Grave Makers (Darkside Dreams - Series 1 Book 2)

by A. King Bradley

  Oscar waited a while at an all-night diner, delivered the stick and tube to his friend's desk at seven, then went home and crashed into a deep sleep. When he finally opened his eyes, it was almost three o'clock in the afternoon and he was hungry again.

  Looking through his data slate, he found a weekly schedule that Catalea had sent him. She was free for an hour at three, so he waited until five past and then gave her a call. He was already smiling, already forming the words on his tongue. She never took longer than a second or two to answer. Not when the caller name said OSCAR GRAVES.

  This time, however, the phone just kept ringing. For five seconds, then ten. Eventually, a computerized voice offered him a chance to leave a message. He declined. He'd just head over and see her. Wouldn't take longer than thirty minutes, not at three o'clock on a Thursday.

  The streets were relatively clear. When there was a lot of traffic, he usually took public transportation, but this time he hopped behind the wheel of his faithful beater and allowed the autopilot to grumble the ancient vehicle through the city. He reached the pleasure house not long before three-thirty. The first thing he saw were three cop cars parked out front, lights flashing. Oscar got out, feeling curious, but there was no one around to tell him what was going on.

  He didn't think much of it. At a place like this, the cops are bound to show up now and then. The house management was very serious about the welfare of its working girls. Some guys still used the girls for what their kind had originally been built for, but a broken or damaged synth was a lot less likely to pull in good revenue in the business of sex.

  The usual front desk clerk wasn't in residence. Oscar blew past the desk without bothering to scan his patron card. He could do it later, on the way out.

  He went up in the elevator. As soon as the doors opened on the second floor, a hubbub of noise met his ears. The frantic voice of a woman. Radio chatter. Someone beating on a door. Oscar rushed down the hall, turning the corner to the stretch where Catalea lived.

  There they were, two cops standing outside her door and talking in calm voices to the hysteric woman. Oscar recognized her as another synthetic working girl named Irena, who had her room not far from Catalea's.

  Oscar ran over. Without thinking, he tried to squeeze into the room past the two boys in blue. They strong-armed him back, sending him into the opposite wall. He rebounded, coming back with his Private Investigator ID in his hand. He flashed it to the boys, who gave it disinterested looks.

  "I know the woman who lives here," Oscar told them. "I may have information you need. What's happened? Was it a guy named Valentine? Did he...?"

  He was about to ask if he'd come back for the kid, but then he glanced into the room and saw a seemingly lifeless foot on the floor sticking out of the kitchen. He saw a guy in a coverall and booties standing near the foot, looking around with an expression of confusion.

  Without a word, Oscar tried pushing through the cops again. Again they threw him back.

  "Back off!" one of them shouted. "If you have information, we can interview you at the station house. This is our investigation, and as far as I know we didn't hire any consultants for it..."

  "Hold that thought," a voice boomed from further down the hall.

  A familiar figure came striding into sight, clutching a tiny paper coffee cup and looking about as exhausted as some mummified corpses. It was Detective Sergeant Brooks, in the flesh. Away from his desk at last.

  "I know this man," the stout middle-aged Brooks said, gesturing at the other cops to move aside. "He's a friend of mine. Let him through. He knows not to touch anything."

  The boys in blue obeyed, stepping aside. Oscar moved in, followed by Brooks. The sergeant waved everyone else out too, calling a momentary pause in the investigation.

  Oscar brushed past the man in coveralls. He rounded the corner and saw what he had feared he would see. A resting body dressed in a silken robe, the type of pink, frilly robe all girls at the pleasure house were provided with. She was facedown, her hair a mess. Her hands were out to either side and he could tell from the way they looked, waxy and motionless, that she was dead.

  Slipping his shoes off, he stepped on tiptoes in his socks toward Catalea. He crouched low, resisting the urge to touch her. Surely, she couldn't be dead. She was supposed to outlive him and everyone else. She was supposed to still be kicking a thousand years from now, doing God knew what. Yet there she was, lying completely still, with the glow of life no longer coursing through her bio-mechanical form. Without that glow the cyber body in front of Oscar just seemed like an empty shell. A malfunctioned piece of tech. An obsolete machine whose inevitable expiration date had finally caught up to it.

  Not too far past her, in front of the refrigerator, lay the child. What was left of him, anyway. It almost looked like a bomb had gone off inside his head. His entire face was gone, blasted into smithereens. Not a visible shred of cyber brain left. A bad way to go, even for a synth. Other than the face, the rest of the boy's body seemed untouched. Undamaged. Some cold, distant part of Oscar's brain registered that as being odd, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Catalea was all he could think of.

  "Did you know her?" Brooks asked.

  Oscar nodded.

  "You were... a client of hers?"

  "An acquaintance," said Oscar. If he said any more than that, he knew he'd become a suspect. Maybe he already was.

  "The cause of death is obvious," Brooks said. "If you were to turn the body over, which I don't recommend. The face is gone, as well as most of the brain. There isn't much left of her. Very brutal. The boy, also..."

  Brooks went on talking. He'd bought Oscar's lie about Catalea being just an acquaintance and was going on in all the gory details, holding nothing back. Evidently, he was after a bit of help.

  But Oscar wasn't listening. He was still staring at Catalea’s inanimate body, silently willing her to move. To show some sign that she was still somehow clinging to life. When she failed to do so, he let his eyes drop to her neck. The robe covered up most of the injured area, but the few details he could see were immediately surprising.

  Handprints had been left behind on Catalea's neck. Marks where her once perfect synthetic skin had been damaged. A small patch of palm, and stubby fingers. Tiny hands. The hands of a child.

  "Any witnesses?" Oscar asked Sergeant Brooks, keeping his hands clasped together between his knees as he squatted there.

  "Just one. Another girl reported seeing a woman leaving with a child not long ago. She couldn't be sure, but she thought the woman looked like Catalea. Probably bullshit, but we have to check it out anyway. Other than that, no one was seen entering or leaving the rooms. Other than the usual clients. No one since late last night... We're doing some checking right now. Establishing alibis and such. Cause of death is easy. But time of death… not so much. Not with a synth. We'll have to get a specialist out here, examine what's left of her memory banks, try and take an educated guess..."

  "You work up a list yet?" Oscar inquired.

  "Yes, as a matter of fact," said Brooks, pulling out a data slate with a table of names and other information. "You should know that your name is on here, too.”

  “I was working a job for you, Brooks. You know that,” Oscar scoffed.

  “I know. Just giving you a heads up that you made the list. Shouldn’t be an issue,” Brooks replied. “Now, I know what you're going to ask next, and the answer is no. We can't share this stuff with any other party, not so early on. It could impede the investigation."

  Brooks said all this in a loud enough voice that everyone waiting in the hall would hear. He also gave Oscar an exaggerated wink. The sergeant would send his files along as soon as possible.

  Oscar wanted to feel grateful or happy. But he couldn't. All he could do was peel his eyes away from Catalea, and waddle over to the corpse of the boy; Matthew.

  On closer inspection, the destruction to the child's face was remarkably clean. Only certain components had been targeted, and
the structures surrounding those components were totally unharmed.

  "We're trying to figure out what could have caused this," Brooks said.

  "It was no bludgeoning," Oscar told him, getting his head low to get as close a look as possible. "Very fine-tuned explosive. Some sort of self-destruct function built into the head. This kid was designed to be detonated remotely. And maybe..."

  Maybe controlled remotely, as well. The thought hit Oscar like a ton of bricks. He almost fell over.

  The kid wasn't a synth after all. He couldn't be. For one, his skull cavity was completely mechanical. Other than a thin layer of synthetic tissue plastered over the outside - a disguise - every bit of him was metal or silicon. There was no wetware at all. He was just a robot. A goddamn glorified mechanical sock puppet that someone took control of from a distance and used to kill Catalea... then they destroyed every bit of evidence stored in the computerized brain.

  The boy was an android designed to look like a synth. An infiltrator. A weapon.

  The next question was obvious. Someone had been on the other end, pulling the puppet’s strings. But who?

  Who was it that wanted you dead, babe? Oscar thought as he struggled to contain the mountains of sorrow and rage that were sweltering in his gut.

  "You alright there, Graves?" Brooks questioned.

  "Yeah," Oscar lied, clearing his throat. "Looks like a weird case. I’ve got some other work to attend to right now, but let me know if you need anything on this one, will you?"

  “I might just take you up on that offer,” Brooks said. “But if I do, just know that I’d be asking for the help of Oscar the Private Investigator, not the goddamn Grave Maker.”

  “That life’s behind me now,” Oscar groaned.

  “You know what they say about old dogs, Oscar,” Brooks warned. “I just want to make sure your heads on straight.

  “I’ll see you around, Brooks,” the heartbroken PI continued, clutching his jaw as he got up and walked out, trying his best to keep his face blank and stoic. He managed to get all the way to his car, and a few blocks down the street, before he had to pull into an alleyway and weep.

  CHAPTER 5

  ◆◆◆

  Oscar wasn't hungry or thirsty. But he felt exhausted and weak. So he popped into a diner and ordered a plate of food and a cup of coffee. The waitress, an attractive brunette with a mole on her cheek, kept the cup full and otherwise left him alone.

  Oscar ate slowly, struggling to swallow each bite. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw Catalea. Each time he opened them he saw the world continuing as normal. As if nothing had even happened. The nerve of them… His jolly fellow Americans plowing down scrambled eggs and country fried steak without a care in the world. It felt wrong. Why weren’t they as miserable as he was? Why wasn’t the rest of the world as dark and cold as he felt.

  As he sat there, feeling hopeless and dead, his data slate buzzed. The sergeant's list of names. Including Oscar's. Within the next few hours the boys in blue would be getting in touch, checking out his alibi.

  Of course, he had a decent one. He was working on evidence gathering for Brooks all night. But the true strength of his alibi would also depend on when Catalea had died. If it was any time after sunrise, Oscar didn't think he could prove his whereabouts. He was at home, asleep, but who else could back him up on it? By evening, Oscar knew he could very well be a prime suspect. Even if that happened, the cops were unlikely to hound him too bad though - synths were second class citizens, somewhere between dogs and organic humans, and they wouldn't waste too much manpower on Catalea. Sergeant Brooks had a track record of looking out for synths but even he was unlikely to spend too much time chasing down the killer of a prostitute. In the end, Oscar knew that it would be up to him to avenge Catalea. He’d have to get his hands dirty. To open doors to places that he had promised to never visit again.

  There were a good number of names on Brooks’ list, but Oscar thought he could rule out about half of them right off the bat. First, he could obviously rule out himself.

  Second, there were the guys who hadn't had an appointment with Catalea any time in the last few days. While it was possible to bypass the front desk of the pleasure house, as Oscar had found out today, it was not possible to walk its halls without being spotted by at least twenty cameras. If any of these guys had been in the house in the past twelve hours, the ledger would show it. It was a current list as of an hour and a half ago, about ten minutes before Oscar had entered the building.

  Second, there were the guys whose names Oscar recognized. He knew them from things Catalea had told him. They were the gentle guys, the guys who treated her better. Some of them were guys who tended to be more submissive in bed. They didn't match the profile of anyone who would want Catalea dead. At any rate, he already technically knew who had killed her. The boy. Oscar’s gut told him to look for someone strange, someone unique enough to stand out from the rest of the potential persons of interest...

  The name "Valentine" was at the bottom of the list. There was no first name associated with it. There wasn't even a proper customer picture, the high-resolution headshot that the pleasure house took of every new member it received. All the other guys on the list had a headshot, but not this Valentine bastard.

  The ledger showed precious little information about this mysterious patron. There were some snapshots taken from security camera footage. He didn't look like anything special, just a silver fox in an expensive pea coat. Clean shaven, handsome. Looked pretty fit for his age. All the shots showed him in the second level hallway, coming and going from Catalea's room.

  Other than that, there was just an entry confirming his elite membership status and his various visits to the house. Dates and times. Probably none of it was useful. The house would never give up its full camera footage, not to a private investigator. Even the police would have to work hard for it.

  But Oscar had other resources.

  He found the most detailed and head-on picture of this Valentine guy and blew it up, focusing on his face. He saved it, then sent it on to his home computer for analysis. By the time he got home, it should have a match with some member of the citizenry. If the guy who called himself Valentine had a driver's license or ID or a passport or anything at all, the computer would find him. Hell, if he had a yearbook photo he'd probably get picked out, as long as he hadn't had plastic surgery or something.

  Oscar sipped his coffee and finished his food. When he was done, he dropped a generous tip on the table and left.

  CHAPTER 6

  ◆◆◆

  Oscar was approaching the door to his apartment, when a call came in from Sergeant Brooks.

  "Yeah?" Oscar answered, hoping to get right to business.

  "Something funny just happened a few minutes ago. Thought I’d mention it to you. A woman came to the crime scene. Never saw her before. She didn't give her name, just asked about the victim."

  "You give her anything?" Oscar asked, unlocking his door.

  "I told her we weren't ready to speak to the public. I asked who she was and why she was concerned, but she wouldn't give me anything. Then she asked about someone named Valentine..."

  Oscar froze. "Valentine? Are you sure she said Valentine?"

  "One of the names on the list. He’s the one guy we can't pin down. I was wondering if you could help out with that, actually... with all our regulations, you know, we don't have the same loopholes you private eyes enjoy."

  "Yeah, I’ll see what I can do," Oscar answered.

  “Keep me posted, will you?” Brooks replied.

  “You got it,” Oscar lied, without missing a beat.

  They ended the call, and Oscar went into his apartment. He opened the door slowly, feeling suddenly paranoid, but there was no one inside. The whole place was one space, other than the tiny bathroom, and there weren't many hiding places anyway.

  He went to his computer and switched the screen on. As expected, the search function had already spit out a result. The firs
t thing Oscar saw was the guy's face. It was his driver's license photo. On the side of the screen was all the information that would be shown on the license itself. His name was Esbert B. Hoffman. Blue eyes, gray hair. His date of birth was February 14. Valentine's day. That solved the mystery of the nickname. But far bigger mysteries remained.

  Hoffman's address was also given. As well as his job. He worked at a place called ProStar Solutions, and it seemed he held a fairly high position. The name of the place rang a bell, so Oscar dug a little deeper and discovered it was a subsidiary of the Greyson Corporation.

  Oscar’s heart skipped a beat when he saw that bit of information. This was getting more complicated by the minute.

  Tucker Berg's Horizon Group specialized in synthetic humans. Artificially created living organisms. Like Catalea. She had a lot of computerized parts, a lot of metal and God knew what else in her, but she was alive. There was biological activity in her synthetic tissues. That tissue just happened to be comprised of materials that were much more durable than their naturally occurring counterparts. She had skin; she had cognition, a personality and consciousness.

  But the Greyson Corporation was one of the leading producers of android tech. Advanced robotics. The most advanced of which were indistinguishable from humans, up until they punched your heart out with superhuman strength beyond what even a synth could exert, and fixed you with their cold, dead gaze.

  Oscar’s heartbeat quickened as he came to grips with the fact that he was likely about to go up against Greyson Corp. Perhaps even DeAndre Greyson himself, the synth-hating bastard whose depths of wealth paled only in comparison to Tucker Berg's.