Isaac Asimov - Inferno

“But he did not let Bissal in. He let us in,” Caliban said.

“And why would he let Bissal see his face?” Cinta demanded.

“He wouldn’t let Bissal see him,” Kresh said, heading over to his desk. “He didn’t.” He unsealed the evidence box and pulled out a pocket communicator, and a thin piece of black metal in the shape of a flattened triangle. “I found these in your room, Verick, the one you stayed in the night of the murder. You’re good at hiding things. The room had been searched twice before I went over it. But I knew what I was looking for—and that makes a great deal of difference. And before you can protest that these were planted, a Crime Scene Observer robot witnessed the search and recorded it.”

“I recognize the communicator, but what’s the other thing?” Fredda asked.

“It’s one of these,” Kresh said. He went to the inner door of the office and used the scanner panel to open it. Once it was open, he took the piece of metal and set it in the frame of the door. It stayed there of its own accord. Kresh stepped back, and the door closed—but not all the way. There was a barely discernible crack between the frame and the sliding door. Kresh got his fingers into the crack and pulled. It took a bit of effort, but he managed to get the door open. Kresh took the door wedge out of the frame, crossed the room, and put it back in the evidence box.

“Grieg was supposed to be killed right here,” he said. “In this office. Verick would set the door wedge on his way out—with a little practice, they’re easy to set surreptitiously. Tierlaw would order the office door sentry robot back into position, and then signal Bissal, waiting in the basement, to turn on the range restrictor signal that would deactivate the SPR robots. Then Tierlaw could simply walk out of the house, unobserved, while Bissal came up out of the basement, came into the office, and shot Grieg. Bissal would remove the door wedge, and go on with the rest of the plot—destroying the robots to hide the restrictors, and then escaping to the warehouse, where he would hide until things cooled off—except the food left for him there was poisoned. He must have died within a few hours of Grieg.”

“That’s the craziest plan I’ve ever heard,” Cinta protested. “It could never work.”

“And it didn’t,” Devray said. “It was crazy, Cinta, but think what we would have found if it had worked. Grieg dead behind a locked door, fifty wrecked security robots, and an assassin who simply vanishes without a trace. A few days later, a warehouse blows up and burns down, and no one ever thinks to connect the two. Things are bad enough as they are. People are scared. Just imagine the panic, the chaos, if the murder had been as smooth, as perfect as it was supposed to be.”

“But things went wrong,” Kresh said. “Things went wrong. The two robots are waiting outside the door, so you can’t set the door wedge, could you, Verick? And you couldn’t use your communicator in front of the robots, either. So you slip into a vacant room and contact Bissal from there, telling him what had gone wrong. You tell him to go to plan B, killing Grieg in his room.

“But then you realize that you couldn’t leave the vacant room. At a guess, one of the sentries on random patrol takes up a post in the hall. If you leave the room, that would raise the alarm. So you had to stay there, in that room, until the robots left, until you heard Grieg go to bed. You could signal Bissal. Then Bissal activates the range restrictor signal, and the sentries go dead. But even then you can’t leave, because Bissal has come up into the house. Suppose he saw you, and knew who you were? He’d have a hold over you. Suppose he tried to blackmail you instead of going off to eat his poison at the warehouse? No, you could not risk that. So you decide to wait until you heard Bissal leave the house.

“But Bissal had wasted most of his blaster’s charge, and he realizes he isn’t going to have enough power left to be able to shoot all the robots. So Bissal decides to remove the restrictors from half of them by hand, and it takes forever. At long last he is done, and destroys the blaster and the Trojan robot in the basement, and heads off on his way. At last you can go.

“Except suddenly you can see the sky is full of police vehicles of one sort or another. The police have discovered Huthwitz’s body. You still can’t leave. Then I arrive, and rush up the stairs. Grieg has been discovered long before you expected.

“Suddenly you hear new footsteps in the halls and realize they are searching room to room. You hide under the bed or something during the first, cursory search. But you know they will search again, or at the very least stumble across you. You can’t hide in the one room forever. So you very cleverly brazen it out.

“You hide the incriminating door wedge and communicator, and then dress in the pajamas left in the room. Maybe you can talk your way out of it. It’s a long shot, but the only chance you have. You wander out into the hallway, and pretend you’re a house guest who’s slept through the whole thing. Donald here snatches you up. And you very nearly got away with it. Until Cinta Melloy here decided to look into whether Grieg ever had overnight guests—and found out he never did. We never thought to check the other side of the point, by the way. Did you have a hotel reservation in Limbo City? If—or rather when—we do find one, how will you explain it?”

Verick opened his mouth and shut it again, and swallowed hard, and then at last the words came out. “And what was my motive supposed to be in this lunatic scheme?” he asked, his voice tight and calm and strained. “What was all this supposed to accomplish for me?”

“Profit,” Kresh said. “Huge profit. Money. Not a motive we Spacers cops are used to. I didn’t even consider it at first. Money hasn’t meant much for a while, though it’s started to again. You went into that meeting with Kresh to find out if he had accepted your control system design. If he told you he had chosen your system, you would not signal Bissal, there would be no attack, and Bissal would slip away when he could. If Grieg told you Phrost had the job—well then, a terrifying assassination of the Governor might well sow just enough distrust of robots that a new Governor would not go with a robot design—or else it might be easier to bribe the new incumbent. You might even already know Beddle wasn’t above taking Settler money. You might even have had some dealings with him. Did you offer Grieg a bribe, by the way? He was half expecting that you would.”

Verick screamed and lunged, and Donald had to struggle a bit to hold him down.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Governor Kresh. “Commander Devray, perhaps you could take this man into custody.”

“AND THAT IS THAT,” Kresh said, after Melloy and Welton were gone and Devray and his Rangers took a sobbing, hysterical Tierlaw Verick away. “You two are free to go,” he said to Beddle and Phrost.

“But what about the charges against us?” Beddle asked.

“What charges?” Kresh asked. “No one has filed any that I’m aware of. I don’t intend to.”

“That’s very generous of you, Governor,” said Sero Phrost.

“The hell it is,” Kresh said. “I think I can do more damage to the two of you by letting you stay in the public eye. After all, everything that was said in this room today is bound to reach the public, somehow. Someone is bound to leak something—wouldn’t you agree, Prospero? Stories—at the very least rumors—about smuggling and bribery and money laundering are bound to float to the surface. I have a feeling that Tonya Welton is going to be able to explain away a lot of things you two can’t. Oh, and Beddle, I’m looking forward to your announcement for Governor. It should be an exciting campaign.”