by Alex Hughes
“Why would it bother him?” Michael asked.
“Strong electromagnetic fields and Mindspace interact. Pay attention next time we visit the morgue. The coolers give off a . . . Well, it’s faint, but it’s unpleasant. And in the grand scheme of things, they’re not even that strong. If you want to get away with fooling me about something, that’s the time.”
I found my footing on the regular ground and turned left. There, in a single sheet of artificially grown ruby, the words FLAWLESS ARCHITECTURE appeared, raised and in black. And I’d thought the Guild was pretentious.
“Why are we here again?” I asked Cherabino as we got closer to the smoked-glass wall. “I thought we already interviewed this guy over the phone.”
“I’m out of leads and feeling thorough. The Dymani Systems interviews were a bust. Besides, sometimes people will tell you things a few days later they won’t tell you at the time. And maybe we have better questions.”
Cherabino pushed through the ruby-handled door, Michael behind, and I hustled to keep up.
“DeKalb County Police Department, Detective Cherabino and team,” she was saying as I finally entered, as she flashed her badge. “I need to speak with Dan Hamilton’s supervisor. I believe his name is Edelman.”
The receptionist, a striking woman in her twenties with an expensive dress and hair dyed to mimic the hide of a zebra, looked closely at her badge before picking up the phone.
* * *
Edelman was a short man and very wide, bald with white eyebrows, looking like nothing so much as a shaved short Santa. He was even wearing a red shirt under a plain gray suit with white trim. But when I got closer, the impression changed—his nose was red, with the broken-blood-vessel look I associated with heavy drinkers, and the circles under his eyes were deep and dark. He slumped as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and even a few feet away, even with him practically mind-deaf, I felt his worry and anxiety hit me like an anvil dropped from a high building. Huh. It was late in the day for me to be picking up even strong emotions without trying. Either he had a nontrivial Ability level or I was better today. A lot better, for no good reason.
Edelman’s office was a small space, three metal walls and a smoked-glass front, a large wooden desk sharing space with an architect’s table in the background. There was a great deal of dust on the architect’s table but none on the desk.
Cherabino shook the man’s outstretched hand, settling into the chair he indicated while Michael and I took up standing positions near the door—now closed, at Edelman’s request. Introductions were accomplished quickly, and then Edelman spoke.
“I told you over the phone, Detective, Hamilton hasn’t shown up for work. He’s still gone, and good riddance. After this long without calling, it’s mandatory termination anyway, and after that blueprint went missing . . .”
Cherabino said, “There was a blueprint missing?”
“Yeah. We found it a few days after he flew the coop, and I can’t prove anything, but I’m sure the bastard took it. He’s always doing something sneaky, and I’m—”
“Why is this important enough to mention in your first sentence?” I asked.
Edelman blinked. “I thought you knew about this.”
“Obviously we don’t. Catch us up, please.”
“I called the TCO and everything. You can’t possibly say that—”
“We’re not here to bust your chops, Mr. Edelman,” Cherabino cut in. “We’re trying to find out what happened to Emily Hamilton.”
The TCO? What in the hell were in those blueprints?
Edelman sat back and took a breath. I could hear him cursing a blue streak, loudly, in his thoughts. “No, no, I guess I deserved this. Giving the whole team unrestricted access to the archives, you’d think I’d know better. But it seemed stupid to tie people’s hands from doing their jobs, and there’s some good old designs there you can sell like new with just a little modification. I’ve always said, recycle, reuse. It’s cheaper for everyone.”
“The blueprints?” Cherabino prompted.
“They’re perfectly legitimate business records. You can’t possibly think we’re in violation of the Tech Control laws. Like I said, I called the TCO. I’ll give you the case number. You can verify it.”
This guy was scattered and worried. I took a step forward, putting a hand on Cherabino’s chair so she’d let me run with it.
“Edelman, is it?”
The man nodded hurriedly.
“Edelman, no one’s here about the Tech,” I said. “Just tell us what the blueprints are for. An old data center?”
He shook his head. “One of the big computer-driven hotels. There’s a whole series on the proper installation of the resident supercomputer Tech system in a decorative bank along the spine of the building, you know, where you could see it from the elevators. It’s a gorgeous piece of architectural history. It’s worth studying, just for the design! But the blueprints—only the Tech pages were stolen. You have to understand, only the employees ever get access, and we have the strongest security available by law. I never thought—”
“Why do you think Dan Hamilton was the one to take the blueprints?” Cherabino asked. “You said everyone had access.”
Edelman, if even possible, looked more upset. “One of the receptionists was cleaning out his desk this morning. She came across—she saw . . . ”
“What did she see, Mr. Edelman?”
“A corner, torn off, from where the wood in the desk drawer had pinched it. It has the correct serial number. The only serial number. We don’t repeat them, you see. We can’t. In three hundred years of business, we’ve never repeated the number. That son of a bitch stole from us, and worse, he stole something that could cause us regulatory trouble. If someone hadn’t gone to look for that exact file, I shudder to think how long we might not have noticed it missing.”
Cherabino sat forward in her chair. “So, when did you notice it exactly? How long had it been gone?”
“Like I told you, a few days after he stopped coming to work. It could have been missing for weeks, I suppose, but the bastard disappeared. Obviously he took it and ran.”
I backed up and let her do her thing, squeezing as much information from this round, earnest guy as could possibly be done.
I was starting to think Cherabino’s case and the hijackings were related by more than my suspicion.
* * *
I called the hospital and got bumped around among four departments until somebody, somewhere bothered to look up the records.
“Jonathon Swartz?” The file clerk made a “hmm” sound.
“That’s right.” I gave him the birthday. “Where did they put him?” Maybe if I was lucky, they would transfer him to that office building across the street and I could actually visit.
More “hmms” and the sound of rapidly shifting papers, then, reluctantly, a few keystrokes. Finally: “Ah. It says here he’s been released after medic therapy, whatever that means.”
“Released?”
“As in, on his way home. Probably a relative took him home—they usually make a note of it if someone had to call a cab.”
“He’s okay?”
“I’m giving you the information I have, sir. If there’s a follow-up scheduled or an ongoing issue not in the chart, I wouldn’t know about it.” He paused. “Who are you exactly again?”
“A friend,” I said, and hung up the phone.
I grabbed my coat from the back of the chair and looked at the clock. Bellury had already left, but it was close to quitting time—maybe I could get Cherabino to drive me over there.
* * *
Ten minutes later, I was sitting outside her cubicle impatiently while she finished up her current project. Probably Swartz wouldn’t even see me. Probably he was sleeping, and Selah was awfully protective, or had been, the one time I’d actually seen her after . . .
I took a breath, told myself there wasn’t time for a cigarette no matter how much I wanted one, and sur
e as hell I wasn’t going to Swartz’s with thoughts of my drug echoing in my brain.
The patch in my head was bothering me, bothering me a lot. I poked at it, despite the sharp pain it radiated down my spine. I poked at it—
“Stop that,” Cherabino said from the end of the cubicle. She was standing up, pissed. “Whatever that is, stop it. If you ever want us to actually leave, I have to finish this and I can’t do that with whatever that is going off like a buzzer. Now, are you going to let me do my job or what?”
I slumped farther down in my chair. “Stopping now.”
She glared at me for one final moment. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
But she was still standing there.
“What?”
She blew out a breath. “It’s going to be another twenty minutes, probably. If you’re bored you can work on that PI paperwork that I got you.”
I straightened in the chair. “When did you get me paperwork?”
“This morning. Bellury keeps them on hand for the disability folks and retirees. If you’d told me you cared sooner . . .”
“I didn’t know I cared sooner,” I protested.
“Well, if you want them, they’re in the front file in the top cabinet drawer. Try not to make a lot of noise, okay?” She paused, and for once I actually saw real concern in her. “Swartz is going to be okay, you know that, right?”
A hundred responses went through my head, some flippant, some real and full of despair and horror and hope.
“He will be. Now do work and we’ll go see him so you can see for yourself.”
In a voice that cracked, I choked out, “Cherabino?”
“What?”
I took a breath. “I found that Irish teleporter we talked about. He says he’ll meet Jacob next week. He doesn’t want me there that first time, says I’ll throw off his tactics. But you can go, he said.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I still need to work right now.”
“I know.”
She pulled out my old chair—now Michael’s—and held it out for me.
I found the right papers and sat down.
Two minutes later, Stone was in my head, the intrusion like a clanging dissonant bell.
I heard what you did with the payment, he told me. You realize that’s only a tenth of the value of the service.
I swallowed, hard, and tried to raise shields—I wanted him out, not that that would happen—but I also wanted Cherabino not to overhear.
Even less than that, Stone continued. And now you’ve opened a tab. Unless you have a little over two million ROCs in change sitting around, you need to talk to me about alternatives.
You said you’d announce yourself, not start up a marching band in my skull, I responded. And two million is ridiculous. It was three hundred thousand ROCs when I left, tops.
I’m sorry. He modulated his tone, getting a lot quieter. That was ten years ago, before the cardiac shortages, and the Guild rate increases across the board. That’s still the bill.
I hope you’re proud of yourself for fleecing me. Now get the hell out of my brain.
This isn’t over, I heard.
Like an expert file clerk, he fanned through my surface thoughts quickly, pulling out details and emotions I hadn’t realized I had. Thirty seconds of unwanted, unnecessary scanning—
You agreed to this.
—and then it was over.
I got my breath. Cherabino was already on her way over, sensing something wrong. You don’t have to be an asshole about it, I told Stone.
And for a moment, I felt the comment register and his regret in return.
I’m doing my job, he said. And I’m doing it fairly.
And then he was gone.
Cherabino sighed. “This had better be a genuine problem and not a return to the distract-Cherabino game.”
I ran my hands through my hair and tried to figure out how to explain—without admitting I was working with either the Guild or anyone else in my head. I couldn’t figure out anything.
“I’ll be downstairs when you’re ready.”
She took longer than she’d said, of course. Cherabino was a workaholic, and stressed lately. So I called Swartz from the phone near the coffee closet, the hallway empty. It was past quitting time for first shift, and the next seemed oddly deserted. I was wondering if they’d been gutted in the layoffs. It was getting so the other cops wouldn’t even look at me.
The phone rang.
“Hello?” a gruff voice answered. Swartz’s voice.
Something inside me suddenly relaxed. “Hi, it’s me.”
* * *
Cherabino showed up downstairs maybe forty-five minutes after I hung up, her hair mussed like she’d been fidgeting with it. There were deep circles around her eyes, and her forehead was creased. I could feel her worry, frustration, and anger trickle down the Link along with her exhaustion.
“Are you okay?” I asked as she settled against my borrowed desk, the downstairs eerily deserted, the large panel of windows in front of me dark with night. “What’s worrying you?”
She rubbed her head. “Remember the pushy woman from the funeral? The one who had the sexual harassment complaint against her?”
“Yes?”
“Well, the interview didn’t give us any more information. Andrew got her financials to check out, and she didn’t have the contacts to trade for Sibley’s services, as near as we could tell. We ruled her out while you were at the hospital. And the Hamiltons’ finances were too messed up to tell anything, Andrew said, while we’re talking about financials. Right now we’re thinking it’s one of the other poker players—we’re still tracking him down—or Edelman, if not Hamilton himself.”
I waited.
Cherabino sighed. “Anyway, I got a call from a detective out in Chamblee. The woman has been murdered. Dead, in her condo, has been for days. It took the detective this long to trace the connection to our case. Anyways, he says the ME found something weird and he thought I might care to come see it. I told him we’d go in the morning.”
“‘We’?”
“It’s something about the brain. You did pretty well with the brain stuff before, right? And tonight we have to go see Swartz.”
“It’s too late. Selah said before we had to be there before nine if we were coming.”
Cherabino paused. “You should have told me. Work is not as important as—”
“I talked to him. On the phone.”
She settled down on the edge of my desk, softening. “How is he?”
“Groggy. But Swartz, if you know what I mean.”
“That’s good to hear.” She waited, but I didn’t have anything else left to add. “I’m sorry. I should have asked.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you—”
“Can we get some dinner?” I asked. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”
“There’s a new pizza place a couple blocks from here.”
“That sounds great.”
The dinner was greasy and terrible, but Cherabino laughed for the first time in weeks, laughed full and long until her joy cut me to the core. I went home, to my empty bed, and tried very hard not to want what I couldn’t have.
I called Swartz in the morning and talked to him for a long, long time.
CHAPTER 20
I met Cherabino at the Chamblee morgue bright and early. It looked a lot like the DeKalb morgue except that everything was new and squeaky-clean. The quantum-stasis refrigerators buzzed louder in Mindspace, the medical examiner was thinner and blond, but other than that it could have been the same place.
Detective Strangely, the guy who called us in, was waiting for us inside, next to a long stainless steel table and the medical examiner.
“I appreciate you calling us,” Cherabino said. “The funeral home already have the body?”
The ME shrugged. “There wasn’t a reason to hold it. We have plenty of pictures and a few organ cro
ss sections. Strangely tells me you might be interested in the results.”
“I would at that,” Cherabino said.
The ME fanned out a number of pictures on the steel table, pictures of internal organs and butterflied brain, heart, and lungs, and grisly measurement tools. “Like I told Strangely, she seems to be in good condition for her age. Minor plastic surgery, the usual amount of scarring on the lungs from living in the city, a healed multiple fracture to the right tibia that required surgery and implanted cartilage, an artificial kidney, and extensive dental work. All items that could be found in any forty-five-year-old woman in the world. She was prediabetic. What I can’t tell you is exactly what killed her.”
Cherabino perked up. “And why is that?”
“Well, her heart stopped. Her tox screen is clear, and there doesn’t seem to be any cardiac abnormality or issue that would cause it to stop suddenly, on its own. There’s no apparent trauma other than a minor blow to the head around the time of death. Not long enough to bleed into the skull; it might have been a concussion, given more time, but it definitely did not kill her.”
Detective Strangely held up a hand. “She was found on her kitchen floor, a spot of which had blood on it. Looks like she fell headfirst.”
“Result not the cause, then,” Cherabino said. “What did happen? Do you have any clues?”
“Well . . .”
“Well, what?”
The ME shifted. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Like what?”
She shrugged and pulled out another photo, and a petri dish with a small gray sample on it. “You know the hindbrain? The seat of breathing and heartbeat, all the things we never think about? In this case, well, it’s so much mush.”
“Mush?” I interrupted, stomach sinking. “Are the cell walls intact?”
The ME frowned at me. “It looks like paste. It won’t hold up to pressure, and it’s definitely not cancer.”
“Yes, but are the cell walls intact?”