Free Starbase Human by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page B

footage—not for the case, but for reasons she didn’t really want to think about.
    So she stayed in her car, quietly watching the footage for the second time, taking mental notes. Because something was off here. People rarely got that upset about being fired from a job, at least not in front of a man known to be as dangerous as Luc Deshin.
    Besides, he had handled the whole thing well, made it sound like not a firing, more like something inevitable, something that Sonja Mycenae’s excellent job performance helped facilitate.
    The man really was impressive, although DeRicci would never admit that to anyone else.
    When DeRicci watched the footage the first time, she had been amazed at how calmly Deshin handled Mycenae’s meltdown. He managed to stay out of her way, and he managed to get his security into the office without making her get even worse.
    Not that it would be easy for her to be worse. If DeRicci hadn’t known that Sonja Mycenae was murdered shortly after this footage was taken, DeRicci would have thought the woman unhinged. Instead, DeRicci knew that Mycenae was terrified.
    She had known that losing her position would result in something awful, mostly likely her death.
    But why? And what did someone have on a simple nanny with no record, something bad enough to get her to work in the home of a master criminal and his wife, bad enough to make her beg said criminal to keep the job?
    DeRicci didn’t like this. She particularly did not like the way that Mycenae disappeared off the security footage as she stepped outside of the building. She stood beside the building and sobbed for a few minutes, then staggered away.
    No nearby buildings had exterior security cameras, and what DeRicci could get from the street cameras told her little.
    Um, Detective?
    DeRicci sighed. The contact came from Brodeur, on her links. He was asking for a visual, which she was not inclined to give him.
    But he probably had something to show her from the autopsy.
    So she activated the visual in two dimensions, making his head float above the car’s control panel. Brodeur wore an environmental suit, but he had removed the hood that should have covered his face. It hung behind his skull like a half-visible alien appendage.
    News for me, Ethan? DeRicci asked, hoping to move him along quickly. He could get much too chatty for her tastes.
    Well, you’re not going to like any of it. He ran a hand through his hair, messing it up. It looked a little damp, as if he’d been sweating inside the suit.
    DeRicci waited. She didn’t know how she could like or dislike any news about the woman’s death. It was a case. A sad and strange case, but a case nonetheless.
    She died from a hardening poison , Brodeur sent. I’ve narrowed it down to one of five related types. I’m running the test now to see which poison it actually is .
    Poison. That took effort. Not in the actual application—many poisons were impossible to see, taste, or feel—but in the planning.
    Someone wanted this woman dead, and then they wanted to keep her death secret.
    That’s a weird way to kill someone, DeRicci sent.
    Brodeur looked concerned. Over the woman? He usually saw corpses as a curiosity, not as someone to empathize with.
    That was one of the few things DeRicci liked about Brodeur. He could handle a job as a job.
    It is a weird way to kill someone , Brodeur sent. Then he glanced over his shoulder as if he expected someone to enter his office and yell at him. The thing is, one of these types of poisons could contaminate the food supply.
    What? DeRicci sent. Or maybe she said that out loud. Or both. She felt cold. Contaminate the food supply? With a body?
    She wasn’t quite sure of the connection, but she didn’t like it.
    She hadn’t liked the corpse in the compost part of this case from the very first.
    Brodeur took an obvious deep breath and his gaze met hers. She stabilized the floating image, so she wasn’t tracking him as he moved up, down, and across the