said. "I've got a sympathy form letter I can fire off. Wife?"
"Don't know," she said. "Haven't looked."
Back at the station house, Miller sat alone at his desk. Muss already had her own desk, two cubicles over and customized the way she liked it. Havelock's desk was empty and cleaned twice over, as if the custodial services had wanted the smell of Earth off their good Belter chair. Miller pulled up the dead man's file, found the next of kin. Jun-Yee Dos Santos, working on Ganymede. Married six years. No kids. Well, there was something to be glad of, at least. If you were going to die, at least you shouldn't leave a mark.
He navigated to the form letter, dropped in the new widow's name and contact address. Dear Mrs. Dos Santos, I am very sorry to have to tell you blah blah blah. Your [he spun through the menu] husband was a valued and respected member of the Ceres community, and I assure you that everything possible will be done to see that her [Miller toggled that] his killer or killers will be brought to answer for this. Yours...
It was inhuman. It was impersonal and cold and as empty as vacuum. The hunk of flesh on that corridor wall had been a real man with passions and fears, just like anyone else. Miller wanted to wonder what it said about him that he could ignore that fact so easily, but the truth was he knew. He sent the message and tried not to dwell on the pain it was about to cause.
The board was thick. The incident count was twice what it should have been. This is what it looks like, he thought. No riots. No hole-by-hole military action or marines in the corridors. Just a lot of unsolved homicides.
Then he corrected himself: This is what it looks like so far.
It didn't make his next task any easier.
Shaddid was in her office.
"What can I do for you?" she asked.
"I need to make some requisitions for interrogation transcripts," he said. "But it's a little irregular. I was thinking it might be better if it came through you."
Shaddid sat back in her chair.
"I'll look at it," she said. "What are we trying to get?"
Miller nodded, as if by signaling yes himself, he could get her to say the same.
"Jim Holden. The Earther from the Canterbury. Mars should be picking his people up around now, and I need to petition for the debriefing transcripts."
"You have a case that goes back to the Canterbury?"
"Yeah," he said. "Seems like I do."
"Tell me," she said. "Tell me now."
"It's the side job. Julie Mao. I've been looking into it... "
"I saw your report."
"So you know she's associated with the OPA. From what I've found, it looks like she was on a freighter that was doing courier runs for them."
"You have proof of that?"
"I have an OPA guy that said as much."
"On the record?"
"No," Miller said. "It was informal."
"And it tied into the Martian navy killing the Canterbury how?"
"She was on the Scopuli," Miller said. "It was used as bait to stop the Canterbury. The thing is, you look at the broadcasts Holden makes, he talks about finding it with a Mars Navy beacon and no crew."
"And you think there's something in there that'll help you?"
"Won't know until I see it," Miller said. "But if Julie wasn't on that freighter, then someone had to take her off."
Shaddid's smile didn't reach her eyes.
"And you would like to ask the Martian navy to please hand over whatever they got from Holden."
"If he saw something on that boat, something that'll give us an idea what happened to Julie and the other - "
"You aren't thinking this through," Shaddid said. "The Mars Navy killed the Canterbury. They did it to provoke a reaction from the Belt so they'd have an excuse to roll in and take us over. The only reason they're 'debriefing' the survivors is so that no one could get to the poor bastards first. Holden and his crew are either dead or getting their minds cored out by Martian interrogation specialists right now."
"We can't be sure... "
"And even if I could get a full record of what they said as each toenail got ripped off, it would do you exactly no good, Miller. The Martian navy isn't going to ask about the Scopuli. They know good and well what happened to the crew. They planted the Scopuli."
"Is that Star Helix's official stand?" Miller asked. The words were barely out