Kangaroo Too Read online

  “Give her one of the bars,” Jessica says. “Go into the bathroom and pull it from the pocket. Tell her we hid the rest nearby, and you can go recover them once she shows you the goods.”

  I tell Gladys I can give her a sample and excuse myself to go to the bathroom. Once inside, I close the door, then think of a golden statuette in the shape of a hippopotamus and open the pocket. I push my hand through the barrier and pull out a therm-pack containing one of the gold bars. It clanks onto the floor, and I hope the music outside is loud enough to mask the noise from Gladys’s neighbors.

  I open the door again, bring the therm-pack over to Gladys’s wheelchair, and open it to reveal the gold. She extends one hand and waggles her fingers in the international sign language for “gimme.” I pick up the bar and hand it to her.

  “It’s cold,” she says. “You had this hidden in a crawlspace or something?”

  “It wasn’t easy,” I say, not answering the question. “But we managed to get all twenty bars up here. I’ll retrieve the rest after you show me the data.”

  She fondles the gold and nods. “Looks good to me. Okay, wait here.” She rolls her wheelchair over to the desk and taps at the computer there.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what in the world are you going to do with gold up here?” I ask.

  Gladys turns and smiles at me over her shoulder. “It’s a precious metal. Even more precious here on the Moon. You can’t mine it out of the ground, and it’s so heavy it’s ridiculously expensive to lift out of Earth’s gravity well in any significant quantity.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say. “But what are you going to do with it? It’s not like you can trade whole bars for anything. And I doubt this nursing home gives you access to a smelting furnace.”

  “You let me worry about that,” she says, turning back to the computer. I see a collection of file icons on the screen, which she manipulates to copy them onto some kind of removable storage media. “Plenty of things people love doing with gold. Jewelry, obviously. But it’s also an excellent conductor. And there’s lots of people who want reliable electronics around here. You can get free solar power all the time—no clouds, no weather—but if you can’t pipe the juice to the right place, it’s worthless.”

  The files finish copying, and she locks the computer again and pulls a memory card out of one of the slots in the desktop. She hands me the small translucent rectangle.

  “There you go,” Gladys says. “Everything you ever wanted to know about the SKR-9500 series but were afraid to ask. And you didn’t get this from me, understand?”

  I tuck the card into my shirt pocket, wishing I could open a portal and store it safely in the actual pocket instead. But I can’t do that in front of Gladys. “We understand.”

  “So what do you spooks plan to do with all that info, anyway? Is the agency branching out into industrial espionage now?”

  “I’m just the courier,” I say with a shrug. “I assume these files are encrypted?”

  “I’m not an idiot,” she says. “You get the passkey after I get paid.”

  “Sure. I’ll be back in a few—”

  “Oh, I think I’d like to see where you wily coyotes managed to squirrel away all these gold bars.” She gives me that toothy grin again. “I’m very curious.”

  Well, that’s no good. “Like I said, Mrs. Löwenthal, we are on the clock. And this will go much faster if I do it alone.”

  “If you think I’m letting you out of my sight before I get paid,” she says, the smile disappearing, “you’re crazier than a fox. We stick together until I’m cashed out.”

  “Isn’t it going to look a little suspicious for you to be rolling around this place with a bunch of gold bars stacked on your lap?” I ask.

  Gladys pats the side of her wheelchair, and a door swings open between her legs, revealing a hidden compartment. “That won’t be a problem.”

  “Do you know how heavy gold is?”

  “One-sixth gravity, son,” she says. “Now we can stand around here talking and wasting time, or you can start our little treasure hunt any time you’re ready.”

  I’ve been waiting for Jessica to suggest some alternative to this, but she’s been silent for a while. I decide I need to prompt her. I turn away from Gladys slightly. “Any thoughts here?”

  “Just do it,” Jessica says. “Pretend to use her as a lookout. Sneak into some storage closets, bathrooms, other private spaces around the home. And hurry up. I’ve booked us on the next flight out of here, and it leaves in two hours.”

  I turn back to tell Gladys we’re ready to go when I hear a knock on the door.

  “What was that?” I ask her.

  “What was what?”

  “Turn off the music.”

  She does, and I listen to the audio feed from Jessica’s hotel room. More knocking.

  “I’ll be right back,” Jessica says. “Go.”

  I walk toward Gladys’s door. In my ear, I hear Jessica talking to some people, but I can’t quite make out what they’re saying.

  Then I hear Jessica shouting. “The suitable wallet is in my alternate trousers!”

  I freeze with my hand on Gladys’s door handle. That’s an emergency code phrase. Jessica’s in trouble. I turn up the gain on my audio feed and wish I had a video link back to her.

  “We’ll get it for you,” I hear a male voice say. “Where are they?”

  “Over there,” Jessica says. “On the bed.”

  Gladys rolls up next to me. “What’s going on? You listening to something?”

  “Shh,” I say, waving a hand at her and muting my comms in the same motion. “Wait one.”

  “Got the wallet,” says a female voice. A very familiar female voice. Who is it?

  “All right,” says the male voice. I hear something click. Metal? “Dr. Jessica Chu, you are under arrest for the murder of Jeremiah Burgess.”

  “Shit!” I say out loud.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” continues the male voice, which I now recognize as Deputy U.S. Marshal Wecks. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney…”

  “Sorry, Gladys,” I say, yanking open the door, “I need to go. There’s a situation.”

  “I’m coming with you,” she says, following me into the hallway and keeping up even when I start jogging toward the central wing.

  “I’m going back to my hotel,” I say, “and possibly elsewhere.”

  “I’m not a prisoner here,” she says. “I’m not letting you out of my sight with that data. Not until I get paid, son.”

  Goddammit.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Moon—nearside—Tycho Crater

  1 hour after I acquired a new best friend

  The USMS outpost looks the same as before, except I feel like more of the marshals and clerks are staring at me now. Maybe it’s because I brought an old lady in a wheelchair with me this time. Or maybe they all know what’s going on with Jessica.

  The deputy at the front desk tells us to wait for a supervisor. I sit down in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the lobby, and Gladys parks her wheelchair next to me.

  “So,” she says, “you want to catch me up on what’s been going on with my old friend Jess?”

  “I told you,” I say. “I heard the marshals come into her hotel room and arrest her. That’s all.”

  “They had to charge her with something,” Gladys says. “What crime is she accused of?”

  I hesitate before answering.

  “Murder in the first degree,” says a voice to my other side.

  I stand and see a new marshal wearing plainclothes with a badge clipped to his belt. He’s tall, with skin maybe half a shade darker than mine, short black hair, and a thin mustache. His thoughtful eyes look over Gladys and me.

  “I’m Supervisory Deputy United States Marshal Sundar Punjabi,” he says, not offering his hand in greeting. “Is one of you Dr. Chu’s lawyer?”

 
; I step forward. “I’m Dr. Chu’s personal assistant. This is Gladys Löwenthal, an old friend of hers.”

  Punjabi pulls out his phone and looks at it. “You’re Edwin McDrona?”

  “That’s me.”

  He gives me an amused half-smile. “Married into the name?”

  “Adopted. We’d like to see Dr. Chu, please.”

  Punjabi shakes his head. “Sorry. We don’t allow visitors to any felony suspects until they’ve consulted with defense counsel.”

  “That’s at discretion,” Gladys says, rolling her wheelchair forward. “Isn’t it, Marshal? You’re not legally required to sequester her. You can let us in to see her if you think it’s appropriate.”

  “I can,” Punjabi says, “but I don’t think it is. I’m sorry, Mrs. Löwenthal, what did you say your relationship to Dr. Chu was?”

  “Oh, we’re old friends,” Gladys says. “Met in the asteroid belt. She came here to the Moon on business, and she knew I was here and wanted to pay me a visit. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to do that before you fellows collared her for—what was it again?”

  I can tell Gladys has dealt with law enforcement before. She might actually be an asset in this situation. Spies and criminals: we’re not that different. We use a lot of the same tricks. We just don’t have the same eventual goals.

  “I’d rather discuss that with Dr. Chu’s attorney,” Punjabi says. He looks back at me. “Does she have someone she can call here? Or should we go ahead and assign one of our public defenders to her case?”

  The Moon isn’t a normal community. Everyone here is a transient; nobody actually lives here. You can only be invested in a place for as long as you know you’re going to be tied to it. And I don’t trust any of the local public defenders as far as I can throw them. Even in Lunar gravity.

  This is a bad idea. But I know who I trust, and I’m pretty sure he can pull this off.

  “I’m a lawyer,” I say.

  “Excuse me?” Punjabi says, raising both eyebrows.

  “Yeah, me too,” Gladys says, turning to stare up at me.

  “I was hoping to track down someone more experienced,” I say, “but those efforts have been unsuccessful. Therefore I am officially presenting myself as Dr. Chu’s legal counsel in this matter.”

  * * *

  “Are. You. In. Sane?” Jessica hisses at me as soon as the interview room door closes, giving us some measure of privacy. Gladys had to stay outside, and I’m pretty sure USMS isn’t legally allowed to record our conversation, since attorney-client privilege still applies.

  “I think you already know the answer to that,” I say. “But calm down. I’ve got Oliver on comms. He’s getting my eye feed, so he can see and hear everything, just like you were doing earlier.”

  “And how is that supposed to help you be a lawyer?” Jessica asks.

  “Is that a rhetorical question? He’s in the office. He has access to the complete criminal justice codes for every jurisdiction in the Solar System. You know how good he is at doing research, and how fast he is.”

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Oliver says in my ear.

  “All he has to do is tell me what to say, and when,” I continue. “Easiest thing in the world.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re hopelessly optimistic or just blithely ignorant,” Jessica says. “Being a lawyer is not just about database lookups. You need to have a nuanced understanding of the law, how different statutes interact, how to interpret—”

  “Do you have a better idea?” I ask. “You want to go with a public defender who’s definitely a short-timer here and almost certainly underpaid for what she does? Do you know a good attorney on the Moon we can trust with the details of your case?”

  Jessica glares at me. “You’re wasting time here. Go pay Gladys. The sooner you get that data back to the office, the sooner we might find our friends in the belt. That’s what you wanted, right? To finish the mission?”

  She’s right about that, but it’ll take weeks to analyze all the robot data and even longer to develop our hack. I’m not leaving my Surgical officer in jail. After what happened in Kazakhstan last year—when I ran, and another agent died—I’m not abandoning my partner. Never again.

  “I’m not leaving you behind,” I say.

  “I’m not in any danger here.”

  “You’ve been accused of murder. Aren’t you even a little concerned about that?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Mur-der,” I repeat, emphasizing both syllables as much as I can.

  “The case will take months to try,” Jessica says. “Lasher will get me out of it.”

  “So you’re just going to sit around here, on the Moon, and wait for that?” I ask. “Am I supposed to get a new Surgical officer in the meantime? And what if Lasher can’t get you out of it?”

  “He’ll get me out of it.”

  “Just tell me what’s going on,” I say. “Tell me what happened last night.”

  Jessica stares at me for a second, then stands up. “Get out of here and do your job, Kangaroo.”

  Before I can stop her, she’s at the door and knocking on it, asking for the marshals to take her back to her cell.

  * * *

  “I want to see the evidence,” I say to Marshal Punjabi when he meets me in the hallway. Gladys sits in her wheelchair beside him.

  Punjabi indicates Gladys. “You want her to see it, too?”

  I think about this for a moment. Oliver says in my ear, “Probably not a good idea, Kangaroo.”

  I know it’s not a good idea. But if Gladys knows more about Jess’s past—if she can shed any light at all on what’s going on with her—I have to take the risk of trusting her.

  After all, what’s the worst that could happen? We need to pay her more hush money? The agency has deep pockets.

  “Yeah, she’s good,” I say. “Mrs. Löwenthal is here to help Dr. Chu.”

  “Absolutely,” Gladys says.

  “Fine. This way.” Punjabi leads us down the corridor to a different conference room. “How did you know we had physical evidence, anyway? I didn’t say anything about it.”

  “You arrested Dr. Chu,” I say. “Which means you had to charge her with something. And you couldn’t charge her unless you had something solid. I thought it was just going to be surveillance footage or something, but now you’ve told us it’s physical evidence, and I want to see it. So you can show us now or wait for me to file a discovery motion.”

  “Well played,” Punjabi says with a smile. “But just so you know, McDrona, it’s not all going to be this easy. We run a pretty tight ship up here.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m serious,” he says. “We know there’s all kinds of petty crime on farside. That’s unavoidable. But this is the first death on the Moon that even looks like a homicide, and once people start killing each other up here…” He shakes his head. “It’s not going to be pretty.”

  “I promise you this is a mistake,” I say. “Dr. Chu’s not a murderer.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Punjabi opens the conference room door. “But we have to follow due process.”

  “Of course.”

  Gladys and I wait in the conference room while Punjabi goes to get the evidence. I sit down and try not to stare at Gladys.

  “Just so you know,” she says, “I’m not entirely unsympathetic to Jess’s situation. But I’m here for my own interest. Don’t expect me to help too much.”

  “Really don’t think this is a good idea, Kay,” Oliver says in my ear. “We don’t know if we can trust her.”

  “Fine,” I say to Gladys. “But just remember, you don’t get paid until I feel like I have some spare time to go retrieve those caches.”

  “Maybe I’ll just go a-huntin’ on my own.”

  “The Moon’s a big place. And you’re not going to fit that wheelchair into a spacesuit.”

  Gladys chuckles. “I got nothing but time, Edwin.”

  “The sooner we get Dr. Ch
u out of this mess, the sooner you get paid,” I say. “So feel free to help out if you can.”

  “I’ll consider it.”

  Punjabi returns, carrying a small plastic bag with something inside. He closes the door and places the bag on the table between us. It’s clear plastic with a red-and-white EVIDENCE label. Inside is a silver necklace with a crucifix pendant. The crucifix is very detailed, with a tiny Jesus Christ nailed there, a crown of thorns on his head. I can even see little trails of blood sculpted down his face.

  I blink my eye into scan mode and run a quick battery of forensic tests—as much as I can without actually touching the object. Oliver’s seeing all this too, and I hear him verifying my scan results.

  “Silver,” he says. “It’s solid, die-cast metal. Nothing inside. Just jewelry.”

  That’s somewhat disappointing. I had hoped to be able to scan something unusual here, but it’s not always the case that seeing more gives useful information.

  “We found that on Jeremiah Burgess’s body,” Punjabi says. “Your client’s fingerprints were all over it. We also got some skin cells; we’re testing those now.”

  “Any other prints on it?” I ask.

  “Sure. Burgess touched it too. But he was Muslim.” Punjabi sits down across from me. “Wouldn’t be caught dead with a Christian religious icon like that. So to speak.”

  “Funny,” Gladys says.

  “And there was a third set of prints,” Punjabi says, “but we haven’t been able to identify those. No match in Lunar records. We’re checking with other jurisdictions now.”

  That’s unexpected. Jessica took her one-night stand to meet someone else? Maybe I don’t want to know exactly what she was up to, recreationally.

  “So she didn’t tell you about the third party, either,” Punjabi says. “That’s interesting.”

  I really need to work on my poker face. “You found the necklace on Burgess?”

  “Yeah. We tracked his whereabouts last night back to an all-hours café in the Apennine Terraces. Witnesses say he met with your client and another woman.”

  “Have you located this other woman?” I’m very proud of myself for sounding so calm when inside, I’m screaming with frustration.