Page 180 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Jury-rigged

jointly. He was a bit uptight with me, starting to feel the heat. Why go
up there at that time? He would not say except to repeat his need to
get away from police harassment for a few hours. It’s at the outer
limits of our jurisdiction, just inside the city limits, so we couldn’t
stop him. Having driven alone to the place Saturday morning, his
plan, he said, was to return late in the afternoon—but his car would
not start. The cabin, it turns out, is not far from a large marijuana
plantation discovered last year by satellite infrared sensing. The DEA
dumped a few tons of defoliant on it, but no agency was able to
finger the grower. We wanted the feds to wait a few more weeks,
knowing the Simulians frequented the area, but they didn’t want to
take the chance of another crop being harvested undetected on some
moonlit night.”
“I know,” said Labelle. “At least nothing will grow in that remote
valley for another couple of generations. What proof is there that he
did not return until Sunday?”
“The auto club came out Saturday and couldn’t start his car. When
they returned Sunday with a mechanic and a new module for the
electronic fuel injector, the car hadn’t moved.”
“Their records show an odometer reading?”
“Correct. We checked the unit: factory-sealed. Someone could
have gone up there and gotten him later Saturday evening, but it
would have to have been pre-arranged: his cell phone records show
only the call for assistance. And that would have made his safety
dependent on an accomplice, not a Simulian preference when murder
is on the schedule.”
“So it has seemed. Rommel also found himself unable to go home
that night, based on your interview and this police report.”
I shrugged, in a minimal attempt to instill some doubt in her mind.
“He was walking down Forshpes Avenue about 10:30 Saturday night,
minding his own business—those were his words, not mine—when a
car drove by slowly and a rifle barrel poked out of a slightly-open
tinted rear window. He saw it in time and ducked just as shots were
fired. When the car made a screeching U-turn and came back for
another try, he ran into the first open doorway he saw. It was an all-
night café, the Retro Metro. The patrons had heard the initial gunfire
and were taking cover—just in time, as a dozen bullets shattered the
plate glass windows in the second volley. Rommel tumbled under a

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