The apartment

Public Safety. Talk to Aust. Officer Arland at the front desk. Wait in the courtesy lounge, then we meet in room with Officer Aust. We give Luce’s name and case number and get assigned a bot. It’ll log any requests.

Officer Arland was involved in the investigation. What a strange coincidence. He doesn’t think that the investigation was obstructed in any way.

The bot appears, painted in friendly, bright Public Safety colours. Its ID is PSO-0966. When asked about the case number, it says that it wasn’t involved. A squad mate was involved at the time. It’ll relay any questions we might have.

We take the train. After we leave the train, The bot provides crime statistics, 3/1000 non-violent crimes, 1.2/1000 violent crimes.

Drugedru Druke ask for access to the travel records of the street where Luce disappeared in the days before the disappearance. Sort the list by rarity of appearance.

The area has many upper class coffee houses. The buildings are not taller than four stories. The building we’re going to has only four apartments, each one of them a two or three bedroom apartment.

Neighbours? What about the three neighbours? No data about them was released by Arland to the bot. The people were interviewed but since they were deemed to be irrelevant, they’re not included.

We are led to the main entrance. We see a ground floor, made off glass, a shared space, table tennis, a lounge. Noise cancellation is in effect. The temperature is mild. The bot uses its ID to enter. No attendant is required.

We take the escalator up to the first floor. Here we see four doors. Obviously every one of the four apartment has three floors. We are let to apartment 3 in the top right quadrant.

Wuglug Mogrog asks: Who owns this building? It’s owned by a subsidiary of her dad. “Grift,” mumbles Wuglug.

It’s an open floor apartment. The living room is large. The furniture is morphable, as is typical for the Jet Set class. Access to the top floor is via a spiral staircase. Behind it is a kitchen. More rooms are in the other direction.

In the living room, Drugedru Druke, finds something that wasn’t in the report: a brochure for a resort, on this planet, with a beach and plenty of sunlight. The brochure is closed and something is tucked inside. It advertises a travel package for two weeks, including a glass bottom cruise through the coral reef, lavish accomodations. The brochure print date predates her disappearance. The time frame is for the time after her disappearance. A sticky note has a name or word on it: Donton plus a sequence of numbers. That could be a com code.

Wuglug Mogrog looks at the three smaller rooms that look like servants quarters.

In the first room, under the bed, there is a wooden box containing a set of three expensive, sharp chef’s knives. In the box is a note with a series of dates. These dates correspond to the dates advertised for the resort.

The second room, there’s something in a shelf that looked suspicious: an upside down media box. It contained a data device! An electronic journal? Wuglug Mogrog wants to take out of the apartment and tells the bot as much.

The last room, trapped between a cabinet and a worktable, there’s a receipt for clothing with the name of a cleaning service and a date and time about a week before the trip to the resort. These clothes were dropped off and picked again. The list of fancy articles is long. The bill is significant.

The bot is concerned that the initial investigation and in subsequent investigations have not uncovered these things.

Wuglug Mogrog is wondering whether somebody planted these pieces. “Let’s compare the initial records with these things we found!”