Free Rimrunners by C. J. Cherryh Page A

of.
    But then they went back to the first questions.
    "I don't have to answer you," she said. "I answered you once. Call my captain."
    "Do you want to go before the judge?"
    Civil law. Alliance law. Stations and civil rights and judges and hospitals
    where they could get the truth out of you. Where nobody could keep from spilling
    everything they'd ever done or thought about doing. "I don't have to talk to you
    without my captain knowing."
    "Come on," they said, "you're not crew yet, you aren't logged out of station
    records."
    "I'm Loki crew, I've got a right to notify my captain!"
    "No, you don't," they said. "You can call in a lawyer, that's the only thing
    you're allowed."
    "Then I'm calling Loki's legal staff."
    That stopped them. They went outside and consulted, maybe what to do next, maybe
    what their choices were or whether they had to do that: she had no idea.
    They kept arguing about something; then three of them walked off and left her
    there, in that cubbyhole of a room with one large window. One stayed standing by
    the door.
    She didn't know what they were up to now. Maybe checking with Nan.
    Maybe finally making that call to Wolfe, who could not be happy about getting a
    call like that from a-new hire-on.
    They had never searched her. That meant, she supposed, she wasn't quite under
    arrest yet. That meant she still had the little razor. She thought about it
    while she sat there. She thought that Wolfe was about one jump away from Mallory
    herself, if Wolfe got onto her case—if they got a court order to question her
    under trank and found out what she was; but there was no chance of that, no
    chance unless maybe they rushed an indictment through at the last moment,
    between the board-call and the undock, when Loki had to be away, on whatever
    business was so urgent they'd prioritied out an honest freighter and created
    hardship on stations down the line.
    She pould see the outside clock through the window. She saw the time pass 1745,
    and 1800 and 1830, and she got up finally and tried the door, to talk to the man
    outside, but it was locked. She bashed its metal face with her fist.
    "I got a board-call to answer!" she yelled; then, with no answer at all, not
    even any interest on the man's part, she walked back to the chair and sat down,
    raked a hand through her hair, and came the closest yet to complete panic.
    She hoped—hoped if nothing else, they'd called Nan, and Nan or Ely had backed
    her, and Nan or Ely was going to come through that door and take her side, do
    something clever, get her clear. At least they could call Wolfe for her, if no
    one else would.
    But it wasn't Nan or Ely who stood there when they unlocked the door. It was
    uniformed Security.
    "Bet Yeager," one said, "you're under arrest."
    "For what?" she asked, all indignation.
    "For the murder of one Eddie Benham, the murder of one Terrence Ritterman…"
    "Terry isn't dead!" she yelled back. She'd primed herself for that one while
    she'd been sitting here. "I picked up my stuff at his place this afternoon! I
    don't even know any Eddie Benham!"
    "You picked up your belongings there. The duffle out front? You said you were
    staying with a Ms. Jodree."
    "I was. I was staying there. I left my stuff with Ritterman, I borrowed a fifty
    from him, I was trying to pay it back!"
    "Mr. Ritterman's dead. You didn't go in the bedroom?"
    "No, I didn't go in the bedroom! What call would I have to go in somebody's
    bedroom?"
    "That's one of the questions we want to ask you, Ms. Yeager."
    "I want my lawyer!"
    "Turn out your pockets on the table, please."
    She thought about refusing, she thought about taking out a couple of security
    men, which came down to the same thing it had on the docks. She emptied her
    pockets, and it came down to a one cred chit and the razor. She laid them on the
    table.
    They took her down the hall and put her in Detention. She did not argue.
    She sat there staring at the door, making up her mind that Nan was going to come
    after