“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..."
&nb
sp; 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 first 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.
If it had been anyone but Catalea, Oscar would have called Brooks, given him the info, and gone about his life. This was some hairy shit and only an idiot would delve into it.
But it was Catalea. And this was personal. The one light left in Oscar's life had been extinguished far before its time. The one thing that made him happy was gone. Everything had been taken from him. Everything but his life.
His course of action was obvious. And he had nothing to lose but a job he hated and a life he no longer cared about.
CHAPTER 7
◆◆◆
Esbert Hoffman's place was on the furthest edge of town, closer to wilderness than city. He lived at the end of a long, level street. Sun-dappled pavement, twittering birds, car doors shutting softly, lawn sprinklers going chitter-chatter, children laughing. An upscale suburban paradise.
The Hoffman estate was on its own large chunk of land, about fifteen acres. There was a seven-foot wall, half brick and half wrought iron. A very private place. A place where it was unlikely that Oscar's actions would be overheard by anyone.
He stopped at the corner of the estate, looking like a fellow out for a walk, and lit up a cigarette. He thought that would make him look even more casual, but it just got him dirty looks, so he quickly snubbed it out, shoving the dead butt into his shirt pocket.
The road was quiet. Everyone was either at work or relaxing at home. A couple cars passed, then nothing for several minutes. Oscar looked both ways, then quickly heaved himself over the wall, careful not to skewer himself on a black iron spike.
Sticking to the shadows of trees, he darted along the edge of the property until he was parallel with the end of the house. A bush offered momentary cover as he hunkered down and studied the view through a large bay window.
A middle-aged man stood there, staring out across his yard as he sipped coffee. He had a vacant look in his eyes, a worried sort of expression on his face. Oscar counted his lucky stars; if Hoffman had been any less distracted, he probably would have spotted the stranger creeping through his lot.
Oscar waited and watched, staying as still as possible. He was willing to wait for as long as it took. The weather was warm. He had shade, and a nice breeze that was almost constant. He had done stakeouts in far worse conditions. Sometimes, in weather where he could almost feel the cold in his fingertips.
Just as Oscar was drifting into that familiar state of near-hypnosis, the scene changed. Hoffman finally drained the last of his coffee and, with a deep frown, he turned from the window and vanished.
Oscar counted to ten, then darted across the yard. He moved fast and stayed low, hoping there weren't any cameras. Even if there were, how much did it matter? He had already given up all pretense of legality and innocence.
He shoved himself against the wall of the house and strafed along it, scraping his back on rough bricks, wincing as he felt the jagged edges catching on his shirt. That was a whole lot of fiber sample, right there. A surprisingly good weapon for forensic detectives. But again, it hardly mattered anymore.
When he reached the window, he flattened himself on the grass and crawled past it, toward a side door that he hoped to god wasn't locked.
Unfortunately, it was, of course. The door seemed poorly maintained. The knob was loose, wiggling around. Oscar gave it a strong twist and a pull, and it came away with a zipping sound of threaded screws breaking through soft brass. On the other side of the door, the inner half of the knob fell to a carpeted floor with a soft thud that wasn't likely to be heard by anyone in such a large house.
Oscar reached his finger through the resulting hole in the door, grunting as he struggled to work the finicky latch mechanism. After a few moments the door popped open.
He was inside. The hall was dark. There was no one in sight. Oscar crept along, and soon passed the half open door to the home office where Hoffman had been standing before. Would he come back, maybe after refreshing his coffee cup? No way of knowing. So Oscar kept moving, glancing around to memorize the layout of the house.
As he approached the end of the hall, he heard a sudden seething outburst. It was the voice of Esbert Hoffman, and he seemed to be in the middle of a heated argument. Oscar froze, heart thumping, as he considered the idea that there were more people than just Hoffman in the residence. But no one could be heard answering Hoffman's words. The conversation was one-sided, which meant he was likely on the phone.
There was the suction sound and clatter of a fridge door being pulled open violently. And, a moment later during a lull in the exchange, Oscar heard the wonderful hiss of a beer can being popped open. Hoffman fell quiet, probably because he was sucking down a full twelve-ounce dose of Forget-About-It. Oscar crouched in the doorway of a dark bathroom, nervously licking his lips.
Come on down, asshole, he thought, silently praying for the beer to go straight to Hoffman's bladder. A bathroom, in many ways, was an ideal place to run an interrogation. They were reasonably soundproofed. There wasn't a lot of room for your target to move around, thus there wasn't much leeway for them to fight. All you had to do was shove them in the tub and knock some sense into them.
The fridge door finally shut, and Hoffman trod loudly across the kitchen floor, whispering into his phone. He popped open the microwave, tossed something inside, and started nuking.
"Well, I'll just have to talk to you again later," Hoffman suddenly hissed. This was followed immediately by the glug-glug of a beer can being drained. The fridge opened again, and another beer can popped open. It seemed Hoffman was just
about to sit down to a very sad meal.
Oscar waited a bit more.
Organic humans were generally most at ease, and felt the safest, when they were eating. A bit of a buzz from two beers downed in quick succession wouldn't hurt either. Hoffman would be dull, and wide open to a surprise-attack. His thinking would likely be out of whack, and he might give away more than he intended by virtue of being confused.
The microwave went off with a series of loud beeps. Hoffman withdrew his meal and carried it across the room. A chair scuffed across the floor, then creaked as Hoffman threw himself carelessly into it. He must have thrown himself, because Hoffman was not a large man. He was of average height and quite slender. Around a hundred and seventy pounds, tops.
The time had come.
Oscar crept down the hall to the corner that led into the kitchen and dining room. A quick peek around the corner gave him all the information he needed. He saw just where Hoffman was sitting.
Drawing his gun, an ancient but well-maintained revolver, he launched to his feet and darted into the dining room.
Hoffman reacted slowly, first freezing with a bite of mashed potatoes halfway to his mouth, his eyes locked on Oscar. Then, with surprising calm as he stared down the barrel of Oscar’s large six-shooter, he set his fork down and sat back. Lifting his beer for a quick pull, Hoffman regarded the intruder with a serene look on his face.
"I guess maybe it's over now," he said. He sounded relieved.
"Not by a long shot," Oscar grunted.
Hoffman just shrugged. The silver fox was at rest. Since the weather was warm today, he had traded his pea coat for a brightly colored polo that was stained with sweat and green grass smears. He had been golfing. One of his hands still clutched the beer can. The other was hidden below the table, maybe just resting on his leg. Or maybe doing something else. Perhaps even drawing a gun. Oscar stepped to the side, fearing a gunshot straight to the crotch.
Darkside Dreams - The Complete First Series Page 25