by F X Holden
“That checks, he disclosed that,” Ferguson said.
“And you returned to South Coast City the same day. Two days ago there are indications you left Sea Gate district in a hurry. You dumped your earbud, and your biodata signal was faked to show you were still in Sea Gate, but you didn’t use a single credit in any of your normal retail or hospitality outlets in the last two days, I assume because you were on your way here via ground transport. There is a police report on file in Sea Gate and a warrant out for your arrest for allegedly bearing a firearm, which you claimed in a phone call to police you used to scare away two burglars.”
“Your father’s gun,” AJ said quickly, looking at Cassie to back him up. “We threw it in a lake on the way here.”
“This was when you found this McMaster guy going through your workshop?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t leave out little details about firearms in the future please son,” Ferguson said. “It tends to annoy the average police officer. Keep going Jen.”
She nodded, “Accessing the VR unit in your apartment, which I am permitted to do under section 73 of the ITMP Act, I can see you keep a nice, neat house and I particularly like the color of your sofa. You seem like a nice guy,” she finished, and winked at him.
So dead, Cassie said. And if it was possible to mutter at quantum speeds, it would have been a mutter.
As though picking up on the vibe, Jen turned to Cassie and her smile faded, “You however, are a fake.”
AJ bumped his adrenaline, getting ready for the cyber equivalent of a world championship bitchfight.
“Oh, really?” Cassie said. “Do tell.”
“Happily,” Jen said. “Your ID and backstory were created at the same time as his. Your current name is Cassie, not Carly, but Cassie is not your real name either.”
AJ shot a look at Cassie but she ignored him, watching Jen with her arms crossed. “Go on.”
“The Cassie ID was only created a few weeks ago, and the backstory with it. Born in the Territory, grew up in Bloor, schools, college, post-grad, journalism – all fake. But your planer license is real enough, you got it a month ago, when you bought a red Scarlatti road planer. But that is as far back as I could go. Before that, your data trail is cold.”
Stop looking at me like that, Cassie said. She’s not going to tell you anything you don’t know.
“You, are a hacker,” Jen continued. “It’s the only explanation. And you’re good, I’ll give you that. You managed to cover your trail all the way from South Coast City to here without being picked up on a single camera, including the cameras at a roadhouse south of here where witnesses report seeing a female and a male on a red Scarlatti just before someone set off a military grade neural blast that rendered everyone in the area unconscious. I can see from your comms traffic, that you first contacted the director of Sol Vista three weeks before my father’s death. The first time your comms and his,” she nodded at AJ, “Were co-located, was two weeks before my father’s death, so I’d say that’s when you first met. Again, looking at your comms and hospitality payment records, you two have been in regular contact since you met, have had six dates, but you’ve spent only two nights together. So it isn’t yet a serious relationship.” Jen turned her gaze from Cassie to AJ. “I hate to break this to you, AJ, but for whatever reason, I think she came to South Coast City with a purpose, picked you out as a soft target, started a relationship with you so that she could manipulate you, and I’m willing to bet with a very high degree of certainty, it was her idea to come here, not yours.”
AJ swallowed hard.
Why are you looking shocked? Cassie said. She’s not wrong about the timeline, she’s just twisting it to sound like I had some hidden agenda. You know my damn agenda! And it was your idea to come here, not mine.
Ferguson raised his eyebrows, “Wow. See what I mean? It’s uncanny how she does that, isn’t it?” He stood, and looked at a clock on the wall, “Well then. Now that we’ve all got to know each other a bit better. How about an early supper?”
They walked out together and took the elevator to the ground floor. The building turned out to be a multipurpose civic center, with the police station sharing offices with some local government departments and a central transit hub for ride-hailing, located underground. There was also a small retail mall, with a few self-service shops and restaurants.
“Noodles and beer OK?” Ferguson asked. He seemed quite cheerful now, though AJ couldn’t really see why. They might have a shared enemy in Winter, but Jen had done a great job fishing the Deep Core and exposing both him and Cassie. Maybe Ferguson was just happy to have his suspicions confirmed, knowing Cassie and AJ had nowhere to hide anymore. What AJ couldn’t tell, was whether Jen had found out more than she’d revealed about Cassie when she was diving, and was keeping it to herself, or what.
What now? he asked her.
Now, we eat some damn noodles, she said. Let me do the talking, ok?
Sure thing.
Why am I so angry AJ? she asked. I hate her. But nothing she said was untrue. You’re right, she has done nothing to hurt me. Why do I hate her with a burning red-hot passion?
It’s called jealousy, AJ told her. When it takes over, reason goes out the window. You really should do more first-person living in the real.
No thank you, Cassie said. If this is emotion, you can have it.
They got their noodles from a stall, and Ferguson bought a round of beers. “You asked a question earlier young lady,” he said to Cassie, handing her a beer. “About how Jen ended up here?” He tipped the neck of his own beer toward the other cyber, “Feel free to tell our new friends your story, constable.”
The young Mountie was still in her bright red uniform, and stopped awkwardly, a forkful of noodles halfway up to her mouth. She put them down again, “Sure.” She wiped her mouth, even though she hadn’t had a bite yet. “A few years ago, my father asked me to come up here. He knew the Chief here, from the time Farley O’Halloran went missing, and they’d stayed in touch since. Farley’s disappearance was a bit of an obsession for my father,” she said. “Though I never understood why until that package came last week and the Chief showed me.”
Do we believe that? AJ asked. Or is she just saying that for Ferguson’s benefit.
It’s probable, Cassie said. He successfully kept it off-Core and hidden from me, so why not her too?
“Sorry, but you said your father asked you to come up here?” Cassie said, not letting it go.
Jen managed to get a mouthful of noodles while Cassie was talking, and they waited while she swallowed, “So hungry, apologies! Yeah, so I contacted the Chief. I’m a freelance data analyst, and I knew they were always looking for cybers up here, so he offered me a job...”
“Doesn’t a constable in the Mounties need years of training?” AJ asked.
“Cybers are fast-tracked,” Ferguson explained. “Especially cybers like Jen.”
“But why?” Cassie insisted. “Why here?”
Jen put down her fork, picked up her beer and took a slow sip. Then she fixed Cassie with a cool gaze, “Because my father wanted me to try to find Farley O’Halloran’s body, so he could give it a proper burial. And I have been looking up and down that goddamn river for three years and I still haven’t found it and now I finally think I know where it is, and he’s dead.”
“I’m so sorry,” AJ said. “At first I thought he was just some crazy old guy, and by the time I realized how serious it was, Winter had put his mercenaries on the job and after that I just bounced from one situation to the other...”
Jen reached out, and patted AJ’s hand, “It’s OK. He was a crazy old guy,” she said. “Crazy. Intuitive. Brilliant.” She sighed, “And obsessed. Consumed. And brutal.” She left her hand a moment on AJ’s and then pulled it away, with a glance at Cassie.
Seriously? Cassie said.
She just opened a TH channel to me, AJ said quickly. She wants to synch. Is there a way you can listen in?
What? Normally, yes. Her, no. Nothing she does is visible to me. What I can’t see, I can’t access!
What should I do? he asked.
Stall her.
OK … done.
“You know where Farley O’Halloran is buried?” Cassie asked.
Ferguson nodded, “There was a clue in the letter. If Citizen Warnecke had shared all that detail with Jen, we might have worked it out earlier. But it seems he didn’t have all the pieces until recently.”
“Winter told my father he buried Farley under a ‘tombstone shaped’ rock,” Jen quoted. There was a 2D screen built into their table, and Jen tapped it to bring up a map of the Territory. She zoomed it so it showed Whitehorse and its nearby river. Then zoomed down to the river, and tracked it south, away from Whitehorse. At a radical bend just after the confluence of another river, she changed the view to ground level and it showed a raging rapid on one side of the river, an ice shelf on the other, and a hillside leading up from the riverbank. On the crest of a hill stood a large boulder, but the image had been taken in fog, and it wasn’t clear enough to see any more than the vague outline.
“I’ve been down that river three times in my life,” Ferguson said. “Two times in the six months just after that boy went missing, stopping at every damn campsite that anyone had ever used. The last time I did it was with Jen, and it was crazy, winter coming, half the river frozen, we nearly got crushed by ice floes in the Bay getting to the take-out point. Jen bought metal detecting gear and a portable ground-penetrating radar. We found some gear buried in ice downstream that was about the right vintage, but nothing you’d call definitive. And we cruised right past that place because it was way further down than Winter and Warnecke had told us they had last seen Farley.” He reached over and put his finger on the circle on Warnecke’s map. “That campsite there, they call it Tombstone Beach.”
He wasn’t finished. He reached over and pointed at the boulder.
“That rock, it’s a bit hard to see on here, is big, but it’s rounded at the top and flat like a tombstone.” Ferguson said, trying unsuccessfully to zoom in. “The reason everyone who ever rafted that river knows the place,” he said, “Is there is this rafters tale, started up a few decades ago, that when the first spring thaw comes, the rock bleeds.”
“I’ve done that river three times a year, the last three years,” Jen said. “Trying different methods of searching for biological remains. I’ve sent drones down, on the water, in the air. I nearly drowned, twice. Got attacked by a grizzly once,” she leaned over and showed AJ a scar on her neck.
If you run a finger down that scar and say ‘ouch that must have hurt’ I will club you on the head and drop you down a grizzly hole myself, Cassie said.
As if I would have, AJ said, putting his hand back in his lap.
"I never saw blood coming from that rock. I assumed it was just a story people told around campfires to creep each other out. It’s so far up from the riverbank that when it’s foggy, you can’t even see it. I never thought to check it,” Jen continued.
Ferguson drained his beer. “Jen and I have been discussing it the last couple of days, but your arrival has made up my mind,” Ferguson said. “What say you, Jen and I take the police rotor down there tomorrow and check out that rock?” He turned to his cyber constable. “Jen, in your expert opinion, would the body of Farley O’Halloran, presumably showing blunt trauma wounds to his skull, together with your father’s letter, the testimony of these good people, and with any luck, solid evidence linking a certain Congressman to the disappearance of Leon Guerra of South Coast City, be enough for us to get a Commonwealth arrest warrant made out for said Congressman?”
“In my expert opinion? Hell yes, sir,” she said.
AJ had asked Jen to hold off with synching on TH until they were done eating, but she forced a connection and broke through.
AJ, I have no right to ask you this, but please say you’ll come with us tomorrow. I want another cyber there with me, she said.
Why, he asked. What’s the matter?
Jen looked pointedly at Cassie, She scares me. She’s not who you think she is.
19. TOMBSTONE BEACH
Ferguson had Jen put AJ and Cassie up at the ITMP cadet college on level two of the station. As a love shack it left a lot to be desired, with bunk beds the only option.
Ferguson had told Jen to take a room next door ‘just in case she was needed’, and she’d done it without question, coming in to their room in a t-shirt and tights and checking they were okay before she retired for the night. She sat on the bottom bunk, looking around, “Not exactly six star. I spent my first year here in this dorm.”
Cassie sighed, “Better than the rad-ridden place we stayed at on the way up here,” she said.
“Yeah, hey, before you guys bed down for the night I have to explain something,” Jen said. AJ had asked her to park their conversation until he contacted her later tonight. Multi-thread conversation was never his strong suit and dealing with the real world, plus two separate cyber conversations simultaneously was testing his physical and emotional capacity to the limit, especially when it was two cybers like Cassie and Jen.
“Sure,” AJ said. “Go ahead.”
“I don’t want to worry you,” she said, “But you should know.”
“Now you’re worrying me,” Cassie said.
“Right. Look the reason the Chief put you here at the college, asked me to stay next door, is that he wants to be sure you’re safe. The potential threat from this Troy McMaster and everything.” She paused, “Also, to be sure you don’t decide to skip town tonight.”
“Are we under arrest or something?” Cassie asked.
“No,” Jen smiled, “But if you try to leave, you probably will be. I’m really sorry.” She pulled two string wrist bracelets from a pocket in her tights. “Would you mind wearing these?”
“What are they?” AJ asked.
“Trackers,” she said with a shrug. “If you move outside a predetermined range, which for you is within 500 yards of me.” She wrinkled her nose, “It will set off an alarm that will wake the whole town. I don’t recommend it, it makes the locals very tetchy.”
“And if we don’t want to?”
She looked surprised, “Oh. Well, then I guess I’ll have to take you to the holding cells in the basement. Just as safe, way less comfortable.”
AJ and Cassie looked at each other.
Shall we go along with this? AJ asked.
Do we have a choice? Cassie replied
They both sat down on the bunk opposite her, and put on the bracelets. As he looped his around his wrist, it tightened to a snug fit. He winced. The idea this thing could set off a city-wide alert, was not going to help him sleep better tonight.
“I knew you’d be annoyed,” Jen said. “But it’s best for everyone’s peace of mind.” She looked at them like she was waiting for them to cheer up, but when they didn’t, she kept going. “Look at it like this. You are in a shielded facility, with fifty police officers.” She looked pointedly at Cassie, “A neural blaster wouldn’t work here.”
“Fifty cadets,” Cassie corrected her.
“And instructors,” she insisted. “Look, if they are trying to find you, they’ll need time to organize and get here. Even a charter drone takes time to get in place and they can’t do the Capitol or South Coast City to Whitehorse in one flight. They’d have to stop to recharge, or change drones. Two days, at best. We’ll be done by then.”
AJ shifted, looking out the window at the endless rain, obscuring what he was sure would be a spectacular view of the mountains. “Done with what?”
“Tomorrow we get the body of Farley O’Halloran, we link Winter to Troy McMaster, and McMaster to the disappearance of Leon Guerra, then we get a Commonwealth warrant,” she asked. “Then you give your depositions, we’ll put you both in witness protection and we can move on Congressman Winter.”
“That simple,” AJ said.
“Never is. We're still wor
king on the McMaster-Guerra thing,” she admitted. “That guy is as slippery as a snow eel.” She smiled, “But the Mounties always get their man.”
“You want top or bottom?” Cassie asked out loud after Jen left.
These bracelets are also listening devices, Cassie said to him on TH. I can see their data links. Talk in the real until we go to bed and can talk properly.
Can’t you disable them? he asked.
Not worth the effort.
“Uh, bottom I guess,” AJ said, rocking the bunk. “These don’t look too solid, wouldn’t want it to collapse in the night.”
“I’m going to the bathroom. It was down the hall, right?” she asked.
“Yep. I’ll be right behind you. But I left my toothbrush in the car.”
She smiled, “The parking level is less than 500 yards from here, so you should be OK. Just don’t get lost.”
“Great advice.”
“Man, I’m exhausted,” she said on her way out. “That was a long day.”
He sat on the bottom bunk. There was a not so fresh towel on each bunk and he picked the closest one up and sniffed it. Musty, but looked clean enough.
He put a hand on the top bunk and drifted.
Jen?
Hi AJ.
What the hell did you mean ‘She’s not who you think she is?’ AJ had an idea that the Mountie would have gone Deep Core looking for information on Cassie and wouldn’t have found any. How could she, when Cassie as an entity had only been birthed a few weeks ago - searching for Cassie in the Core was like trying to remember a dream before it had been dreamt.