Deep Core

by F X Holden

  Cassie continued, “We’re here because we think Citizen Warnecke was murdered and we don’t know who else to turn to. Tell him, AJ.”

  AJ explained how he had found Warnecke, his personal papers all conveniently laid out, the man lying in bed with pills and an empty liquor bottle beside him. He also explained how he’d compared vision of the flat before and after and concluded it had been searched.

  “Then my partner, Leon Guerra, got it in his head to speak to McMaster and try to get some sort of reward for handing over the page of the document that we gave the Congressman. I was stupid enough to give him a copy before I realized what he was planning to do.”

  “You’re telling me you weren’t in on that brilliant plan?” Ferguson asked.

  “No! The Congressman had already offered me ‘compensation for my troubles’ and I’d declined. I told Leon that, and I never thought he’d …"

  “Be so dumb,” Cassie said. “Now he’s missing.”

  “Took the money, and ran,” Ferguson guessed.

  “No, there’s more. Next day, after Citizen Warnecke died and Leon disappeared, I found McMaster, the Congressman’s security guy, going through our stuff, in our workshop. He said he was looking for a missing chapter from Citizen Warnecke’s manuscript. I confronted him about Leon and he told me Leon had squeezed them for money but they’d made no deal and he’d gone his way.”

  “You didn’t believe him,” Ferguson observed.

  “Not for a minute,” AJ said. “Leon was a family man. He’d never disappear without a word, let his wife worry like that.”

  “So, we got scared,” Cassie said. “AJ read Citizen Warnecke’s will on the table in his flat and we saw he’d left the photos to you. We hoped maybe you were a friend of his. And being a cop...”

  “Inland Territory Mounted Police,” he said. “If you can’t say police officer, say Mountie. And an ex-Mountie, at that.”

  “Ex-Mountie,” she corrected herself. “Anyway, we got up here as fast as we could.”

  Ferguson swiveled on his chair, fingers steepled under his chin, then reached up and touched his earbud, “Jen? Can you search the alert service for a missing persons’ report on a Leon … who?”

  “Guerra,” AJ said. “G-u-e-r-r-a.”

  “G-u-e-r-r-a, Jen. South Coast City resident. No, I’ll wait.” He stared at the ceiling as he waited, then looked at AJ again as he spoke, “Thanks Jen. That’s all for now.”

  He leaned forward and pushed the document on his desk toward them. “I think I know what your friend McMaster was looking for,” he said. “This was in that courier bag. There was no explanation, no other note in there, just this page. I read it, and realized what it was straight away. Should have acted on it straight away too, I guess.” He sighed, “But I didn’t. When I finally got around to calling Dave, it was the same day you found him, dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” AJ said. “We...”

  Ferguson pointed to the document. AJ saw it had the same biometrics stripe on it as Warnecke’s full manuscript. “You read that, and then the three of us are going to talk some more.”

  The arguments started every morning as soon as we were all awake. Farley was using, and it was making him erratic, irritated, irritating. Calling us idiots for calling him an idiot. Kevin said he was sick of arguing, if Farley wanted to waste his career trying to do the stupidest thing Kevin had ever heard of in his life, he could go and do it. Trick the Core to hack itself? Why? Just to prove it was possible?

  But then the real argument started. Farley wanted to cut the trip short, walk out to a nearby camping dome and signal for a pickup so he could get back to work. Kevin said he was damned if he was going to cut his holiday short just because Farley had some sort of ‘deranged epiphany’.

  We’re going, Farley said. Dave, get your gear. He picked up a paddle.

  No, Kevin said and he grabbed up a shovel and put the blade on Farley’s chest. We’re not.

  Farley wasn’t in control of himself. He got furious, swore at Kevin and pushed aside the shovel and Kevin lifted it in both hands and bunted him with it. It wasn’t hard, but the shaft connected with Farley’s nose and he staggered back and caught his foot on something and went down backward.

  His head hit a rock and there was this wet thud.

  He wasn’t dead. He rolled onto his side, pulled his knees up and lay there.

  Get up, idiot, Kevin said. Faking you’re hurt won’t get you to the end of the river faster either.

  Farley was moaning, kind of soft. There was blood leaking from the back of his head, running away into the snow.

  Then he started to spasm.

  We knelt down, and tried to hold him still, but he was strong. Kevin tried to shove a shirt sleeve in his mouth to stop him biting his tongue, but we couldn’t get it past his teeth. His eyes were rolled back. When he relaxed, Kevin got the cloth between his jaws, but there was blood coming out his mouth as well.

  I think he spasmed three or four times in the next hour. We had a first aid kit still, and we bandaged his head, so that stopped bleeding, but you could feel the bone of his skull moving under your fingers. He’d cracked it wide open when he fell.

  I sat holding him, and we put all our thermal blankets on him, trying to keep him warm, but when he wasn’t in spasm, he was shivering.

  About an hour later, he stopped breathing.

  Kevin tried CPR, but he was gone.

  AJ finished the screen, reading how they’d pulled the blankets over Farley then crawled into their tent not talking to each other, just lying there until night came and the darkness and Warnecke had lain awake the whole night, not believing what had happened. There was more but AJ caught his breath, stopped and looked at Cassie. “Damn. You were right, it was bigger than just leaving the guy behind,” AJ said. “Winter killed him.”

  He handed the page to Cassie.

  “Dave alleges Winter killed him,” Ferguson warned. “This is just his version, right?”

  “So?”

  “So, we don’t know who swung that shovel,” Ferguson said. “You don’t know whether any of what he writes there is true.”

  “Yeah, but when I read that,” AJ said, pointing to the page Cassie was reading. “And I’m thinking that Citizen Warnecke didn’t commit suicide, that Winter had him killed, Winter had Leon killed; it’s because he’s trying to cover this up,” AJ said.

  “You don’t know that he did,” Ferguson said. “You said South Coast City police concluded Dave died in his sleep. You said your work friend is missing, but no one found him yet? Dead or alive?”

  “No, but…”

  “So you can’t prove anything. The only thing we know is that Dave Warnecke might have written that page, and he’s saying Congressman Kevin Winter killed Farley O’Halloran.” Ferguson said.

  “Did you check the biometrics signature?” Cassie asked.

  “Yeah, it’s his.”

  “Warnecke wrote that,” AJ said. “It’s exactly the same style as the rest of the manuscript.”

  “You have this famous manuscript so I can have an AI compare the writing?” Ferguson asked. “Put this chapter in context? You read it, it so you must have it cached.”

  “No,” AJ admitted, knowing it sounded weak. “He didn’t want me to cache it. He wanted to keep it off-Core.”

  "Convenient,” Ferguson said. He leaned back in his chair, “A Congressman like Winter, he’s got to have plenty of enemies. I can think of harder ways to make life difficult for him than to get a couple of nice wholesome people like you to come up here and try to get the ITMP to restart a cold case based on an allegation from a dead man that Winter killed his rafting buddy.”

  AJ heard him saying it and realized what they were up against.

  “Allegation from a dead man, with TGA,” Ferguson added.

  “Don’t you want to know what happened?” Cassie asked him. “Don’t you have a duty to find out?”

  “We need protection,” AJ said. “Two people are dead becau
se of this. Three if you count Farley.”

  “You say. There’s an immigration office in Ketchikan,” Ferguson said with a cold smile. “Tell them your story. They might give you asylum.”

  AJ started to pick up his pack, thinking they were done. Cassie was still reading the page from Warnecke’s manuscript.

  “Where you going?” Ferguson asked.

  “I don’t know,” AJ said. “I thought we were done.”

  Sit down AJ, Cassie said. This isn’t about Warnecke or Winter anymore remember? This is about Jen. We need as much information as we can get before I move on her. We need to get him back to the question of how she ended up here, working for him. Why is she here?

  “Good, sit down son. I didn’t say we were beaten,” Ferguson said. “Did I say we were beaten? I just wanted to show you what we’re up against, if we try to make this case.”

  AJ looked at him sharply. “You do believe us?”

  “Not yet, young man,” Ferguson said. “Not by an Inland Territory mile. But you haven’t finished reading yet.” He nodded at the page Cassie was holding and AJ leaned over to read over her shoulder as she scrolled down.

  We were freezing because we’d used our thermal blankets on Farley and the charge on our heat suits was running low, we’d worked them so hard, but we both fell asleep sometime before dawn and woke a couple hours later in the early morning half-light. I wanted to crawl out of my tent and see that it was just a nightmare. Maybe Farley had gone off to find the dome like he said, and the two of us would just drag ourselves into the raft and get onto the river. Either he’d find help, or we would.

  But as I crawled out of the tent, I saw his body was still there, wrapped in the silver blankets.

  Kevin crawled out beside me. We have to bury him, he said. Deep. Or grizzlies will get him.

  We’d seen several of the big furry scavengers combing the riverbanks as we’d rafted down. They were everywhere up here.

  We should take him with us, I said. Just put him in the raft.

  You want to spend five days with a dead guy in the raft? Kevin asked. Find the shovel. We’ll get help and come back for him.

  The water level had started to drop a little since the day before, but the rain was still heavy. We’d dragged ourselves up above the normal waterline to make our camp, but now we could see we were just above a broad ice shelf, barely covered with water. Probably a place you’d normally be able to camp if the river wasn’t so high.

  While I looked for the folding shovel Kevin had killed Farley with, Kevin walked up the riverbank and disappeared from view in the fog.

  He came back down. There’s a rock up there, with a kind of sinkhole at the base, on the other side, where the runoff disappears, he said. Help me bury him up there, we can cover him up, but he’ll be easy to find.

  You killed him, bury him yourself, I said, and handed him the shovel.

  I didn’t kill him, Kevin said. It was an accident.

  But he didn’t argue any more. He grabbed the shovel, and took hold of the blankets we’d wrapped Farley in, and dragged him up the riverbank.

  When he came back down, I decided we should say a few words, so I said a prayer.

  As we were packing the raft again, Kevin said, You know what? I don’t think Farley died in an accident. I think he tried to walk out to that dome.

  I looked at him like he was crazy.

  The guy is dead, right? he was saying. Nothing is going to bring him back. But we’re going to get the blame. We’re talking manslaughter or something, he said. Kiss your doctorate goodbye, kiss your whole future goodbye.

  Your future, I told him. You killed him.

  Yeah? That’s not the way I’ll be telling it, Kevin said. You tell anyone I killed him, and I’ll tell them you did. My word against yours Dave. You really want to go there?

  He pointed up the hill, yelling in the rain, You want to ruin your whole life because of that stupid jerk?

  I saw his eyes. I saw the eyes of a guy who had just killed Farley and now was threatening to tell everyone I had done it, and I could see he was serious.

  He started walking again and I fell in alongside him.

  He walked out on us, Kevin said again. Decided to quit the trip and tried to hike out. We tried to stop him but he wouldn’t listen. If they want to search for him, we tell them we had no idea where we were, but yeah, they should probably search back upriver, we’ll say we last saw him near Alsek River Camping Dome.

  What if he was right? I asked Kevin. If there is a fatal flaw in the Core?

  He’s not right, Kevin said. And we told him that and he got shirty and he walked out on us. And that was that.

  I never saw exactly where he buried Farley, and though I asked, he never told me. Said it didn’t matter. Or he didn’t want to think about. Or I should just let it go. But just recently, Kevin Winter came to visit me. After a few drinks, I asked him again.

  Damn it Dave, he said. I put him under a big rock, like a tombstone. It was as tall as four men and as wide as two. I buried him under it, and covered him up. It was as good a resting place as any of us are going to get.

  So there you have it. I can’t tell you where on the river Farley O’Halloran lies, or under exactly which rock, but at least the world can know now how he died.

  AJ looked up. “So, they buried him… and the whole thing about him walking out was a lie?”

  Ferguson nodded. “According to Dave Warnecke.” He reached up to his earbud, “Jen? Can you come in here again? Thanks.”

  “How did Citizen Warnecke’s daughter end up here?” Cassie asked. “If you’ll excuse my curiosity.”

  Well, that was subtle, AJ said.

  If you don’t ask, you won’t get, she replied. I think that’s from the Tao Te Ching.

  Ferguson poured himself some more tea, “Let’s let her tell you that, shall we?” He called Jen on his earbud and the tall young cyber walked in and stood with arms folded in front of them, legs apart, in a relaxed stance.

  She was looking straight at AJ, not at Ferguson, until he spoke.

  “Jen, I brought these nice people up to date on the letter we got last week from your father.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, looking at Ferguson now.

  “And they tell me they do not believe your father committed suicide, they think he was murdered, by order of Congressman Winter. What do you think of that, Jen?”

  The light between her brows pulsed quickly.

  She’s drifting, AJ said.

  And I still can’t see her anywhere in the Core, Cassie said. She’s a damn ghost.

  Her third eye stopped pulsing and she replied, “I think that concurs with our own assessment, doesn’t it sir?” She spoke without rancor, without emotion. Calmly, and all the more disconcertingly for it.

  Ferguson leaned forward and took the document in its evidence folder back. “First this, then we learned Dave was dead. We knew he was sick – the TGA – but suicidal? He was too driven. So Jen did some digging. Turns out the officer who signed off on the suicide investigation is as dirty as they come down south. And there was no post-mortem, as there has to be for a suspected suicide. The body was just released straight to the family and cremated yesterday. What did we think when we heard about that Jen?”

  “I believe you swore, sir,” the woman said.

  “And what did you say Jen?”

  She smiled, slightly. “I think I said ‘I will get that bastard Winter even if it takes me the rest of my life’, sir.”

  Ferguson nodded at a spare chair, “Take a seat Jen. Even though these folk are lying through their teeth, I do believe we are united by a common enemy and we just need to learn to trust each other. They brought me these,” he said, pointing to the photographs on his desk.

  Jen reached over and picked them up, and flicked through them. For the first time, AJ saw something like sadness cross her face. She put them back on the desk, “Every year, on my birthing day, he made me pose for one of those.” She reached up
and touched her third eye self-consciously. “When I was a teen, I tried putting makeup on this, to hide it. But he’d rub it off. He told me to be proud of who I was because I was better and brighter and more beautiful than any damn citizen.” She looked at AJ, “I bet your mom said the same.”

  She’s flirting with you? Cassie remarked. Oh, this girl is going down. She’s going to wish she’d run off to Orkutsk.

  Easy, tigress, AJ replied.

  “No, she never did,” AJ said. “She never took photos like this either. He must have really loved you.”

  “In his own way,” she said thoughtfully. “I think he did.”

  Ferguson gathered up the photos and put them back in their envelope, then leaned over and handed them to Jen, who took them with a small nod. “Thanks for bringing these all this way,” she said to Cassie.

  “Hey, least we could do,” Cassie said. Then chirped to AJ, For a dead woman.

  She hasn’t actually done anything to you, AJ reminded her.

  Yet, Cassie said. And don’t you dare start defending her!

  “Jen, in the spirit of encouraging greater trust,” Ferguson said. “Why don’t you tell me what you learned about our new friends here while you were outside there?” AJ stiffened, and Ferguson noticed. “Oh, you’ll enjoy this. It’s quite impressive.”

  “Are you sure, sir?” she asked. “In front of them?”

  He waved a hand, “Please. We’re all friends here. The enemies of my enemy, as they say...”

  She looked directly at AJ, “Your ID was only created two days ago, and all information about you in the Core has the same creation date, which normally would not be detectable, except …"

  Ferguson smiled, “Jen has created her own proprietary engine for Core queries,” he said. “It’s fast, and it’s frighteningly efficient.”

  “...except that as the chief says, my query engine makes that kind of thing transparent.”

  Damn, Cassie said. She’s good.

  Jen was still looking at AJ, a slight smile on her face, “Your real name is AJ.80966, you work as a maintenance tech at Sol Vista where you came into contact with my father. You buy a lot of surf equipment, so I’m guessing you surf. You visit your mom every Sunday, but you didn’t visit her last Sunday. She has a brain tumor and has lost the ability to recognize you anyway, so she probably won’t miss you. You recently made a flight to the Capitol and a car took you to the office address of Congressman Winter...” she paused and shot a look at Ferguson.