Up Against It - M. J. Locke [72]
“That’s strange.”
“Yes. Our Barsoomian counterparts are chasing a couple of leads, but the trail’s pretty cold.” Wilkes shrugged. “We’re not holding our breath.”
“But Kovak’s old mob connections on Vesta,” Detective Duran said, “and the fact that his former spouses and children emigrated to Mars—especially Barsoom, where the Ogilvies rule—it’s given us pause.”
Wilkes had a dubious expression. “It’s given you pause,” she told her partner. “I grew up on Mars. There are eight major principalities with several hundred million people living there. It’s not all mafia, all channels, streaming media. Besides, the wife was from Barsoom originally—she would have contacts there. Maybe they just left the grid, joined a low-tech co-op out in the wilderness, and are hiding out.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Duran said. “But from what?”
Sean looked from one to the other. “Where does this leave us?”
“Well, it’s at least suggestive that Ogilvie could have bribed or blackmailed him in some way to gain his cooperation,” Wilkes replied.
“You mean he sacrificed himself to save his family?”
Wilkes looked at her partner, who shrugged. “It fits the facts.”
Sean did not like the idea of extenuating circumstances. Maybe Commissioner Navio had a point. Maybe he did need Kovak to be a villain.
“Let us give you a rundown on some other things we’ve found. Ramirez,” Wilkes said, “play the video again, slow motion, from right before the crash. Zoom in on the cab.”
They all watched the crash unfold. At this zoom, Sean caught a glimpse of Kovak’s pale and determined face. Sean’s fists flexed, despite his earlier reflection. I’d kill you all over again if I could, you selfish prick.
“I want you to notice a couple things,” Wilkes said. “Fidel, go back thirty clicks before impact,” she told the tech, “and zoom in on the right cab window. There. Now, take it forward in stop-motion. Stay on the window.”
The images hopped forward. Sean noticed nothing unusual, only that glimpse of Kovak’s face, and then his forearm.
She pointed. “See how his right arm is on the controls in front of him. It disappears for a moment, here. See? Then as the cab starts to fall, his arm reappears. You can’t see the fingers here, but you can see how the arm goes forward to the cab windshield as the crane plunges into the chute.
“OK, freeze it. See how the cab is crushed. At that point, his arm would have to have been shoved into his chest.” She pulled herself into a nearby chair and modeled the impact, pushing herself forward into the workstation’s edge, folding her arm to her chest. “Now, hold that thought and come with me.”
She led them down the tube to the med lab, a brightly lit room with autopsy tables and trays of instruments. The preservatives and cleaning solutions could not mask the faint stench of decay.
Wilkes introduced Sean to the coroner, Dr. George Bassinger, a very tall, serious-looking man in a lab coat.
“Show them what you told me this morning, George,” she said.
Bassinger shared a wavespace with Sean and the others. In the center was an enlarged 3D image of two severed fingers. Bassinger gestured at the fingers with a steel pointer. “The first thing I found was that these were cleanly severed at the distal phalangeal joints. I found traces of MDHRA in them.”
“Groupmind,” Wilkes translated.
“The most obvious implication here is that the fingers were severed during the impact, and somehow avoided exposure to the disassemblers. But let me show you something interesting about the nature of the trauma.” He set the severed fingers down, pulled himself onto a lab saddle, linked Sean into a shared wavespace, and called up a set of slides labeled “Kovak—Tissue Sample” followed by numbers and dates.
“These are micrographs of the trauma site. First, note how cleanly the joints were severed.” He pointed. “It’s a surgical cut. Note the cellular structures, the capillaries and bones. There’s no torn or crushed tissue or shattered bone here.”
Wilkes said, “The