Artemis

I rapped the door with my knuckles. “Lene! It’s Jazz! I know this isn’t a great time, but we need to talk.”

I waited a bit longer. I was about to give up when the door clicked open. That was as much invitation as I was going to get.

I stepped over the consolation bouquets and through the door.

The once brightly lit foyer stood dark. Only the dim light from the sitting room filtered in to give any illumination at all.

Someone

had drawn a dozen or more circles on one wall—where the blood spatter used to be. The actual blood was gone, presumably cleaned by a professional service after Rudy and Doc Roussel were done with the scene.

I followed the light into the sitting room. It too had changed for the worse. All the furniture was shoved against walls. The large Persian rug that once adorned the floor was nowhere to be seen. Some things just can’t be cleaned.

Lene sat on a couch in the corner, mostly in the dark. As a wealthy teen girl she usually put hours into her appearance. Today she wore sweats and a T-shirt. She had no makeup on and dried tears streaked her face. Her hair was in a loose ponytail, the universal sign of not giving a fuck. Her crutches lay askew on the floor.

She held a wristwatch in her hands and stared at it with a blank expression.

“Hey…” I said in that lame tone people use when talking to the bereaved. “How you holding up?”

“It’s a Patek Philippe,” she said quietly. “Best watch manufacturers on Earth. Self-winding, chronograph, time zone, you name it. Nothing but the best for Dad.”

I sat on the couch next to her.

“He had it modified by top watchmakers in Geneva,” she continued. “They had to make a replacement self-winding weight out of tungsten so it would have enough force to work in lunar gravity.”

She leaned over to me and showed me the watch’s face. “And he had them change the moon-phase indicator to an Earth-phase indicator. It was tricky too, because Earth’s phases go in the reverse order. They even modified the time zone dial to say ‘Artemis’ instead of ‘Nairobi.’?”

She clasped the band around her thin wrist. “It’s way too big for me. I’ll never be able to wear it.”

She angled her arm downward. The watch slid off and fell to the couch. She sniffled.

I picked it up. I didn’t know anything about watches, but it sure looked nice. Diamonds denoted each hour on the face except the 12. That had an emerald.

“Rudy has the guy who did it,” I said.

“I heard.”

“He’ll rot in a Norwegian jail for life. Or be executed in Russia.”

“Won’t bring Dad or Irina back,” she said.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She nodded.

I sighed, just to fill the awkward silence. “Look, Lene, I don’t know how much Trond told you about his business dealings…”

“He was a crook,” she said. “I know. I don’t care. He was my dad.”

“The people who killed him own Sanchez Aluminum.”

“O Palácio,” she said. “Rudy told me. I never even heard of them before yesterday.”

She put her face in her hands. I expected a crying jag—she was entitled to one. But it didn’t come. Instead, she turned to me and wiped her eyes. “Did you trash Sanchez’s harvesters? Did Dad put you up to it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” she asked.