Rees was ready to laugh, to hit Vandum with some snide remark about the half-melted corpse strolling upstairs to greet him, but something in the perp’s eyes made him stop.
There was a spark there, a glimmer of knowledge that still weighed heavily upon him.
“You saw something up there, didn’t you?” Rees asked.
Vandum nodded.
“Did you go to church when you were a kid, Detective?
“Sure, a few times, I guess.”
“My parents were Catholic. Every so often they’d take me to a service at this old church in our town. Place must have been two hundred years old; it had a stained glass window depicting the book of Genesis that stretched across the back wall. It was beautiful. I’d keep turning around during the service to look at it, always thinking that it was like a snapshot of who we are, where we came from, why we’re here.”
Vandum smiled again, but there was no trace of humor in his expression.
“It was wrong.”
Rees waited a moment for him to elaborate, but Vandum fell silent. His eyes scanned the room furtively, lingering overlong in the shadowed corners.
“Listen,” Rees said, “let’s start over. Why don’t you go back to earlier this evening and tell me what you were doing in that building?”
Vandum shook his head.
“You’re persistent, Detective, I’ll give you that. You really think anything I’ve got to tell you is going to make sense of what you found up there?”
“I’ve been told I’m a sensible type,” Rees said. “Try me.”
Before Vandum could respond, the door opened and a tall man in an expensive suit walked into the room. Standing in the doorway behind him was the chief of police, who usually only left the comfort of his office to accommodate very influential visitors.
“Detective Rees,” the man said, “my name is Brian Nallick. I’m Mr. Vandum’s legal representative.”
“What’s going on here, sir?” Rees asked. “I was under the impression that the suspect had waived his right to counsel.”
The chief just shrugged. He clearly wasn’t there to get involved.
“Yes, so it would seem,” Nallick said, “but, as you are obviously unaware, as an employee of the Sircotin Technologies Corporation, Mr. Vandum’s person is under the legal jurisdiction of his employer.”
“Fine,” Rees said. “Take a seat, Mr. Nallick, we’re just getting started.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be necessary, Detective Rees,” the chief said. “Mr. Vandum is being released into corporate custody until his hearing.”
That wasn’t the sort of involvement Rees was hoping for.
“What?”
“Surely, Detective Rees,” Nallick said, “you must remember the provisions of the Corporate Crime Law of 2064, which was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court’s Altron Technologies v. Illinois ruling in 2087?”
Rees was quite familiar with the law that protected employees of Class 1 corporations from much of the criminal justice system and he hated it.
“Yeah,” he said, “I remember.”
“Then I expect you also remember that any statements you’ve taken from Mr. Vandum at this point will be inadmissible as evidence in any pending trial?”
Rees nodded.
“Excellent. Mr. Vandum, if you’ll please accompany me?”
Vandum’s face was pale and his eyes unfocused. His eyebrows, cheeks, and lips twitched occasionally, but otherwise his face was expressionless. Nallick stepped forward to help him up and then led him to the door.
Before Vandum stepped out of the room, he glanced at Rees.
“Trust those eyes of yours, Detective.”
Nallick pushed Vandum through the door before Rees could reply.
“That’s quite enough, Mr. Vandum,” he said. Once his client was out of the room, Nallick smiled and nodded at the officers. “I trust I don’t need to remind you to forget that last remark, Detective.”
“Course not,” Rees said, mustering his most sardonic tone.
“Good,” Nallick said. “Thank you for your cooperation, gentlemen.”
Rees thought about complaining to the chief as the lawyer walked his client down the hallway, but he suspected it would be waste of his time. Sircatin would keep Vandum close now. Even for a Class I corporation, having an executive arrested for murder made for bad publicity, the type that didn’t just go away with a few well-placed bribes or a prolonged media silence.
He doubted he would ever see George Vandum again.
***
Dr. Morgan never met with an officer in person. Like many other heavily-cybered city personnel, his multitasking brain couldn’t bother being tied down to the hassle of a face-to-face conversation. The only time Rees actually saw Morgan anymore was when they happened to be at the same crime scene so it was quite a surprise when he received a message from Morgan asking to see him.
“Thank you for coming, Detective Rees. I have something here you should see.”
Morgan led Rees through his lab into the main examining room. A single corpse covered by a bloody sheet lay on one of the tables. Morgan pulled the sheet back, revealing a familiar lump of melted flesh. Heavy polymer bands were strapped across the body.
“I have conducted a full examination of the body and confirmed the results of my preliminary analysis.”
“So it really isn’t human, then?”
“Correct. Apart from the DNA scan, the unidentified toxins in the victim’s bloodstream are a natural aspect of its biochemical makeup. As of yet, I am unsure of their purpose.”
“I talked to Vandum a few minutes ago,” Rees said. “He seemed to know that what he shot wasn’t human. Is there any way he could know that from a glance?”
Morgan shook his head.
“A thorough DNA scan would come back negative, though the victim’s DNA would likely pass as human when subjected to a consumer grade scanner. There are no physical differences that would indicate it was anything other than human. Perhaps he had some association with the victim that would expose its true nature?
“Maybe,” Rees said. “What about the melted flesh?”
“It appears to be a result of trauma. When the victim received the final bullet to the skull, its body became unstable at a molecular level.”
“So why didn’t the whole thing melt?”
“The deterioration was halted when cellular activity ceased.”
Rees looked at the body again.
“Why is it strapped down?” he asked.
“Because I am not convinced the victim is dead.”
“What?”
“The initial nano-scan detected no cellular activity, which normally indicates death, but upon further examination, its cells have gone into an extreme state of hibernation.”
“So you mean that this thing could wake up at any time?”
“That is possible,” Morgan said.
“Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No.”
“Well, a lawyer from Sircotin just made off with our shooter so you might be getting a message from upstairs to destroy the evidence from this case.”
“It appears I already have. I received a message before I contacted you that I was far too preoccupied to open until just now. Detective Rees, I am afraid I will have to ask you to leave and to forget everything you have seen here as it is no longer admissible as evidence.”
“Right,” Rees said. He wanted to thank Morgan, but the doctor was already going to be in enough trouble with the department for ignoring a priority message for so long. Still, given the particulars of the case, Morgan could probably claim that what was left of his human curiosity got in the way of regulations.
As he walked out of the examining room, Rees noticed a small plastic chip on the table by the door and he picked it up.
Case #4563367-6638, Addendum. Dr. L. S. Morgan.
Rees glanced back at Morgan, who was still busy tending to the corpse and ignoring him.
He put the chip in his pocket.
“Hey, I don’t suppose the identity scans for this stiff ever came up with anything, did they? Vandum put a name to him; Aran Kurush, he said. But I don’t–”
Morgan stopped what he was doing and looked up at Rees.
“I am sorry, Detective, but I really must insist that you discontinue this line of questioning as any information obtained through my analysis or your invalidated questioning of Mr. Vandum is no longer considered admissible evidence in the investigation.”
Rees put his hands up and nodded. He should have known better than to try to squeeze another drop of info out of Morgan.
“Right,” he said. “Sorry.”
Morgan turned to go back to his work, but he stopped short as if some thought had just occurred to him.
“However,” he said, “from a purely procedural standpoint, it would be a simple matter to cross reference the victim’s autopsy data with any suspected aliases to produce a more complete picture of the victim’s identity, provided one had access to and could thereby cross-reference municipal, state, federal, and corporate records. Such multi-faceted data analysis carries substantial liability risks, however, which is why several cyberanalysts were dismissed from the police force in recent years.”
He looked at Rees again. His mouth twisted oddly and it took Rees a moment to realize that he was trying to form a smile.
“Again, this is only a hypothetical estimation of how one might procedurally continue with such a unique case under the circumstances.”
“Hypothetical,” Rees said. “Sure.”
***
Once the Sircatin lawyers got involved, the entire case fell apart. First Vandum was off limits, then some obscure legal code nobody at the department had ever heard of before rendered Morgan’s examinations inadmissible as evidence. Sircotin even wanted the body returned so their security personnel could conduct an internal investigation, but Morgan managed to head that off by citing a few of the city’s health regulations. If they were cagey enough about it, they could keep the body in custody for at least another week or two before Sircotin could bribe a judge to rule in their favor.
Rees hoped it would be long enough to get some answers.
When he left the precinct an hour before noon, he took the el-train over to Sizzle Street, which was on the west end of downtown. At one point, the place had been a hot nightspot, home to some of the best clubs and bars in the city. Like most of downtown, though, it had gone to shit once the arcologies went up a few decades back. As more and more citizens moved into self-contained living spaces, the street started catering to a different kind of customer. The street still “sizzled,” but that had little to do with the nightlife.
The train dumped Rees a few blocks away from his destination. It took a few minutes to push through the crowded loading platform to get down to the street, but once he was there, it was easier to get around without bumping into someone. The busy sidewalks gradually cleared out as he moved farther away from the station. By the time he’d gone a block, the number of pedestrians had dropped to a trickle
Heavy, chemical laden clouds generally covered the city like a cotton-lined roof, but today there were more gaps in the shroud than normal. The harsh sunlight punched through and baked everything it touched. Rees pulled his jacket’s hood over his head to keep the harmful rays off his skin. Most of the people he passed wore a wide-brimmed hat or held an umbrella aloft. Those going without protection already had the telltale patches of discolored skin or were losing clumps of hair. Either they couldn’t afford treatment or they’d simply resigned themselves to the slow death of skin cancer.
Sizzle Street was quieter during the day, but it was hardly dead. Most of the shops there were open around the clock, and there were always street dealers set up in the mouths of alleyways or roaming up and down the sidewalks. The place really lit up at night, though. That was when the street filled up with folks from the surrounding blocks looking to get all sorts of business done. Some of it was legal, but most of it wasn’t.
The sheer number of people there made it a good choice for face-to-face meetings and there were so many signal scramblers set up that it was almost impossible for either city or corporate authorities to listen in unless they knew exactly when and where to focus their efforts. Bribes and moles proved more effective means of keeping tabs on what was going down at any given time.
Rees entered an old apartment building and took the stairs up to the fourth floor. Most of the rooms there were empty, or had been the last time he’d visited. He stopped outside apartment #483 and knocked.
The tiny cameras positioned at the corners of the doorframe whirred to life and scanned him from head to toe.
“Open up, Squibby,” he said. “It’s Rees.”
No answer. The cameras went silent.
Rees knocked again.
“I’m not here to arrest you, asshole. Will you just open the fucking door?”
The something inside the door clicked. Rees turned the handle and slowly pushed the door open.
There were no windows inside the apartment. Most of the light came courtesy of a small lamp resting on the desk in the center of the room, but it wasn’t strong enough to reach the walls or corners. Dozens of tiny lights in all sorts of colors glowed and blinked in the darkness, each of them likely connected to a larger piece of computer hardware. The room smelled of solder, static, and old fast-food wrappers.
“Squibby?”
She sat in a large, cushioned chair on the opposite side of the desk. The chair was so big that she looked like a child sitting in her father’s office. Her attention remained fixed on the multiple monitors set up on the desk, but she waved one of her hands up when Rees called out to her.
“Mind the door, will you?”
Rees shut the door and walked over to the desk. Each monitor screen displayed lines and lines worth of encrypted data. Additional information was being transmitted to Squibby’s cyberoptic implants, but her workload was obviously much too large for just one display feed. Her fingers danced across three physical keyboards and occasionally reached up to tap on the virtual interface that Rees couldn’t see. It looked overwhelming to him, but Squibby juggled the tasks effortlessly.
But there was obviously a cost to such efficiency. She looked like she hadn’t left the room in days, maybe weeks. Her hair was greasy and tangled and Rees wondered when she last washed her clothes. If it hadn’t been for the wisps of warm air rising from her cup of tea, he might have wondered if she ever left her chair. Even though the floor around her workstation was covered with food wrappers and empty cups, she was frightfully thin.
“Been a while, Squibby.”
She shrugged one shoulder, never taking her eyes off the monitors.
“Nice of you to notice,” she said.
“Come on, now, don’t be like that. You told me to keep my distance.”
“Keep your distance,” she said. “Not disa-fucking-ppear.”
Rees wanted to argue, but deep down, he knew she was right. More than a year had gone by since Squibby’s dismissal from the force. He’d tried to keep in touch with her at first, but her close association with an active detective was making it hard for her to find work so she’d asked him to back off. It didn’t take long for Rees to fall into a habit of forgetting to contact her at all.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have called or something, just to check up with you, see how you’re doing.”
She bobbed her head slightly. It might have been intended as a nod.
“Morgan says ‘Hi’,” Rees said.
That got a smile out of her.
“No, he doesn’t,” she said. “Now you’re just being an asshole.”
She spun her chair around to face him rather than the monitors.
“So,” she said, “what do you need? This have something to do with the murder over at the Sircotin building?”
“How do you know about that already?”
Squibby s
ighed and pointed to her collection of monitors as Rees fished Morgan’s report out of his pocket.
“Morgan did an autopsy and tracked the murder weapon to a guy named George Vandun. I got to question him for a few minutes before a Sircotin lawyer hauled him off and slammed the case shut. He gave me a name that I need crosschecked in all the relevant databanks along with the results of Morgan’s autopsy.”
“What are you looking for, exactly?”
“Anything,” Rees said. “According to Vandun, the stiff’s name was Aran Kurush. Vandun seems to think he was up to something… strange.”
“And you believe him?”
Rees thought back to the look on Vandun’s face when he spoke of his last meeting with Kurush.
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
Squibby held out her hand.
“Give me the file.”
It had been a long time since Rees watched Squibby work.
He’d forgotten how good she was.
She started with the easy stuff, sorting through the various national identity registries for hits on Kurush. While the search was running on a few of the monitors, she downloaded Morgan’s report and took it apart piece by piece, feeding each bit into powerful compiler programs that would scan trillions of datafiles for any similarities.
But that was just the groundwork. After the automated programs started cranking out leads for her to follow, she removed the synthskin plug covering her neural datajack and plugged herself into her rig. Once she interfaced with the system, she plunged into the datastream, slicing through any firewall or AI countermeasure that got in her way. She worked quickly, almost in a state of hyperactivity as her eyes darted from screen to screen and her fingers keyed in hundreds of commands every minute.
Rees watched her closely for the first ten or fifteen minutes of the search, but once it was clear she wouldn’t be finishing any time soon, he found an empty chair and sat down. He was still running through his conversation with Vandum when he drifted off to sleep.
***
Rees didn’t sleep well.
He should have known better. Fifteen years on the street had gone a long way to desensitizing him to the nastier sort of crime scenes, but the human brain didn’t just forget the things it saw. It tucked them away, to be sure, locked them behind the iron doors of logic and covered them with veils of denial. During the waking hours, the mind kept those barriers strong, but during the night, when the tidal force of dreams flooded in, it started springing leaks.
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