Ex-Kop by Warren Hammond Page B

celebration dinner, or maybe they were getting together so Horst could pay them their fees.
    Maggie's face knotted into a tight mask of concentration as she worked through the same possibilities. “That would explain why Ian's so determined to work the barge case.”
    “That it would,” I said, stone sober. I was amazed at how quickly Maggie recovered from the bombshell. Here she just found out that her partner was likely involved in thirteen more murders than she'd thought, and already her mind was back in high gear. My worldview must have rubbed off on her more than I thought. She was finding it all too easy to believe the worst in people. That, or her opinion of Ian was so low that even thirteen murders weren't far beyond the reach of what she thought he was capable of.
    “And you think Yuri is our filmmaking accomplice?” she asked.
    I was already nodding before she finished the question.
    “He must have vids of all the murders,” she said.
    I suddenly remembered to ask, “Hey, did you ever watch that vid, the one the rook found on the pier?”
    “It was blank.”
    “Erased?”
    “No. It was blank, never been used. Ian thought some tourist probably went down to take some shots of the old barges and then lost it in the weeds trying to change discs.”
    It sounded plausible, but I didn't believe it, and I could see in Maggie's eyes that she didn't believe it either. A tourist visiting the pier? The barges were hardly a top tourist attraction. And at this time of year? Way too rainy. I was shaking my head.
    “He's full of shit,” Maggie said hotly.
    “Was the vid molded over?”
    “No. Just wet.” Which meant the vid hadn't been exposed to the rain for long, a couple days at most.
    “So unless an offworld tourist went down there recently to film those rusted-out hulks in the rain, it was the cameraman who dropped the vid.”
    “And if that's the case, Ian was dead on about him beingsloppy. The cameraman must've realized he'd muffed it so he came back and tried to sneak onto the pier to retrieve it.” Maggie's cheeks were flushed, and the smile on her face made her look like an animal baring its teeth. She had a lead, her first in a case she'd worked for months, and it led straight to her partner.
    I took a hit off my flask and held it out for Maggie. I wondered how long I'd had the flask out.
    She put up a no-thanks palm. “But why bother coming back if the vid was blank?”
    My mind tangled up into a tight little knot. I thought about it for a minute and said, “I don't know.”
    “Maybe he was afraid we'd find prints.”
    “Did you?”
    “No. It was clean. I don't get it. He had to know it was impossible to sneak around that pier without getting caught. There was a dead cop on that barge. A whole squad was crawling around down there. Why take the risk?”
    “Like you said. Maybe he was afraid he'd left his prints on it. Maybe he didn't know it was clean.”
    Maggie gnawed on her lower lip, totally unsatisfied by the explanation. “It still doesn't make sense. Say we
did
find his prints on the vid. He could've beaten any wrap we tried to pin on him. There's probably a thousand ways he could explain it away. Especially if he really works for the Libre. He could say he lost it some other time. Who knows how many stories he's covered down on that pier? It's not like we found the vid in the cabin, or even on the barge.”
    Maggie's words barely echoed in my head. I felt like there was a doubled-up rubber band squeezing down on my brain. Why did Ian make such a show of knocking the guy around? Why not just have the unis escort him off the pier? But instead, he made a big production out of it, all under the guise that he was trying tokeep the case from going public. Why? The answer was close, so close. … But I couldn't pin it down. I felt like I was trying to grab hold of smoke.
    Maggie kept the theories coming. “What if he didn't know it was blank? Maybe the camera broke down on him without him