After we’d finished watching the recording, I did an analysis of the actual blaster burn. No fun, that: standing over the open top of Skye’s torso. Most of the blood vessels had been cauterized by the charge. Still, blasters were only manufactured in two places I knew of — Tokyo, on Earth, and New Monty. If the one used here had been made on New Monty, we’d be out of luck, but one of Earth’s countless laws required all blasters to leave a characteristic EM signature, so they could be traced to their registered owners, and -

Good: it was an Earth-made blaster. I recorded the signature, then used my compad to relay it to The Cop Shop. If Raymond Chen could find some time between stuffing his face, he’d send an FTL message to Earth and check the pattern — assuming, of course, that the Jeffies don’t scramble the message just for kicks. Meanwhile, I told Suze to go over Hissock’s client list, while I started checking out his family — fact is, even though it doesn’t make much genetic sense, most people are killed by their own relatives.

Skye Hissock had been fifty-one. He’d been a soothsayer for twenty-three years, ever since finishing his Ph.D. in genetics. He was unmarried, and both his parents were long dead. But he did have a brother named Rodger. Rodger was married to Rebecca Connolly, and they had two children, Glen, who, like Dale in Skye’s recording, had just turned eighteen, and Billy, who was eight.

There are no inheritance taxes in Mendelia, of course, so barring a will to the contrary, Hissock’s estate would pass immediately to his brother. Normally, that’d be a good motive for murder, but Rodger Hissock and Rebecca Connolly were already quite rich: they owned a controlling interest in the company that operated Mendelia’s atmosphere-recycling plant.

I decided to start my interviews with Rodger.