When the River Ran Dry

by Robert Davies

  Ricky stared at the remaining officials, fighting back the anger and an irrational urge to demand they leave. Instead, the cold reality of a crime scene sweep was playing out before him and without regard for a loss he would take with him the rest of his life. Nearby, inspection lamps on thin tripods bathed the shadows in harsh light as the technicians finished their tasks. Ricky paused one last moment, but there was little to see; the old man had been murdered nearly halfway across the sector and far from his home above the clouds.

  Ricky backtracked in numb silence to the intersection where Bryce Avenue met Kondrachev Street, trying with great care not to hurry. The light poles above, mostly darkened by years of indifference and disrepair were missing surveillance cameras that would surely have captured Elden’s last moments and identified his killer, but Ricky didn’t notice.

  Elden lived quietly in his retirement, neither causing nor seeking trouble. Why had he been targeted by a murderous thug? Worse still, how could he have done so stupid a thing? He must have known the extreme risk, yet the truth of what waited below for an elderly Upper had not held him back. It seemed senseless and unnecessary, like so many violent crimes, but at last, only the sadness remained as Ricky went slowly across the plaza to where the land taxis idled along Kempten Road.

  The ride home passed in a blur as Ricky’s preoccupation with Elden’s murder made other thoughts fade into background noise. He was surprised when the taxi stopped suddenly, only to find the alley’s entrance off Rademacher Way. He paid the fare and shuffled down the rough pavement as evening shadows began to gather, entering his lock code slowly and deliberately. At once, he felt the presence from behind and he wheeled quickly to find Mrs. Abber, moving slowly toward him.

  “That boy, Vincent…he stopped by a while ago,” she began. “He asked me to tell you to call.”

  Ricky only nodded, holding the door for her. When she settled at his kitchen table, it was clear something was wrong.

  “Are you okay?” she asked softly.

  “Not really,” he replied. “An old friend was killed last night.”

  At once, she understood.

  “The famous man they talked about on the news this morning?”

  “Yeah; his name was Elden Fellsbach.”

  “Richard, I’m very sorry; I didn’t know you were acquainted.”

  “He was a great man; they don’t talk about him anymore, but years ago, he did some amazing things with…”

  “Yes?”

  Suddenly, the thoughts poured back in a flood. He stood for a moment, reluctant to tell her Elden’s part in the process that created Starlight, simply for the acute embarrassment that wouldn’t ease. She would hear the word and mistake Elden’s role as one contributing to Ricky’s eventual downfall, or worse, his persistent inability to divorce himself from it. He remembered plaques on the old man’s wall, lauding his leadership and coding skills in transforming a novel concept into the most intuitive, successful entertainment software in human history. But the memories carried with them still more, slipstreaming through on the tails of Elden’s image where it smiled in Ricky’s mind. He thought again of Neferure. The vids would delve into the old man’s past soon enough, he knew; it was pointless to deflect the truth.

  “Elden was in charge of a project about fifteen years ago, and it ended up becoming the Starlight program.”

  “Starlight?” she asked at a near whisper, as if others might overhear a desperate secret.

  “It’s not what you think; he didn’t have anything to do with what it’s become.”

  “I only meant he must’ve made a lot of money,” she said. “I wasn’t judging him, Richard.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied quickly, “it’s just that…well, you know everything that happened since then.”

  She smiled and said softly, “I wasn’t judging you, either.”

  They sat on his couch where the fading sunlight made pale, yellow shafts that angled through his window to the floor.

  “How did you meet him?” she asked at last.

  Ricky smiled at the memory her question stirred, turning to explain in words the images from long ago she couldn’t see.

  “When I first started,” he began, “Elden was a customer. The man who showed me how to run a hustle—Mister Anthony—brought Elden occasional packages he couldn’t get up above because of restrictions.”

  “The Behavior Regulators would’ve stopped him?”

  “They don’t tolerate Uppers breaking the contraband laws, so if they catch you, it’s confiscated and they lay on a heavy fine.”

  “What was inside those packages?”

  “Data sticks, mostly,” Ricky answered, “but he paid a ton of money for them.”

  “What were they for?”

  “I never knew—they were code locked and heavily encrypted. Mister Anthony said Elden was wasting his money on garbage no one else would want.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” She frowned. “Why would he pay so much for useless data sticks?”

  “They weren’t useless to him, I guess.”

  “But the Regulators still made it illegal to own them?”

  “Yes, and it was pretty clear having them would get Elden in a lot of trouble. Every time he wanted one, he’d send a message to Mister Anthony with some kind of code words they used only for that purpose.”

  “What were the code words; do you remember?”

  “Ex Libris.”

  “I don’t understand what that means.”

  Ricky smiled and shook his head.

  “Neither do I.”

  After Mrs. Abber was gone, Ricky returned Vinnie Bayle’s call and told him all he had seen from the empty place where Elden was found—betrayed and shot dead. Vinnie often made rounds with Ricky when both were still teenagers, remembering the old man as a thoughtful, kind person you could trust. In the days and weeks after Ricky’s father died, Elden silently assumed the role of surrogate, guiding and advising a quiet kid who moved on to his own enterprise. Though he never said so, Ricky understood Elden’s gift, standing with a lonely boy when no one else would. In the quiet of his flat, he felt the stinging regret and permanent truth his opportunity to thank the old man was closed forever.

  Two days on, there were no answers from the news vids and Ricky paced in a wide circle from his living room to the kitchen, trying to make sense of Elden’s death. He didn’t want them, but cold images of what could only have been the old man’s last moments played through in his mind. Had the killer lingered in the dark across the street, he wondered? Was the criminal an acquaintance? Perhaps Elden’s past carried with it secrets never revealed. Still, nothing added up as the frustration returned, but a loud, rapid knock on his door startled and pulled Ricky from his thoughts.

  He tapped the security camera’s monitor to find a lone figure in the dim light.

  “Mr. Mills?”

  Ricky held his breath and watched her.

  “Mr. Mills, I need to speak with you; I’m investigating Elden Fellsbach’s murder. Please open the door.”

  Still he said nothing. Dressed in a smart, gray and blue suit with raven hair pulled into a tight knot at the back of her head, a thin, shapely woman looked directly at him through the security camera. It was unnerving the way she stared; had she seen him at Elden’s murder scene, Ricky wondered?

  “Richard, I know you’re there; I just want to talk, okay?”

  There was no good reason Ricky could think of that would explain a cop’s sudden appearance at his door. His mind swirled with scenarios and none of them could ease the building fear. Had the investigations and a search for culprits fixed the police on him, he wondered? A Flatwalker, and a known street hustler to the bargain, Ricky’s position in a murder investigation could be made into anything they liked, with or without merit or evidence. Had somebody named him, simply for his association with Elden and an excuse to find and punish an outsider to satisfy the expectations of shocked and outraged Uppers?

  Slowly,
he released the lock and opened the door a few inches. She looked at the latch and said, “May I?”

  Ricky stood aside as she walked quickly to the middle of his kitchen.

  “Maela Kendrick; Special Investigations Division. If you have a few moments, I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  Ricky felt himself retreating quickly.

  “I don’t have time right now; I was just going out and…”

  “Make time, Slider.”

  Ricky looked at her for a moment, deciding at last to meet her head-on.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “Our records show you visited Mr. Fellsbach recently.”

  Ricky remembered the little boxes and a late-night adventure into the Industrial Zone.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “What was the purpose of your visit?”

  Ricky felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

  “Just a personal call; I hadn’t seen Elden in a while, so I went to say hello and get caught up, that’s all.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Kendrick leaned close and said, “Richard, I know who you are and what you do, and frankly, I don’t give a shit how you earn a living. The neighbors told us about loud voices that day coming from Mr. Fellsbach’s apartment. The surveillance footage shows you arriving with a casual expression on your face, but minutes later, you rushed away, looking very different than when you knocked on his door. That doesn’t sound to me like two friends chatting and catching up.”

  Ricky stiffened.

  “I can’t help what it sounds like to you or anyone else; Elden was my friend, goddamn it!”

  “Yes,” Kendrick said, moving closer, “and now he’s dead—somebody put four bullets into his back for no good reason. The killer rifled through his things, but that was just a show; too many valuable items left behind makes robbery as a motive pretty hard to swallow. If you want to help me find his murderer, stop jerking me around!”

  “I didn’t kill him!” Ricky thundered.

  Kendrick waited a moment while he recomposed himself.

  “We know; transit records and video replay shows you on a pod train in Sector 2 at the time of the murder.”

  “Then why are you here, Detective?”

  “S.I.D. has cleared you as the shooter, but just because you didn’t pull the trigger doesn’t mean you couldn’t have paid somebody else to do it.”

  “He was my friend; one of the best people I ever met!”

  “Save the testimonial, Richard; friends kill friends every day.”

  Ricky paced again, trying to balance his anger at Kendrick’s clear suspicion and the sadness Elden’s death had made.

  “He didn’t do anything to deserve that, Detective; Elden was a gentle man and…”

  Kendrick cut Ricky off cold.

  “You’re stonewalling again.”

  Ricky stood and spun around.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I’m hunting Elden Fellsbach’s killer and your bullshit sob story is wasting my time!”

  “It’s not a story!”

  She stood at once, leaning close with a knowing smile.

  “I saw your Starlight records and they paint a very different picture, don’t they?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I can read an account sheet! Oh, and while we were at it, I had a nice, long chat with Ellis Justman this morning, so don’t play the innocent with me!”

  Ricky looked away, but she continued without pause.

  “Justman is a gutless weasel, so it didn’t take much of a push before he told us the score; you got in way over your head with that simulation and Boris Konstantinou put you on the spot to either pay up or help him get next to your sister.”

  She paused, tilting her head so that her eyes met his.

  “Meanwhile, the debt skyrockets from that really stupid advance you took, and of course, you couldn’t get the money to pay it off. Konstantinou’s idiots deliver the news, along with an offer to forgive what you owe, so long as you convince your little sister to…well, I don’t have to spell out that part, do I?”

  Ricky shook his head slowly.

  “Next thing we know,” Kendrick continued, “you’ve got sister Litzi spirited away to some hiding place down in the factory districts; a hole where even a heavy hitter like Konstantinou couldn’t find her. Well, who could blame you, right? There was no way you’d let an animal like Boris touch her, but that didn’t get you out of it. You still owed that money, so you had to make the Walk. The networks went crazy as the betting tallies shot up with every passing hour when a nobody from Sector 4 kept going and going. Somehow, you got through alive—I have no idea how, but you survived. Boris gets paid off by the networks, you’re still upright, and little sister’s honor is safe again. Happy days!”

  She leveled her gaze and spoke softly.

  “But it doesn’t end there, does it?”

  Ricky shot a searing look in return.

  “It did for me!”

  “Oh? Sorry, Richard, but you don’t look like the kind of guy who knows battlefield tactics from his ass. Only five others have survived a Walk and any one of them would pull your lungs out through your mouth!”

  Ricky felt the walls closing in around him. Kendrick obviously watched the replays and she saw him pause when Cason’s warning came through. Could she have known of the doctor’s interference, he wondered?

  “What are you suggesting, Detective?”

  “You should’ve blundered straight into that ambush and everyone knows it, yet suddenly, you veered off and down the hill by an instinct I don’t think you have. The vid shows made a big deal about it, telling everyone about your Starlight simulation that magically turned you into a vicious, bloodthirsty bastard overnight.”

  “I never claimed that it did!”

  “You didn’t have to—the Walk organizers did it for you. But time passes and things die down. You’re back on the streets and hustling like before, but all of a sudden, your friend turns up dead. I’m guessing you went to his apartment to borrow some tokens to pay off that asshole Konstantinou, but Fellsbach turned you down and you made the long walk out to Broadridge, scared shitless and pissed-off because he didn’t bail you out. A few months later, when no one is looking, you sent somebody up to blast an innocent man and get a little payback.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “No? Then help me out, Richard, give me something to work with!”

  “I didn’t go there to ask Elden for money.”

  “Then what was it? You had to do the Walk to get Boris off your back, which should’ve meant everything was back to normal again, but it wasn’t, was it? Mr. Fellsbach ended up dead anyway. Something doesn’t add up and I’m running out of patience. I’ll ask you again, Richard; what happened when you went to Elden’s apartment?”

  Ricky looked away. Again, he felt the fear and torment from a time he thought was safely in the past. His head ached and like a chronic, recurring disease, the life he led before haunted him still. Kendrick heaped on the pressure.

  “Would you rather talk about this up at headquarters? I can turn you into a suspect again with a simple comm call, and since this is a murder investigation, I can keep you there indefinitely. I suggest you take a deep breath and consider your next words very carefully, Mr. Mills.”

  Ricky closed his eyes for a moment. There was no point in keeping from Kendrick what she wanted to know. At last, he went to the little window and stared upward into the haze, glowing from the lights of the city as it moved into night.

  “I wanted his help to fence some stuff up above.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Token transfer chips—a few pieces of jewelry.”

  “How much on the chips?”

  “Two hundred-thousand, give or take.”

  “Anything else?”

  Ricky paused a while, knowing Kendrick could easily
call down the Behavior Regulators to make matters much worse.

  “Data sticks with results for upcoming Challenge matches—dozens of them.”

  Kendrick smiled and nodded.

  “Fix sheets?”

  “Yes.”

  “And worth about three times the amount in the token chips, I would say.”

  “More than that.”

  “That’s why you took out the advance from the Starlight manager.”

  Ricky nodded twice.

  Kendrick watched him for a moment, waiting for the rest of the story. When Ricky looked away, she asked the question he knew was coming.

  “I know you run a good hustle, Richard, but how in the world did you manage to find something like that?”

  “I knew where to look.”

  “Oh, so you stumbled across a half-million in fix sheets and token transfers lying around in a trash can somewhere? I don’t think so.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “No, I’m sure it wasn’t,” she replied quickly, “but there’s no way you could fence something like that down on the streets, is there? The token transfers would have to be laundered or the Ministry’s systems would identify those chips the second you loaded them into a public scanner.”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “It’s starting to make sense, now. You had to get the stuff turned with the only people who have the means, and they’re all up there, aren’t they? That’s what you needed Mr. Fellsbach to do; find one of his wealthy friends and sell off for whatever you could get.”

  “Now you know; are we finished?”

  “Almost,” she said, standing to walk in a circle as her words played out the image forming in her mind. “Your little problem led you to Elden, but he wasn’t willing to play along, leaving you back at square one. What did you do with the chips and sticks, Richard?”

  “I put them back.”

  “Back?”

  Ricky had no other way—no clever tactic of delay that would dissuade Kendrick.

  “An empty machine shop out in the Zone where your guys got them; I knew where they hid some of their stuff, and…”

  “Who are they, exactly?”