CHAPTER 21
Konami waited in the passageway outside the Solacer’s office, checking his feed for the text of his constables’ interviews of Senior Chemist Nicolescu’s colleagues. The chemists and chem techs were effusive in their praise for the deceased, offering to help in any way they could, but had no information that jumped off the projection as immediately useful. He’d been so busy lately that he hadn’t felt bitter in days. When it occurred to him that, upon solving these crimes, everything would go back to normal, he felt a momentary panic.
As he waited for Mattoso to arrive, he found himself thumbing through Inspector Loesser’s electronic interview notes — she had the habit of scrawling anything that caught her eye in the margins. Chemistry Director George was “smooth and polished, and overly verbose, but nervous as hell under the surface,” while the “hulking” Second Class Chem Tech Singh was “shaken and barely verbal.”
The search of Nicolescu’s quarters had been a bit more helpful — an anachronistic handwritten dry-erase calendar, with the chemist’s daily appointments scrawled in, led Konami to the passageway outside the office of Solacer Assunta Patil. Just as he checked the time, Mattoso arrived.
As if she could sense their presence, Solacer Patil appeared and beckoned them through an open doorway. The solace therapist had the grace and loveliness of a dancer, and wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth did nothing to lessen her beauty. Her sleek, silken dress, and the exotic, colorful décor of her office completed the illusion that this was a very different sort of place, with a different sort of people, then the rest of Aotea. “Please, sit,” she offered, her voice low and melodic. “You’re here about Sulemon.”
“Yes,” said Konami. He recalled his own most recent visit to a solacer, several months prior. Saara Angelini was short and curvy where Solacer Patil was tall and slender, but they had the same voice — confident, mature, and musical. He wondered if this was from solacer training. A look from Mattoso snapped him out of thoughts of his last visit. “His colleagues did not know of any close friends,” he said to the solacer. “Do you know if Nicolescu was close to anyone outside of Chemistry?”
Patil pursed her lips. “I’m in a very difficult position, chief inspector. I want to help your investigation in any way I can, but the Oath of Solace prevents me from sharing any details of my time with Sulemon.”
Konami anticipated this. “Voicenet: Charter doc eighteen.” He projected to show the Solacer. He realized, a bit uncomfortably, that he was getting very skilled at citing regulations to serve his investigations. It was a necessary skill, but it made him feel like a bullying bureaucrat. “Captain Horovitz and Director-Superintendent Akunle have both invoked this section of the Charter — that the needs of this investigation override any internal guidelines and regulations of individual departments.” He traced the applicable parts with his finger, explaining that the Therapy Director agreed that this includes the Oath of Solace.
Eyes scanning nothingness in front of her, the Solacer read for several minutes. She sighed and shook her head as she finished. “Very well. Even putting aside the Oath, there’s not a whole lot I can tell you about Sulemon’s acquaintances. He rarely spoke of others, and no one close.”
Konami asked how long she had been meeting with Nicolescu, and she said more than five cycles, since before the departure.
“So why did he come to see you?” asked Mattoso. “Intimacy?”
“Well, yes, I suppose. But not just intimacy. He had — a weight. That’s what we called it — ‘the Weight’. He wouldn’t say what it was — long ago I learned to stop asking. But it was always there, and it was always on his mind, and figuratively pulling him down.”
Konami leaned forward. “You must have had some idea.”
“I considered many possibilities — pharmaceutical addiction, first and foremost. He was a Chemist, after all. But he didn’t have any other signs. No lying, at least that I could detect. No physical signs.” She spread her hands. “Perhaps it was some family secret, though he had no family onboard that I know of.”
Mattoso interrupted. “Did this ‘weight’ get better over time, or worse?”
“It waxed and waned, mostly. I couldn’t discern a pattern. But thinking about it since his death, I think it may have been getting worse, very slowly. In fact, the last time I saw him, a few weeks ago, it was as bad as I’d ever seen in him.”
“You were with him for so long,” said Konami, scratching his chin. “What do you really think it was?”
The Solacer looked down for a moment before shaking her head. “I think it was guilt. Overwhelming guilt. Over what, I don’t know.”
“Do you think this guilt had something to do with his death?”
She nodded immediately. “Absolutely.”
Konami and Mattoso shared a glance.
“Was he a good man?” asked Konami. Mattoso raised an eyebrow.
Patil looked at him for a long time before responding. “He cared deeply about doing the right thing.”
Konami sensed something unsaid. “But...?”
She looked away. “I’m not sure that he knew what the right thing was.”