As Corsi keyed the lock to her quarters, she was beginning to give a modicum of credence to the notion of a vast conspiracy by the universe in general to keep her from finding the murder weapon. She had finally settled on the three possible candidates, but no idea how it could have been done. None of the tests that had been run on either of the padds or the latinum showed any signs of something that could have caused vibrations in Caitano’s brain or a rupture in his eardrums.

As the door slid closed behind her, the corner of the wooden box that contained her family’s heirloom fire axe caught Corsi’s eye as it peeked out from beneath the bed. She couldn’t help but think it was almost taunting her, sticking its tongue out like a spoiled child.

She tried to look away from it, but it would only be a few seconds before it filled her vision once again. Taking a deep breath, she reached down and dragged the case from its usual home, sitting it on the foot of the bed so it could stare at her properly.

What would her father think? The last time she’d seen Aldo Corsi, they’d made some sort of peace, but she still wondered how stable that peace was in reality.

“Domenica? You okay?” Lense’s voice asked.

Corsi turned to find her roommate standing in the doorway, a level of concern in the doctor’s expression that she couldn’t recall seeing outside of sickbay.

“Yeah,” she said, her eyes going back to the axe. “I just need to know—”

“What killed Caitano?”

Corsi shook her head. “No. Well, yeah, eventually, but that’s not it.”

She heard Lense sit down, judging by the distance, on her own bed. “Then what is it?”

Corsi opened her mouth to speak, but for a few moments no words came. How could she explain it to Lense when she couldn’t even explain it to herself? Finally, she said, “I don’t know.”

“You need to know something, but you don’t know what that something is?”

Corsi pinched the bridge of her nose between her right index finger and thumb. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Try me,” Lense said. “I’m not a counselor, but…”

“I’d be dead about five times over now if you were,” Corsi said, an edge of sarcasm in her voice. She didn’t want to think about the way things might have gone over the years if the da Vinci had had a lesser CMO. Elizabeth Lense had saved her life, as well as the lives of her staff, on more than one occasion. Corsi had long ago discovered that having such an accomplished medic on the ship made doing her own job that much easier. She didn’t worry about bumps and bruises when she was on a mission, because she knew that Lense could fix just about any problem she might be able to come back with, so long as that problem wasn’t someone being dead.

Lense sighed. “Okay, direct questions it is. How about telling me why you’re staring at that axe like it’s going to do a trick?”

“I’m getting tired of dead ends,” Corsi reluctantly said. “I don’t know any more about how he died than I did when I walked into his quarters. Well, I do, but it’s not useful.”

She could have sworn she heard the doctor laugh. She moved her eyes from the axe long enough to see a wry smile on her roommate’s features. “What’s so funny?”

“Domenica, in all of the time I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you run out of options.”

Corsi raised an eyebrow. “Who said I’m out of options? I just tested every one I thought of already and have no likely scenarios. There wasn’t any evidence that he tripped on anything. He didn’t have a medical condition that would cause him to suddenly collapse. There weren’t any incurable blood disorders involved. So why? How could he still have enough of his wits about him to clearly call for help before he died if his brain was coming apart?”

Lense shrugged. “Trust me, I’m just as frustrated as you are. His blood chemistry was otherwise perfectly normal.”

“So, if he wasn’t drugged, there wasn’t a struggle, and he didn’t trip, then what?” Corsi’s stare returned to the ax.

Lense sighed, and then said, “What we need is a change of subject. Sometimes that helps me think. You know, you never did tell me what’s so important about this thing.”

“Huh?”

“What’s so important about an axe? It seems pretty impersonal to be a family heirloom.”

Corsi leaned back in her chair, reluctantly thankful for the change in subject. She had to admit, the doctor had a point. She’d only met two or three other people over the years who carried heirlooms with them, and those pieces had been things like ancient jewelry or quilts that had been made by their great-great-grandmothers back wherever home was.

“You’re right,” Corsi said, rubbing a hand over her face in an attempt to clear the mental cobwebs. “It was an ancestor of my father’s. He was a firefighter back in New York at the start of the twenty-first century. He got killed in the line of duty during a terrorist attack on the city. Remember when the Breen attacked San Francisco during the war? From what I’ve read, it was like that.”

A cloud crossed Lense’s features.

Corsi winced. “Sorry. I forgot you’ve got family there.”

“It’s okay. Thankfully, I didn’t lose anyone. Go on. What happened?”

“He was responding to the site of the attack when the building he was in came down around him. All that was left of him was what they could find back at his firehouse. They used to give a firefighter’s badge to next of kin, but his was never found. Yeah, it may not be the most personal family heirloom, but it’s all they could do at the time.”

The corners of Elizabeth Lense’s eyes pinched. After everything they’d been through in recent years, far more close calls than even Corsi cared to remember, she could only guess that the doctor was imagining the same thing she had from time to time—what Starfleet would give their next-of-kin.

“The terrorists used things people saw every day against them, so what their victims thought nothing of became weapons.”

They hid things inside everyday items…so standard security measures wouldn’t see them. Wait a minute. What if there’s something inside one of the padds? We would have spotted it on the scans, wouldn’t we?

Not if it had a masking signal.

Corsi’s eyes shot open. She was about to slap her combadge and contact Commander Gomez when a comm came through. “Hawkins to Corsi. We’ve got another body.”