Today's Reading
CHAPTER TWO
From launch, the Fairweather's Community Charter had been very clear that police were considered largely unnecessary. We had a small security force Ferry could deploy as needed—glorified bouncers, really—and a wealth of social workers in various fields; these two groups managed most everyday crises that arose.
For more complex situations—your elaborate hoaxes, your sudden deaths, your inexplicable accidents and incidents in which witness statements vastly differed—there were the ship's detectives. We had no power to arrest or enforce: our duty was strictly to sort out the truth from the lies and report them to the Crime Committee, which would arrange for any necessary punishments or reparations. I had volunteered as a lark in the first six months of the journey, and had surprised myself, at the age of fifty-seven, by finding my calling.
That was several lifetimes ago, and it had yet to turn tedious. Frustrating and disillusioning, sometimes, but never dull.
A detective's primary privilege was access, so when I reached the dead woman's apartment on Aft Port Deck Sixteen I reached out and offered my fingerprint to the lock.
The doors slid open, and I stepped across the threshold. Down here on Aft Port Sixteen the flats were sprawling, single-level affairs: a kitchen at the back, a bedroom and bathroom off the center hallway, and one large front room for entertaining company and/or any side business the occupant was involved in.
Miss Dodds's front room looked as though a wardrobe had exploded: garments in various states of construction and fabric samples were everywhere. Several sizes and genders of dress mannequins lurked headlessly in one corner. Colored pencil sketches on thin paper fluttered from the widest wall: skirts and trousers and evening wear, front and back pictured side by side. The retromat had recently produced a vivid silk print of clouds and cranes, folded in half and ready to be cut on the ruler-edged table shoved up close beneath the porthole on the farthest wall.
There were ever only the dark, distant stars outside instead of the warming sunlight or soothing rain of Old Earth, but somehow every human on board always put their worktables beneath their windows all the same. Myself included. As if we were careful to leave space in our lives for the weather we never experienced on board ship.
I moved closer to the wall of sketches. The same name was inked carefully in tiny capitals in the corner of every page: EMPYREAN DESIGNS.
The retromats, which fabricated objects from the operator's memories, were notoriously bad at producing clothing—at least, if you valued your dignity and were certain you wouldn't forget an important stitch or seam or zipper. But most people could make fabrics easily, and more than a few passengers on the Fairweather made extra money by creating and selling patterns to turn those fabrics into garments. Judging by the quantity and quality of designs I was seeing, Miss Dodds was more than a mere hobbyist.
I was halfway across the front room and headed for the rest of the apartment when the realization hit me: Dorothy Gentleman's body had a detective's privileges—but Gloria Vowell's didn't.
Which meant: the lock had recognized me. Gloria and the dead woman were connected.
It made sense, and I berated myself for not having thought of it earlier. Ferry had said everyone battened down during the storms—but there was Gloria, in the Library elevator, where she had no obvious business being.
I stopped where I was and pulled out Gloria's pocket watch again.
Sure enough, the dead woman's name was there in the address book: Janet Dodds, late thirties, a longtime member of Ferry's custodial staff. Everyone on the ship received a standard income; necessary jobs came with wages on top of that. Custodians were among the most highly paid of all, along with Medical staff, teachers, and Librarians.
I scrolled through the notes. Gloria's written conversations with Janet went back at length, but they didn't appear to be social. They were full of references to Empyrean Designs. I brought up the infobank portal and poked a little further. It seemed Empyrean was a company Gloria and Janet had formed—and it stretched back nearly two hundred years.
Suddenly it seemed vital to find out precisely how Janet had died. Natural, accident, or something more sinister? The timing was enormously dodgy.
I found I rather misliked the idea of walking around wearing the body of a potential murderer.
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