Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

“All right.” Alex sank back into the sofa and crossed his arms. “What we need to do is find thefts from homes whose occupants would have been likely to own antiques.”

“How do we do that?”

“Hang on a second.” He flipped open a notebook. “Jacob, would you see if you can get Inspector Redfield on the circuit for me?”

Fenn and a slice of his desk appeared in the middle of the office. “What can I do for you, Alex?” He sounded as if he were having a long morning.

“The case we were talking about yesterday-?”

His brow furrowed. “Yes?” He looked as if he’d already heard enough about that one.

“I wonder if you could tell me whether the burglaries were limited to a single area?”

“Wait one.” He made weary sounds. “What was the name again?”

“Plotzky.”

“Oh, yes. Plotzky.” He gave instructions to an AI, reminded Alex that that week’s card game would be at his place, and took a bite out of a sandwich. Then he looked up at a monitor. “Bulk of the cases were in Anslet and Sternbergen. There were a few elsewhere. Pretty well spread around, actually.”

“But all in the region immediately west of Andiquar?”

“Oh, yes. Plotzky didn’t travel much.”

“Okay, Fenn. Thanks.”

In his final trial, Plotzky had been charged with seventeen counts of theft by breaking and entering. We had the names of the property owners from the court records. The prosecutors had tagged him with more than a hundred over his career. “What we do is use the media to track down every burglary we can find in the target area while Plotzky was active.”

“That’s going to be a lot of burglaries.”

“Maybe not. The records don’t indicate that he had much competition.” He got up and went over to the window and looked out at the snow. “Jacob?”

“Yes, Alex?”

“How many burglaries were there during the period?”

More lights. “I count two hundred forty-seven reported instances.”

“I thought you said he didn’t have much competition.”

“Chase, we’re looking at twenty years.” He shook his head at the weather. “Doesn’t look as if it’ll ever quit snowing.” It was the kind of day that left me wanting to curl up in front of a fire and just go to sleep.

“Jacob,” he said, “we need the victims’ names.”

A list rolled out of the printer.

“Now what?” I asked.

“We check each of them. Try to find people likely to have owned antiques.”

Easy to say. “This is forty years ago. Some of these people won’t even be alive.”

“Do your best.”

What happened to the “we”? “Okay,” I said. “Who’s likely to own antiques?”

“Think what our clients have in common.”

“Money,” I suggested.

“I would have preferred exquisite taste. But yes, they will have to have money. Get the addresses. Look for people who live in the more exclusive areas.”

“Alex,” I said, “we’re talking about burglars. They’re going to favor the moreexclusive areas.”

“Not necessarily. Security systems are less effective elsewhere.”

Alex pitched in, and we spent the next few days making calls. Most of the people who’d been burglarized had since moved or died. Tracking down the survivors, or relatives, was another big job.

We did connect with some. Did your family ever own an antique cup with English symbols?

Actually, several thought they might have had one once. But nobody could describe it accurately. And nobody sounded serious.

“Alex,” I complained, “there have to be better things we could be doing.”

After a few days had passed without result, he was tired of it, too. By the fourth evening, we were near the end of the list. “It’s a wild-goose chase,” I told him. “I’d be willing to bet the majority of burglaries didn’t even make the news.”

He was chewing a piece of bread, looking as if his mind were somewhere outside in the night. The lights in the room had been dimmed, and Jacob was playing something from Sherpa. It was a quiet rhythm, adrift in the somber mood of the evening.

“Plotzky didn’t know what he had. Maybe the original owner didn’t either.”

“It’s possible,” I said.

“Maybe the victim wasn’t somebody who collected antiques. Maybe it was a guy who collected cups.”

“Cups. Somebody who collects cups.”

“Jacob,” said Alex, “let’s see the cup again. Close up.” It appeared in the center of the office, the image about my size. “Turn it, please.”

It began to rotate. We looked at the eagle, at the banners, at the registry number. At the ringed planet. “No way,” I said, “you could miss that it’s connected with interstellars.”

“My thought exactly. Jacob, let’s go back to the time period of the burglaries. Same geographical area. How many families can you find with a connection to the interstellar fleet?”

“Families on record as having been burglarized?”

“No,” he said. “Anybody with a connection to interstellars.”

We found nine families in the target area with fleet connections. Five had moved during the intervening years. Of the remaining four, two were military, and one was connected with a corporation that maintained orbitals. The fourth was the sole survivor of her family, a female who still owned the house but who was now married to a journalist and living in the eastern Archipelago. Her name was Delia Cable.

She’d been Delia Wescott at the time Plotzky was active. Her parents, and the owners of the property at the time of the burglary, were Adam and Margaret, who had lost their lives in an avalanche in 1398. Margaret had been a class-two pilot for Survey, and Adam had been a researcher who’d made a career of the long-range missions.

The connection with Survey caught Alex’s attention, and Delia Cable went directly to the top of the list. Jacob made the call, and she materialized in the office.

It’s difficult to determine qualities like height over the circuit. People have a tendency to adjust settings, so the projection may be considerably different from the reality. But you can’t do much with eyes other than change their color. Delia Cable’s eyes filled the room with their intensity. I suspected she was tall. She had chiseled cheekbones, and the kind of features that you associate with models. Her black hair swept down over her shoulders.

Alex introduced himself and explained that he represented Rainbow Enterprises. He had a few questions about an antique.

Her expression was polite although it let us know she had better things to do than talk to strangers, and she sincerely hoped Alex wasn’t trying to sell her something.

Her clothes, a soft gray Brandenberg blouse and matching skirt, with a white neckerchief-I couldn’t see the shoes-indicated she was not wanting for resources.

Her diction was perfect, the accent Kalubrian, that happy mix of detachment and cultural superiority that derives from the western universities.

“Did your family,” he asked, “ever own an antique cup?”

She frowned and shook her head. No. “I’ve no idea what we’re talking about.”

“Let me ask a different question, Ms. Cable. When you were a girl, you lived in Andiquar, is that correct?”

“In Sternbergen, yes. It’s a suburb. That was before my parents died.”

“Was your house ever robbed?”

Her expression changed. “Yes,” she said. “There was something about a burglar.

Why do you ask?”

“Did the items get returned?”

She considered the question. “I really don’t know. It was a long time ago. I was pretty young when it happened.”

“Do you recall an antique cup? An ordinary-sized drinking cup with odd symbols on it? And an eagle?”