Timothy Zahn - Quadrail 04 - The Domino Pattern v5 by Timothy Zahn

Author:Timothy Zahn [Zahn, Timothy]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-01-15T12:00:00+00:00

I had hoped there would be a way of telling which and how many of the storage tanks our intruder had broken into. But no such luck. There were no locks on the tanks, nor were there any breakable—or broken—seals. The four bodies lay quietly and peacefully in their temporary coffins, each wrapped like a mummy in wide strips of plastic. “I guess we’ll start here,” I said, gesturing to the coffin which had been ajar when we’d arrived. Swiveling the lid all the way up, I started gingerly unwrapping the corpse.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Bayta asked, her voice sounding a little queasy. “Needle marks?”

“Mostly,” I said. “I’m thinking one of the needle marks may have something different about it.”

The wrapping came free of the head, and I saw that it was Master Colix’s rest I’d disturbed. “Here we go,” I said, working the plastic free of his shoulders. “You want to start on one of your own, or shall we both work on this one?”

“You go ahead,” Bayta said, making no move toward the other coffins. “I’ll just watch.”

“Okay, but this is the really fun part of investigative work,” I warned. Forcing my mind into clinical Westali mode, I leaned into the coffin and got to work.

I’d expected the job to take a while, with a lot more unwrapping necessary before I got anywhere. But as seemed to be happening more and more these days, I was wrong.

“There we go,” I said, pulling Colix’s tunic back to reveal the tiny needle mark a few centimeters below the top of his collar and just to the left of his corrugated spinal ridge. “One needle mark, comma, hypodermic. Definitely fresh.”

“How can that be?” Bayta objected. “The Spiders have accounted for all the hypos the passengers brought aboard.”

“Which means it was either Aronobal or Witherspoon, or else someone managed to smuggle a spare aboard,” I said.

Bayta shook her head. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

“Possible or not, here it is,” I said, gesturing to the body. “Take a look.”

Bayta shuddered, but gamely leaned in a little closer. “Seems like an odd placement,” she commented. “How could someone make an injection back there without him noticing?”

“Actually, it’s a perfect spot,” I said. “Generally speaking, in order for poison to be injected without the victim noticing, he or she has to be asleep, comatose, or drunk. Those third-class nighttime privacy shields have openings at the top for ventilation. All our killer needed to do was go up to Colix’s seat, reach in with his hypo—”

“Did Master Colix use his privacy shield?” Bayta interjected. “A lot of Shorshians don’t.”

I stared at her, then down at the needle mark I’d felt so proud about finding ten seconds earlier. Damn it, but she was right. And if Colix’s whole skin surface had been available, surely the murderer could have picked a more out-of-the-way spot for his injection.

Had it happened at dinner, then? The mark was also in the right spot for someone who’d sneaked up behind him and surreptitiously poked a hypo into his back.

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