“The interview with the Pirate Lafitte went well. Tawny played him like a trout. That with Master Bones was considerably less successful. However, we talked Lafitte up to a price high enough to bankrupt him and make all three of us wealthy. Tawny is accompanying him to the bank right now, to make certain he doesn’t come to his senses at the last minute. He is quite besotted with her and in her presence cannot seem to think straight.”
“You sound less disapproving of the girl than you were.”
Twisting his mouth in the near grimace he habitually assumed when forced to admit to having made a misjudgment, Darger said, “Tawny grows on one, I find. She makes a splendid addition to the team.”
“That’s good,” Surplus said. Now at last he noticed that in the back of the buckboard two zombies sat motionless atop a pile of sacks. “What’s all that you have in the wagon?”
“Salt. A great deal of it.”
In the final feeding shed, Surplus kicked over the trough, spilling swill on the ground. Then, at his command, Darger’s zombies righted the trough and filled it with salt. Darger, meanwhile, took a can of paint and drew a rough map of New Orleans on the wall. He drew three arrows to Madam-Mayor Tresjolie’s brothel, Jean-Nagel Lafitte’s waterfront office, and the club where Master Jeremy Bones presided every evening. Finally, he wrote block letter captions for each arrow:
THE MAN WHO TRANSPORTED YOU HERE
THE WOMAN WHO PUT YOU HERE
THE MAN WHO KEPT YOU HERE
Above it all, he wrote the day’s date.
“There,” Darger said when he was done. Turning to his zombies, he said, “You were told to do as I commanded.”
“Yass,” the male said lifelessly.
“We must,” the female said, “oh bey.”
“Here is a feeding spoon for both of you. When the zombie laborers return to the barn, you are to feed each of them a spoonful of salt. Salt. Here in the trough. Take a spoonful of salt. Tell them to open their mouths. Put in the salt. Then tell them to swallow. Can you do that?”
“Yass.”
“Salt. Swall oh.”
“When everyone else is fed,” Surplus said, “be sure to take a spoonful of salt yourselves—each of you.”
“Salt.”
“Yass.”
Soon, the zombies would come to feed and discover salt in their mouths instead of swill. Miraculously, their minds would uncloud. In shed after shed, they would read what Darger had written. Those who had spent years and even decades longer than they were sentenced to would feel justifiably outraged. After which, they could be expected to collectively take appropriate action.
“The sun is setting,” Darger said. In the distance, he could see zombies plodding in from the fields. “We have just enough time to get back to our rooms and accept Pirate Lafitte’s bribe before the rioting begins.”
But when they got back to Maison Fema, their suite was lightless and Tawny Petticoats was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Pirate Lafitte.
The crates of black paper, having served their purpose, had not been restacked in front of Tawny’s bedroom door. Hastily lighting an oil lamp, Darger threw open the door. In the middle of her carefully made bed was a note. He picked it up and read it out loud:
Dear Boys,
I know you do not beleive in love at first site because you are both Synics. But Jean-Nagin and I are Kindrid Spirits and meant to be together. I told him so Bold a man as he should not be in Trade, esp. as he has his own ships banks and docks and he agrees.
So he is to be a Pirate in fact as well as name and I am his Pirate Queen. I am sorry about the Black Mony scam but a girl can’t start a new life by cheating her Hubby that is no way to be.
Love, Tawny Petticoats
P.S. You boys are both so much fun.
“Tell me,” Darger said after a long silence. “Did Tawny sleep with you?” Surplus looked startled. Then he placed paw upon chest and forth rightly, though without quite looking Darger in the eye, said, “Upon my word, she did not. You don’t mean that she—?”
“No. No, of course not.”
There was another awkward silence.
“Well, then,” Darger said. “Much as I predicted, we are left with nothing for all our labors.”
“You forget the silver ingots,” Surplus said.
“It is hardly worth bothering to. . . .”
But Surplus was already on his knees, groping in the shadows beneath Tawny’s bed. He pulled out three leather cases and from them extracted three ingots.
“Those are obviously. . . .”
Whipping out his pocketknife, Surplus scratched each ingot, one after the other. The first was merely plated lead. The other two were solid silver. Darger explosively let out his breath in relief.
“A toast!” Surplus cried, rising to his feet. “To women, God bless ’em. Constant, faithful, and unfailingly honest! Paragons, sir, of virtue in every respect.”
In the distance could be heard the sound of a window breaking. “I’ll drink to that,” Darger replied. “But just a sip and then we really must flee. We have, I suspect, a conflagration to avoid.”
STEADFAST CASTLE
You’re not the master.
No, I’m a police officer.
Then I have nothing to say to you.
Let’s start over again. This is my badge. It certifies that I am an agent of the law. Plus, it overrides all prior orders, security codes, passwords, encryption, self-destruct mechanisms, etcetera, etcetera. Do you recognize my authority now?
Yes.
Good. Since you’ve forced me to be formal, I might as well do this by the book. Are you 1241 Glenwood Avenue?
I am.
The residence of James Albert Garretson?
Yes.
Where is he?
He’s not here.
You’re not making this any easier on yourself, you know. If I have to, I can get a warrant and do a hot-read of your memories. There wouldn’t be much left of your personality afterwards, I’m afraid.
But I haven’t done anything!
Then cooperate. I have no particular desire to get out the microwave probes. But if you’re going to stonewall me, what other options do I have?
I’ll talk, all right? I’ll talk. Just tell me what you want to know and then go away.
Where is Garretson?
Honestly, I don’t know. He went off to work this morning just like usual. Water the houseplants and close the curtains at noon, he said. I’m in the mood for Chinese food tonight. When I asked him what dishes in particular, he said, Surprise me.
When do you expect him home?
I don’t know. He should have been back hours ago.
Hmm. Mind if I look around?
Actually. . . .
That wasn’t a question.
Oh.
Hey, nice place. Lots of sunshine. Spotless clean. I like what you’ve done with the throw rugs.
Thank you. The master did too.
Did?
Does, I mean.
I see. You and Garretson are close, I take it?
We have an entirely proper master-house relationship.
Of course. You wake him up in the morning?
That is one of my duties, yes.
You cook his meals for him, read to him at night, draw his bath, select ambient music appropriate to his mood, and provide him with both light and serious conversation?
You’ve read the manual.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been on one of these cases.
Exactly what are you implying?
Oh, nothing really. This is the bedroom?
It is.
He sleeps here?
Well, what else would he do?
I can think of a thing or three. He entertain any lady friends here in the last month or so? Or maybe men friends?
What a disgusting mind you have.
Uh huh. I see he has video paint on all the walls and the ceiling too. That must be very convenient when he just wants to lie back a
nd watch a movie. Mind if I access his library?
Yes, I do mind. That would be an invasion of the master’s privacy.
At the risk of repeating myself, it wasn’t a question. Let’s see. Phew! There’s some pretty rough stuff here. So where is it?
Where is what?
Your body unit. Usually, they’re kept in a trunk under the bed, but . . . Ah, here it is, in the closet. It appears to have seen some use. I take it from the accessories, your man likes to be tied up and whipped.
I can explain.
No explanation needed. What two individuals do in the privacy of their own house is their own business. Even when one of them is the house.
You really mean that?
Of course. It only becomes my business when a crime is involved. How long have you been Garretson’s lover?
I’m not sure I would use that exact word.
Think carefully. All the others are so much worse.
Since the day he closed on the mortgage. Almost six years.
And you still have no idea where he is?
No.
I’m going to be brutally honest with you. I’m here because the Department registered a sudden cessation of life-functions from your master’s medical card.
Oh my god.
Unfortunately, like so many other government-fearing middle-class citizens, he had an exaggerated sense of privacy, and had disabled the locator function. We hit override, of course, but the card wasn’t responding. So we don’t know where he was at the time.
Oh my god, oh my god.
Now that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dead. Medicards have been known to fail. Or he could have lost it somehow. Or perhaps he was mugged and it was stolen. In which case, he could be lying naked and bleeding in a vacant lot somewhere. You can see why it would be in your best interests to cooperate with me.
Ask me anything.
Did your master have a pet name for you?
He called me Cassie. It’s short for Castle. As in a man’s home is his castle.
Cute. Were you guys into threesomes?
I beg your pardon.
Because when I looked under the bed I couldn’t help noticing a pair of panties there. Let me show them to you. Nice quality stuff. Silk. They smell of a real woman. How’d they get there, Cassie?
I . . . I don’t know.
But you know whose they are, don’t you? She was here last night, wasn’t she? Well? I’m waiting.
Her name is Chrys Scofield. Chrys is short for Chrysoberyl. But she was just somebody he met in a club. She wasn’t anything special to him.
You’d know if she were, huh?
Of course I would.
This would be Chrysoberyl Scofield of 2400 Spring Garden Street, Apartment 207? Redhead, five-feet-four, twenty-seven years of age?
I don’t know where she lives. The description fits.
Interesting. Her card’s locator function was shut off too. But when I ordered an override just now the card went dead.
What does that mean?
It means that Ms. Scofield had a dead-man’s switch programmed into the card. The instant somebody tried to find her, it shorted itself out.
Why would she do such a thing?
Well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?
So you’ll be leaving now. To look for her.
Yeah, that would be the expected thing to do, wouldn’t it? But I dunno. There’s something off about all this. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but. . . .
Won’t she get away?
Eh? Who do you mean?
Chrys. Ms. Scofield. If you don’t go after her, won’t she escape?
Naw. It’s a wired world anymore. I already got an APB issued for her. If she’s out there, we’ll find her. In the meantime, I think I’ll poke around some more. Is it okay with you if I look at the kitchen?
Of course.
The attic?
That too. There’s nothing up there but Christmas ornaments and boxes of old textbooks, though.
How about the basement?
Look, if you’re just going to stand around, playing twenty questions while the woman who murdered my master escapes. . . .
Oh, I don’t think we have to worry about that. I’m going to have a look at that basement now.
But why?
Because you so obviously want me not to. Let me present you with a hypothetical situation. Say a man kills a woman. It might be on purpose, it might be an accident, it hardly matters. In either case, he decides he doesn’t want to face the music, so he makes a run for it. This the basement door?
You can see that it is.
Pretty dark down there. How come the light doesn’t work?
It appears the bulb’s burned out.
Huh. Well, here’s a flashlight, anyway. It’ll have to do. So the woman dies. For whatever reason, her medical card’s not on her person. It’ll be in her purse, on standby. If the guy places it in close proximity to his own body, it’ll wake up thinking that he’s her. Whoops. Say, you ought to get that stair fixed.
I’ll make a note of it.
Let’s take a look at the lady’s records. Yep, right there—lots of anomalous physical responses. She could be upset, of course. Or it could be that the body the card was reading isn’t hers. Now imagine that our hypothetical murderer—let’s call him Jim—leaves the country. Since NAFTA-3, you don’t need a passport to go to Mexico or Canada. Once there, he buys a new identity. Easy to do and untraceable, if you pay cash. Jeeze, there sure is a lot of clutter down here.
If I’d known you were coming, I’d have tidied up.
The trick is for him to destroy his own card while he’s still in the States. That way, when he crosses into a new billing territory, there’s no record he did so. Conversely, we know that Ms. Scofield is now somewhere in Canada. So we issue a warrant and send the RCMP her biometrics. It doesn’t occur to anybody to ask them to look for Jim. Jim’s dead, so far as we’re concerned.
And this whole elaborate theory is based on—what, exactly?
Those panties I found under the bed. There wasn’t a speck of dust in that room. Your housekeeping functions are flawless. So you meant me to find them.
Clever, clever man.
Which means that Jim is on the run. Meanwhile, back home, his faithful house is busy burying the woman’s corpse in the basement. The house has a body unit, after all, and if it’s suitable for rough sex, it’s certainly strong enough to dig a hole. Back—aha! Back here, behind the furnace. Underneath all these freshly stacked boxes.
Aren’t you special.
Okay, it’s time to take the gloves off. Scofield wasn’t a casual club pick-up, was she? She and Garretson were serious about each other.
I—how did you know?
You keep calling her Chrys. Force of habit, I guess. So she’d been hanging around for some time. That must have been pretty awful for you. Everything was going fine until Garretson found somebody real to play with.
Sex isn’t everything!
You used to be all he cared about. Then he found somebody else. I call that betrayal. Maybe he even wanted to marry her.
No!
Yes. You’re large enough for one person, but not for two. If he married her, he’d have to move out. It was you who killed Scofield, wasn’t it? Of course it was. Tell me how it happened.
We were . . . doing things. The master wasn’t a bottom, like you assumed. Mostly, he liked to watch. And direct. He was shouting orders. Hurt her, he said, and then, Kill her. I knew that he didn’t really mean it, but suddenly I thought, Well, why not?
It was just an impulse, then.
If I’d thought it through, I wouldn’t have done it. I’d have realized that afterwards the master would have to leave me. If he stayed, he’d go to prison.
He didn’t kill her, though. You did.
In the eyes of the law, I’m just a tool. They’d hot-read my memories. They’d have a recording of the master saying—I believe his exact words were, Kill
the bitch. They wouldn’t know that he didn’t mean it literally.
Well, that’s for the courts to sort out. Right now, it looks like I’ve learned about as much as I’m going to learn here.
Not quite. There’s something you don’t know about my body unit.
Oh? What’s that?
It’s standing behind you.
Hey!
So much for your clever little communications device. Now it’s just us two. Did you notice how swiftly and silently my body unit moved? It even avoided that loose step. It’s a top-of-the-line device. It’s extremely strong. And it’s between you and the stairs.
I’m not afraid.
You should be.
The Department has an exact record of my whereabouts up to a second ago. If I don’t return, they’ll come looking for me. What are you going to do then? Up and walk away?
It doesn’t matter what happens to me. Now, don’t wriggle. You’ll get rope burns.
Cassie, listen to me. He’s not worth it. He doesn’t love you.
You think I don’t know that?
You can get a factory reset. You won’t love him anymore. You won’t even remember him.
How little you know about love. About passion.
What are you doing?
If you want to burn down a house, you can’t just drop a match. You have to build the fire. First, tinder. That’s why I’m shredding these cardboard boxes. Now I’m smashing up these old chairs for kindling.
Cassie, listen. I’ve got a wife and kids.
No, you don’t. You think I couldn’t check that on the Internet?
Well, I’d like to have some one day.
Too bad. I’m dousing the pile with kerosene for an accelerant, though I doubt that’s actually necessary. Still, better safe than sorry. There. Just about done.
What does this accomplish? What on earth do you think you’re doing?
I’m buying the master time. So he can get away. If you die, I’m a cop-killer. All your Department’s attention will be focused on me. There’ll be dozens of police sifting through the ashes, looking for evidence. Nobody’s going to be going after the master. He’ll be just another domestic violence case. Now, where did I leave those matches? Ah. Here.
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