Up Against It - M. J. Locke [41]
If worse came to worst, they would start up a new list, one without him on it.
He nodded abruptly. “It’ll do.”
She heard a rustling behind them. “Mr. Mayor … Ms. Commissioner … a moment of your time—” Morris fixed a genial expression on his face as a handful of other politicians came up to them. “I’m counting on you,” he told her.
As he turned to speak to the others, Jane faded through a wall of mourners and well-wishers. Once out of view of the main crowd, around on the other side of the wall, she sat down on one of the mourners’ benches and shot an e-mail off to the PM telling him she was expanding her eyes-on distribution, and why. She decided to add the other towns’ mayors to the eyes-on list as well. To preserve the balance of power. They might still play games behind her back, but putting them in the same decision-making space meant they would be making commitments that they would have to decide whether to keep or break, not play the gaps and put her in the middle as they usually did. She messaged Tania and asked her to make sure one of her people made the change in the eyes-on list, right away.
She found in her inbox an encoded message from a contact among Parliament staff: “Expect invite from jerk soon. < 1 wk?”
“Jerk” stood for JRC, the Joint Resource Committee. Jacques Reinforte’s committee. He had been given the position of chair as a consolation prize of sorts, after Benavidez had defeated him in a fight over the party leadership. No friend of Benavidez’s obviously, he would love to see her replaced. She couldn’t keep them waiting for long without looking as if she was obstructing their investigation. But she needed time—time to find out what had caused the accident, time to come up with solutions.
This was a bid for power, played out on the back of a tragedy. The repercussions from this accident, at least at first, would not happen in a courtroom, but in the media. And there was plenty of media to play in.
I’m going to need a lawyer, she thought, eyeing the note. A lawyer and a publicist. It was time to put in a call to her friend Sarah, who practiced law.
Give me as much notice as you can, she replied to her secret friend.
She spotted a Viridian holy man at the edge of the crowd. A big man, he looked Nordic, or Germanic. He had a bolt of hair tied at the crown of his head, with a cascade of metal beads and fiber optics laced through it, bouncing in the light gee. He wore a loose-fitting outfit, overlaid with a rainbow stole of knotted cords, and had a staff of oak with a spiral helix design. He seemed to be shadowing her; she had noticed him a few times at the periphery of her vision, but had managed to avoid him till now.
“Commissioner Navio!” he said. He was so near this time, and the crowd was so thin, that she couldn’t ignore him. She stood.
“Thor Harbaugh,” he said, and held out his hand. Jane shook it. “I just wanted to thank you for coming. It would have meant a lot to Ivan.”
Ivan Kovak. The driver who had precipitated this whole thing. Anger flooded her veins. “I assure you, I’m not here for him.”
Harbaugh looked shocked at her bluntness, then pensive. “You’re not alone in your feelings. How well did you know him?”
“Not at all.”
“I knew him only a little. His family wasn’t that active in the gather, but after his partners left, he came more often. He was a troubled man.”
Jane studied Harbaugh. Curiosity won out over distrust. “Did he talk to you about his intentions?”
“You mean, about his reasons to commit suicide?” Harbaugh shook his head. “I know little. But I do know he was in pain. His life partners left the cluster and took his children away, and he had no legal recourse. His psychiatrist informed me the antidepressants he was on countered the depressant effect of the hallucinogen he took. He was essentially a walking corpse by the time he climbed into his rig.” He shrugged. “I wish I’d known. My foresight