Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [95]
“Grant organized all his findings and committed them to this metallic thread. He coordinated dates and facts, statements, shipping orders and times, signatures on bills of lading and manifests, locations of various Rogues at key moments before, during, and after suspicious incidents, and a thousand bits of circumstantial evidence against Mrs. Khanty.”
They all looked at the single foot-long thread as if it were about to sing.
“He was no fighter,” Worf went on tightly. “He was no soldier. He had never trained to resist torture. Yet here this is in my hands. He never gave it up. He knew I would retrieve it. He expected … me … to come back.”
Riker stepped to him. “Worf, don’t do this. This isn’t your fault. It’s Odette Khanty’s fault. Don’t get that mixed up.”
His innards shriveling, Worf bottled up a need to spit in Riker’s face and drive those words back. Not his fault?
“He died because of me. I kept my honor, but he paid the price.”
Shuddering, Worf gazed down at the body of his brave, dead friend, and his heart snagged.
He stuffed the critical thread into Beverly Crusher’s hands, and noted peripherally that she quickly fed it into her tied-back hair. Once that was done, Worf plowed between Riker and Crusher and out of the cell.
“Worf!” Riker called after him, but the warning had no effect.
Five seconds later Worf was back, with a terrorized Burkal City police lieutenant in his claws. He drove the policeman before him into the cell and bent the man over Grant’s body.
“Dead!” Worf roared.
“I know … I know he’s dead,” the policeman quivered.
“Why was he still hanging there so long after he died?”
“There’s—there’s an investigation underway—”
“You mean there’s a cover-up being developed! Who did this to him!”
Barely able to move his head because of Worfs unkind grip on the base of his neck, the policeman glanced at Riker and Crusher. “He did it to himself.”
“He inflicted these burns on himself?” Crusher shot back. “He gouged out his own eyes? You’ve got to be kidding!”
“I—I—he did it to himself. That’s what’s on the report. He hanged himself.”
“You tell the truth!” Worf shrieked in the policeman’s ear, reaching his breaking-somebody’s-neck point.
“It’s—look—” The policeman raised his hands and winced. “Look, it’s suicide. It’s in the report.”
“What about all these wounds!”
“They’re …” The policeman grimaced. “… self-inflicted.”
“Curse you!” Worf shook the man violently. “Worf, let go of him.” Riker stepped forward and took the rattled policeman away from Worf.
He must have seen something that Worf, through his rage, could not see. As the policeman looked at the body, then up again, Worf found it in himself to notice that there were tears in the man’s eyes.
The officer’s voice was thin and miserable. “I can only tell you … what’s in the report. Sorry.”
“Where is Lieutenant Stoner?” Worf demanded.
The policeman sighed hard. “They say he didn’t show up for work this morning.”
Then the man shrugged.
“When the truth comes out,” Worf threatened, “I will see you again.”
Obviously more afraid of something else than he was of Worf, the policeman looked at him firmly now and with great sympathy. “If I were you, I’d worry about seeing morning.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plum-sized device that was flashing a blue and red pattern of lights. Worf recognized it—the policeman had notified the Rogues. Understanding boiled through the anger. The policeman had no choice.
“Sorry,” the man said again. “I got four kids.”
“Get out!” Worf thundered.
“Going.” The policeman veered for the cell door, hurried down the narrow stone corridor, and disappeared.
“Poor guy,” Riker uttered.
Though there was no charity in Worfs heart, he felt for the first time Grant’s intense passion to cure this planet for the sake of its people, and not just for the integrity of the Federation as a whole. His knees and elbows trembled with the strain of containing his rage.
Contain it? Why!
He swung about and rammed his fist into the wall.
The wall cracked. Plaster clattered to the cold floor.
Riker eyed him sympathetically.