Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

by Anthology

  We sit for a moment. I give Mr. Rodriguez the space to collect himself. Mullins is impatient, tapping his foot annoyingly. I shoot him a quit-it look and he stops. I resume my questioning.

  “Mr. Rodriguez, do you know what Switch does to the central nervous system? It rewires it. It affects judgment, restraint, motor skills, focus and attention. If you’re doing bad in math, it fixes it. If you think you’re weak, it changes that. If you’re feeling aggressive, it amplifies the sensation. It does a lot with just a little. And when the high is off, the craving hits you, because feeling normal just isn’t good enough anymore.” I hit a high note with the last part, my sermon fueled by confession. Mullins looks at me strangely, but I ignore him, and continue.

  “Mr. Rodriguez, it’s not that we don’t hear what you’re saying. No one wants to think their child uses. But do you think nothing was wrong when he shot those police officers?” I’m surprised at my own flare of anger.

  Mr. Rodriguez brandishes the handkerchief. “He wasn’t on it when he gave me this! I know my son. He must have taken it for the first time yesterday. Or someone drugged him. Why aren’t you looking into that?”

  Kurt Rodriguez was an addict, pure and simple. His father can’t recognize the signs. “We found quite a bit in his bloodstream. There were indications he was dosing regularly. No one drugged him.”

  Mr. Rodriguez perks up. We’re not allowed to share lab specifics during an investigation, especially before the official report comes out, so I leave it at that.

  I try to get back to obtaining a meaningful answer. “What about new associates? Did your son meet any new people, either outside of school or over the Mindnet?”

  “None that I was aware of.”

  “What about his feelings toward authority? Any changes in his views on religion or politics or the government?”

  Mr. Rodriguez throws his hands up. “Look, I already told you I don’t know anything. I hardly saw him as it was, and now…” He swallows. He’s on the verge of crying. His voice comes out chaffed. “And now, I won’t get to see him again.”

  I sigh inwardly. We’re spinning our wheels.

  I thank Mr. Rodriguez for his time. He barely acknowledges me. We leave him in his armchair, handkerchief clenched in his hand, tears of defeat streaking down his face.

  ***

  Back at the precinct, we go through the items seized from Kurt Rodriguez’s bedroom. The little shit had to have been OCD, because everything was arranged and aligned perfectly on his desk and drawers—his socks, underwear and t-shirts folded and pressed, his other clothes hanging in the closet, hangers spaced evenly apart.

  I recognize the pattern. Switch makes you do things like that. You get all this energy, all this creativity, and you have to use it or you get antsy. Suzie would always ask me how much coffee I drank whenever I’d redo our cupboards, making sure every label on every can or box faced forward, all stacked and sorted neatly, and dust-free; or when I’d work on the lawn for hours, snipping the edges with a scissor, on my hands and knees.

  Rodriguez’s room was a total disaster by the time our team was done tearing it apart. The only computerized device they found was his digipad, loaded up with meaningless, hand-drawn sketches and the notes he took during his junior-year classes. The problem these days is that anything of merit is on the Net, and since people use their TLIs instead of old-tech computers for just about everything, you have to go to the cloud if you want anything.

  Mullins and I review the panoramic photos taken of the kid’s room, looking for additional clues. The one facet of interest is on the north wall where Rodriguez had meticulously pasted a few hundred blank sticky notes in straight rows and columns, each sticky equally spaced apart.

  Mullins shakes his head. “You mean to tell me his father didn’t notice this?”

  Thinking about the pattern gives me an idea. I rub my hands together. “You know what we need to do, right?”

  “What, get something to eat?”

  “No, we need to tap into his last memories.”

  Mullins tents his eyebrows, forehead creasing in puzzlement. It takes him a few seconds to get what I’m suggesting. Then he smiles big. “I’ll get us the warrant.”

  ***

  It’s called a cerebral trace, and it requires an okay from a judge. I’m not a big fan of digging into a person’s private memories, even when they’re dead, but it’s helped us in the past, like when we scanned the last memories of a murdered rape victim a few months back to find a serial killer before he struck again. I honestly think we saved lives, because we weren’t anywhere near catching the bastard. Privacy advocates argue the technique violates Fourth Amendment rights, and in a way, I see their point. With a pending case at the Supreme Court, we’ll see what happens. Until then, we keep doing our job.

  Mullins and I race over to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Manhattan, warrant already forwarded. We meet with Dr. Sanjay Parekh, a neuropathologist certified in cerebral traces. Time is of the essence, considering the decomposition of the brain after death, so I’m happy to see Parekh already at work in the autopsy room. Rodriquez’s blanched form is lying upright on a metal table, the body covered with a sheet below the collarbone, a probe jutting from his skull where I imagine Parekh drilled into it only moments ago. It’s a good thing too because I get a little queasy seeing drills and bone saws in action. Plus, I hate the odor. Mullins always jokes that it smells like corn chips.

  Parekh plugs the other end of the electrode into a beige cylinder with a monitor affixed to a mobile cart. “Almost there,” he says, as he continues to set things up.

  Mullins chomps noisily on his gum. “Hey, I got a question about the autopsy report.” He attempts a bubble, but the gum flops over his lower lip. He shoves it back into his mouth. “You mentioned something about his right shoulder tattoo being animated. I thought those things stopped post mortem.”

  I’d noticed the oddity too, but hadn’t thought much about it. Rodriguez had a black-and-white tattoo of a Bengal tiger with bared teeth that transformed into Chinese characters when animated—nothing fancy or useful in my opinion.

  Dr. Parekh checks the monitor while adjusting the cranial probe. The screen is grainy, a dark sea of shimmering speckles. “It’s rare, but not unheard of. Skin cells can survive for days. Animorphs—animated tattoos—function as long as the cells sustain them.”

  “So, it’ll work now?” Mullins asks.

  Parekh moves over to Rodriguez’s left side. “Take a look.” He presses a gloved finger firmly into the stiff muscle of the shoulder. The Bengal tiger dissolves, changing into a pair of Chinese characters, and then back to the original tiger. “See? Animorphic transformation. Pretty cool, actually.”

  Mullins lifts his eyebrows. “Huh. What d’ya know?”

  “Stand back, please.” Parekh motions for us to not make contact with the cadaver. I maintain a safe distance.

  The doctor taps an icon on the side of the monitor and Rodriguez’s body convulses for a split second. The speckled screen dissolves into a blob of gray and black gradients, expanding and contracting like heated wax in a lava lamp. Parekh rotates his finger over a shaded dial in the sidebar menu, and the screen’s contrast brightens. He adjusts several more controls, and the blur sharpens into an image that looks exactly like the canopy lights at the gas station. “It’s the last thing he saw,” Parekh explains. “We call it residual retinal burn. Let’s see if we can get anything else.”

  He taps the screen. The body shudders again. We see fractured images, glimpses of a school locker, a crowd of students in a hallway, a few flashes of different parts of the Rodriguez household—boring scenes, although I’m quite impressed that we’re actually seeing what Rodriguez saw when he was alive. I’ve been through this process before, but it amazes me every time.

  The onscreen image changes. We’re looking at what I imagine to be a Mindnet page showing an online store, followed by a chat session with a succession of static images represen
ting a conversation. I’m thinking we’re going nowhere until I spot the familiar packet of strips. I assume our suspect is holding the dispenser when it turns out to be someone else. The dispenser gets handed off to Rodriguez, but I glimpse a y-shaped scar on the knuckle of the tanned individual before it disappears from view.

  “Wait, go back!” I jab my finger at the monitor.

  Parekh freezes the frame. He tries to retrieve the last scene, but now we’re looking at a bowl of cereal and Rodriguez’s brown fingers moving a spoon around in circles, not bothering to eat. “Sorry, I can’t go back. Don’t worry, it’ll be on the recording.”

  The scene continues with Rodriquez still not eating. Something must be bothering him. “Any idea how far back this is?”

  “Probably the morning of the incident, or the day before,” Parekh says.

  “Not earlier?”

  “I’ve never seen any memories older than seventy-two hours. This is pure visual cortex feedback. It’s always short-term.”

  Rodriquez slams the spoon down on the table, splashing milk everywhere. There’s no sound with these memories, just raw imagery. Someday, I hope the technology improves so we can get audio. Rodriguez removes his dispenser from his pocket and empties out all the strips. He stuffs the entire wad into his mouth. There had to be at least ten strips in the bundle! Mullins and Parekh seem unfazed. Am I the only one who noticed?

  The better part of a minute goes by with Rodriguez sitting at the table. He takes the spoon and bowl and neatly moves them to the side, wiping up the spill with his napkin. Whatever agitation was coursing through him seems to be gone. We watch as he calmly leaves the table and goes up to his room and locks the door. It’s bizarre as he walks in a circle, round and round. He finally stops, and lifts up his mattress. He grabs a handgun resting on the box spring.

  Mullins snorts a laugh. “Hah, there’s our murder weapon!”

  I ignore Mullins’ outburst and continue to watch as Rodriquez takes his firearm over to his desk. He removes the magazine and makes sure the chamber is empty. He then disassembles the rest of the gun—slide, recoil spring assembly, barrel, pistol base. Each piece is carefully placed on the desk. It’s as if Rodriguez is creating an exploded diagram from an engineering schematic. He retrieves a cleaning kit from a drawer, and proceeds to clean the components with obsessive detail. I recognize the precision in his movements, the need to clean. He’s amped, a fully-charged human turned into a purpose-driven machine.

  From there, Rodriguez picks up the pace. He does at least a hundred pushups on the carpet of his bedroom, runs up and down the stairs two at a time, assembles and disassembles his gun faster than anyone I’ve seen. The tasks are repetitive, the mind trapped in a continuum of exacting execution. The next scene shows Rodriguez running on the sidewalk. He glances at his body once. It confirms he’s wearing the clothes we found him in, establishing a timeframe. He hops a chest-high chainlink fence like it’s nothing, dodges cars in a frantic burst across a busy intersection. He then runs past three young males in front of an apartment building. They’re perhaps a little older than him. I catch a sneak peek of their stereographic tattoos. Gang glyphs, visible only through a retinal overlay. Rodriguez stops and turns around with near inhuman dexterity. The largest of the three is goading him, making obscene, taunting gestures. The other two laugh, but in a blink, Rodriguez is on them. He smashes the first in the side of the head with his fist, the second in the Adam’s apple, the third in the side of the neck. It’s something I picture a Navy seal doing to enemy combatants. They’re down in an instant, squirming.

  I’m getting an adrenaline high watching the action. I want to deny it, but I can’t help but revel in Rodriguez’s ass-kicking abilities. I want to mimic his superpowers, to become invincible like him.

  The thrill ends the second I recognize the gas station. Rodriguez is running at full steam. Without missing a step, he pulls the Glock from his belt. A second later, the kiosk comes into sight. Officer Yee is holding a bottle of water, ready to pay the cashier behind the glass. He looks over to Rodriguez, mystified expression. Rodriguez slows to a walk. My heart is beating crazy in my chest. I know this feeling, this anticipation. The animal wants the prey to engage him. Yee holds off a moment longer, as if trying to rationalize what he’s seeing. He then goes for his duty weapon. Rodriguez blasts Yee in the face. The three of us gasp, Mullins adding in a “Holy shit!” I want to turn away, but I can’t. I’m captivated by Rodriguez’s inhuman display of savagery.

  Rodriguez takes a long moment to stare at his reflection in the kiosk glass. I feel like I’m looking at myself, carriage heaving to suck in more oxygen, a predator ready to maul his next victim. I clutch my chest. My heart is thumping like it’s going to explode. Mullins looks my way. “Parker, you all right?”

  I have to get out of this room. I need air.

  I’m becoming Rodriguez, mirroring his animalistic breathing, a hair trigger from snapping at anything that touches me or comes too close. I think Mullins senses it too, because he leans away.

  We let the rest of the scene play out—the arrival of the police cruiser, the shootout with the other two officers, the suspect’s violent death. It ends with the first image we saw of the canopy lighting, then speckled blackness. We’re all quiet, as if waiting for the end credits to the horror movie we just saw.

  Mullins is the first to say anything. He turns to Parekh. “You get all that?”

  “Everything. My God!” Parekh is obviously shaken.

  “‘My God’ is right.” Mullins wipes the sheen of perspiration from his forehead. “I swear, if that SOB weren’t already dead…” Mullins knots a fist, then relaxes his grip. He looks my way. He raises his hand, like he wants to place it on my shoulder, but drops it quickly. “You okay, partner?”

  “Fine,” I say. But I’m anything but fine.

  ***

  “This is crazy, you know it?” Mullins has his jowls pushed up on his left hand, fat folds in his face bunched like a shar pei’s. He’s on his third can of energy water, the other two empty and crushed into pucks.

  We’ve been going over Rodriguez’s recording for almost four hours. Everyone on our floor has gone home for the evening, leaving the rest of the cubicle farm dark and quiet, except for us.

  Mullins is playing with his bowl of microwaved popcorn, circulating the kernels endlessly, his nervous energy eating away at my resolve. He points a greasy finger at the screen. “I mean, who gets this kind of front-row seat into a murder’s craziness, huh?”

  I replay the scene showing the dispenser handoff between what I imagine is the drug dealer and Rodriguez. We’ve already run the still image against our biometrics database, searching through the collection of tattoos, scars and birthmarks. Fifteen potential matches were returned, not a single one quite like the knuckle scar in the still. The only thing we were able to determine were generic traits: male, late thirties to mid-forties, approximately five-nine in height, medium build, possibly Hispanic.

  Mullins downs the last of his water and burps. “Hey, I gotta go. Sandy is driving me crazy. She keeps pinging me to pick up Kevin.”

  “I thought this was her week to watch him.”

  “It was.” Mullins heaves himself out of his chair and grabs his blazer. He sighs heavily, the weight of life showing in his weary eyes. I don’t envy his situation. Both his exes can be a pain-in-the-ass.

  “You’ll be fine,” I say. “Just think: you can knock back a couple after Kevin goes to bed.”

  He jiggles his big belly with a smile. “Yeah, that’s what I need.”

  I shove him playfully. “Go on, get out of here!”

  He tosses a goodbye hand wave and disappears, leaving me with the video of our dead suspect. My smile fades when I see the frozen image of the dispenser in the dealer’s hand. It not only reminds me that we’re no closer to figuring out who’s moving product on the street, but that I’ll be out of my own supply tomorrow evening. I begrudgingly turn off the monitor, sinking into
a cesspool of disgust, most of it aimed at myself. What would happen if I were to just go on empty? It’s not like I’m addicted to the stuff.

  I catch myself licking my lips again.

  I bang the desk, angry. I need to fix this. And the only way I see how, is to do exactly what I’m not supposed to do.

  ***

  I park on Sutphin Boulevard, about a block from the Jamaica Long Island Railroad station. A little after eleven, and the streets are still teeming with pedestrians. It’s a shithole of a neighborhood, as mixed as a melting pot gets, mostly low- to middle-income, depending on which side of the block you’re on. My beat-up SUV is fine where it is. I push through the mangle of people walking by toward the subway and stores at the end of the street. I hear the L train in the background as I turn down an alley. I’d ended up going home after Mullins left, only to head out after reading Caitlyn a bedtime story and telling my wife that duty called. In a way, it’s not too far from the truth.

  I ring the bell to Apartment Fifteen on the steps outside a rundown tenement. I’m wearing a nondescript tee, jeans and sneakers, with a Mets baseball cap, brim pushed down over my forehead to keep a low profile. I’m mindful of the pair of gang members sitting on the stoop two buildings over. I can tell they’re tracking me as they talk to each other. They’re both wearing wife beaters and shorts that extend down to the ankles. I recognize the stereographic tattoos projecting in front of their chests, burning sigils of circles with exes for eyes. These guys are la hermandad de fuego, Brotherhood of Fire, a Dominican gang that controls this part of Jamaica; and judging from their dot rankings above the circles, I’d say low-level enforcement. The lanky one doesn’t even bother covering up the handgun with the taped grip peeking out from his waistband. He turns my way, and I sense a pingback through my retinal overlay. It’s a discovery ping, a way of saying, “Who are you?” I ignore him; don’t even move an inch to let them know I’m aware of what he’s trying to do. If I were on the job, I’d do my own active pingback, and pull up his rap sheet through our NYPD portal using the electronic signature from his own temporal lobe implant.