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extrapenguinHave the AU: Cop/Detective WIP in its entirety:
“Miles, stop pacing.” Again, despite Ivan's best efforts, his cousin Miles Vorkosigan continued pacing. One day Miles would understand that no-one would hire a short and crazy Eastern European guy as a detective when they could go to the cops without being shot. One of the benefits of living in the United States as opposed to Barria.
Really, it was an amazing story when one thought about it. A lonely American woman visits the other side of the Iron Curtain, falls in love with a local, and in what must have been the greatest Green Card exploit of all time, brought half of the surviving Barrian aristocracy with her back to America. Ezar Vorbarra was still trying to get recognised as the head of government in exile.
“Miles, you're wearing out the carpet.” And maybe, maybe, one day Cousin Miles would decide to reap America's benefits and do something useful, like go to college. Sure, his American mother was rich, and would probably pay for a few more months' rent out of her cartographer's salary, but even Tante Cordelia would say “no” eventually.
The buzzer sounded. Miles leapt to buzz the person in.
“You do realize it's probably the Mormons, right?” Ivan asked. Miles glared at him.
Surprisingly, it wasn't the Mormons, but a short, wholesome, blonde all-American girl who introduced herself as Dr. Laisa Toscane. Miles invited her to sit. Ivan went to prepare tea. And eavesdrop.
“So, Doctor Toscane, what brings you here?” Miles asked. He'll have to work on curbing that enthusiasm, Ivan thought.
After a beat, she answered, with confidence, “A colleague of mine was murdered recently. I am afraid that the police wrongly suspect my friend of committing the act.”
The kettle clicked. Ivan poured water into the teapot. He could almost hear Miles lift his eyebrow. “Really? What happened?”
“My colleague, Larry Guye, was found at the office dead two nights ago. I work at Gottyan Brothers, so workplace deaths are unheard of. Guye was apparently killed by strangling him with his own tie. I think the cops have already decided that my friend did it. Please help him.” Toscane sounded desperate. Ivan couldn't blame her. He certainly wouldn't come to ask Miles for help if he weren't desperate.
“Who's your friend? Are you dating?”
“No, we're not dating. My friend's name is David Galen. He's part of Human Resources, as is – was – Mr. Guye.”
Miles continued grilling her on whether she knew of anyone with a motive against Galen or Guye, but she didn't seem to know. If she did, she certainly wasn't telling. Ivan brought them the tea.
It was an earthy pu-erh blend, brewed with all the expertise that had rubbed off from the Russian man Ivan's mother had started seeing when Ivan was seven. Semyon Ilievich Ilianov, or Simon Illyan, if you were the U.S. Immigration folks. A decent man who didn't seem to mind Ivan's mother's peculiar notions of propriety.
Soon after they were done with the tea, Toscane left. Miles had managed to finagle a few more details out of her, most of them biographical.
Ivan washed the tea-set while Miles doodled onto the whiteboard he'd found from somewhere and installed where clients (and Mormons) wouldn't immediately see it.
Miles was muttering to himself, as was typical. Ivan could barely make out the handwriting.
“Ivan, we have a case!” Miles exclaimed. He was practically bouncing up and down.
Ivan rolled his eyes. “And what do you plan to do with it?”
Miles got that determined look in his eye that signalled that he was going to do something very harmful to innocent bystanders.
“Why, we're going to interview Galen, of course.”
Galen was in his mid-twenties and probably either Indian or otherwise South Asian. Gottyan Brothers' security had, amazingly enough, let them in, most likely due to them feeling bad about Guye's death and Dr. Toscane vouching for them. Toscane, apparently, was a high-level consultant. Ivan wondered how a consultant and a HR guy could become friends. Perhaps she'd had to be in professional contact with him? Sexual harassment, maybe? Toscane was nice enough that a misguided or malicious soul might easily desire to get in her pants and make that desire known in public.
Miles waltzed into HR like he owned the place. He paused in front of a door, found the name Galen on it, then strode in. Ivan followed.
Galen was an Indian man in his late twenties. He wore his black hair short, and his russet skin had an unhealthy pallor. He'd utterly frozen up when they'd walked in the door.
“David Galen, Human Resources, Gottyan Brothers. How may I be of assistance?” he asked after regaining his composure.
Miles sat in the office's only free chair. Ivan shighed mentally and leaned on the wall.
“We are here to investigate the murder of Larry Guye. We-”
“Your friend, Doctor Toscane, hired us due to concern over bias in the official investigation”, Ivan interjected before Miles could accidentally establish an adversarial relationship.
Galen relaxed. “I didn't do it. I didn't discover him. I barely spoke to him.”
“Why are you a suspect, then?” Miles frowned.
Galen raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the rest of the office sits on the delightful end of the scale that goes from alabaster to bisque? Or perhaps with the fact that the rest of the office is all nth-generation American, as opposed to a fresh immigrant?”
“We'll find the right man and clear your reputation, don't worry. Now, if you'd tell more about the victim?”
Guye had, apparently, been something of an asshole. He'd been assigned to cooperate with Galen on what to do with fresh widower H. Yarrow Lucas, and essentially done nearly all of it himself, not letting Galen near it. (Galen had considered going to HR before remembering that he worked there, and yes, everyone else was an asshole, too.) Then, before he'd concluded on whether to give Lucas a week off due to grief or just an afternoon for the funeral (out of his vacation days), Guye had ended up hanged in his office. Asking the rest of the department generated only the praise that was expected when bringing up the dead. (Ivan was reminded of the time he'd asked about Ezar's son Serg, who'd died in a traffic accident back in Barria. He'd been damned with faint praise.)
Miles was galloping off to see Lucas. Ivan did his best to keep up with his short cousin.
Harry Yarrow Lucas was a denizen of Dr. Toscane's division, though lower in rank, if Ivan had interpreted the title correctly. He looked to be in his mid-forties, with milky skin and receding sorrel hair that was already showing strands of grey.
“Good morning, Mister Lucas”, Miles started in an adversarial tone.
“We were hired by one of your colleagues to look into the death of Larry Guye due to concerns with the police investigation”, Ivan interjected smoothly. He hoped he hadn't outed Toscane.
Lucas raised his eyebrows. “What's wrong with the investigation?”
Thankfully, Miles said “Unfortunately we can't tell you”, then launched into an interrogation. Fortunately, Lucas had retained the typical American white man's inability to realise he was under suspicion.
Very fortunately indeed, since he'd known the victim for “forever”.
And here's a previous version:
Miles tried not to jump out of the police car before Duv had parked it. Such conduct was unbecoming for an officer, apparently. Of course, then Miles realized that Duv had parked next to a snowbank, and the passenger side door wouldn't open, so Miles had to clamber over the gearstick, which in his opinion made everything moot.
Ten minutes of being lost in the University's sprawl later, they finally came to the department of Optoelectronics. (Miles had no clue what they did, except that it probably concerned light in some way.) An elderly man was nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot in front of the door.
“Officers! I'm glad you came. I'm the Department's head, Professor Albert Guina. One of our researchers, Doctor Manfred Jones, has died.”
“We are aware of the fact”, Duv stated. “I am Sergeant Duv Galeni and this is my partner, Constable Miles Vorkosigan.”
Miles nodded when he was introduced. They shook the Professor's hand when he offered it.
The Professor had some internal revelation that showed on his face, then sheparded Duv and Miles into the corridor that the Department's offices branched off of.
The corridor was grey and drab apart from the blood-red office doors. The not-quite-oxidized pool of blood that Jones was lying in fit the décor reasonably well. Jones himself was lying on his stomach, arms splayed, with his head pointing the other direction. There was a gaggle of academians silently observing the body, coffee mugs in hand.
Duv introduced himself and Miles, then asked who'd discovered the body. The youngest member of the group – a woman of maybe 25 – stepped forwards. After it was established that no-one had moved the body, Duv arranged for an empty office, then told Miles to interview her while Duv looked at the body.
Slightly miffed at the division of labor, Miles led the woman to the office, started his tape recorder, then gave the obligatory spiel on “you are not under arrest, but obstruction of the police is a crime”.
“Name, age, occupation and marital status, please.”
“I'm Doctor Lina Benin-Kotka, 26 years old, researcher, single.” From afar, her expression could have been shock – a completely natural reaction to having one's colleague die – but this close, it was clearly indifference. There was some polite curiosity to it, as if a spongiform creature had infested a storage closet and Miles was there to investigate that. Actually, to Miles, her expression was just off. He made a mental note.
“How and when did you discover the victim?”
Benin-Kotka paused for a moment, then said, “It was around seven thirty, the time I usually arrive here, and he was lying face-down on the floor. I asked him what he was doing, and when he didn't answer, I poked him. He was cold, so I called emergency services.”
All in all a relatively reasonable reaction. No mentions of experiencing emotion. Miles pressed the issue.
Benin-Kotka looked confused, as if feeling emotions were on par with being a mass of quivering tentacles. Her expression morphed from confused to suspicious. Her body language was still slightly on the closed side of neutral. “I was confused, since I didn't know why Jones would lie down on the floor. When he didn't answer, I became a bit … annoyed? Then he was cold to the touch, which was unusual, so I called emergency services.”
“He was lying in a pool of his own blood. Didn't you feel any concern?”
“Oh, neurotypical people do weird shit all the time for opaque reasons they find perfectly obvious. I assumed Jones was doing something like that.” Benin-Kotka gave a smile that was more than slightly off.
“Wait, ‘neurotypical’?” Miles was confused.
Benin-Kotka looked startled. “Oh! Daddy told me that I should tell any police officers questioning me that I have Asperger's.” Her face froze, as if she had decided that she couldn't be bothered to come up with a suitable expression.
Miles sighed inwardly. He wouldn't get much out of a loonie. Still, he must try. “Can you think of any reason why someone might want to kill Jones?”
“No.”
“What was Jones working on?”
Benin-Kotka perked up a bit. “The world's first entirely light-based computer. Three months ago, I published a paper detailing how to make transistors by shining light through nematic liquid crystals and modulating the light's intensity. Jones was working on making a working computer from my solitons. He was working in a group with Professor Guina and Doctor Marcela Bretagne.”
“Were you jealous that he got to develop your idea while you were shafted?” A plausible motive for a seemingly work-obsessed Aspie lady.
Benin-Kotka looked at Miles as if he had suddenly turned into a swordfish. “Why would I be jealous? I am not interested in practical matters.”
Miles concluded the interview. Next, Bretagne.
Doctor Marcela Bretagne was a middle-aged blonde. “Oh, Manfred. Yes. He was so enamored with his libido. Bedded anything that he could. A mighty good lay, too.” She gave a wistful sigh and looked out the window at the floating snow in the afternoon dark.
Duv was conducting this session. “He was in the bed of every single lady?”
Bretagne snorted. “All the single ladies – save Benin-Kotka, the girl has no concept of sex, bless her – and a vast quantity of married ones. I don't know about my colleagues' wives, but he claimed to have bedded the Dean's wife, daughter and maiden aunt.”
A whole slew of potential suspects. Ugh, more work.
“Did Jones ever get rebuffed?”
“Well, he wanted into Benin-Kotka's pants. She probably didn't even realize he was flirting with her. A pity; now she'll never know what she missed. He was quite insistent in his pursuit.” She sighed. “Who wouldn't? The girl has the face of a goddess – not Aphrodite, mind you – and the coloration of Snow White, were she to color her lips. Oh well. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. She has beauty and intellect, but no social skills whatsoever.”
Add to suspect list: Benin-Kotka's parents and older relatives. “Insistent pursuit” sounded a lot like “stalking”, and the shotgun method of daughter protecting hadn't gone anywhere.
The rest of the interviews weren't nearly as interesting. Forensics took away the body and a whole slew of things that had suffered the misfortune of not being bolted down while looking intriguing. On the way out of the building, Duv managed to invite them to this evening's Multidiscliplinary Scientist Mingle (Natural Sciences and Mathemathics Only, Humanities Sod Off). His idea was probably “in vino veritas”. Or he wanted to get drunk. Or pointedly give a symbolic middle finger to the Natural Sciences people. (Before joining the police force, Duv had acquired a doctorate in history. The fact that Duv had joined the force at all said a lot about Duv, considering that, in addition to the doctorate, his aunt had been killed in a tragic incident of police brutality and his father had been a cop-killing delusional bomber.)
Back at Chez Cops, Miles did a background check on all members of the department. Most had the typical driver's licence and nothing else in the database; Benin-Kotka had a mention of her father being a Sergeant in District C next door. An extended search revealed that her mother was a Professor ar the University's Chemistry department (speciality high-nitrogen compounds) and that no other suspect had parents in the region. A few had children and spouses.