Damage Time

by Colin Harvey

  "You seem to have got this the wrong way around, John. They got their own files – they don't need ours."

  "Yeah, well." Marietetski calmed slightly. "They can pull our eyepieces any time."

  "Only if they got probable cause. Did you know she studied psychology at CCNY too?" He shoved a printout at Marietetski, who ignored it for at least twenty seconds.

  When he glanced at it, Marietetski grunted. "My degree's in Criminal Psychology, which at least has practical value. Her degree's in General Psychology. Dilettantism."

  "Snob."

  "Let's focus on the memory-ripper, Pete."

  "OK. What we got?"

  "The seven subscriber conglomerates in the Pacific net-havens have – as one – refused to release lists of either their subscribers or their customers. The Swiss have come through, though. I'll give you their list. You can go through them, and match them against purchases – see if there are any downloads that match the various victims that we have on file."

  The rest of the morning was spent poring over a customer list. Marietetski pulled up the client's details, while Shah scrutinized each of their purchases, looking to see if any of the clips bore the hallmarks of a rip, or could be tied to their amnesiacs.

  It was close to a sweltering noon after hours of pointless, frustrating work when Shah's new eyepiece chimed again. At the same moment Captain van Doorn appeared by their desks. "In my office, Shah – now. You too, Marietetski."

  Shah said, "Call you back." He followed the Captain into his office. Van Doorn said, "Close the door behind you," and Shah pushed it shut with his foot.

  Van Doorn said without preamble, "You're reinstated."

  "Great!" Marietetski punched the air. "What's changed?"

  "Seems our friends the Feds were doing a random audit," van Doorn said. "Yeah, right, I believe in coincidences like that like I believe in the friggin' Tooth Fairy. They turned up a file on Aurora Debonis, buried beneath the public one. Seems our lady weren't quite such a lady, isn't that right, Shah?"

  "Huh?" Marietetski said.

  Shah felt his stomach plummet and his face burn. Jesus, here it comes. Now they know. I can just hear the comments; 'Shah so dumb he can't tell a freak from a real woman. Or he so horny he don't care no more.' He stared down at his shoes. "Dunno what you're talking about, sir. Far as I can remember – and it's all a bit hazy – we never got as far as getting her panties off. She made a disgusting suggestion–"

  "Yeah, you've had such a sheltered upbringing, Shah."

  Shah repeated, "She made a suggestion I thought disgusting, sir, and it went downhill from there. Shouldn't be surprised though: kinky in one way, kinky in another." He looked up at Marietetski. You dare make a joke, John, I'll freaking kill ya.

  Marietetski seemed to get the silent message. "So this uh, Aurora was transsexual?" he said. "And the corpse in the morgue is a real girl?"

  "Seems so," van Doorn said. "The real Aurora Debonis was – maybe is – intersexual, born with both male and female sexual organs. They used to cut one or other of the extra off, but then 'bout forty, fifty years ago they eased back on that. Decided to let the children choose for themselves. Most go one way or the other, but a few like the best of both worlds." Van Doorn added, "So the attachment said. Feds thought maybe we needed a bit of explanation. Dumb flatfeet like us. Still, it was lucky they was doing a random audit, heh?"

  "Sure was, Cap," Shah said levelly, mentally breathing a sigh of relief. If it weren't for her balls I'd be so damned pleased it weren't her on the slab. Shame, too. She weren't just a looker, she was nice. Shah couldn't remember the last time a woman with that combination had been interested in him. Course she was interested, dumbo, she was doing a number on ya. But he said only, "What now?"

  "Get out of my sight is what now. If I find out you had anything to do with this, or you been holding out on me, you'll swing from the nearest lamp post." They turned to go, Shah leading. As Marietetski was following out through the door, van Doorn added, "Course, while it rules out the victim being who we thought, it opens up a whole new set of questions."

  Marietetski turned. "Who was the girl?"

  "Exactly." Van Doorn added, "No wonder her counsel demanded proof of death, and refused to divulge any information until we confirmed her identity – which we couldn't do 'cause we couldn't raise any next of kin." Van Doorn frowned. "Bigger question is how was someone able to hack into NYPD databanks and change her identity? And why?"

  Shah wandered back, filling the doorway, his presence easing Marietetski further into the office, "Maybe my idea it was to fix me up wasn't quite so paranoid. Maybe they hacked into some of the Federal files as well. Did they do a match?"

  "That's what set off the klaxons," van Doorn said. "Then they checked deeper. What's this about a fix-up?"

  Shah explained his conspiracy theory. Van Doorn frowned. "I'll ignore you talking about it to Marietetski. It's a stupid and unworkable rule. Only some moron in Human Remains could come up with something so half-assed." He thought for a moment. "Not only do we have the case that IA took off us tossed back into our lap, we got an extra one. But you stay the hell away from this. It's a clear conflict of interest to have you investigating a case you're involved with. It's going across to Beckett and Hughes. They'll quarry through every case you've been involved with." The captain took a deep breath. "I'll have them swear out a warrant for Aurora Debonis' arrest for ID fraud."

  XI

  The torches and burning crosses flicker and flare in the hot, humid night, casting malevolent shadows that caper on the white walls of your house.

  You had thought that the people of the United States had left such practices behind; you've taught for years in your college classes that racism is on the decline – but now you see the stark truth. Civilization is just a wafer-thin veneer over savagery. You've done the best you can, but now you see with despair that it's not enough.

  Your hands are tied behind your back by one of the whitecowled mob. "Damn nigra," comes a growl from one of the nearby men, and you know that voice. You don't know the man's name, but you've seen him hanging around on street corners in nearby Charleston, glaring at you as you drive your old hybrid Prius off to the CSU campus, heard him spewing racist filth. Yesterday you waved when he flipped you the bird, and you wonder whether that single act of defiance called their wrath down upon you.

  There's been too much talk of end times lately, too often words like 'apocalypse' and 'rapture' have been bandied about, but you thought that words were all they were. Armageddon couldn't come to Kiawah Island.

  Until the rock through your kitchen window tonight. You raced out with your shotgun in hand, for even a good Baptist has the right to defend himself. But chasing the intruder around to the front of the house, you realized with a stomachplunging jolt that all of President Obama's good words mean nothing now, when times are hard.

  "You kin take a few of us down with you, Perfessor!" One of them shouted. "Or you kin lay that gun down, in which case we might spare your bitch and pups!"

  You recognized the technique of dehumanizing the victim, to objectify them by using animal imagery, but didn't know how to talk your way out of it. From the moment when you heard Millie and the children screaming in the house you knew this was no ordinary burglary. You turned, but before you could move white-cowled men moved to cut off your return.

  "Put the gun down, Perfessor!" Another voice shouted. "We ain't gon' ask nicely a third time!"

  You guessed that they want you alive for a purpose. Dead you can't help Millie or the kids, so you tossed the weapon on the ground. Six bullets wouldn't dent the mob's numbers.

  As they bind your hands, you see Millie dragged out of the house, while a couple of burly men each carry your struggling, squirming children. "Why?" You shriek, the word sandpapering your throat. "We've been good neighbours, we've done none of you any harm!"

  "You speak when you're spoken to, nigra!" A fist slams into your nose.

  "These are th
e end times!" Someone bawls. "We should cast them out, the sinners!"

  You recognize words like 'sinners' and 'cast out.' Just as Satanism inverts the Christian lexicon, so these people have taken the Lord's words and twisted them to their own ends.

  But the phrase implies exile, and for a few moments as they drag you down the street, you hope that you're simply being run out of town. You can cope with that. Lord, give me the strength to come through this, you think. I shouldn't look to horse-trade, but I'll even take a tar and feathering if you let Millie and the children come out of this alive.

  Too late, you realize as they march you around the corner and you see the crosses, two of which already have bodies dangling from them. The men's mouths twist in screams drowned out by the rumbling of the mob.

  "Damn nigras, setting' yore-selves up as Gawd Almighty!" The man you belatedly recognize as their leader yells. "Yew and yore Bar-ack Hossein Obama, doing his deals with them OPEC devils to make our country weak!"

  "For God's–" a fist punching your mouth ends your protests.

  "Yew and yore kind wanna set yorselves up in place of the Almighty with your soft, twisting words, well, you kin suffer what the Lord suffered. He gave his son, yew kin give yores Perfesser!"

  They drag little Barack to the central cross, and you wonder how it could have come to this so quickly. You squirm and struggle, but the hands won't let you look away, for all that you writhe.

  As they lift your struggling, yelling son into place, you would give anything to be able to forget what follows.

  XII

  Wednesday

  "Wow." Shah took a deep, juddering breath as he unclipped the scanner.

  "What was that?" Marietetski said. He hadn't seen the clip, only its effect on Shah.

  "That's maybe the oldest clip I've ever seen," Shah said. "It's listed as a burn, but the documentation looked a bit off, so I thought I'd better check it out, especially as some of the properties had the same qualities as a rip. But extreme trauma can do that as well as the actual ripping process. Turns out this guy was one of the earliest victims of the God Wars down in South Carolina."

  "Ew." Even now, mention of the Deep South made many New Yorkers – secularists and faith worshippers alike – deeply uneasy.

  "Yeah." Shah rubbed his eyes as if that would clean the memory from his head. "Guy was the head of a nice, middle class, well educated, decent black family – who didn't know their place, according to the bigots. So when times got really hard down there and people needed scapegoats, guess what old-time prejudices crawled out of the shadows?"

  "Who?"

  "Some bastard offspring of the Klan mixed with backwoods evangelists talking up the End Times. Poor bastard saw his son crucified, so when memory rips became available, he went for it. Course, rippings are illegal, so they had to doctor it."

  "Anything tying it to other open cases?"

  "Nothing obvious. I guess all we can do is slap a subpoena on the provider to take it down, and red-flag the memory itself so no more sickos can twist off on how it feels to see your family attacked." He looked up. "Hey, Cap." Amazing how such a big man can move so silent.

  "Got a call from Organized Crime Unit last night," van Doorn said.

  "What did they want?"

  "There was a little, uh… friction… between some Koreans and some Italian kids. Not big enough to interest them, except they've heard whispers that a couple of the Koreans are friends with Sunny Kotian. And that one of the kids had a ripper slapped to his head. Luckily it didn't take properly. Keep your eyes and ears open for whispers of a fragment, will ya?"

  "Sure, Boss," Marietetski said.

  When van Doorn went Shah said, "You taking it?"

  "And get my unsolved pushed up by another one? I thought you were the rebel who doesn't play the numbers game?"

  "I might be a rebel, but I'm not that stupid. I'm not volunteering to take on one that we've got no chance of ever solving."

  "I guess we flip for it." Marietetski took a ten yuan piece from his top drawer. "Heads or tails?"

  "Let me look at that." Shah's beckoning fingers spidered at Marietetski. He caught the c oin and looked it over, squinting at both sides. "I'll toss. Heads or tails?"

  Marietetski grinned. "You do this most every time. Makes no difference. Heads."

  Shah flipped the coin, caught it and stared at it. "Damn!"

  They had barely got into the rhythm of checking downloads flagged as 'of interest' by the subroutines when Shah and Marietetski's eyepieces chimed together.

  "Gentlemen," said an avatar in each man's screen. Shah recognized the voice, but not the image of a prosperous man of indeterminate race in his mid-thirties. "I'm Stephen Harcourt, counsel for Ms Aurora Debonis."

  Shah grinned, then wondered whether his own avatar looked unprofessionally smug, and finally gave up worrying.

  "We're not–" Marietetski started to say.

  Shah interrupted before he could say the people you need to talk to: "Good morning, Mr Harcourt. How can we help?"

  "I understand that an arrest warrant's been issued for my client."

  Shah thought, why'd it take so long? He had a suspicion that something wasn't right about this case. Normally it should have taken only an hour or so.

  Harcourt continued, "I'm petitioning the State Legislature to quash the warrant and to slap a confidentiality seal on any potential discussions about her."

  "Her?" Shah said, "Don't you mean him, or it?"

  Harcourt simply bulldozed on, "My client has not only done nothing wrong–"

  "Hang on! Marietetski shouted, "She has false information on her ID data!"

  "–but as the victim of a mistake by the NYPD, she is probably due for compensation. As to the supposed offence of providing false information, the Supreme Court agreed in 2042 that in the event of someone put at risk due to their beliefs or their background is entitled to issue a public ID, and a private one." Harcourt paused. "What difference does keeping her gender out of the public eye make? None whatsoever. Your investigation is to catch a killer of a young woman incorrectly identified as my client, not fish for juicy details about her before chatting about them on the web."

  "That's offensive," Marietetski said.

  "That's happened in the past, Officer. Forgive me wanting to prevent a repeat of it." Harcourt paused. "Any public investigation would be a de facto punishment, taking the very steps that Aurora has sought to avoid – public exposure. Just listen to Officer Shah's Neanderthal comment – 'it', Officer! I'm more an 'it' than she is. You will cease this witch hunt immediately." The line went dead.

  Their eyepieces chimed again. "In my office," van Doorn said.

  When they entered van Doorn was sitting, eyes closed, eyepiece off, pinching the bridge of his nose. Eyes still closed he said, "Judge's chambers called to say the warrant's been quashed. No reasons given. Proceedings took place in camera."

  "Crap," Marietetski said.

  Shah privately thought, Just as well we didn't spend too much time on it. They were already in danger of being blizzarded by cases only tenuously linked to their specialty. But he said instead, "Is she still a material witness? I mean, you don't usually get used as an alias for a murder victim unless you have some connection to the killer or the real victim."

  "You prove a link," van Doorn said, opening his eyes and replacing his eyepiece, "you can make a case for subpoenaing her, but it's chicken and egg. How you going to prove it? Get back to your core cases, and forget this one."

  The rest of the morning was as enjoyable as quarrying rock; none of the overnight proliferation of new clips seemed to jigsaw into any existing cases, but instead simply created new dockets.

  At lunchtime Marietetski said, "Been announced that Federal funding's been withdrawn for Tosada's longevity project. The newsrooms are quoting the government line that the last thing the Earth needs is an immortal population mushrooming exponentially."

  Shah grunted, and kept studying the clip he was looki
ng at.

  He left early, unable to say why he felt so tired and disillusioned, but on returning home, he found no solace there.

  Leslyn and Doug were on the terrace tending the plants, as they often did in the afternoon; below them the commuters' bickerings were far enough away that they blended into one homogenous hum, a mere ghost of the chaos of Shah's younger days.

  "Hey," Shah said. "How was today?" The greeting was a formula, abandoned temporarily at the weekend. That alone was an indication of how much Shah's arrest had rocked the equilibrium of the marriage.

  "Same as always," Doug said. That too was formula.