* * *
“So what do you think Smythe had stashed away in that little pocket?” Laughton asked as they waited for the elevator.
“Memory stick seems like a good guess to me,” Kir said.
“But if Smythe is the source of the killer app, why would he be hiding it after it’s already in the wild?”
The elevator came, and they got on. “Unless it’s a nonexecutable copy, one that let him work on it. If people figured out a way to neutralize it, he’d want a copy to tweak.”
Laughton nodded. “Or it’s the antivirus.”
“If he wanted to kill robots, why bother with an antivirus?”
The elevator opened, and they moved down the hall toward the other elevator. “Maybe it was the first step in a ransom scheme. Let a few robots die, then come forward with the antivirus with a huge price tag.”
“I don’t know,” Kir said. “Most robots would think the addicts using sims deserved what they got. The government’s not going to be able to put money toward that.”
“But the sims dealers might. They don’t want all of their customers getting fried.”
Kir tilted his head. “That might work.”
“It’d be a reason to kill Smythe, to get the antivirus.”
“Or even the source code.”
“Could be worth a lot of money.”
The elevator opened at the lobby. They stepped out, giving way for others to get on. Jesse stopped short. “We should see if Betty and her mom are here before we leave.” He turned. “Excuse me, can you hold—?”
A young man holding a child propped in the crux of one arm put his hand out, and the elevator door stopped closing and reopened.
“Thank you,” Laughton said as they stepped on. The ER was marked on the elevator panel as one floor below them. Laughton smiled at the little boy in his father’s arms, and then remembered that the boy couldn’t see his mouth behind the mask. The mask covering the boy’s mouth covered almost his entire face and hung below his chin. They must have been out of child-size masks.
When the door slid open, Laughton said, “Take care,” and he and Kir stepped out. There was the subdued, waiting room hush of a lot of people attempting to make very little noise. There were two televisions, just loud enough to create a murmur, but not loud enough to be understood. Jesse started to scan the people in the chairs, when Kir grabbed his arm, and pulled him around.
“Who would have known Smythe had the virus or antivirus on him?”
Jesse felt his whole jaw tighten, the muscles below his left eye tingling. “Sam McCardy, who I stupidly let get away.”
“Or his middleman, Jones.”
“Who I also let get away.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You can’t just hold people for no reason.”
“Says the robot police officer.”
“I never held anyone if it broke the law,” Kir said, his voice harsh.
“I know,” Laughton said, shaking his head. “I know. I didn’t mean anything. I just feel like an idiot.”
“Well, don’t. Letting Jones go makes sense. We’ll track him down later.”
“But not leaving someone to watch McCardy was lazy,” Laughton said.
“We can’t all be me,” Kir said.
“Fuck you.”
“Hey, it might be one of the women Smythe was seeing at the clinic, and then it’s a moot point,” Kir said.
Laughton thought that was unlikely, but Kir was right that it couldn’t be ruled out. “Okay,” he said.
“Don’t feel stupid,” Kir said. “We’re on this thing.”
“Tell it to your boss.”
“I have.”
“Jesse?”
Betty was walking toward them. Her pace increased as she approached, and she threw her arms around his waist. He pulled her in tight as she sighed into him. “You okay?” he said.
She nodded against his shoulder. “Just exhausted.”
“Tell me about it.”
Betty stepped back, and then she hugged Kir as well. “It’s good to see you,” she said.
Laughton saw his mother-in-law in one of the seats nearest to the TV. He went over to her. “Barbara, how are you?”
She wasn’t wearing a mask. Her lips were swollen to twice their usual size with a dried, red cut in the center of the lower lip. Her nose looked out of place with more blood crusted around one nostril, and a bruise trailing across her cheekbone. She just shook her head, and blinked.
“Hurts too much to talk?” he said.
She nodded.
“What happened?”
She shook her head again.
Betty and Kir had joined them, Betty taking the seat next to her mother. “Mom, this is Jesse’s old partner, Kir.”
The old woman nodded that she recognized him.
“He’s here because of the murder.”
“What happened?” Jesse said to Betty.
“I don’t know,” Betty said. “She went upstairs for something, and when she came back down, she fell.”
“They tell you how long until it’s your turn?”
“No.” There were at least thirty other people waiting. “What’d you find?”
“You know I can’t discuss it,” Laughton said.
“Because I’m a danger!” Betty said.
He raised his eyebrows and gestured at the rest of the room, indicating all of the other people.
“Oh, right,” she said.
“Betty, we’ve got this,” Kir said.
“He keeps saying that,” Jesse said.
“Because it’s true.”
“Well, don’t forget to pick up Erica by six if you don’t hear from me,” Betty said.
“I won’t,” Laughton said.
“I won’t let him,” Kir said.
“Okay.”
“Keep me posted,” Laughton said, and he bent down to kiss her through his mask. To his mother-in-law, he said, “I’d kiss you, but I’m afraid to hurt you.”
She nodded her understanding.
Laughton heard a familiar voice, and he looked over to the television. They were re-airing the press conference from earlier in the day with the commissioner, the secretary of Health and Human Services, and Brandis. It made his stomach turn. “I don’t want to see this shit again,” he said to Kir, and headed for the elevator without waiting for his partner.
His phone buzzed as he and Kir stepped into the elevator. He pulled it out. “Yes,” he said, looking at the screen. “Subpoena’s in.” He hit forward, and sent it to Moira. “Let’s get back to Liberty; try to interview at least one of the women this afternoon.”
“We need to make a stop first,” Kir said.
They were back in the main lobby. “Police headquarters. Secretary Pattermann wants to see us while we’re in town.”
“Shit,” Laughton said, pulling off his mask as they exited the hospital. “I should probably see the commissioner.”
“The secretary promised it won’t be long.”
“She better not be. Our job is policing, not politics,” Jesse said.
“Most of the time,” Kir said, “it’s the same thing.”
* * *
The Charleston Police Department’s headquarters was across the street from a small riverside park. Metal posts placed at equal distances lined a paved walk. The grass was well tended, the few trees wearing young leaves. Across the water, rows of small, probably no longer owned yachts were anchored along a pier, sun bleached, algaed, and barnacled, but from this side of the river, white and grand, and suggestive of freedom and money. Beyond that, a gray skyline described the city of the distant shore. If you were in lockup and lucky enough to be on the right side of the building, the view must have made the stay more bearable. It was probably prisoners who did the park’s grounds keeping, after all.
The headquarters looked like the kind of high school they had built eighty or ninety years ago, red brick stained black with grime, opaque green glass windows, concrete steps, and a later a
ddition tacked on to the side, a tan brick building with a grid of small square windows. For a minute, Chief Laughton stood with the park on his left and headquarters on his right, looking from one to the other. The river was the promise of the preserve, the headquarters its reality.
“How come we only got a view of the highway from headquarters in Baltimore?” Laughton said to Kir.
“We were only five minutes from the water.”
“And how often did we walk over to the water? Oh, never.”
“It’s not my fault you were unimaginative.”
“How about we just go sit on a bench for a little while?”
“You do that,” Kir said.
Then Jesse’s phone buzzed. “And the phone again.” He pulled it out.
There was an older message that he must have missed at some point. Mathews letting him know that the tech people had arrived at the hackers’ house, and that the robots had taken off when they saw the other cops show up.
The new notification was an email from Moira with Smythe’s clinical record. The hacker had seen three women over the past nine months. Two only once each right when the clinic opened, and then a woman named Nancy Enright, once a week for the last few months. He wondered how Miss Enright was handling Carl’s death. He held the phone out so Kir could see. “Smythe had a lover,” he said.
“Good to hear.”
“Let’s go,” Laughton said. “I don’t want to waste any more time here than I have to.”
Inside, headquarters had a similar vibe to the hospital, large and impersonal. Many people were on their way out, the day over for them. The commissioner sent a uniform down to escort Laughton and Kir to his office. The nametag pinned on the uniform’s shirt read “A. Knightly.” He was maybe twenty years old, clean-shaven, and sported close-cropped hair. He walked with his eyes straight ahead in such a way that Laughton knew he was using all his willpower to not look in the chief’s or Kir’s direction. Was it Kir that was making the boy so nervous?
When they reached the commissioner’s office, Laughton said, “Thank you.”
Officer Knightly met his eyes. “You’re welcome. Anything you need.”
Laughton saw what he had taken to be nerves was actually admiration. He couldn’t understand why.
The commissioner was sitting at his desk with his eyes closed. There was a flutter in his lower lip that belied the appearance of calm. But it was the woman sitting in the chair in front of the commissioner’s desk that commanded Laughton’s attention. Grace Pattermann. Laughton had seen her on the news countless times. Seeing her in person was unreal. Small and compact as she was, she seemed bigger than anyone else in the room.
“Gentlemen,” she said by way of greeting.
The commissioner took three deep breaths, then opened his eyes. “Five minutes of regular breathing and I feel refreshed.”
“Good for you.” Laughton genuinely meant the comment, but he could see the commissioner took it as sarcasm.
“You should try it,” he said.
Maybe I should, Laughton thought.
“Madam Secretary,” Kir said.
She held up her hand. “I know you both know what’s at stake here today,” the secretary said. “But I want you to understand how dire the situation actually is. Brandis has asked the president to bring army forces onto the preserve.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Laughton said.
Secretary’s lower eyelids tense, lips tighten—mild anger
Kir put a silencing hand on Laughton’s shoulder.
“It is ridiculous, Chief Laughton. A single murder is not civil unrest, but Brandis is trying to blow this murder out of proportion. He can’t decide if he should claim it’s part of a sims war or if it’s just evidence of humans’ natural violence.”
“What’s the president said?” Kir said.
“He’s using caution, but if more robots die from this bad sim and it really did come from the preserve, then he won’t be able to be cautious much longer.”
“So, first,” the commissioner said. “Is it?”
“Is it what?” Laughton said.
“Is it tied to this bad sim, killer app, whatever?”
Laughton looked from one to the other. Would it be better to equivocate? It was all speculation right now. Just because the victim could have been the creator of the killer app didn’t mean he was. They had no evidence one way or the other. “What’s better?” he said to Secretary Pattermann. “Forewarned or plausible deniability?”
“Deniability is always an option,” the secretary said, “regardless of what was actually known. That’s why it’s denial, and not definitive.”
“Then,” Chief Laughton said, “I think probably, yes, but…”
“Shit,” the commissioner said.
“No, I needed to know that,” the secretary said. “It will make it more difficult, but at least I can plan for it.”
“Plan to have robots swarming all over the place,” the commissioner said. “I can barely keep the feds off us about the sims coming out of the preserve, as if there was really any way to control it and I don’t have a million other things to worry about.”
“A murder was going to be a lightning rod no matter the circumstances,” Secretary Pattermann said.
“Not if it was a simple domestic, and we had the man in jail within the hour.”
Laughton felt that as a slam against him, the muscles in his shoulders seizing and his cheek throbbing.
“This does make it harder,” the secretary said.
“So where are we on this?” the commissioner said. “What did the ME say?”
“Taser hit the wiring for Smythe’s arm at close range with precision,” Kir answered.
“Does that mean anything?”
“No. Not really.”
“So, do you have anything else?”
“Your tech people are at the hackers’ house, right?” Laughton said.
The commissioner nodded. “They’re supposed to report to you when they find anything.”
“We’ve got another lead too,” Kir said. “A mistress.”
“That would be better,” the secretary said.
“Who are we kidding?” the commissioner said.
“We’re keeping track of their distributor,” Laughton said, stretching the truth a little about Jones. “I’ve got people tracking down other hackers, trying to find if anyone knew these people. They were like fucking hermits. And the vic has a sister who lives off-preserve. We’re tracking her too.”
“So we’ve got nothing,” the commissioner said.
“Not nothing,” the secretary said.
“That’s optimistic,” the commissioner said.
“That’s half of my job,” Secretary Pattermann said. She turned her attention to Laughton and Kir. The force of her eyes through the red rims of her glasses inspired the conviction to deliver. “We do not have much time on this,” she said.
“Then let us go do our job,” Kir said.
“For as long as I can,” the secretary said.
The commissioner laced his hands together and ran them over the top of his head, causing the hair to stick up. “The FBI wants in on this case,” he said. “If the sims connection is correct, there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do to stop them.”
“And the Coast Guard,” the secretary said. “Since they police the harbor, they feel they have a say.”
“Anyone else?” Laughton said.
“We knew there would be a murder,” the secretary said. “People kill each other. That happens. But this sims connection…”
Laughton was so beat down that part of him felt like it would be a blessing to let the metals come in and take over, but he thought of Erica growing up in a robot-free environment, where she wouldn’t have to face arrogant metals treating them like animals or worry about hate crimes that the robot world just ignored… The idea that that all rested on him was staggering.
“What more do you need?” the secretary said.
Laughton shook his head. “I don’t know.” He thought of all those books. “They used old paper books. Maybe they had a bookseller.”
“Yeah. The internet,” the commissioner said.
“Something else to look out for,” Laughton said.
“I’m going to keep stalling,” the secretary said. “That’s my job, that’s my life, stall, stall, stall. But we need this tied up, gentlemen.”
“Buy us the time,” Kir said. “Keep us informed. We’ll tie it up.”
“Never-ending energy, never-ending optimism,” Laughton said. Something flashed on the commissioner’s face.
narrowing on the outside edges of the eyes, slight downturn of the corner of upper lip—worry
“What is it?” Laughton said.
“Nothing,” the commissioner said.
Secretary Pattermann said, “It’s good to see you in person, Chief Laughton. Kir speaks of you often. I have utter faith in you both. Just don’t put too much faith in me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Laughton said.
Kir gave his boss a respectful nod.
The commissioner had closed his eyes again and slowed his breathing.
If only, Laughton thought. If only what?
“Get going,” Secretary Pattermann said.
Nancy Enright lived in a twenty-first-century home about a mile and a half outside of Liberty’s downtown. An oversize box, the main impression it made was as an expanse of vinyl siding, remarkably clean. There was no ornamentation, no shrubbery, no porch or shutters; the point had been big, even at the expense of being bland. At one time, it had no doubt replaced an older, smaller home, encroaching on Liberty’s nineteenth-century roots, but it was the anachronism now, the rest of the block occupied by townhomes with plate glass fronts. Those had all been overtaken by vegetation, ivy and tufts of Spanish moss, piles of windswept, dry leaves beside each home’s stairs, no longer fresh or hip. Laughton wondered how the Enright home had survived redevelopment and then survived abandonment. Perhaps it had retained human residents through the years. Maybe the Enrights had always lived there, even before the preserve.
Laughton and Kir left the car in the empty driveway, and peeked through the garage windows for no particular reason outside of occupational nosiness. There were at least five bicycles ranging in size from a beginner bike to adult, the children’s bikes lying willy-nilly on top of one another. The rest of the space was given over to cardboard boxes and plastic totes. No car could fit in there.
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