Free Rimrunners by C. J. Cherryh

knew she was; and that mess involved stationers, who did
    things by rules that made no sense, every station eccentric and unpredictable in
    what it allowed and the way it worked.
    So they knew her face: that meant they'd gotten her picture off the
    card-on-file, the same one that she'd filled out when she'd gone through Thule
    immigration and gotten her temp card. They had her prints, they had themselves a
    spacer with a black eye and a lot of scratches, and had themselves a very dead
    body in a room where, eventually, they were going to find a lot more of her
    prints—
    That would take time. The question, the first question was whether they were
    going to break in there; whether they'd ever made the Ritterman connection;
    whether they had enough right this moment to get the station legal department to
    swear out a warrant to take her to hospital and start asking questions under
    trank.
    After that, two dead men were a minor problem.
    They walked her far across the docks and down, they got her into an official-use
    lift, and they shot straight up to Thule's little blue-section—a single level
    up, then, and down a corridor to grim little offices.
    "ID," the officer at the desk asked, and she handed over the temp card.
    "Papers," the man asked next, which scared her as much as anything else in the
    proceedings. That was everything, that little folder. But they had a right to
    ask and they had a right to hold it until they were satisfied. They said they
    would put her duffle off behind the desk and it would be safe. They had her sit
    down and fill out a form that asked questions like: Present address and Current
    Employment and Most Recent Prior Employment: Date.
    Deeper and deeper. They wanted to know things she couldn't answer—like what her
    credit balance was and where receipts were that proved she'd been spending cash
    since she left Ernestine.
    They wanted to know stationer references. She gave Nan and Ely.
    Desperately she said she'd been living with Nan. Nan might cover for her. It was
    the only thing she could think of.
    God, if they asked her the specific address… Nan lived in Green, she remembered
    Nan and Ely talking once. She could remember that.
    Estimated income this month, they asked. She counted. She wrote, 25 cred.
    Counting what she'd gotten off Ritterman, off the dock-worker, off Ely. She was
    going to lie, but she'd spotted the next question, with a possible out, a
    possible escape from all the traps.
    Other source of support, it asked.
    Nan Jodree, she wrote. Room and board, even exchange, for cleaning and errands.
    She looked at the time. 1710. She sweated. The last answer put her legal, she
    knew it had to—if Nan backed her, and she had some belief that Nan would, then
    they couldn't hold her on the likeliest charge, free-consuming, which was what
    they'd want to use to keep her here while they checked the other things.
    If it was legal on Thule to do private work.
    If Nan wouldn't panic and or just answer some trick question and hang her, never
    knowing.
    They took the form, they looked at it, and then they asked her to step into an
    interview room—"To answer a few questions," they said.
    "I answered!"
    "Ms. Yeager," the men said, holding the door.
    So they had her sit down at a table, they sat on the other side and they asked
    her questions, like What happened to your face, Ms. Yeager?
    Fight with a drunk, she said, the same as she'd told Terry Ritterman.
    Where?
    Green dock, she said.
    When?
    She had to be honest about that: the eye made it clear, and it was possible Rico
    might remember the date she'd shown up. She said, "Last week. I don't know what
    day."
    "Wednesday?"
    "I dunno. Could have been.—Look, I got to call my ship. I got a right to call my
    ship…"
    They said, "What's Nan Jodree's address?"
    And she said, suddenly thinking like a merchanter, "I got a right to call my
    captain."
    "What's his name?" they asked.
    "Wolfe!" she said, the first answer she'd had absolutely no doubt