Free Anniversary Day by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page A

attack hadn’t come.
Nyquist took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He hoped to hell Soseki was dead from natural causes. Nyquist had never wished anyone had a massive heart attack or a surprise brain aneurysm before, but he hoped for that now.
Because if someone had killed Soseki, today of all days, the entire city would go insane.
     
     
     

Fifteen
     
Savita Romey felt overworked, maybe because she was overworked. She had twice as much to do now, because Soseki’s aides dithered more than she would have had she arrived an hour earlier.
She had done what she could outside: she had protected the body. But even that had taken some effort. The street cops who arrived when the aides made the call had done some of that, but not in the way an experienced homicide detective would have. They made the perimeter too wide, and didn’t ask who had walked close to the body.
The other problem with coming in late was that there were too many people milling around aimlessly. Someone had ordered the remaining people to stay on scene, so some of the patrons of the restaurant still sat at their tables, the remains of their meals scattered before them. Waiters, recognizable only because they wore uniforms, sat at empty tables. Chefs remained in the kitchen, and the owner hovered near the reception desk.
The back room still had people who had come for Soseki’s speech. Some of those people were important—rich business owners, a few politicians, a couple of bigwigs from off-Moon. Soseki’s aides wanted her to deal with them first.
She had to figure out a way to deal with the aides. They were irritating her, and getting in the way of the investigation. But they had been in charge of the scene from the moment Soseki died, and she wasn’t quite sure how to deal with them, without alienating them, without getting the information they didn’t even know they had.
For all she knew, one of them had killed Soseki.
The interior of the restaurant smelled of garlic and baking bread. Her stomach growled as she worked. She needed a command center, she needed a place to put the witnesses, she needed staff to interview those witnesses, and she needed the crime scene techs to get here before the entire scene got contaminated.
The coroner’s van showed up first.
Romey left the restaurant, stepped around the crime scene lasers she had placed around Soseki’s body, and watched as the back of the van opened. She worried that Brodeur The Incompetent had overruled her and had come instead of Jacobs.
But Romey shouldn’t have worried. Brodeur hated extra work, and important cases were always extra work.
Jacobs stepped out of the back, her kit in hand.
Jacobs was tiny, muscular, and no-nonsense. She had bright yellow hair, which couldn’t have been natural. If it was natural, then her parents deserved to be chastised for naming her Marigold, because her hair was precisely that color.
Jacobs had an angular face, intelligent eyes, and a calm manner. Her husky voice seemed genderless over audio links. She nodded at Romey, then set to work, without having to be told what to do.
Romey let out a small sigh. At least one thing had gone right this morning.
One of the street cops approached her from her left. He was careful to avoid the crime scene lasers as well.
“Detective,” he said, “there’s someone here from the Security Chief’s office?”
His tone made it clear that he didn’t believe the outsider was from the security chief’s office, which made her realize the young cop hadn’t even asked for identification.
“Thanks,” she said as she headed toward the man the cop indicated. “And next time, officer, make sure you check credentials before you get me.”
The cop started, then flushed, making her wonder just how new he was. That thought flitted across her brain and left it as she walked down the sidewalk, past two businesses that she had ordered closed. Their employees and patrons waited inside for interviews, the very thought of which