Release Page 22

  Ariana picked up the paper cup and scooped the pills off the floor and back inside it. She used the key in the nurse’s pocket to open the door to her room. Then she strode into the hallway, her head high.

  Her heart thudded against her ribs as she walked. Stare forward, she told herself. Act like you’re supposed to be here.

  She didn’t catch the eyes of anyone else in the hallway, but she didn’t hide her head either. She moved as if she belonged in the baggy nurse’s uniform, as if she was hurrying to complete important business. Near as she could tell, no one gave her a second glance.

  The hallway outside her room was nondescript. Gray, with a few benches outside of rooms with locked doors. Ariana walked by all of them as if she’d seen them hundreds of times and pushed through a swinging door at the end of the hallway.

  She paused for a second as she emerged into an open area. There was a nurse’s station to her right, and she could see a woman huddling over the screens, not paying attention to her. Ahead of her, another hallway, making a T with the one she’d just exited. Which way to go? She couldn’t stand here thinking about it for too long. So, she picked the left hand one, away from the nurse’s station, and she started to walk again.

  “Hey,” called a woman’s voice from behind her.

  Ariana ignored it. She kept walking.

  “You with the pills,” said the voice. “Are you deaf?”

  There was no one else in the hallway. Ariana quickly debated. If she didn’t respond, that would be suspicious. If she spoke, the woman might figure out what was going on. Biting her lip, she turned. “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Do you see anyone else around?” The woman who spoke was another nurse, tall, with broad shoulders and dark hair. The nurse was holding up a syringe, flicking the tip of the needle. She was alone in the nursing station except for a hospital guard who stood boredly at the corner.

  “Do you need something?” Ariana’s eyes darted from the syringe to the blaster on the hip of the guard.

  “Dr. Trint asked for this in Exam Room Seven.” The nurse held up the syringe. “Since you’re headed that way anyhow, can you take it?”

  Ariana strode back to the nursing station with quick steps. “Sure.”

  The nurse was eyeing her uniform. “Do you usually work on this floor?”

  Ariana yanked the syringe out of the woman’s hand and plunged into the neck of the guard.

  The nurse gasped. “What are you—”

  The guard gurgled and fell to the ground. Ariana knelt to get his blaster, switched it on and pointed it at the nurse. “Shut up.” Her hands were shaking.

  The nurse had gone pale. “You’re a patient, aren’t you? I recognize you. That duke’s daughter, the one who was kidnapped.”

  “Shut up,” said Ariana, gesturing with the blaster. The shaking in her hands lessened a little bit as if she drew strength from the way she ordered the woman around.

  The nurse bobbed her head.

  Ariana looked around. There was no one else close by, but someone could round a corner or come through a door at any second. She shoved the blaster in the nurse’s face. “What’s the quickest way out of here?”

  “I...” The nurse was shaking now.

  Ariana didn’t have time for this. She pulled the woman out from behind the nurse’s station and jammed the blaster into her back. “You can show me then. Lead me out of here, avoid any places where I might see someone who’ll stop me, and if we run into guards or anything like that, I shoot you. Got it?”

  The nurse whimpered, but she started walking.

  It turned out to be easy. There was a set of stair at the end of the hallway. They took them all the way to the basement. The nurse led her to a back door, apparently used by the staff. Once outside on a back street, Ariana set the blaster to stun and shot the nurse. She shoved her inside and darted down the street.

  She ran in the alleys until she found a public comm. Then she sent her Aunt Tildy a message. “Remember how you said you’d do anything to help me?”

  * * *

  Tramet arrived at Winfield to find it in a panic. It seemed that Miss Gilit had knocked out one nurse, put a needle in a guard’s neck, stolen his blaster, and stunned another nurse. She’d gotten out of the hospital, and no one knew where she was.

  He left the place almost immediately. He couldn’t find out anything here. And if he were honest with himself, he didn’t know what he could discover from Miss Gilit. Obviously she believed that Keirth was innocent. Whether she was crazy or not was a matter to be left up to doctors, not dukes. He was probably wasting his time. If he wanted to do something about Keirth’s execution, he needed to act fast. Wavering by trying to interview a girl who was possibly mentally ill was only treading water.

  Still. What if he were wrong? What if he were only projecting Keirth’s character onto him because he so desperately wanted it to be true?

  Tramet sat outside Winfield in the backseat of his speeder, unsure of what to do next. He pulled out a tablet and skimmed through the news stories on the nets that he’d read a million times before. But something jumped out at him this time. It was a quote from a police sergeant who’d testified at Transman’s trial. Nol Praxider, when questioned if he was glad justice had been so swiftly carried out had said, “Well, it certainly was swift, wasn’t it?”

  That was all. Praxider certainly wouldn’t speak out against the decisions of the Star Chamber, but Tramet suddenly wondered if he wasn’t convinced by the case either. He checked on his tablet for Praxider’s office address, and then gave it to his driver.

  If he spoke to Praxider, perhaps he’d have a little more of an idea whether he would be doing the right thing to interfere or not.

  * * *

  Aunt Tildy’s speeder pulled up on the street where Ariana had told her to pick her up. The door slid open and Ariana scrambled inside.

  Aunt Tildy was waiting, her face shining. “This is so exciting, Ariana. A prison break.”

  Ariana didn’t feel excited, only grimly determined. “You’re announcing that loudly enough. Does the driver know what we’re doing?”

  “Oh yes, miss,” came the answer from the front. “Bloody well time, if you ask me.”

  “I told you that the servants were all on your side,” said Aunt Tildy.

  Okay. Well, there wasn’t much Ariana could do about that. She hoped Aunt Tildy’s driver was trustworthy, that was all. “Did you bring the things I asked you to?”

  “I did,” said Aunt Tildy, “but I can’t see what you’re going to want a dress for.”

  “I can’t wear this, can I?” Ariana gestured at the baggy nurse’s uniform. “Give me the dress.”

  Aunt Tildy handed the parcel over.

  Ariana set the blaster down on the seat next to her.

  Aunt Tildy gasped.

  “What?” said Ariana. “We’ll probably have to use these, so get used to it. You ever shot one before?”

  Aunt Tildy shook her head wordlessly.

  Ariana bounced over next to her. “It’s pretty easy. You turn them on down here.” She demonstrated and the blaster came to life. “Then you’ve got a dial over here.” She pointed. “That adjusts the intensity, so you can simply stun someone or you can turn it all the way up and incinerate them.”

  “And you just aim it at someone and then pull the trigger?”

  “That’s the general idea, Aunt Tildy.”

  “Oh, I’m not going to be able to do that,” said Aunt Tildy. “I’ll mess it up.”

  “You will not,” said Ariana. “You’ll be fine. But you are going to have to do most of the talking, because people will recognize me from the nets.”

  “They might recognize me too and know I’m your aunt.”

  Ariana shook her head. “People in our social circle might, but I don’t think the prison guards will. Did you wear that dress I told you to wear?”

  “Yes, I had my maid dig it out for me, and help me put it on, but the damned thing is impossibly tight.�
�

  “That’s the idea.”

  “What’s the idea? Tell me what we’re planning, would you?”

  “Okay,” said Ariana. “Now listen closely, because we won’t have time to go over it more than twice.”

  * * *

  “Listen, my lord,” Sergeant Praxider was saying, “whatever you might have thought I implied with that comment in the news article, I assure you I did not.” He was standing just outside the door to his office, looking annoyed.

  Tramet was feeling a bit annoyed himself. “I’m not here to try to get you in any trouble, Praxider,” he said, worried that the sergeant was backpedaling because he thought that Tramet was here as a representative of the nobility in general or the Star Chamber specifically. “I’d just like to know, honestly, what you think of the girl’s story.”

  “The girl’s story?” said Praxider. “We didn’t get a chance to question the girl. She was sent back to her family. So I’m afraid she officially doesn’t have a story.”

  Tramet sighed. “Surely, you’ve seen the nets. You know what people are saying. About the Duke of Risciter. Do you have any opinion about that, or are you convinced of Keirth Transman’s guilt?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think,” said Praxider, “because Transman’s already been tried and sentenced.”

  “It matters to me,” said Tramet. “Please, can you spare a few moments to sit down with me?”

  Praxider narrowed his eyes. “Why is this so important to you?”

  “If an innocent man is about to be killed, it’s pretty damned important, don’t you think?”

  Praxider considered. “All right.” He opened the door to his office, then paused. “You swear you’re not out to get me? Are you a reporter in disguise, trying to get dirt? They’ll sack me, you know.”

  “I’m the Duke of Tramet. I’m here because I’m trying to decide whether or not to interfere and beg the prince not to execute Keirth Transman. But first I need to be sure he’s not guilty.”

  Praxider ushered Tramet inside the office and gestured for him to sit down. “You want to save Transman?”

  Tramet sat in a chair facing Praxider’s desk. “I may want to save Transman. If he’s guilty, then I won’t. He’ll deserve to die.”

  Praxider settled in his desk chair and leaned forward. “Well, I’ll tell you this, Tramet. That boy had a joke of a trial. And there very well may be evidence against Risciter, considering the Star Chamber is known to protect its own. They let the nobility get away with atrocities.”

  Tramet had to admit this was occasionally true. But Praxider had mentioned evidence against Risciter. “So you have seen the stories on the net? Seen that Miss Gilit claims that Risciter did the killing and that Transman saved her?”

  “I’ve been doing my best not to pay attention to be honest,” said Praxider. “I’d rather not know that I helped the sector kill an innocent man.”

  “Do you think he’s innocent?”

  Praxider sighed. “Well, look. The knife wounds on the prostitutes are precise. Whoever killed them knew what he was doing. We also found traces of a drug in many of their systems. Something that would put them to sleep and make them pliable. It definitely wasn’t the act of someone who snapped and suddenly killed a bunch of women. It was the work of someone who’s done this kind of thing before, a methodical killer.” He leaned back in his desk chair. “Of course, there are a few things that don’t fit with that theory. Most of the bodies were killed with a single slash to the throat. It’s precise and even, yes. But the bodies of the madam and Risciter both have multiple stab wounds. We believe the wounds on the madam were issued postmortem, as if the killer was so angry with her that he stabbed her over and over after she was dead. The stab wounds on Risciter, however, were what killed him. The men, too, are the only ones whose throats weren’t slashed.”

  Tramet did his best to sort through this information. “So, the alternate method of killing Risciter could point to the fact that a different killer killed him.”

  Praxider nodded. “Perhaps. But the stab wounds mean that if there was another killer, perhaps he killed the madam as well.”

  “You said the madam’s stab wounds were postmortem.”

  “Yes,” said Praxider, “but if we theorize that the stab wounds came from the same killer, then I suppose we’d have to assume that...” He paused, thinking it over. “Risciter killed all the women, and then Transman came in and stabbed the already dead madam before stabbing Risciter to death.”

  Tramet wasn’t sure he liked that theory. He didn’t want to think of Keirth taking a knife to an already dead woman.

  “The truth is,” said Praxider, “the stab wounds may not mean anything at all. They happened to the men. This killer, if it is Transman, may have a fetish for killing women that way. He may only have killed Risciter because he was in the way.”

  When Praxider put it like that, Tramet could see how it made sense. He nodded slowly. “I suppose it makes sense for Transman to have done this.”

  “A slaughter like this never makes sense,” said Praxider. “But Transman does have some evidence against him. One, he seems to have kidnapped Miss Gilit, and we have a distress call from her indicating this. Two, after the incident with the prostitutes, he ran. Three, Risciter’s distress call plainly names him as the killer.”

  “It seems cut and dry.” Tramet knew he shouldn’t have allowed himself to hope. He knew it.

  “But it’s not,” said Praxider. He shook his head and leaned forward conspiratorially. “The duke was wearing gloves when we found him. And he had a small bag on his person. It was full of little bundles of human hair. But both of those pieces of evidence seem to have been destroyed. I can’t find photos of the duke with the gloves on, can’t find the bag. Nothing.”

  Now that seemed particularly damning. “What does that mean?”

  Praxider looked frustrated. “Well, it means nothing, because it doesn’t exist anymore. Let’s go with what we do have. Risciter’s distress call said that Miss Gilit was dead and also that Transman was dead. He claimed that he’d fought off Transman, killed him, but been too late to save anyone else.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It doesn’t,” said Praxider. “We could assume that Risciter saw Miss Gilit injured and was confused and thought she was dead. But that doesn’t seem to fit with the killer’s way of doing things. He drugs his victims or perhaps comes upon them in their sleep and slashes their throats. We could assume that Risciter was confused entirely, and that Miss Gilit was only asleep or something, that perhaps the killer was waiting to kill Miss Gilit. There are a lot of ways that it could have gone, but none of them seem entirely likely to me.” Praxider stroke his chin. “In fact, my lord, the more that I think about this, the more I feel like it hasn’t made one bit of sense from the get-go.”

  “Why is that?” asked Tramet.

  “Let’s assume Transman is the killer,” said Praxider, “and that he has a history of capturing women and killing them. Why did he wait so long to kill Miss Gilit?”

  “It doesn’t fit,” said Tramet, his spirits lifting.

  “No,” said Praxider. “It doesn’t fit at all. Why take her to some brothel and kill all the other women but leave her alive?”

  “Unless, he hates all other women, but is in love with Miss Gilit?”

  “That’s not the way the mind of a killer like this works,” said Praxider. “If you kill that many people that precisely, you’ve moved into a space where you no longer think of people as anything other than playthings. Killers like this don’t love women. They aren’t capable of it.”

  “But we’re speculating, aren’t we?” asked Tramet. “We can’t know without more evidence.”

  Praxider spread his hands. “Well, you’re right there, of course. And I have very little ability to search for more evidence now that the case is officially closed.”

  This was a dead end. Tramet was no better off than when he started, was he? C
ould he go to the prince with little more than suspicions?

  “Although there was something...” Praxider swiveled on his chair to face the screen on his desk and began typing on his console. “Before Transman was apprehended, I had a message from the police department on Hallon. They thought maybe they could connect a similar string of murders...” He hit a few more keys. “Ah, yes. Here it is. Dead prostitutes, nearly all killed on Rilla Alley, spanning nearly fifteen years.”

  Tramet gulped. This was starting to make sense, suddenly. “There was a string?”

  Praxider nodded, still studying his screen. “Yes. Throats slashed in a very similar manner to the way the women were killed on Scranth. A small subset of them with postmortem stab wounds as well. The police there strongly believe it was the work of the same man.”

  “Do you see individual files there?” Tramet asked, his hands shaking. “Individual women’s names?”

  “Um....” Praxider hit a few more keys. “Yes, they’ve sent me individual files as well.” He gave Tramet a curious look. “Why?”

  Tramet’s breath was growing shallow. “Was one of the women killed in this manner a woman named Kara Transman?”

  Praxider’s eyes widened at the last name. He hit a few more keys. “Yes, actually. Killed seven years ago, clearly fits the M.O. of the suspected serial killer on Hallon.”

  Tramet covered his mouth with one hand. All this time, he’d assumed it was a random killing. After all, that was what happened to women who chose a profession like that. He’d never realized that it could be part of something larger, and if Risciter were the one responsible, he wished he’d been able to stab him to death himself.

  “I suppose that woman is related to Transman,” said Praxider.

  “His mother,” choked Tramet, thinking of her face suddenly.

  “If Risciter...” Praxider trailed off. “Well, I think we might have a motive, mightn’t we?” He stood up. “I don’t know of a way to prove that Risciter had anything to do with those crimes, but I might have an idea of how we could rule him out.” He strode over to the door to his office and opened it. He turned to Tramet. “My secretary Nandi is head over heels about Risciter. You know the type. Reads all about him on the nets.” He turned back to the door. “Nandi,” he called. “And bring your tablet.”