“What happened?” Ade said. “You look like you got the mess stomped out of you.”
“The…” Mac lifted his chin toward the suspect, “perp got away from me. I’ll tell you later. What have we got here?”
“Look for yourself.”
A figure slumped against the side of Kiersten’s bed, his face bruised and swollen. “Damn it, Ade, you’ve beat him to near death.”
“Wasn’t me. I found him like that.” Ade took a step back, his head cocked at an angle.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking him for drugs, his heartbeat, respiration, implants,” Ade said, “establishing a baseline should we be so inclined as to engage him in conversation. I hate to be lied to.”
“I need to get me one of those.”
“What’s your name?” Ade asked the suspect.
“I ain’t sayin’ shit.” The man leaned forward and let out a small chuckle. Blood spilled from his mouth.
“Anyone else in the apartment we should know about, Mr. Sayin’ Shit?” Ade asked.
“I’ll clear the place,” Mac said.
“Don’t open any drawers,” Ade reminded him. “Plain view search only or the judicial net will tear me a new one.”
“Too bad you have to make a case. The law has a way of getting in the way of justice.”
Ade looked down and shook his head. Sirens roared in the distance. “I’ll secure the scene. You should have the service medics take a look at you.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Former Detective Peterson,” Ade said in a voice that didn’t invite argument, “please sit down. You’ve lost more blood than you realize and you’re probably in shock.”
“I’m not going anywhere till I’ve figured out what went on here.” Mac faced him, an unwavering gaze locked onto his erstwhile partner’s robotic visage.
“You mean besides you getting your ass kicked? You need to settle down and let them do their job.”
“I need to do mine first.” Mac turned toward Kiersten’s bedroom. The door closed behind and he leaned against it, recalling what it was like to be in there again. Alone with his anger. And underneath the anger was more anger. Under that, lifting up that inner welcome mat—black earth squirming with worms and isopods and other insects that broke down organic matter, building something from death and decay—was fear. Kiersten had only wanted to be let in. She’d said that he had constructed a life—with the booze and the Stim—where he cut himself off from having to deal with others and the potential pain they brought. Living with the fear that if he exposed himself, showed people who he really was, they would abandon him. Some part of him became convinced that he would rather be alone and unhurt rather than risk others in his life. He preferred to live with the fear. Fear that she’d betray him. Fear that she’d see him for who he was. Fear that she’d humiliate him.
Fear that she’d leave him.
That was why he ran. That was why he always ran.
The room hadn’t changed. A row of porcelain figurines lined the mantle over her chest-o-drawers. Her queen-sized bed—how many nights had their bodies tangled up in the space trying to get comfortable but still appreciating that they had it to begin with?—divided the room. On the other side was her desk, an antique rolltop. Pulling out the main drawer, he ran his hand underneath it. There it was. An envelope. Inside was a tiny spiral-bound notebook. Kiersten was running an off-the-book investigation. He flipped through the pages.
“Where’d you get that?” Ade asked, suddenly filling the doorway.
“It fell out.” Mac nudged the drawer closed and stood up.
“What are you thinking?”
“Right now that maybe one of the Carmillon paid one of their brothers…or sisters…to take care of a couple of liabilities.”
Devices measured their brainwaves, heartbeats, and body temperatures, logged retinal scans, DNA, and fingerprint info. The biocircuitry that formed the artificial intelligence of the LG Security Force headquarters in Waverton gave it a kind of low-level sentience. While it allowed for adaptive responses, more importantly, it allowed for self-repair. Mac wasn’t allowed on the interrogation floor, but Ade found him a spot up in an observation room. A great seat for his show.
In the small confines of the interrogation room, under the glare of a single column of light, the suspect seemed a lot smaller. And younger. A young man, barely a man at that. Hair styled in thick cornrows, a bruise under his left eye, and the entire right side of his face remained swollen. Tattoos, in a pattern familiar to Mac, trailed down each skinny arm. A razor-thin goatee framed his mouth; three gold rings pierced each ear. Seated in the metal chair, his knee hopped to a frenetic beat; his eyes scanned and rescanned the room at every sound; his heartbeat tripped along as if he were a hunted rabbit. Fear made everyone smaller.
“What’s your name, son?” Ade circled the table, which blocked the suspect from the door. A subtle reminder that the only way to the door was through the detective. He set a data sheet on the table between them. A subtle reminder that evidence, the truth, separated them.
“Don’t call me son. I’m not your son.” The subject reared up slightly, partly a show for the detective, partly to move away from the sheet and what it might portend.
“Yeah, well, I figured ‘what’s your name you scumbag, daring to shoot at Security Force, pain in the ass’ would get us off on the wrong foot.”
“But at least it’d be honest.”
“Honesty’s important to you?”
“Honesty’s all that we have. That and respect, but honesty’s something no one can take away from you but you.”
“What can I call you?” Ade asked again.
“Between that fancy eye of yours and my prints, retinal scan, and DNA, you probably know all my history.”
“Oh, I have that: Quavay Middleton. Twenty-two years old. Dropped out of Edu-Link at thirteen. Known associate of the Easton MS crew. Four assaults, one possession without intent to distribute, suspect in three B and Es. But that’s your government name. What do you want to be called?”
“Tin Tin,” he replied, tentatively, as if uncertain of his own name, much less what the detective’s play was. The concession to his name caught him off guard.
“How’d you get a name like Tin Tin?”
“Just sort of stuck. I can get anyone jacked in from anywhere.”
“So you’re like a walking cantenna.”
“Yeah. Tin Tin. Why you being so cool to me?”
“Well, Tin Tin, I got to say, you done right by me, so I got to do right by you.” Ade broke out his wide, fractured smile and patted the data sheet.
“What you mean?”
“I mean, here you are, right in the middle of a jackpot. This murder case is closed.”
“Murder?”
“Yeah. Turns out your fingerprints match a set of unknowns at the murder scene. Then we catch you in the apartment of the woman whose murder we’re investigating. It doesn’t matter how great a story you may have, this case is done.”
“Shit, man, that ain’t right.” Tin Tin’s eyes widened and followed the detective wherever he moved with plaintive desperation.
“Right doesn’t have anything to do with it. You should know that by now. You’re twenty-two. You’ve been in and out of the system for years. You know how the game works. How we do. Us Security Forces, we’re strictly about the easy workload: if we can close a case on your ass, we will.”
“You got it all wrong.”
Ade crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. His heavy gaze fell on Tin Tin, and the boy—he seemed more like a frantic little boy in search of his mother—squirmed under its weight. “Then set me straight. You keep my job easy, I’ll keep listening.”
“Word came from up high: Kiersten had been snitching. Had notes and recordings of a lot of the dirt we do.”
“So you were sent to shut her up.”
“It wasn’t like that. She was greenlit, all right. But she was sti
ll Kiersten. We’d accepted her as one of us. I know some folks felt this sense of betrayal and…I guess. Still didn’t stop me from feeling what I did. I loved her a little. Still, though, we couldn’t have her notes just out there. She could put all of our business out on the streets.”
“But?”
“But that ain’t what I do. I don’t handle that end of things. I’m strictly…acquisitions.”
“So you broke into her place just looking for her notes and stuff?”
“That shit could’ve been anywhere. A micro dot even.”
“That’s why they sent in my man Tin Tin.”
Tin Tin beamed with pride. “None other.”
Mac hadn’t known Ade long, but he guessed some of the pressures he may have been under. No matter how postracial they had declared their world, too many times Ade had needed to make a choice: whether he was black or blue, one of those cops who was a black man first, cop second, or vice versa. Too much of that brother-brother crap could play in some people’s heads and cloud their judgment. Feeling too responsible for fuckups fucking up, that’s what a sense of community meant to Mac. As far as he was concerned, Ade was just there to clean up their mess, not play Father Malone or something to get them to see the light.
“So who was your playmate?” Ade asked.
“Fuck if I know. I’m steady tossing the place, suddenly this kung fu heifer jumps my shit.”
“She whupped that ass,” Ade enjoyed saying.
“I got my licks in.”
“You want that to go in the official report?”
“Nah, man. You know, I’m a lover and all. Can’t be seen putting my hands on no female. Just trying to fend her off so I can do my do.”
There it was. Though guilty of many things, Tin Tin had neither the demeanor nor heart of a killer. Now a gentler touch was required. The old juices of being in the room began to flow again for Mac, the gentle tug to join Ade on the performance.
“So you have no idea who she was?” Ade sat down across from him now. Like an actor commanding the stage, he owned the room.
“None. Though I got the feeling she was there for the same reason.”
“Where were you about three forty-five last night?” Ade asked.
“Tucking my ass into bed.”
“Here’s my problem, Tin Tin: scan says we got your prints at the scene of my homicide.”
“Can’t be. I didn’t do no murder.”
“Then explain your prints.”
“Someone fucked up on your end. Carried a one or some shit when they shouldn’t have. All I know was that I wasn’t nowhere near no murder.”
“Well, you’ll forgive us if we don’t take your word on it.”
“Don’t go soft on me,” Tin Tin said with a sudden steel to his words.
“Excuse me?”
“I didn’t do no murder, so I need you and your robo-ass to put in some elbow work. Re-visit the crime scene. CSI some shit, ’cause I’m telling you, I’m innocent.”
“You may be many things, Tin Tin, but innocent surely isn’t one of them.”
“But…”
“Sit tight. I’m going to check things out. If you didn’t do this, I’ll find out. If you did, well, I’ll find that out, too.”
Entering the observation room to join Mac, Ade sighed with exasperation. Mac recognized that sigh because he’d already let one out a few minutes ago. They were nowhere. There were worse than nowhere because they had a viable suspect in hand they knew wasn’t good for the crime. But expediency often trumped niceties like what one’s gut might say or what one might intuit from years of experience. Ade paced back and forth, working off his frustration. Pausing, he tilted his head in that tell that said he’d received new information across his high-res screen.
“We got the call dump back on Kiersten’s communications.”
“About time,” Mac said.
“Told you, something had the files all but suppressed. Anyway, Baraka was the last one to call her.”
“Think he arranged the meet?”
“We could assume that. Maybe he was her confidential informant. That could get them both killed if they were caught.”
“It’s all right there, I know it. All connected somehow.” Mac pored over Kiersten’s notes, not understanding most of the technical jargon. He recognized the name that topped the manifests and memos. “What do we know about the Lifthrasir Group?”
“They’re into all sorts of weird stuff. Alternative energy sources. One of their labs had a break-in reported a week ago. Case got buried.”
“Why? Brass interference?”
“You’d think, but apparently when the Lifthrasir Group talks, the bosses jump. The group was completely uncooperative. Their alarms went off, we responded, and it was like we were inconveniencing them. Case shut down.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. When shit don’t make sense, it rubs my taint raw.”
“You are a lovely, lovely man.” Ade leaned forward, his gaze distant. He thumbed through a crate of bagged material like a child at Christmas choosing which present to open first.
“What are you doing?”
“About to log this stuff in.”
“You can’t do that.”
“It’s procedure.”
“You haven’t been about procedure this whole case. Why? Because part of you suspected this was an unusual case from the beginning. Look, I don’t understand most of what she has here, but much of this stuff doesn’t look like any technology I’m familiar with. She was onto something. Something big.”
“I know where you’re going with that science fiction conspiracy theory tone. Snippets of internal memorandums, schematics for devices, blurry photographs, and recordings of meetings? You connect these pieces one way, you get to spin the tale of business executives in league with…foreign agencies…to procure tech. You spin the same facts a little differently, you have Kiersten involved in corporate espionage—the equivalent of high treason—and needing to scapegoat somebody.”
“But we agree it revolves around the Lifthrasir Group,” Mac said.
“Yes.”
“And the Lifthrasir Group owns the Security Force.”
“They provide the funding and we do report ultimately to their appointed civilian review board.”
“I know. I dealt with them on my way off the force. But that’s what I mean. You’ve seen the kind of juice in play to pull the strings that have been yanked so far. We log this into the system, no telling what will happen to the evidence.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“Log in a duplicate. We keep the originals. Kiersten might have done that herself. Worked with the dupes while keeping the originals somewhere safe. Think about it. Why else do a pen and paper investigation? Because they can’t be monitored or traced.”
Clutching his hands behind his head, Ade stretched back in the chair. The room buzzed with activity, detectives and uniformed officers milling about trying to appear as if they were being productive in case any of the brass wandered through. Official memorandums trailed along the walls, along with case status and deployment updates. The phones chirped constantly.
“What’s he doing here?” Deputy Chief Hollander sneered with a mild derision toward Mac.
“Consulting,” Ade said.
“I meant for you to extend him a courtesy, not have him move in.”
“He helped me bring in our prime suspect, Tin Tin. Even got his ass handed to him by another suspect. Figured I owed it to him to let him see this through a little bit farther.”
“I’m strictly a shadow investigator,” Mac assured, though the chief wasn’t buying it.
“See that it stays that way.” Hollander turned fully to Ade, standing in front of the “murder board,” as the squad called the case wall. Crime scene photos lit up the board, along with victim profiles, and results streamed from the crime lab. Diagrams detailing the physics of impacts or the biology of any drugs present filled the screens. From every possible sce
nario or angle, various theories and guesses ran along the side of the board in blue. “Now we’re going to pretend that you’re still lead investigator on this case. Where do we stand?”
“We’re in the middle of interviews. Her friends. Her family. Her coworkers.” Ade fixed his cybernetic eye on him. “We’re working on trace evidence right now.”
“So what do we have?” Mac asked.
“Kiersten Wybrow goes undercover to investigate the Easton MS crew as well as an ancillary organization known as the Carmillon. The group is headed up by Chike Walter and his right hand, Elia Baum. Kiersten hooks up with Harley Wilson, and the two of them get into some shit they shouldn’t have. Our Mr. Quavay Middleton, aka Tin Tin, was found beaten at her place by perp unknown.” Ade cut a glance at Mac to keep him silent.
“Any word on the unknown perp?”
“That’s the other reason Former Detective Peterson is here. He’s going through arrays of known Easton MS crew associates to see if a familiar face pops out.”
“What’s your next step?” Hollander peeked into the evidence box, then scanned a data sheet.
“Let the suspect stew a bit then see if he gives up anything else.”
“He look good for this?” Hollander asked.
“He looks great for this. He’s been practically delivered to us with a bow on top. Everything points to him: prints on the scene; knowing Kiersten reported to us; caught at her place ransacking it for incriminating evidence.”
“Why isn’t he in holding?”
“His statement is like high grade Stim: ninety percent pure. That’s the way this game is rigged. Everything he’s telling is ninety percent truth, but that last ten percent can get folks killed. Plus, I hate loose ends and unanswered questions.”
“Well you know what? I hate open cases even more. Do I need to remind you that Kiersten Wybrow was one of our own? One of us. Murders of Security Force members do not go unsolved, especially when there is a perp who has all but confessed to it already in our custody. Close this case so that we can move on. Somebody’s gotta give the press their morning hand jobs, and I’m the man anointed for the mission. Do I make myself clear?”
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