I wiped a droplet of blood from my forehead, then carefully inspected myself in the mirror. I looked like hell.

 

Doc said I shouldn't take my heart pills with cola. I rummaged through the drinks cart. Ellen the stew, real name Regina Butz, was no help. She was strapped inside a storage compartment. Harsh, but nothing compared to all the people who'd died from her bargain-basement smuggled narcotics. Twelve had been kids.

 

I found a juice, washed down my medicine. That should help. I only needed to last until we landed. We were due at Copernicus Base in twelve minutes.

 

Then I took a deep breath.

 

I could do this.

 

* * *

 

"That takes care of the stewardess," I announced, coming back into the passenger cabin. "She didn't do it."

 

"So where is she?" asked Boggs. Miner, 42, looked the part.

 

"Locked inside a supply cupboard. She may not have poisoned his coffee, but she was smuggling drugs." I held up a baggie of little white pills. "That's why she'd lied about her name."

 

"I guess that makes sense," said Cherry dubiously. Call girl, which is legal, but a disease carrier, which isn't. She didn't know I knew, but she was nervous.

 

"Why not lock her inside one of the bathrooms?" asked Boggs. "We got two."

 

"She's fine where she is. I want to get this taken care of before we land. One of you three poisoned my prisoner's coffee, and we're going to find out who."

 

I glanced at the dead man, still zip-tied in his chair, but now covered by a blanket. The poison had been cyanide, and he was even less pretty now than he'd been before. Simon Trezibond, career thug, known killer. Multiple everything but never convicted. Now he never would be.

 

The third passenger, a short-con specialist named Winston, sighed in irritation — an act, I was sure. "What else can we tell you? You went to the bathroom, Cherry and I were talking, and Boggs was sound asleep. Nobody went near your guy except the stewardess. Are you sure—"

 

"Positive," I interrupted. "The amount of pressure I put on her when I found her drug stash, there's no way she wouldn't have confessed. Hell, she'd have said anything to stop the pain."

 

That shocked them all. I'd wanted it to, enough to lie about it. The Lunar Patrol doesn’t use torture on suspects, not anymore. But I wanted these three to take me seriously. From the looks of them, they would.

 

"So, you and Miss Cherry were over on that side of the cabin. Did you get up at all? Stretch your legs, maybe?"

 

They both shook their heads. Winston said, "I'd swear to it, Patrolman." Not that I'd trust him. His first partner had been his own cousin; he'd slit the man's throat over a fifty-credit disagreement.

 

"And just how close were you watching Boggs over here?"

 

The miner stirred himself. "Now wait a second," he started. I shushed him and waited.

 

"Not all that close," admitted Cherry. "We was mostly looking at each other, ya know?" Her eyes flashed downward demurely. He flushed. I couldn't tell who was conning who. Didn't matter, though, not really.

 

"Okay, Boggs. You were saying."

 

"I was gonna say, I've never even met the man. I don't know his name, never seen him before so far as I know. Why would I kill him?"

 

"Maybe because he was tied in with your kidnapping conviction?"

 

I'd been saving that until now, and the payoff was worth it. Boggs went dead white, and his mouth dropped into a perfect O. I pressed on. "Maybe he's the missing third man, the guy who killed the Preston kid while you collected the ransom."

 

"I couldn't— I didn't—" Boggs was having trouble with his words. I grunted, then continued.

 

"You are that Gaheris Boggs, aren't you? Tried, convicted, sentenced to life, then let off on a technicality?"

 

"Well, I— No! That's not true. They fabricated that evidence!" He'd regained the use of his tongue at least.

 

"It isn't me you have to convince," I informed him. "I'm reasonably sure these two have never met before, and there's no good reason they'd cover for each other. That means it must have been you that poisoned him."

 

He was sweating now. "I didn't— I couldn't— Hell, I was asleep!"

 

"Save it for the judge. You have the right to remain silent..." I went through the litany for the benefit of the others, cuffing him and walking him back to the spare bathroom. Once he was in there, zip-tied to the fixtures, I gave him a tap on the noggin to keep him quiet, then latched the door.

 

"All right, you two," I told them. "Stay clear of the corpse. I've got to hit the head again."

 

As I went inside, I felt the engines shift. The robo-pilots would be bringing us in for our landing. I secured myself and tried to control my breathing. It was almost over, and I didn't want to give the game away by letting the passengers see me panic. Anyway, I had a confession to write.

 

I'd killed the prisoner myself. He was on his way to yet another hearing before a paid-off judge, and I'd simply had enough. With a bad ticker and two months to live, I had nothing to lose.

 

It had cost me a lot of favors to arrange this flight. The stew had killed dozens with her cheap-made drugs, and Cherry's body count was even higher, spreading typhoid among her clients — spacers with no immunity, poor devils. Yeah, all five richly deserved to die, and were about to when the hatch I'd rigged opened early. Working together they might have saved themselves somehow, but not now.

 

I braced myself for the coming decompression and screwed my eyes tight shut. I deserved it too. After all, I'd set all this up.

 

We Patrolmen frown on letting murderers walk free.