Skyway Angel

by James K. Douglas

  “She worked here?”

  Theresa smiled and allowed herself a small laugh. “I don’t know if you’d call it work. She always turned down her cut of the ticket sales. She just loved to perform. I think she got too bored up there above the Skyway.”

  “One of the most well known models in the world was performing at your theatre? You must have been sold out every night.”

  “Oh, the audience never knew who she was. She had some lower end bionics she would use while she was on the ground level, and she only took roles where she could wear a mask.” She wiped away another tear. “I wish you could have seen her play Titania. She was amazing, a natural performer.”

  “We’ve heard she liked to have her theatre friends up to her apartment. Have you been there often?”

  “Yeah, she loved having after-parties at her place. Most Fridays and Saturdays we’d lock up and all of us would follow her up and hang out until the Sun came up.”

  “And what did you think of her apartment’s computer?”

  “April? She’s great. Half the time I forgot she wasn’t human. It was a little awkward that she couldn’t sit down with us, but she carried on like she was one of the group.” A brief smile passed over her face. “Sometimes, when we’d had enough to drink, we’d act out scenes from the play for her. She really seemed to like that. Is she handling all of this okay?”

  “Hardly matters,” Cassdan answered without removing his eyes from his arm computer.

  Theresa looked at me, her brow worriedly drawing up. “The company that designed her is planning to… decommission her,” I said. “She’s asked us to get justice for Angela, if we can.”

  “Oh my,” she said, covering her lips with her fingertips. “That’s awful. She’s such a sweet person.”

  My curiosity wanted to ask her why she felt a computer was worthy of the term “person,” but I stifled that in favor of getting back to finding the killer. “How many people would be at these after parties?”

  “Just the cast and crew, about fifteen people. Angela wasn’t the type for big parties, just friends sitting around talking, sometimes reminiscing about the old days.”

  “Was anyone in the group romantically interested in her?”

  Her blonde bob cut swayed as she shook her head slightly. “Not that I’m aware of. The only ones who are both available and might have been interested never made any moves. I think they didn’t think they were good enough for her. Besides, Angela never acted interested in any of them.”

  “Did she act interested in anyone else? Did she flirt with any of the patrons?”

  “Not normally, no.”

  “Not normally? Had she been behaving unusually, lately?”

  Theresa pressed her lips together, her eyes looking left, then right. “You can’t tell anyone this,” she said, finally. “If the news channels learned about this, there’d be all kinds of speculation, and she really wasn’t that kind of woman.”

  “I promise you, this is just between us.”

  “About a month ago, she asked me if she could do a burlesque performance.”

  “You think she wouldn’t want people to know about that?”

  “That’s just part of it.” She squeezed and released her hands. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Burlesque is a lot of fun. It’s very liberating. It didn’t occur to me she might have had some other motive.”

  “What else could she have been up to?”

  “Well, after the show is over, we often have a meet and greet with the audience. It’s pretty standard stuff in theatre, but the dancers always have to be a little distant, you know? We’re perfect targets for stalkers and obsessive types, so we always have to keep an eye out for the dangerous ones, and we never flirt.”

  “But Angela wasn’t so great at sticking to those rules?”

  “Well, she was, but there was this one guy she kind of took to. She talked to him a lot. He wasn’t anything special, plain looking but very clean cut.” She leaned in to make her point. “It’s her business who she wants to see, but it’s just a bit unprofessional to flirt in the building. Other people start getting ideas, start thinking ‘She’s obviously up for it, so why aren’t you?’”

  “You had to have a talk with her about it?”

  “I did, but what she said didn’t make a lot of sense. She said she wasn’t interested in dating him, that she just needed his help.”

  I felt my head draw back and cock at a slight angle. That hadn't been a response I expected. “With what?”

  “She wouldn’t say, but then he comes in a couple of days ago, interrupting our rehearsal looking for her. He was cussing and yelling, saying she had used him.” She let out a frustrated breath. “She wasn’t even here that day, but he wouldn’t listen. Zach confronted him, saying he was going to call the cops, and this dude just gets up in his face and says ‘I dare you.’ We get all kinds in here, but I’ve never met someone who wasn’t afraid of the police, especially now.”

  “That must have been scary. Any chance you got his name?”

  “No. He left right after that, but he said to give her a message. He said that when Jimmy Patel finds out about this, she’s as good as dead.”

  “I’m not familiar with that name. Any idea who it is?”

  “No,” she said, “I’ve never heard it before.”

  “Well, maybe that will give us something to go on.” I pulled my phone from my pocket. “Let me give you my number, in case you remember anything else or that guy comes back.”

  She pulled out a phone as well, and I double-tapped the small button on the side of mine to transfer my contact information. She tapped her own button to accept the information, and promised to call if anything came up. I thanked her for her time. She thanked us in return, for looking into her friend’s death.

  Back outside, the haze overhead had grown thicker, triggering the sensors on the street lights, forcing them to come on. Across the road, an automated street sweeper the size of a dump truck gathered paper cups and takeout bags, the suction making an awful racket as it passed. Warning labels on its sides and rear alerted drivers of possible sudden stops or turns, noting the machine’s use of infrared and sonar to avoid harming pedestrians. Cassdan was now looking through his eyepiece, ignoring the real world around him.

  “You didn’t say much in there,” I grumbled. “Isn’t this your investigation?”

  “You’re talented, Jackson,” he responded without looking at me. “I knew you could handle it.”

  “And what are you handling?”

  “At the moment, I’m looking up this Jimmy Patel.”

  “What’ve you found?”

  “There’s eleven of them in the city, but from the sound of things, we’re looking for the most dangerous.”

  “And that would be?”

  “James Sen Patel, head of security at Ultramarine Tech.”

  “Great,” I said, in a frustrated sigh. “I was hoping to go at least another month before butting heads with another major corporation. Let’s go ahead and check him out next. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll just admit to the murder.”

  I tapped my wristwatch to wake it up and asked it for directions to the Ultramarine Tech building, via the Skyway. It took a moment to process the map before zooming in on my location. In seconds, Cassdan and I were on our way back north, walking toward the city center.

  Cassdan chuckled to himself. “After everything that happened last week, I thought humbling major corporations had become your new specialty.”

  I gently rolled my right shoulder, feeling the dull ache within. “I’m still healing from that job.”

  “I was wondering when you were going to bring up that new arm of yours. And here I thought all you six million dollar men loved bragging about your fancy robot parts.”

  My right arm wasn’t literally worth anywhere near six million, but I got his reference and politely laughed. Design-wise, the new limb was very similar to my old one. The bones were made of high density
polyethylene, 3D printed to match the size and shape of my remaining biological arm. The muscles were clusters of coiled nylon monofilament line, controlled by the heating of nichrome wires and protected inside helically wound carbon steel braid cylinders. Unlike my old one, this arm wasn’t made of scrap and repurposed junk. AlterBionics never skimped on materials.

  “I don’t generally like to brag about getting smashed up by an armored psycho while breaking and entering,” I said, picking up my pace slightly as I spotted the nearest Skyway access point. “That wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of my career, but at least the client covered the damages.”

  I nearly came to a stop when two cops in ME-Slim armor stepped out of the Skyway’s ground level doors. Cassdan and I tried to act nonchalant as they passed by so close that I had to step to the side to avoid shoulder clipping one of them. They were nearly a block away by the time we were on the escalator, but I watched them through the glass a moment longer, just in case they doubled back.

  “I don’t have corporate funding,” Cassdan said, continuing the conversation, “so try not to lose another one.”

  “I can promise you I’ll do my best not to end up in that situation again.”

  “Good.” He switched off his eyepiece and put it away. “Let me ask you something, though. What was up with you asking Theresa what she thought about April?”

  “Just trying to cover my bases.”

  “You think April might be a suspect?”

  “Well, I don’t particularly see how she might have thrown a grown, bionically enhanced woman through a high-rise window, but we can’t rule it out yet, either. She certainly seems intelligent enough to do it. Could be that she was just tired of having to babysit all those Uppers and decided to do something that would get her dismantled.”

  “I looked through her system. The zombie attack was legit.”

  I tried to keep my gestures and tone friendly and free of accusation. “Is it possible that she hacked those computers herself so she could orchestrate the attack?”

  “She might be able to do it, but why? Do you seriously think she pointed a million guns at her own head and pulled the trigger?”

  “Every one of them missed, didn’t they?”

  The muscle in his jaw flexed, but he didn’t say anything.

  “It’s unlikely,” I offered. “I’m just saying we have to stay on the lookout for unexpected possibilities. This unnamed jerk at the theatre is still our prime suspect, and right now we need to find out how he and Angela are connected to Ultramarine and this James Patel guy.”

  Chapter 4

  My watch vibrated, alerting me that we would soon arrive at our destination, but I didn’t need the help. Painted the dark blue of its namesake, the obelisk that housed Ultramarine Tech stood out from its many concrete covered neighbors. Up the front of the building, a projector played a silent propaganda film on a loop, asserting the superiority of Ultramarine products and the greater safety brought to the city by the ME-Slim power armor. Through the thick glass of the Skyway, I couldn’t see much of the ad, but that was soon remedied.

  At the edge of Ultramarine’s Skyway lobby stood four pillars, reaching from the floor to the arch of the entryway. Each one was a small reproduction of the building itself, all painted the same deep blue color, and on all four sides of each miniature skyscraper played the same projected video, comparing the skills of standard uniformed officers to that of the much superior armored officers.

  Beyond the pillars sat a dozen chairs with thick cushions upholstered in blue cloth, situated around three tables with dark blue glass tops. An oversized half circle desk of solid black marble sat in the middle of the room, attended by a single young woman, and looking beyond that I saw a dozen more desks, all thick wood, with computer monitors and video phones.

  I stepped up to the front desk. The young woman wore an I.D. badge that said her name was “Monique.” I gave her a friendly smile, keeping my bionic hand below the counter. Bionics were as common in the upper half of the city as they were in the lower half, but there was no need to pique anyone’s suspicions, or to have them view me as any more of a security threat than I already appeared to be.

  “Afternoon,” I said. “We’re here to speak with the chief of security, James Sen Patel.”

  Her eyes glanced over my clothes. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, I’m afraid this urgent matter came up unexpectedly.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, never breaking her neutral expression, “but without an appointment-”

  I cut her off. “If you would please just tell him that friends of Angela Vidales are here to see him. We were given his name by a… mutual acquaintance.”

  She breathed a gentle huff and picked up her desk phone, dialing a four digit number. Four rings later, someone at the other end picked up. She relayed my message as I had said it, and patiently listened to the reply.

  Hanging up the phone, she said, “Security will be down shortly to escort you up. Can I get you anything while you wait.”

  As Cassdan and I took two of the seats farthest from the desk, I leaned in close to ask, “If this guy doesn’t give us anything useful, what are the chances that you can just hack the company systems to see how Patel might have been connected to Angela?”

  “Not good,” he whispered back. “If you just wanted a heavy duty takedown, I’m good enough to manage that in a day. But spy-ops? The operation might be over in minutes, but it takes days, sometimes weeks of planning, especially if you want to get in and out unseen.”

  I sat back in my chair. “Piss.”

  “I suppose we’re just going to have to rely on your spectacular charm.”

  I breathed a short laugh. “It’s good to see that neither of us has any false hopes about how productive this meeting is going to be.”

  “Do me a favor.” Cassdan leaned closer. “Don’t give them my name. I’m not looking for that kind of publicity.”

  “Not a problem. It’s pretty common for my clients to want to keep their identities to themselves. If it comes up, I’ll just give them a fake name.”

  “And what if they check it?”

  “If they check it, they’ll find out it’s fake, which will only add to the illusion that you are a man of power and authority.”

  Across the room, the elevator dinged. Three security officers in white, long-sleeve uniform shirts and black tactical pants stepped off. The patches on their sleeves matched the color theme of the building. Their faces looked stern, but I was glad to see that none of them were unconsciously touching the sidearms attached to their belts.

  The ride up with them was awkward. Five grown adults in a smallish elevator, with no one talking. The officers were probably just trying to be professional, but my silence was from not wanting to talk strategy in front of anyone that might relay that to Patel. I could only hope that Cassdan would play along.

  On the eighty-ninth floor, the doors slid open again to a long hallway. We passed two dozen doors before the officer in the lead stopped at the last on the left. He opened the door without knocking.

  The office beyond was an oversized trophy case, a museum exhibit dedicated to war. A map of Europe and Asia took up most of the wall to the right. Wide red arrows stretched across it, depicting a long path beginning in Macedonia and reaching as far East as the Indus River Valley. A circular shield and a curved sword sat proudly on display beside the map, propped up on clear plastic stands inside a glass box. Hidden lights gave the armaments a gentle golden glow.

  Along the left wall were a series of guns, ranging from an American musket to a Russian assault rifle. Each one had its own display rack and appeared lovingly cared for, ready to use at a moment’s notice. As if to confirm that concept, each one also had its appropriate ammunition displayed on a small shelf below the gun, including the black powder for the musket.

  On the far end of the rectangular room, displayed in another glass case, stood a full suit of ME-Slim power armor. I would have loved to
take a closer look, but sitting directly in front of it was an older man, filling out paperwork at his desk. His body seemed fit, with a trim torso capped by thick shoulders, and biceps that strained the rolled up sleeves of his shirt as he moved. Grey hair adorned his temples, giving away his age, yet adding to the power he seemed to command, undercut only slightly by his “hunt and peck” typing style.

  “Have a seat,” he said, vaguely gesturing at the two chairs on our side of the desk. “You said you had an urgent matter to discuss?”

  “Mr. Patel-”

  “Jimmy,” he corrected, continuing to type. “I know it’s a little informal, but I have little tolerance for typical corporate posturing and protocols.”

  “Jimmy, earlier today, as you may know, Angela Vidales was found dead. The police believe it to be a suicide, but my client believes there may be foul play.”

  “Certainly a tragedy,” he said, pausing his paperwork momentarily, “but why not just let the police do their work. They’re certainly capable enough. Are you an investigator for her employer?”

  “No.” I gestured to Cassdan. “Mr. Pondsmith is an old friend of Ms. Vidales. He just wants to make sure justice is done.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” he said to Cassdan, before turning his eyes back to me, “but I don’t see how this has anything to do with me.” His brow lowered. “You’re not connected with those protestors outside, are you?”

  “Protestors?” I asked, genuinely unaware.

  “Oh, nothing to worry about. Just some troublemakers spreading lies. Please continue.”

  “Well, our investigation has turned up some evidence that Ms. Vidales was being harassed. The harasser made a number of threats, at least one of which included your name.”

  “And does this harasser have a name?”

  “We haven’t gotten it yet, but it won’t be long.”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t be of much help without a name. If you get one, feel free to come back to let me know who’s been making false threats in my name.”