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gloves. He had worked with her partner, Rayvon Lake, before, and Lake had to be reminded to follow any kind of procedure.
    But Brodeur didn’t see Lake anywhere.
    “Have you had cases involving the waste crates before?” DeRicci asked Brodeur.
    “No,” he said, not adding that he tried to pass anything outside the dome onto anyone else, “but I’ve heard about cases involving them. I guess it’s not that uncommon.”
    “Hmm,” DeRicci said looking toward a room at the far end of the large warehouse. “And here I thought they were uncommon.”
    Brodeur was going to argue his point when he realized that DeRicci wasn’t talking to him now. She was arguing with someone she had already spoken to.
    “Can you get me information on that?” DeRicci asked Brodeur.
    He hated it when detectives wanted him to do their work for them. “It’s in the records.”
    DeRicci made a low, growly sound, like he had irritated her beyond measure.
    So he decided to tweak her a bit more. “Just search for warehouses and recycling and crates—”
    “I know,” she said. “I was hoping your office already had statistics.”
    “I’m sure we do, Detective,” he said, moving past her, “but you want me to figure out what killed this poor creature, right? Not dig into old cases.”
    “I think the old cases might be relevant,” she said.
    Brodeur shrugged. He didn’t care what was or wasn’t relevant to her investigation. His priority was dealing with this body.
    “Excuse me,” he said, and slipped on his favorite pair of gloves. Then he raised the lid on the crate.
    The woman inside was maybe thirty. She had been pretty too, before her eyes had filmed over and her cheeks had sunk in.
    She had clearly died in an Earth Normal environment, and she hadn’t left that environment, as advertised. He would have to do some research to figure out if the presence of rotting food had an impact on the body’s decomposition, but that was something to worry about later.
    Then Brodeur glanced up. “I’ll have information for you in a while,” he said to DeRicci, trying to dismiss her.
    “Just give me a name,” she said. “We haven’t traced anything.”
    He didn’t want to move the body yet. He didn’t even want to touch it, because he was afraid of disturbing some important evidence.
    The corpse’s hands were tucked under her head, so he couldn’t just run the identification chips everyone had buried in their palms.
    So he used the coroner’s office facial recognition program. It had a record of every single human who lived in Armstrong, and was constantly updated with information from the arrivals and departures sections of the city every single day.
    “Initial results show that her name is Sonja Mycenae. She was born here, and moved off-Moon with her family ten years ago. She returned one month ago to work as a nanny for….”
    He paused, stunned at the name that turned up.
    “For?” DeRicci pushed.
    Brodeur could feel the color draining from his face.
    “Luc Deshin,” he said quietly. “She works for Luc Deshin.”

 
     
     
     
    FIVE
     
     
    LUC DESHIN.
    DeRicci hadn’t expected that name.
    Her gaze met Ethan Brodeur’s. Brodeur looked scared. He immediately turned his attention to the poor dead woman in the compost.
    DeRicci tugged on her gloves, thinking about what Brodeur had just told her.
    With Deshin’s involvement, everything changed.
    Luc Deshin ran a corporation called Deshin Enterprises that the police department flagged and monitored continually. Everyone in Armstrong knew that Deshin controlled a huge crime syndicate that trafficked in all sorts of illegal and banned substances. The bulk of Deshin’s business had moved off-Moon, but he had gotten his start here as an average street thug, rising, as those kids often do, through murder and targeted assassination into a position of power, using the deaths of others to advance his own career.
    Then DeRicci realized what was bothering her. It wasn’t that