Page 62 of Mongrels United
“It was me,” Nash said. His voice was still strained. “I saw the argument. I was a witness. If anything happened to you so soon after Hyram disappeared, and I told people you and my father argued, it might have exposed him. They would have looked into his life.” Nash grimaced. “And my father was very,verygood at covering up.”
“And you didn’t really know why he might have done it,” Grady added, speaking to Rogerson. “You were guessing, following your gut, and what you knew of the two men. That also saved you. If you had even hinted about Bellish…well, I think the outcome would have been different.”
Rogerson shivered, his shoulders hunching under the sweater. “Stars…!” His voice was back to old man huskiness.
“Hyram must have learned about the Bellish,” Nash said, almost to himself. “Nason hid it from him for ten years, but he must have made a mistake and Hyram caught it.”
“It was bound to happen, both of them living in the same apartment,” Grady murmured. “But he clearly knew how to hide his tracks. He lasted ten years before Hyram figured it out.”
Nash sat in a tight bow, his eyes on the ground.
“The body was never found,” Grady added. “He even knew how to take care of that.”
Rogerson, who was watching Nash, cleared his throat. “I’ve a theory about that, too. I’ve had thirty years to think about it.”
“Yes?” Grady prompted.
“Wheelock was a Skinwalker. One of the last, or something. They used the big aft airlocks all the time, to move the sheets of new skin out onto the hull.”
Grady waited.
Rogerson rolled his eyes. “You young people have no clue about the ship you live on, do you?”
Grady pressed her lips together to stop herself laughing at the cantankerous complaint. She thought she was extremely well-informed about the ship, its systems and structures— “The engine rooms!” she blurted.
Rogerson grinned. “Got it in one.”
“What about them?” Nash said, his tone wooden with disinterest.
“There are high capacity, wide-mawed recyclers in the engine compartments,” Grady said. “They can handle toxic waste, even irradiated materials. They reduce everything to atoms and return the energy to the ship.”
Nash looked even more ill.
Rogerson leaned toward Grady. “You’ve got access to everything. Bet if you check, you’ll find that in all the hoorah about the shard and the Skinwalkers retiring, no one got around to revoking their access to the engine area. I bet that around the time Hyram disappeared, the logs for the access hatches to the engine area show that Wheelock went there, fifteen years after the work was finished.”
Grady was growing more concerned about Nash’s reaction. She couldn’t begin to guess what it must be like to learn there was a strong possibility that a parent was a murderer. He’d disliked his father, and that was the Bellish’s fault. But this…
Grady got to her feet. “We need to think about this. And…adjust.”
Rogerson nodded. “Figured. Probably hard to hear, coming cold like that. I didn’t believe it myself, when I first thought of it. Had to build up to it. But the more I thought about what I knew of Wheelock, the more convinced I became.”
“Can I speak to you again, later, if I have questions?” Grady asked.
“I’m always right here.” He lifted the pad.
“Not through the forum,” Grady said quickly. “Can I come to see you?”
Rogerson gave a rough bark of laughter. “But everyone will talk about us.”
Grady laughed, too. “Thank you.” She went over to Nash, then remembered something and turned back to Rogerson. “Why did you mention the shard?”
“You know about the shard?”
“I remember…something about it, yes. It holed the ship. That’s how they learned they were passing through the Junkyard. The shard was manufactured.”
“Yup. That’s why all the plebes got obnoxious about stopping where we were and finding out where it came from, because there were clearly people out there. Maybe not human people.” Rogerson rolled his eyes again. “No one seemed to worry that the aliens might be aggressive. Maybe they even shot the shard at us.” He shook his head. “But I’m a negative son of a bitch, so suspicion comes to me easily.”
“But when the Skinwalkers retired, everyone changed their minds?”
