Dominance

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘NAPA isn’t running things now,’ Fox replied.

  ~~~

  ‘Tough week?’ Marie asked as Fox sat silently at the table they had selected at Sheela Na Gig.

  ‘Tough day,’ Helen replied. ‘I was just watching when she talked to Lomax and I thought it was tough.’

  ‘She wouldn’t talk?’

  ‘She wouldn’t stop,’ Fox replied. ‘She’s an ex-cop and she gave me all the details as though she was reporting to her superior. She’s not even trying to fight it. When they assign her an AI representative, I think it might try for a diminished responsibility defence. She obviously lost it when her sister was murdered.’

  ‘But that does not excuse her for multiple murder,’ Sam said.

  Fox sighed. ‘No. No, it doesn’t. I can’t help feeling sorry for her, but she has to pay for what she did. And this is depressing for a Friday club night.’

  ‘Naomi is joining us later?’

  ‘She said she would. She has a couple of clients in, then she’s free.’

  Sam smiled. ‘She seems more than a little smitten.’

  ‘Are we going to have to talk to you about dating a professional?’ Marie asked. ‘I have some experience. If you need advice.’

  Fox smirked. ‘I’ll start worrying about it if I start worrying about it. I’ve always known what she does for a living and it didn’t stop me wanting her. Besides, I don’t know that this will go anywhere. I mean, she’s a pro and I’m a cop. She’s hotter than Hell and I’m–’

  ‘Also really hot,’ Marie said.

  ‘Agreed,’ Sam said, nodding.

  ‘I think the evidence suggests that you are, in fact, hot,’ Helen said, smirking.

  ‘Please,’ Kit said, ‘don’t feed her ego further. A swelling head is unattractive.’

  ‘I’ll just enjoy this while I’ve got it,’ Fox said. ‘And, so far, it’s been really enjoyable. I’m not going to get to interview Sherman Wayden before Monday, so I’ve got all weekend to forget about all of that.’

  28th January.

  Fox watched Naomi’s face lift from between her legs, the image wavering a little as her inputs stabilised, and wondered whether she could remember her own name. Random fluctuations in emulated neurons were still making her legs jerk, but she had no inclination to stop them.

  ‘What you can do to my body,’ Fox said, managing a slow shake of her head. She was dimly aware that she was grinning, probably a little manically.

  ‘You seemed like you needed it,’ Naomi replied. ‘This has not been a pleasant case for you. Too many echoes, I think.’

  ‘Yes. It’s almost done with. All I need to do now is put Wayden and Neiman in cages. Lomax… I wish she hadn’t done what she did. I’d probably never have gone after the men if she hadn’t, but… I understand her. Too well.’

  Naomi slid up the bed and pulled Fox up against her. Fox wrapped her arms around Naomi’s waist and settled her head against Naomi’s shoulder. It felt warm, comfortable, safe. ‘I want to say something, but I don’t want it to ruin a night of debauchery,’ Naomi said.

  Fox giggled. ‘Okay. Well, say it and we’ll try not to let it sour the mood.’

  ‘You may understand her, but there’s a considerable difference between you and Lomax. When you lost Jason, you could have taken the same road as she did. You elected to hand Montcairn over to the proper authorities. I am so proud of you for doing that. I am honestly not sure I would have done the same in your place.’

  Fox frowned, thinking of Reginald Grant gasping for air in his habitat on the Moon. ‘I’m no kind of saint, Naomi.’

  ‘And I thank the Lord for that. Trust me, I plan to enjoy your unsaintly behaviour a great deal for the next few hours.’

  ‘Oh, well, amen to that.’

  30th January.

  Sherman Wayden’s right arm was fixed into a plastic cast and then suspended from his neck by a sling. Fox had seen the medical reports; the prognosis was for a full recovery without the need for cybernetics, but right now Wayden’s humerus was held together with surgical plastic supports.

  ‘…treatment of my client is nothing short of police brutality.’ Slocomb was back. This time he was representing Wayden and he had a squad of additional advisors outside the interview room as well as a notary inside it. The latter was entirely unnecessary given that Slocomb had an implant, but neither Fox nor Helen were going to worry over it. ‘We demand that–’

  ‘Your client was shooting at me,’ Fox interrupted, ‘and in a manner likely to endanger other people. He’s lucky. If I hadn’t been determined to arrest him and bring him in, I’d have put three rounds in his chest and he wouldn’t be here so you can complain about excessive force.’

  ‘You can’t prove–’

  ‘I record everything, remember? We did this last time, Mister Slocomb.’

  ‘My client cannot possibly be interrogated now. His injuries–’

  ‘Have been examined by qualified medical professionals who have deemed him fit to stand questioning.’

  ‘Quit delaying,’ Helen said. ‘Delays are not helping your client. We already have everything we need to lock him up until the Moon flies out of orbit.’

  ‘Witness testimony from a criminal and video evidence filmed by a porn producer without anyone’s knowledge? You have nothing.’

  Helen raised an eyebrow. ‘Odd. Mister Pons has an excellent employment record with Wayden Executive Services and no criminal record. Perhaps you mean Patricia Lomax, an ex-NAPA detective. Not so easy to discredit.’

  ‘And there are several points in the videos where your client is seen looking at the camera and asking Mister Neiman whether he “is getting all of this,”’ Fox said. ‘Your client knew all about what Neiman was doing. Couldn’t bring yourself to watch all of the videos, counsellor? I have. I can’t really blame you.’

  Slocomb’s jaw clenched, but from the look of things, that was as much to stop himself vomiting as anything; clearly, he had watched enough of the video to understand who he was defending. ‘You’ll never get that video into court.’

  ‘Then I’ll bring this one,’ Fox replied, and the interview room’s screen burst into life.

  ‘I am going to see to it that your last moments are really horrific,’ Wayden yelled from the screen. ‘You want to know just exactly what happened to your sister? Well, how about I do to you what I did to her.’ There was a pause while Wayden took aim at Lomax’s face. ‘Maybe I should just kill you.’

  ‘We’re having the bodies of Amelia Lomax and Molly Tailor brought here from Fargo,’ Helen said before Slocomb could speak. ‘Tailor’s parents weren’t exactly happy to have their daughter exhumed, but they agreed to it when we told them it might help lock up her killer. We’ll be looking for evidence of the drug Burrage supplied. We know what it does and we’ll be looking for indications of it. We also executed a search of Mister Wayden’s homes in Fargo and Detroit over the weekend, assisted by NAPA officials. We retrieved a bottle of the nanodrug from his Fargo residence along with copies of the videos we got from Wayden on memory cards.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of this,’ Slocomb snapped.

  ‘I’m making you aware of this. The forensics team only just finished cataloguing the evidence. For the record, the nanodrug is unclassified and therefore legal, but we will be filing charges for possession of controlled substances. That will be for the Cupie and Party Juice we found in both houses. There was enough in Fargo to warrant an investigation into distribution charges, by the way.’

  ‘I need to speak with my client,’ Slocomb stated flatly. Watching him, Fox was not entirely sure he could bear to say Wayden’s name.

  ‘Interview suspended at ten forty-three,’ Fox said for the record. ‘Discuss all you want, counsellor. Let us know when you’re ready to restart.’

  ~~~

  ‘They’ll use that for more delay,’ Helen commented when they were out of earshot of the lawyers.

  ‘Probably,’ Fox replied, ‘but they can’t use the
“I didn’t know anything about it” defence when Wayden had his own copies of Neiman’s videos. Plus a bottle of that damn drug, so even if he manages to get away with not knowing what it did the first time, he kept some to use after he did know. We knew this was going to be protracted. It’s going to take time to get past the BS.’

  Helen frowned and nodded. ‘Neiman didn’t have any of the drug.’

  ‘And I actually think his lawyer deserves to bring that out. It might shave six months off his sentence. He might be a disgusting excuse for a human being, but he has more limits than the others.’

  ‘Are we going to get to use Lomax’s testimony against Wayden?’

  Fox pressed her lips together. ‘One for the lawyers, but I’d say not. She obtained most of what she knew from torture. She’s not exactly a credible witness. If the defence brings it up, we might be able to use it, but not otherwise. To be honest, I don’t think we need it. Neiman documented almost everything they did, and Pons’s testimony covers most of the rest.’

  Kit appeared in avatar form. ‘Mister Slocomb is suggesting that we reconvene after lunch.’

  Fox checked the time. She shook her head, smiling a little. ‘Sure. Why not? It’ll give them more time to come up with something entertaining for this afternoon.’

  ~~~

  ‘Fox, Major Norton Wayden is requesting admittance.’

  Fox looked up at Belle’s avatar and frowned. ‘He’s here?’

  ‘He is waiting outside the front door. Shall I allow him entry?’

  ‘He shouldn’t be here. Uh, let him in, and tell him to wait in the hallway. Does he have anyone with him?’

  ‘No, but he is carrying a weapon. I believe it is a ten-millimetre semi-automatic pistol.’

  ‘Right.’ Fox got to her feet and retrieved her own pistol from its cabinet beside the bed in her bedroom before heading downstairs. In all probability, Wayden was not here to shoot her and his pistol would probably do little damage, but she had just got her frame back in working order and she was taking no chances.

  When it came down to it, Norton Wayden was nothing like his son. Sherman was a young man who spent too much on cosmetic treatments and probably worked out as little as possible to maintain muscle tone. Norton was getting old and not worrying over how it made him look. Unlike General Graves, the chairman of Palladium, the elder Wayden was not aging that well, but he was still fit, still healthy… Or he had been when Fox had seen him in Detroit. His hair was grey, his eyes were a strong brown, and there were not that many wrinkles on his face. He was still a powerfully built man, but today he was slouching and the lines on his face seemed deeper.

  ‘Major,’ Fox said as she walked down the stairs, ‘you really shouldn’t be here. You’re running an organisation which has policing contracts. You should know this.’

  Wayden waved the comment away with a snort. ‘You’re recording everything we say. You’ll have evidence if I try to influence your investigation.’

  ‘True enough.’ Fox indicated the door to the lounge and walked through, holding the door for him as he followed her. ‘Have a seat. Why are you here?’

  ‘You have my son in a cell.’ Wayden walked over to the unlit fireplace and remained facing away from her.

  ‘I do. Considering I had to go through a small army to arrest him, NAPA Judicial agreed that he was a flight risk.’

  ‘The lawyers tell me you have a lot of evidence against him, but that they believe they can get most of it thrown out.’

  ‘They’re wrong. Or they’re lying because they’re scared of you. We have two sets of the videos Neiman made. There’s evidence on those videos that your son knew they were being made. Neiman is being pretty forthcoming about what happened over those two weeks in Fargo and the video evidence backs him up. One of your son’s employees, Andrew Pons, has also been very open about the kidnappings, and also on being sent to New York with another man, Silas Paulus Rampton, to kill Patricia Lomax and make sure I didn’t catch her. I have evidence of Rampton following me on more than one occasion. The evidence Lomax collected will probably be inadmissible, but it only backs up what we have from other sources. The case is solid, Major. He is going to be convicted.’

  There was silence for a few seconds. Then, ‘I should never have let him become involved with Winsford.’

  Fox’s eyes narrowed. ‘This kind of attitude to women doesn’t start that late in life. His mother died when he was young, right?’ She got no answer and went on. ‘He views women as… Objects is wrong. Holes. He views women as a collection of orifices he can use. He wants them to do as they’re told. To give him what he wants. Maybe Winsford cultured that attitude, but Sherman had to have had that basic mindset in place long before he met Winsford. It’s weird, because as far as I’m aware, you’re not like that.’

  Wayden turned but did not meet Fox’s eyes. ‘Perhaps I should have put more effort into his education when he was younger. There were tutors we… had to pay off. I tried to instil some discipline in him. Perhaps I should have pressed him to serve.’

  ‘A man like that in the Army? It would’ve reinforced his view. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, Major, but you were never a woman in the military. Whatever mistakes were made, your son is going to pay for them.’ She sighed. ‘We can be absolutely sure of getting him on most of the charges. He’ll go down for multiple rape and conspiracy charges. Conspiracy to kidnap is a given. If he confesses, judicial will probably bargain the murder charges down to involuntary manslaughter to avoid the complications and they may be willing to drop the possession charges since it won’t add much to the tally.’

  ‘If he confesses?’ Fox nodded in reply and Wayden began to walk back toward the door.

  ‘If you want my opinion,’ Fox said as he passed her, ‘I think he learned one thing from you. Dominate at all cost. You were willing to get into bed with NIX and push their agenda to get control of law enforcement and the security industry.’

  ‘I believe in national security, Captain Meridian,’ Wayden said.

  ‘So do I, but that’s not what NIX is aiming for, is it? They want control, and you did everything you could to help them get it. You had to know that a lot of the proposals they had you put forward were designed to open up private companies to any snooping they wanted.’

  Wayden paused and looked back at her. ‘Be sure you’ve picked the right side before you cast stones.’

  Fox let him go, watching as he left the building before she turned for the stairs.

  ‘Have we picked the right side?’ Kit asked inside her head.

  ‘Yes,’ Fox replied. ‘Unless the other side wins, and then history will say they were the right side.’

  ‘And if our side wins?’

  ‘Then we’re the right side, even if, in reality, we aren’t.’

  31st January.

  Fox and Helen entered the interview room ready for another morning of repeated attempts to ignore the evidence. Fox’s brow furrowed almost immediately: Sherman Wayden was sitting at the table with his eyes on the metal surface and the lawyer looked… resigned. She glanced at Helen; Helen had noticed too. Something had changed since the previous afternoon.

  ‘Beginning interview,’ Fox said, ‘with Sherman Grant Wayden and counsel.’

  ‘Artemius Slocomb,’ Slocomb supplied.

  ‘Tara Meridian and Helen Dillan attending for Palladium Security Solutions. Note date and time.’ Fox took a seat and peered at Slocomb. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘My client would like the state to consider a plea bargain,’ Slocomb stated flatly. ‘In return for cooperation, we want the murder charges dropped.’

  ‘Daddy has been having words,’ Fox said silently.

  ‘It would seem so,’ Kit responded.

  Helen rose to her feet and started for the door. ‘Helen Dillan leaving interview. I’ll get the judicial liaison down here.’

  Fox waited for the door to close before continuing. ‘We’ll drop the drug charges, but we won’t go lower than invo
luntary manslaughter.’ She held a hand up as Slocomb opened his mouth. ‘You can argue it with other lawyers. I want to know what happened to the other dozen girls. No one’s found bodies and I doubt they’re hidden better than Lomax and Tailor.’

  Slocomb glanced at his client. Wayden looked up briefly and nodded; they had been expecting that one. ‘We would need assurances,’ Slocomb said, ‘that no further charges would be made from the information gathered on that subject.’

  ‘You know I can’t guarantee that one way or another,’ Fox replied. ‘Judicial have the final word. I can recommend that no action be taken and, if it brings some sort of closure to the families, I’m inclined to make that recommendation.’

  Wayden gave another nod, a lot more reluctantly. There was pain in his face, as though giving up that much was hurting him.

  Text appeared in Fox’s sensorium. Helen: Lawyer’s coming. Norton W visited Sherman last night. Reports say there were raised voices. Well, that made sense. The major had told his son to cooperate, even if it killed him. It was.

  ‘My client has contacts in South America from the contracts he’s worked on for Wayden Executive Services,’ Slocomb said.

  Fox’s heart sank, virtually. ‘You trafficked them down there.’ That explained why they wanted the assurance about further charges. Lizette Delvalle was probably lucky to have too much of a public image to be vanished. ‘I’ll want details. You can hash your deal out and then I want details.’ There was always the small possibility that the girls could be traced…

  Helen: Judicial oversight in the control room.

  Pulling in a deep breath – which she did not need to do, and she knew it – Fox looked at the top of Sherman Wayden’s head. ‘I’m going to need a statement. All of it. You give me your side of the story and then Mister Slocomb can argue the charges with someone else. Start talking, Mister Wayden.’

  ~~~

  ‘Major Wayden must have really laid down the law,’ Helen said. She was having a drink in Fox’s lounge to celebrate the closure of the case.

  Well, as far as Fox was concerned, it was not quite closed. There were a dozen young women somewhere in Brazil to be tracked down. Kit had already passed all the information they had to the UNTPP to see whether the girls could be found, but no one was especially hopeful.