“I heard they gave you a lie detector test.”
“Yes they did. And I passed with flying colors. That’s why I’ve been released on my own recognizance.”
Lie detector tests, utilizing detailed sonic luminescence brain scans, had a success rate of 97.42 percent, monitoring the activity of areas of the brain that were known to light up when someone lies. What the experts who administered the test did not know about Natalya was that she had an unusual view of what constituted reality. For her, on a very deep level, nothing in the outside world, outside her own needs and passions, had any independent existence apart from her own belief in it. This was especially true of past events, particularly those with no recorded evidence. The plasticity of her reality allowed her to state her story about Marja attacking her, and Terri protecting her, as the reality she knew.
That didn’t stop her from holding several different versions of reality at the same time, and juggling them all as co-equal realities.
“I need to know where Terri is. I bet you know. It would make me very happy if you told me.”
Jerome looked down at the floor and said reluctantly, “I think I know where she might have gone.”
Natalya smiled mischievously. “You bad boy. You’re breaking the law by not going to the police.”
He looked back at her silently.
She traced a finger on his bare desk. “I want you to give me the stealth technology that she used to get away. So I can find her and talk to her and get her to turn herself in. It’s the best thing for her. I will make sure she has the finest legal representation. It’s the least I can do for her since she was only trying to protect me.”
Jerome licked his lips nervously. He was in deep trouble. This woman was insane. She could destroy him easily, they both knew it, and that fact was thick in the air around them.
“They used contact lenses, I’ve been working on replicating them but it’s not quite ready.”
“Really,” she said incredulously. “You, the mighty Metronome, can’t copy some simple contact lenses. I find that hard to believe.”
“They use a Department of Defense back door to VuDyne. If I don’t get it just right, you might have the Department of Defense dropping down on you from black helicopters. Be my guest if you want to beta test it.”
She furrowed her brow at him, and he thought he heard just the slightest feral growl from her throat.
“I do have an alternative method of getting to her,” he said quickly. “Something that would require a lot less work on your part.”
The growl stopped and her brow smoothed. “Really?” she said expectantly.
“I have rigged up something for myself. Obviously I couldn’t just use Blink Dog like Conrad and Terri did. So I hooked it up to one of my Deliverators. It simply accesses the surveillance data passively, so there’s less chance of detection. And since it’s a Deliverator it won’t get much notice. You can use it to go to where Terri is.”
Natalya brightened. “See? I knew you would come through. Let’s go see this magical Deliverator of yours.”
He led her out the office to a freight elevator that led to the dimly lit basement. Weaving through shelves and a strange menagerie of eclectic machinery, they stopped before a Deliverator with its center sphere open. Nestled inside was a padded chair. Jerome waved to it with a robotic arm.
“It’s too small for me to fit in with my arm chair. I was just going to drive around in it and test Blink Dog until I got a larger one. You are welcome to use it to take you to Terri.”
“Great!” she said, taking a step toward it.
“Hold on a sec,” Jerome said. “I still have to secure the seat. I’ll get my tools.”
He drove off into the darkness and returned a few minutes later with a large metal tool box held in a robotic hand. He put down the box and the Deliverator lifted itself so that it was at a height that was easy for him to reach in. It then shifted itself subtly so that it was between him and Natalya. He opened the tool box just enough to reach a wrench inside.
She looked around the basement and started pacing back and forth, moving in and out of view of his work. “I did look at a couple of your books,” she said. “They were written by a bot, weren’t they? Have you ever tried to get your bot to write anything good? Ever tried to feed it Moby Dick and see what it comes up with? Or what about Crime and Punishment? Have you ever read Crime and Punishment?”
“No I haven’t,” he said, his chair bending him into the Deliverator.
“It’s a fucking stupid book,” she said. “Dostoyevsky should have called it Raskolnikov is a Fucking Pussy. I mean, you have this guy, and he’s going to kill some old lady for her money. He thinks he’s beyond morals. And he plans to kill her because he could do so much more with the money than she could. Spoiler alert, he kills her, and gets the money. Great! The plan is going great. But then he becomes this big fucking pussy about it. If he had just stuck to his original plan, if he had just continued to believe that he was this ubermensch who was beyond good and evil, he would have gotten away with it. But then he becomes this big pussy who cries to some whore and goes really off the rails when he believes that he can get redemption through suffering. Like that’s going to help anything. Like suffering is going to do any good. Suffering is just suffering. Raskolnikov the Pussy.”
When her pacing took her outside his view, something scaled and reptilian, about the size of a cat, crawled out of the tool box and leaped into the Deliverator, curling up to hide under the chair.
Jerome backed away from it and said, “It’s all set. Are you ready to leave now?”
“Yes,” she said, walking quickly around and sticking her head into the Deliverator sphere. “Are you sure this thing is properly ventilated?”
“It should be quite comfortable. Just make sure you strap yourself in.”
Natalya climbed into the sphere, wincing when she brought up her left leg. She strapped herself in, her knees up in front of her face.
Jerome smiled apologetically. “I didn’t really consider leg room.”
Natalya smiled humorlessly. “Haha.”
After the Deliverator had closed up and driven itself off to the freight elevator, Digby materialized on the ground in front of Jerome.
“Well Digby,” Jerome said, “It looks like you’re going to have a real body ahead of schedule.”
Digby stood on his hind legs and clapped his front paws together with glee.
Chapter 53
Conrad had ditched the mask and sweatshirt by the time he reached the concrete building with the hatch. The night air was thick with humidity and his t-shirt clung to him with perspiration. With all the excitement he had forgotten to bring a flashlight. He kept the door open so what little light there was from outside revealed the outline of the hatch on the floor. Taking out his screwdriver he pried at the edge.
The room lit up with a bright white light. Turning on his knees he looked up at a flashlight shining directly on his face, blinding him. He held a hand up to block the light.
“Don’t move,” a woman’s voice said calmly and authoritatively. “I know you can’t see me so I’ll tell you that I am holding a Kel-Tech KSG bullpup 12-guage shotgun. I don’t want there to be any confusion about the situation that might lead you to making any hasty decisions. Drop the screwdriver and put your hands on your head.”
Conrad did what she said. Comply and shut up.
“So you are Mr. Conrad Hicks. Last I heard you were in your apartment. I suppose you took advantage of the riots to sneak out. Very resourceful. Now, what is so important that you had to sneak out to this hatch in the middle of the night?”
He was busted. He wasn’t going to get to Terri, and now they knew how to get to her. He had really fucked up.
Wait, who are they? He realized that she hadn’t identified herself as belonging to the police or any other government agency. And then he also realized that Blink Dog showed that she wasn’t recording this, or if she was she wasn’t streami
ng it to VuDyne for authentication. Nothing she recorded here was admissible in court. Nothing he did—and nothing she did. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Mr. Hicks, I know certain things about this case and I would appreciate your cooperation in confirming some facts for me. You were going to meet with Teresa Vieira under the Bergs, correct?”
Comply and shut up. He looked up at her stone faced.
“I know that both her and your father, David Hicks, are hiding down there. Are they hiding in the same location, or separately?”
It was a good thing he had already been sweating when he got there so she wouldn’t notice the fresh sweat coming down his brow.
“It really would be best if you answered my questions.” She lowered the light so it shown on the empty concrete floor between them. She was wearing army boots and camo pants. He got a better look at the gun she held in both hands—it looked like a small canon. “My name is Detective Angel Martinez. I’ve met Teresa Vieira. I taught her to shoot.”
Conrad almost said something but then he reminded himself Comply and shut up.
“I got a good first impression from Teresa. As a cop I know people are easily fooled by first impressions, but it’s more than just that. I like her. She really seems like a good kid. What do you think? Is she a good kid?”
Before he could stop himself he said, “Yeah.”
“Do you think she shot those two girls in the Blank Room?”
“Of course not,” Conrad replied loudly, more loudly than he had intended.
“Then you think Natalya did it?”
Since words had already escaped, the rest came out as a flood, “Natalya is an evil bitch! She’s hated Marjaana for years, or course she killed them! She killed them and blamed it on Terri, because she’s an evil selfish bitch!”
In the darkness Conrad saw the shadow of her head nod, she was wearing a baseball cap. “That’s what I figured,” she said. “But we’re going to have a tough job proving it. You’re going to have to clear up some things for me. For instance, how does your father know Simon Hersh?”
“Simon Hersh? My dad didn’t know him, my dad hates rich people.”
“Enough to have him killed?”
“No! My dad’s a pacifist! So am I!”
“Well, there are too many coincidences here. Armin Shubert used this passage to get in and out of the Bergs, as did your father. By the way, how did you learn about this passage? The last time I talked to Teresa it seemed like you guys didn’t know about it.”
“I . . . I found out about it from my dad’s computer.”
“Okay. That makes sense. So have you been here before? Have you been under the Bergs?”
It seemed that the detective knew most of the story already. And she knew Terri, and believed she was innocent. Conrad’s paranoia suspected that she was saying whatever he wanted to hear to gain his trust, but he had no one else to turn to.
“Yeah, we went looking for my dad, but we didn’t find him.” He looked at her curiously. “Don’t you have a partner or something? Why aren’t you calling this in to get a search team in here?”
“Hm. I guess you can say I’m off the clock right now. I’m not working in an official capacity. Anyway, the less you know about my situation, the better it is for you. So, do you know where Teresa is hiding?”
“I don’t know for sure . . . I have a guess.”
“Well, let’s get going. I’m not going to arrest her; I just want to talk to her. I can’t imagine it will be too long before the geniuses back at central finally figure this out. The sooner we get to her, the better.”
She watched as Conrad opened the hatch. “After you,” she said.
He looked up at her uncertainly. “You sound too good to be true.”
“I know the feeling,” she said.
He shook his head and climbed down the hatch. She climbed in after him.
About an hour later a Deliverator drove up to the small concrete building. The central sphere hatched open and Natalya climbed out. She held her hand to her chest and gagged. Riding in that swaying torture chamber had made her car sick. It was all she could do to hold back from throwing up. When she composed herself she looked at the building.
“Huh. I didn’t know about this entrance,” she said to herself. She undid the buttons of her vest and from an inside pocket took out a flashlight and shone it in the doorway. She followed the beam inside.
Once the darkness had reclaimed the night, a small, scaled shape crawled out of the Deliverator and followed her through the door.
Chapter 54
Terri awoke with a throbbing, aching head. She went to bring her hands to her head but was shocked to discover that she couldn’t move them. She was lying on her back, her arms stretched out above her. Her eyes opened to a dimly lit room. She was lying on a bed. She tried to move her legs but her feet were bound to the corners at the foot of the bed. It was a four poster bed, a light colored canopy two meters above her, appearing gray in the gloom of the room. She squirmed in panic, trying to loosen herself. She was bound tight.
“Before you speak,” a familiar voice said from the shadows, “there is one important rule you should know. We don’t use names here. We use handles. My handle is The Earl. Make sure you refer to me as that. The Earl. What handle would you like to have?”
She stopped squirming and looked in the direction of the voice. The voice she recognized as Sergei’s.
“How did I get here?” She was parched, her voice came out hoarse and cracked.
“First, your handle. I have to call you something.”
He was sitting on a chair next to the bed. He was wearing a white jumpsuit. He had latex gloves on his hands and a hairnet on his head. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his gloved hands clasped together.
She said the first handle she could think of. “Bobbi.”
“Of course,” his lips moved into a smile. “You’ve met Nose. He’s quite the character, isn’t he?” He spoke in a calm, measured voice. She looked around the room the best she could. It appeared to be a girl’s bedroom—ornate vanity, the mirror a spectral sheen in the dark—an equally ornate dresser—lumpy shapes of stuffed animals, a menagerie of silhouettes. “Welcome to the Hotel Vienna. I wish you were here under better circumstances.”
This is Sergei. Sergei. I might be alright. I can still be alright. He will help me. I’ll cooperate with Natalya and he will help me. She tried to remember how she got there. With her aching head it was difficult to remember. What is the last thing? She was going to Nose’s house. She was going to hide out with him, figure out what to do next. But she never made it there. She was walking—walking through the yards—and then nothing. Then she was here.
“How did I get here?”
“We have our own surveillance system under the Bergs. We saw you both come here the first time, when you were with . . . hmm, he doesn’t have a name yet. Bob I suppose. We had Felicity Black pick you up that time. This time I sent Goose and Rock to get you. They shot you with a tranquilizer. I told them to make sure you weren’t on pavement when they shot you. The tranquilizer is very strong; you can get a serious head injury if your body suddenly goes limp over pavement. You still got a nasty bump on your forehead anyway. Sorry about that.” He smiled wanly.
She realized she was trembling. She couldn’t make it stop. What is he going to do with me?
“Earl, what is—”
“The Earl,” he corrected. “I wanted to be The Prince but that was already taken. The Duke was already taken too, but The Duke is dead now, so I’m hoping to get that name. But you have to wait some time, out of respect. So I’m just The Earl for the time being. But if you leave out the ‘The’ it sounds like I’m some Appalachian hillbilly.”
“The Earl,” she said carefully. “Why am I tied up?”
“So you won’t get away, of course. You’ve come at a bad time. This Hotel Vienna is closing down. There’s been too much attention and we have to . . . dispo
se of this place. It turns out there’s a huge propane tank in the cellar, for the restaurant kitchen stoves. It was practically full when they abandoned the contaminated zone. It’s happened before, vagrants getting in and poking around, trying to turn on the gas and . . . the mechanisms have degraded, started to leak. Boom. It won’t be so unusual. I’m the new guy, I got the dirty job of closing everything down. Cleaning up after everyone else. It’s quite a responsibility, I guess it shows they think I’m a competent person.”
“Why . . . what . . .” she wanted to ask what had gone on here—why they had to blow it up. Orgies? Cage fights? Was that it, or was it more? She couldn’t think of how to ask, or whether she should know. This room, a girl’s room, a little girl’s room. What Marja had said about Sergei before she was murdered.
He understood the question without it being fully spoken—and knew that she had answered it herself. “You must be disappointed in me. You have to understand, it’s not a choice.” His face looked pained. “This is the sort of thing we are reduced to, people like me. Watched all the time . . . people accept just about anything these days . . . just about any sort of sexual fetish is fine . . . just about. Hell, even consensual necrophilia is a thing. But there is one that they will never accept.” He bitterly lifted up an index finger. “One. I swear, the girls we brought in here were better off than where they were before. I always treated them like princesses.” He curled his index finger into his fist. “And they loved me. After what they’ve been through. When they came here, from the refugee camps,” he looked about the room, “they were treated with respect and kindness. And they loved me. Everything they did they did willingly.”
She wasn’t sobbing, but tears were streaming down her eyes into the goose down pillow under her head. She had to get out. She had to get away. She wished that she was with the police now, arrested, in a nice safe prison.
“I’ll confess to the murder of Marjaana. I’ll say whatever story Natalya wants—”
Girl in a Fishbowl (Crowbar Book 1) Page 25