The elevator ride down to the standard gravity surface and the aircab ride to his stay took seven hours. And there were no further customs or Maréchaussée processing. The ground level station of the spaceport only served temporary lodging and transportation. Plenty of free time for him to think about why he was here. There was nothing else to do while taking in the views.

  Work had entered a dry spell back in the crowded stations in Zeta Reticuli, and he wandered the streets sightseeing to pass the time. He wasn’t worried, the farthest most parts of the explored galaxy were still in the boom-bust cycles of early development. You stash money away during the booms to ride out the busts. And before long his business would boom again.

  He had surfed through some street ad pages to keep abreast of goings on to be prepared for the next boom. His father had showed him that he must always be prepared for the next boom. He probably never would have taken a second glance at the ad, if he had been there to see it at all, if not for that habit. It looked like a challenge, and boredom (and his smaller income) made him particularly inclined to it. And from what he had already heard about Le Roi Soliel, there was always money to be made there.

  Most of his investigative work had stopped just short of crime. Dig into the unscrupulous but legal activities that so many indulged in. He had seen it all with the usual dirty street life during the twenty years of his investigative career. Countless times he hired himself out to angry spouses who were looking for proof of infidelity and hidden stashes of funds to use during divorce proceedings. And when he wasn’t doing that he was usually working for unscrupulous employees who climbed ahead of their peers by uncovering their scandalous ways, and then leaking them. People in the Outers were often a rough and selfish bunch.

  He had only tackled a few rough crime cases because the police usually wrapped that area off. Even when working the cases on the side of them they remained a competitor with greater resources and usually solved them before he did. But he did once track and apprehend a suspected chomo who absconded with his goddaughter. He was proud of that win, but it wasn’t his finest.

  His most memorable case had involved apprehending a serial killer. All the others he tailed were common wretches. The “Botanical Butcher” had talent. The killer became famous for it. And he too had become somewhat famous from that case.

  He was brought on to work independently from the police force when the missing persons multiplied. It was just a cold case at first – no surveillance evidence, no suspects, no bodies to forensically examine, and nothing to point to murder. And no idea how (whether murder or disappearance) the cameras and monitoring systems were being evaded. Corpses had nowhere to go on space stations and so should have been caught somewhere.

  The first lead came after he had been working the case for more than three months. A bone fragment had been identified as human remains by a waste disposal crew. It was some damned good luck that they were certain about it enough to report it. It was 3d scanned and matched to medical records to a 27-year-old female who had recently disappeared – likely dead. Laboratory analysis proved that it had been treated with heat and chemical cleaning, and it was devoid of any DNA fragments.

  The police detectives and him covertly watched the waste disposal and recycling centers after that. They found another bone fragment from the same person a week later and then the case went cold again for over six months. And then they recovered a new fragment, treated like the others, scanned and matched to a 16-year-old male. They acted on that first sign of heat.

  He worked in parallel with two police detectives. They did their own inspections of all the areas where both victims were last seen by cameras and from witness testimony. The police afterwards backed off to wait for new developments since they found no human remains and tracing the last known whereabouts turned up nothing. He kept going. He secretly placed his own cameras and microphones in hidden locations to watch the movements of just one man.

  One man interviewed was cold and narcissistic beneath a generous fa?ade. He hid his inner self so well Burt wasn’t sure whether the secret monitoring would convict him or clear him. That action could have got him into trouble and he had thoughts about backing off. He talked the matter over with his father, the man who had raised him and who was also a PI, and he told him to “be sure about it.”

  He did, and it paid off. The man killed again weeks later, and Burt had acquired enough information to know he did it and break into his garden-workshop where he disposed of the bodies. The savage slime wasn’t much for resisting when he had a gun pointed at his face. The gruesome nature of the killer’s work earned the nickname of “The Botanical Butcher.”

  The police gave him greater respect after that. Apparently, Jensen and Ayud also held him in high enough regard to hire him to perform his present investigation on behalf the late Harshesh Nandgopal. He was happy to have the greater social rep. And he was eager to get more from this job. But deep inside, it almost felt unearned. He could have kept a tighter watch on the Botanical Butcher and prevented his last kill. The other innocent deaths were unpreventable. That last one was partly on him.

  He could gauge the process made on the elevator ride. Both his view of the scenic cylinder habitat and the feel of the station’s gravity changed slowly throughout the ride. He pulled himself out of his thoughts to read some news articles about Comte Izem Mansouri as well as reported crime on the station. And that passed enough time until he reached the ground transport station.

  He booked an aircab at the ground station and then used the men’s room as well as grabbed a croque monsieur, a little extra meat, and a coffee while waiting. And he sent a shot text to Elena Vargas, the woman he was going to share a countryside chalet with. She was a professional escort, and she had personally met many of the elite moghuls and business executives during their many galas and parties. And so she might actually prove useful for information.

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  His shuttle was a fully automated hexcopter with an open lattice cage build which let the air flow through the cockpit. He hopped right in and quickly ate his lunch while it took him back high into the clouds for a four-hour flight. He didn’t see any other craft take off and follow him.

  He wasn’t being tailed…yet. But Comte Mansouri would certainly have his men soon do so.

  The Comte’s associates were a mystery that he must unravel. Particularly the duo of sleazeball lawyers that he kept. The late Duc Nandgopal didn’t trust them and was disgusted by them. And Mansouri knew that they were an obstacle to inheriting his portion of the late Duc’s empire. He should have fired them. Why were they so important?

  He would start with them, knowing that they were middlemen for something untoward. He would put the Comte’s enforcers under observation too. It wouldn’t be too hard to do since they were often with the lawyers. Even though they were likely going to be difficult to tail by themselves, keeping tabs on the legal team would be easy work.

  He would learn of their secret associates. Then branch from there to others. Unravel the mystery that was so important to Comte Mansouri that he just couldn’t let it go. Not even when it stood in the way of a fortune.

  He thought back to the nights where he reviewed what little case information he had been able to gain with his father. His dad had guessed that the Comte possessed a driving personal ambition. An insatiable desire similar to the late Duc Nandgopal’s desire to industrialize some thirty star systems. The kind of thing that compels one to take high risks. He suggested interviewing old friends and business partners of the Comte to gain insight into what that might be.

  It was a good idea, and he hoped to pick up a few crumbs that way. Especially since Elena had probably met many of the Comte’s old friends and associates. Still, those people would actually have to be currently present and willing on Le Roi Soleil for it to work.

  He wished his dad was with him on this case. His secret partner – the Mentat – would bolster his hand on the cyberspace angle. But he wished he had someone to help navigate the physical muck to pick the right trails. He had so little to go on. Even less than the bones and missing persons that he had with the Botanical Butcher.

  He spent quite a while thinking about old times, which were nothing like what he saw now, and then he pushed the past out of his mind and focused out on the high air vista. It was now getting late in Le Roi Soleil’s day cycle as the aircab soared past the first Eiffel Tower group. The great towers were even more impressive up close. The nearest one rose far above the clouds and had taken on a reddish hue from the changing color of the central lightbar. The whole station changed with it; the blues and greens from midday light now blending into golds, purples, and blood-orange.

  “It’s like nothing else in existence,” Mr. Jensen had said.

  He was right. Burt surmised that the only thing he hadn’t decided on was whether it was more beautiful at midday or late in the evening. He was leaning toward the latter, but thought it may be due to the novelty of it. The O’Neill cylinder stations he was used to were basically one big city – with scattered forested parks and ponds to break up the monotony. Those didn’t catch the light like the forest and countryside spaces here did.

  He turned to the HAL 9000 style red eye flying the aircab. “How much longer?”

  “Precisely eighty-one minutes, monsieur. You will arrive before nightfall.”

  There was only one natural follow on question. “And what’s that like on Le Roi Soleil?” There was no real night on most cylindrical habitats. Even with the lightbar at a minimum, the lights from the city towers come from all directions.

  “It’s wonderful, monsieur, the city lights from far away mimic starlight clusters. And the Eiffel Towers provide a wholly unique experience when lit at night. I recommend you step out tonight to see it. The chalet you have booked provides outstanding vistas from its hilltop perch.”

  He liked that idea. He needed to spend a few days building a repertoire with Elena. He pulled out his phone to give her an update. Her picture came up with her number. She was a classy brunette with long thick locks and a smile which exuded a sense of joy you wanted to go on forever. The smile was one of the reasons why he chose her. Her pictures suggested she could make it at will, and that alone was enough for them to pass as a happy couple when needed.

  She had left a text message.

  “Got your message. I have a marinara waiting and will just need a few minutes to warm the meatballs and cook the spaghetti. The bar and wine cellar are stocked and so take your pick. Caesar will be good if you let him smell you as you enter the door. And I’ve got your rooms set up, so don’t worry about anything.”

  Caesar was her golden retriever, and he would undoubtably be the first to greet him. He was glad for the tip; getting the dog to be friendly was top priority. He texted back saying that it would be another hour and a quarter and he was looking forward to meeting her. He then tilted his seat to the side so he could watch the trees, towers, and church steeples go by. All the buildings soon lit up with golden light in preparation for the coming night and he looked back at the Eiffel Tower group – three graceful spires rising up to the midpoint of a darkening sky. Distant drones and aircabs turned on their lights to blink in the dark.

  There was none of the rough hustle of the Outers here in this lonely island of refinement. He started to think maybe the Maréchaussée wasn’t so much threatening him as pressing him to understand that work here required elegance. He couldn’t blend in without it.

  And he would need to blend in. Success required hiding as much as it did stalking. Comte Izem Mansouri was a wealthy and well-connected man, and he would have him under his own observation soon. And he already knew from the contract how the investigation would proceed.

  Burt carefully looked all around the sky, taking note of the flashing running lights of all the nearby air vehicles. Nothing in sight seemed to be tailing him – yet. Or maybe they were even farther out and keeping a track on him with radar. Or maybe they had figured out where he had planned to stay and had set up observation there.

  It didn’t matter yet. The Comte wouldn’t crash in on him and Elena. Nobody in business wanted bad press. The Comte, being on the eve of an appreciable inheritance, especially had too much to lose from it. And so he would have privacy enough.

  He needed to fully capitalize on that operational freedom. And always keep that fact in the Comte’s mind too, and let him worry. He had to pressure the Comte. That would be the origin of his fatal mistake.