“Can you give me a preliminary picture of what the evidence is suggesting to you, Dal Kaer?” Odo solemnly inquired of the analyst.

Kaer’s mouth was an unmoving line as he faced the security chief, and then he spoke. “Whoever committed this crime was apparently in league with our three suspects from earlier in the week,” he said without emotion.

Odo nodded. “A fair conclusion,” he allowed, though he was thinking something very different. “It is a shame then,” he added, “that our three suspects have been executed already. Otherwise they could perhaps help us with this investigation.”

Kaer looked taken aback. Odo had not intended to let so much apparent bitterness show in his voice, and he modified his tone. “But there is no reason to speculate on lost opportunities,” he said. “We must make the most of the evidence that we have access to.”

“Indeed. I’ll have Gil Letra round up a sampling of our usual troublemakers from the Bajoran sector and he can begin questioning them right away.”

Odo nodded, as he normally did to such a suggestion, but an overwhelming possibility had him deeply troubled—the possibility that Dukat’s current Cardassian adjutant somehow knew about the bombings, for it was simply too uncanny, in Odo’s mind, that the soldier would have known to push Dukat out of the way just before the explosion erupted. Dukat would reject the hypothesis immediately; Odo knew there was little point in even suggesting such a thing. After all, several identical bombings had occurred in Musilla Province recently, and Dukat would be sure to point out that his assistant could hardly be associated with those incidents. But Odo also knew that it was not unheard of for Cardassians to occasionally assist in Bajoran mischief, for a large enough bribe, or for their own political gain.

Odo wondered if perhaps this soldier had caught wind of a terrorist plot, agreed to help carry it out in exchange for some favor or bribe, and then saved his prefect at the last moment so he would appear to be a hero. It was not beyond the realm of possibility. However, Dukat would never accept the idea. This case would likely remain open, just like that of the Bajoran chemist who had been killed. Dukat didn’t care about justice so much as he cared about making an appropriate display of punishment to keep his workers in line, and though Odo wanted to deny that truth, it was in cases such as this one that it became impossible to ignore. That he was an instrument in carrying out Dukat’s draconian policies was troubling, to say the least.

The shape-shifter returned to his office to log the evidence into the security database, for all the good it would do anyone. He planned to regenerate immediately after his business with this case was completed, but as soon as he entered his office, he saw that it would be impossible. The Ferengi child was waiting for him.

“Chief,” Nog implored him, rising to his feet. “My uncle says to tell you that he’s dropping the charges against my father. Please—you’ve got to let him out.”

“Then why isn’t your uncle here?” Odo said, brushing past the small alien.

“He’s too busy tending his bar. He tried to contact you, but you were unavailable—”

“I’m in the middle of a high-profile investigation,” Odo said. “I don’t have time to resolve these petty family squabbles right now. Tell your uncle that if he wants his brother released, he’ll have to come to my office and fill out the paperwork himself.”

“But…chief…there’s nobody to tend the bar, and I thought you might—”

“Quark might have thought of that inconvenience when he had your father arrested,” Odo said irritably. Of course, it was all utter foolishness. Once again, the Ferengi were having a pointless tiff, and once again, Odo had been dragged into it. This time, Quark was accusing his brother of attacking a customer, a claim Odo found to be unlikely, but the Kobheerian freight officer substantiated the claims, and Odo had no choice but to put Rom in a holding cell until he could be processed and fined.

The young Ferengi left the office, clearly upset and concerned for his father, and Odo began the process of entering the latest data into the files on the explosion from this afternoon. But something was troubling him—something more than the obvious discrepancies regarding the apparent assassination attempt. He was bothered by the false claims Quark and the Kobheerian captain were laying against Rom. Though it was the sort of thing he usually paid the very least amount of attention to, his thoughts persisted in suggesting that Quark was up to something. There was a pattern in these arrests of Rom, and while Odo might be naïve, he was not an idiot.

Odo was tired, and his body was practically quavering with the desire to liquefy, but he decided his hunch was worth a second look. He made his way back to the holding cells, where several imprisoned Bajorans called out to him from behind the force fields. He disabled the field that held the Ferengi, who was sitting silently by himself in the corner, apparently trying to avoid any interaction with the angry Bajorans in the vicinity. He did not immediately realize that the force field had been deactivated, and Odo was forced to call to him.

“Rom,” Odo addressed the other man. “Come into my office, please. I have a few questions for you.”

“Uh. Okay,” the Ferengi replied. “But I already told you. I didn’t hit anyone.”

“Yes, I heard you the first time. But I’m curious to know—why are you lying for your brother again?”

Rom looked simultaneously astonished and terrified, his mouth falling open to expose his jagged teeth. “That’s not true, Odo!” he cried. “I don’t know anything—just ask Quark!”

“Yes, so he’s told me, on more than one occasion,” Odo said, folding his arms and tapping his fingers restlessly against his elbow. The urge to regenerate was becoming a need.

The Ferengi continued to jabber, but Odo already knew what the truth was, for it had happened twice before. Odo would not play along this time. “Your brother and the Kobheerian were conducting some sort of transaction.”

“No!” Rom said stoutly.

“The Kobheerian is gone now. Did your brother have you arrested so you couldn’t interfere? Or was it because he simply wanted to divert attention away from himself?”

“I don’t know anything about any transaction,” Rom insisted. “I don’t know why he had me arrested. I was just—”

“Yes, how could you have known what your brother was up to, when you were locked in here?”

“That’s right,” Rom said hopefully, though he didn’t seem to understand where Odo’s logic was going. Odo knew he had hit on the correct scenario, though there wasn’t any way to prove it. He wasn’t sure if he was quite so concerned with proving anything anymore, at least, not today.

“It worked the first time he did it, which was shortly after you accidentally implicated him with that business that got him fined for dealing in illegal Jibetian goods. It worked the second time he did it, last month, when the Boslic freighter captain was spending so much time in the bar. But this is the last time he tries it. I want you to be sure and tell him that, Rom. I’m dismissing your case. You’re free to go.”

The Ferengi did not even stop to thank him; he only scurried out onto the Promenade and back to his brother’s crooked establishment. It had occurred to Odo numerous times that if Quark’s bar were eliminated from the station, an exceptional percentage of the petty complaints that clogged his arrest roster would simply cease to exist. But then, he considered, the station’s residents would find some other means of causing trouble, and anyway, Odo did not have the authority to make such a suggestion.

In fact, how much authority did he really have here? He could release an unfairly accused Ferengi waiter, but beyond that, he was simply adhering to a rigid set of rules laid out by the prefect—rigid for anyone but Dukat himself. And within the rigidity of those laws, Odo had begun to discover that there were many curious instances in which following Cardassian policy to the letter resulted in the conviction of innocent men—as in the case of Rom’s frequent incarcerations at the behest of his brother…or the case of the three executed Bajorans.