hands.
"My name is Lieutenant Kiodd," says Kiodd, "and this is Sergeant Vilondri from Quadrant 30—"
"Oh, I thought so. Truth be told, they never let many people in apart from police and, well, people from the church who came into our Reverend's good graces somehow." Looking up at the holo of Goshter—antennae fully extended on this one—she pours them tea, and herself last. "And you can call me Welma."
"Okay, Welma," Kiodd smiles. "Thank you. So we're investigating an old case—"
"A card game getting sticked-up," says Vilondri. "That was many years ago—"
"And Ash Dingham was one of the victims."
Welma tilts her head backward. "Ooooh. But you do know he died, Mr. Dingham did, don't you?"
"Yes, ma'am, we do."
"But if we can get the perpetrator—"
Welma nods, and then nods again at the dish of cookies on her table.
"Please help yourselves."
Kiodd takes one out of politeness. "So what did Mr. Dingham do for Arthur Tegol'Nari, exactly?"
"Oh, I can't rightly tell… Y'see, he was mighty secretive, wasn't he? I'm telling you, two decades side by side, and I didn't know much about him, no, not much at all."
There are footsteps in the corridor, and a pudgy man in his twenties looks into the kitchen: "What's it, Ma?"
"Oh, these gentlemen are policemen from the planet."
"Oh yeah?"
"They are here to ask us about Mr. Dingham. You remember Mr. Dingham, Carl? This is my son Carl, detectives."
"Sure."
Carl leans onto the doorframe and crosses his arms.
Kiodd states their names once more and asks, unsure whom of the two he's asking: "You remember his trinket? Wore on his neck?"
"Oh yes," says Welma. "A precious stone. The prettiest thing I've seen, I'm telling you."
"Do you know where he get it?"
"I am pretty certain it was Mr. Arthur who gave it to him."
"For what exactly?" Kiodd says, his left cheek burning with Carl's stare.
"Oh, I can't rightly tell… You see, we were sharecropping, me and my Pete, yes, the family lent us seeds, tools, droids, everything… Most of us folks were who used to live here. But Mr. Dingham, he didn't work the land, no, sir."
"What did he do?"
"He was helping Mr. Arthur."
"Yeah," Carl says, "only he dropped out of school after, like, second grade, but he sure was helping the great financial mind Mr. Arthur."
"So what was the nature of his help?" Kiodd asks, putting his cup on its saucer.
Carl shrugs.
"You remember what cars he drove?" asks Vilondri, cup in hand, cookie in the other.
"Uh, he had that Ulalu, got a model V96…" says Carl almost amicably. "He changed them more often than socks, like."
"Was he paid well enough to afford that?"
"Far be it from us to pry," says Welma, "and Mr. Dingham, he never shared, you know."
"That stone of his looked pricey," shrugs Carl.
"Do you remember an acquaintance of his, perhaps," says Kiodd. "A lady by the name of Regina Stovares?"
Carl changes the shoulder and the side of the frame. "What, the sister?"
"Oh, Carl," Welma purses her lips, "she's old enough to be your mother!"
"How do you mean, sister?" Kiodd asks the young man.
"I mean, a Balosar, like."
"Yes, we remember her. She would come here sometimes with Mr. Dingham and Mr. Arthur. Would spend some time, I'm telling you, at Mr. Dingham's. I thought—I hate to admit it, but I did, god knows—I thought they might have something going, but Mr. Dingham… Oh, I don't like to speak ill of anybody, least of all the dead as can't speak for themselves— That's what the Reverend says too— But he never did seem like he'd go out with a Balosar girl, if you know what I mean, Mr. Dingham didn't."
"Did he ever insult you or—"
"Oh, no, no, Lieutenant. Never anything like that. Just… not the feeling I was getting from him."
"Did you know Ms. Stovares well?"
"Not at all. Just a hello and—"
"She ever brought her kids here?"
"Kids? No. I didn't know if she had any kids."
"Did she or Mr. Dingham ever mention that he bought his cars from her?"
Welma thinks for a minute and says, "Uhm, no. I don't think they did. Not to us, anyway."
"He had any friends here?"
"No. I was the closest thing, I suppose. The Folagars lived in 48, I don't think he even spoke to them at all before they left… If he had a friend, it was Mr. Arthur."
"He lived alone, didn't he?"
"For the most part. There was a family—for maybe a year or two after we moved in, but then they divorced. Don't think I saw his little girl visiting after that."
"Do you think," Kiodd probes, "Mr. Dingham could be involved with some… less-than-savory individuals?"
Carl: "Apart from himself…"
Welma: "Well, I don't know about that…"
Kiodd, probing harder: "Thing is, the card game where he got robbed… Some of the other people at it were connected with crime. Sentient trafficking, to be precise."
He watches her—
No surprise on her face.
"Well," she says, "I don't know. People were saying things about him, they were."
"Who was?"
"Just people."
"Around here?"
"Yes."
"What kind of things?"
"Oh, this and that… How he did something bad for Mr. Arthur."
"You don't really like Mr. Arthur, do you, Welma?"
"I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but… He was nothing like the Reverend. A… an unpleasant man."
"What did Ash Dingham do for him?"
"I don't know, Lieutenant. I never listened too closely, and no-one was speaking of it too loudly."
"Anybody here you reckon could remember?"
"Oh, we're the last family from back then. Lived here our entire lives, since the marriage, at least. And Carl, Carl actually's lived here his entire life."
"So nobody else really knew Dingham?"
"Not of the current croppers, no. The Folagars left when their old woman died… Most do. The old folks die, and the kids don't want it here anymore. They go to the city or to the other city, some… Not our Carl, though. He isn't like that."
Carl, rolling his eyes.
"And there were rumors," Welma continues, "that Mr. Arthur had something to do with those disappearances down on the planet."
"Really?"
"Not like he did it himself, mind. No. Just that he… maybe he paid some of the families of those girls so they didn't start anything. That sort of—"
"And Dingham was a… problem-solver of sorts for him, the way I see it?"
"I don't know what he was. He was just strange, Mr. Dingham."
"Strange how?"
"Diddled kids, like."
"Carl!"
"What? Forgot how you used to shoo us back inside the house every time he came rolling in his V96 or Ulalu or whatever?"
Welma puts her hands together—as if in a prayer. "There were different things people said about him. About him and Mr. Arthur. Maybe some were true."
Or maybe all.
"Apart from Dingham and Stovares," Kiodd asks, "did Arthur Tegol'Nari have any other… confidants, shall we say?"
"Oh, now that you mention it… There was a young policeman who'd come with them sometimes. Stay at Mr. Dingham's house sometimes. What quadrant did you say you were from, Lieutenant, Sergeant?"
This is it—
A sensation in his stomach as though he's falling—
"Thirty, ma'am."
"I think so was he. Isn't that something?"
"Do you remember what he was called?" asks Kiodd.
And Vilondri says: "Derek Miles."
Derek fucking Miles—
"N-no," says Welma. "No," she repeats with more certainty. "I'd… let me think… I loved—when I was younger—I loved making up rhymes to help me remember people's names better. Rhymes and alliterations, you know… I never went to college, but I've always loved reading. Our whole family did." She looks at Carl, and he rolls his eyes again.
"Can you remember the rhyme you had for that policeman?" asks Kiodd, nearly lying on the table, so close he gets to her, so badly he wants to minimize the distance her words will have to travel before reaching his ears.
"It was not a rhyme, I'm fairly sure… Oh, let me think… Ah! I think I can."
And she declaims with a wide white smile on her wide brown face:
"Ah, to be as nonchalant as Tobey Nochel!"