Garrett was alert to the change in Stern’s tone. “There’s a problem.”
“Yeah.” Stern laced her fingers together and leaned her forearms on her desk. “Rachel, his story doesn’t jibe. Not all of it, anyway.”
“Which part?”
“How about a lot of it? Right now, he’s sticking to it. He and Batra go to the bazaar, then they see this…what’s her name…this Dalal character. They have dinner. Then they’re on their way back to the spaceport when this Bolian and a goon jump them, force them into an aircar, and take them out to God knows where for God knows what. Wherever they’re going, there just happens to be a shuttle. Halak doesn’t know why or how; it’s just there. Then there’s a scuffle. The Bolian has a pulse gun; the goon has a knife. Halak gets knifed, but Batra manages to get the knife away from whomever’s got Halak and she stabs the Bolian, the one with the pulse gun. Then Batra’s killed, and then Halak shoots both the Bolian and the goon. Only…”
“Only what?”
“Only there’s no ionized residue on Halak’s skin. There is on Batra’s, around the entry wound. But if Halak pulled the trigger on the Bolian and another goon, then there should be blowback. There isn’t.”
“Meaning he didn’t use the pulse gun.”
“Not damned likely. And if there wasanother goon, he remains a mystery because I can’t find a trace of himanywhere—no blood, no DNA, nothing. On the other hand, the blood on Halak’s clothing? Two types, his own and the Bolian’s.”
“He said that Batra stabbed the Bolian. If Halak struggled with the Bolian, he’d have the Bolian’s blood on his clothing. That jibes.”
“Rachel, Halak had that Bolian’s blood all overhim—under his nails, in his hair, on his neck. His cheeks, for God’s sake. Not to mention bone and stuff that tests out as cerebral cortex. Bolian.”
“And from that you infer…what?”
“You ever take a good look at blood spatter? Well, I have. Did a bunch of forensics work when I was in training before I decided on going the deep space route. Now, blood oozes. It pools. It flows. And it spurts, but only if the heart’s still pumping. What the spatter pattern looks like depends on how the body’s positioned; how much you get on you depends on your relationship to the body. Now to get all that blood where it ended up, I figure the Bolian was lying on his back and Halak was on top, maybe straddling him.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“That he sure as hell didn’t stab the Bolian to death. You don’t get Bolian brains under your fingernails if you’re stabbing him.” Stern shrugged, rubbed her neck with her hand. “Jeez, Rachel, I dunno. All I know is that the evidence suggests that Halak didn’t use a pulse gun or a phaser, and he may not have used a knife. The evidence suggests that he bludgeoned the guy to death.”
“Could it be that things just happened too quickly? Mixed him up?”
“Sure. In fact, I’d say that would be par for the course. I’m no psychiatrist, but trauma’s funny. Either you remember everything—how things smelled and tasted and even what clothes you were wearing—clear as a bell, or it’s all a jumble. So I’d be inclined to let it go except for a few other things. That wound, Rachel, the one on Halak’s back, and his left arm? They’re old.”
Garrett was startled. “Old? What you mean?”
“I mean that he was stabbed all right, only it happened earlier and then the wounds dehisced, pulled apart, probably as a result of the fight with the Bolian. By the time I got to them, rudimentary epithelial regeneration had already begun. So I couldn’t close them right away. Tissues don’t heal as well, more chance of infection. I had to leave the wounds open, let them granulate in a bit, and then close them up. I did the second surgery on his back yesterday. Only when I tested the skin around his wounds, I found evidence of antimicrobial packs.”
“What?” Garrett was flabbergasted. “But then that would mean…”
“He got knifed much earlier, and someone patched him up. Only the question is who? This Dalal?” Stern leaned in closer. “An interesting question, isn’t it? I’ll tell you something else. Halak lost a lot of blood, only where is it? There wasn’t enough soaked into his clothes, or pooled in that shuttle, to account for the way his intravascular volume was down. So he did his bleeding, only not in the shuttle.”
As astonishing as it was for her to think it, Garrett found what she thought even more incredible to say aloud. But she did anyway. “You think he’s lying.”
Stern hesitated. “God, I hate going that far, especially with a fellow officer, and I happen to like Halak quite a bit. Let’s just say I don’t think it’s so cut and dried, pardon the pun. There was undigested food in Batra’s stomach, so she had a meal before she died, and I have no doubt she was shot. Only she was pretty banged up, her jaw especially. But, Rachel, get this: she bruised. Her tongue was lacerated, like she bit herself. Only there were no clots, and the tissue was regenerating. If Halak’s correct in his sequence, she died before she had a chance to bruise, and there ought to have been blood clots in her mouth. There weren’t. And here’s a kicker: There are traces of an antiseptic salt in her mouth. Someone tended to her, too.”
Garrett sat very still, her headache forgotten, absorbing the implications of what Stern was saying. If Halak hadn’t outright lied, then he was omitting a great deal. But omissions were not, in and of themselves, crimes. Stern hadn’t found anything to contradict Halak’s assertion that he’d killed in self-defense, and no one on Farius Prime was even admitting to, or advertising that someone had misplaced a Bolian.
“You said there were a few things that didn’t jibe,” Garrett said. “The wounds, the blood spatter.”
Stern ticked the rest off on her fingers. “The amount of blood loss, and Batra’s bruises. The stuff in her mouth. And one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
Stern’s eyes zeroed in on Garrett. “Dirt.”
Chapter 14
His companel shrilled, and Tyvan jumped.
“Shouldn’t you answer that?” asked Bat-Levi.
“Oh, it can wait,” Tyvan lied. He knew who it was: Bulast, to remind him that Halak’s inquiry, delayed three days while Starfleet Intelligence rummaged around his ship and the commander mended, would begin in fifteen minutes.
“Oh,” was all Bat-Levi said, though the skin above her eyebrows furrowed in a slight frown. He read her meaning: Hails weren’t things an officer could afford to ignore.
The hail cut the air again.
“One second,” said Tyvan. Nothing was more important than being with Bat-Levi right now; he was sure the captain would see it that way. Still, since his chair—black leather, high-backed—squatted in front of his desk, he faced the unenviable task of hoisting himself around in his seat to grope for the audio cutoff: an undignified posture for an officer, he reflected, so it was good he wasn’t one to stand on ceremony. Tyvan rummaged around and killed the audio in mid-bleat. “No, I shouldn’t answer that,” he said, dropping back. “You came by to see me. Something must be wrong.”
“Wrong?” said Bat-Levi. The horizontal furrows above her eyebrows deepened, and her eyes narrowed, as if she worried that she’d made a mistake, or thought this was some sort of test. “Why do you say that? This is when I’m scheduled to see you. Session four. You schedule, I come. Simple as that.”
So she didn’t know. She had no idea. Very interesting. When Bat-Levi had shown up at his office door twenty minutes before, Tyvan had to contain his surprise, especially given the fact that he had to be very elsewherein short order. He’d been about to put her off and ask why she was here, now, didn’t she realize what day it was, but then caught a glimpse of the unmistakable shine of unshed tears in her overly bright black eyes. And then he’d understood and he’d kept his mouth shut, let her come into his office, her servos squalling, and get herself settled. She hadn’t been angry, thank heaven, or even distantly polite; she’d seemed tired and wrung out, and her movements were slower, as if she carried some greater weight than her prosthetics.