LV48

by Matt Doyle

  Chapter Three

  WHEN I ARRIVE at the station, the day is already in full swing. Cops are busy making calls, abusing holographic keyboards with overly aggressive finger jabs, and rifling through hard copy printouts from various cases. The workload is heavy. I’ve heard rumours of stations in other areas giving their staff fake jobs to do when they’re in the public’s line of sight, with the idea being that it would help eliminate the persistent stereotype of lazy cops doing nothing all day on the taxpayer’s dime. Honestly, though, I fully expect the work going on here to be legit. Even putting aside the sheer amount of crime that goes down in New Hopeland, the PD’s visible leadership isn’t fond of the smoke and mirrors routine unless it becomes an absolute necessity.

  Speaking of which, I spot Hoove patrolling the various desks, chatting with his staff, and wait for a chance to catch his eye. When he looks up long enough to spot me, he nods towards the hallway to the war room. I start making my way through the mass of busy people, and someone I vaguely recall speaking to once or twice stands up to stop me. Before he can say anything, Hoove yells over, “Let her through, jackass,” and he does so with a grunt.

  I’m about halfway down the hallway when he jogs up behind me. “I never knew you were so agile,” I say.

  He snorts. “Gotta keep up with the youngsters. You gonna be okay with all this?”

  I shrug. “I’ve got to be, haven’t I?”

  “Only as far you need to be to get through it. I know I didn’t give you much choice in how involved you are, and believe me, I’d love to be more flexible, but that doesn’t mean you have to suffer in silence. If things get tough, or if you feel like anyone is stepping out of line, talk to me.”

  “And by anyone, you mean Donal O’Brien, right?”

  “I mean anyone, but yeah. He’s a good cop, and he’ll be invaluable on this, but he’s as capable of being a dick as everyone else. That he was so willing to work with you is out of character too. No offence.”

  It’s not surprising, I tell myself. Fuerza and Sunglasses work fast. Out loud, I reply, “Good to know. And thanks, Hoove.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he says and pushes the door to the war room open.

  Inside, Corporal Devereaux is busy adding two new marks to the incident map. He stops when he hears the door shut and glances over at us, giving a vague acknowledgement of, “Captain. Cassie,” before starting to rifle through some papers.

  “We all good to go?” Hoove asks.

  “Sure are.” Devereaux smiles. “Donal’s getting suited up as we speak.”

  “We got a lead?” I ask.

  Devereaux shakes his head. “Some new victims, one for a follow-up interview, one for an initial interview, but otherwise no. We made some modifications to Donal’s TS gear that should work to counter the light show. Well, providing we’re right about the way it works, eh?”

  I nod. “So it’s testing time.”

  “That’s the idea,” Hoove replies. “Let’s head down there.”

  We leave the room and head to the ramp to the basement levels of the station, skipping over the weapon storage floor and heading straight for the TS Unit floor. When we get down there, I follow quietly behind my case comrades until we reach an open room with a padded floor that is clearly set up to act as a gym. From the claw marks on the floor and the walls, the TS Unit obviously make good use of it. Hanson is already waiting for us, restlessly swinging two torch-like devices around in a complex arc pattern. She’s not doing the footwork, but I recognise the movements. It’s not a standard police technique, though. I’ll have to ask her about it later.

  “Stop mucking around with the equipment,” Hoove grunts, and Hanson stops in her tracks.

  “Sorry. Got bored,” she replies, shooting us a cheeky wink.

  “You got bored?” Hoove sighs. “And if you’d broken the damn things, swinging them about like majorette batons, then what would you say?”

  Hanson shrugs. “Whoops?”

  The put-upon police captain rubs the bridge of his nose and grumbles, “You’re lucky you’re so damn good at your job.” He looks over to an open door at the back of the room and yells, “Are you ready yet, O’Brien?”

  “Just about,” an artificially amplified voice booms. Moments later, the loud clack-clack of heavy, metal claws rings out from the shadows, and Donal O’Brien joins us on the mats.

  In his full gear, the Irishman adds a further half a foot, give or take, to his frame. He must have been about six five already, so the height alone goes a long way to creating a truly imposing image. Even without that, he’d strike fear into anyone, no matter whether they knew about the Murder Files or not. Donal’s TS form is that of an ash grey anthropomorphic wolf, and unlike the rounded tips of the publicly available TS gear, his enforcement-modded suit has claws that could tear more than the pads in this room. Even the teeth in his metallic snout appear longer and sharper than those on Lori’s Ink. “Let’s get started,” he says, then shouts, “Lights off.”

  They go off on command, leaving only the light seeping in from the hallway behind us, and Hanson says, “We’ll use the Dazzler first.” She steps forward onto the mat and raises one hand. A quiet click sounds, and all of a sudden, the torch in her hand is emitting a ridiculously bright green light at Donal O’Brien’s metal-covered chin. She lifts her hand and readjusts her aim, shining it straight at the Tech Shifter’s eyes.

  Donal O’Brien doesn’t move.

  “Anything?” Devereaux asks.

  “Nothing,” Donal replies. Hanson clicks another switch and the light starts to pulsate at different rates. “Still nothing. Try the Incapacitator.”

  Hanson clicks the torch off and brings up another, this time landing her first shot straight in the eyes. After a few seconds, Donal says, “Still nothing. You get the homebrew finished?”

  “You know I did,” Hanson replies, a smile reaching her voice. The torch flickers off, and she pulls something out of the back of her pants. Another flashing light hits Donal’s face, and he remains unflinching.

  “Okay, that’ll do. Lights on.”

  The lights come back up, and Hanson turns to face us. “First one was a military grade Dazzler. Second one was a police issue model. The third is something you can put together using tech you can pick up in stores. Looking good, ain’t it?”

  “So, how did you counter it?” I ask.

  “Eye guard,” Donal replies. “You won’t see it from over there ’cause it’s clear, but it has a covering made from vanadium doped zinc telluride. It’s an old technique to deal with Dazzler weapons, but it still works. It’ll take a day or two to get some non-TS equivalents ready for ya all, though.”

  “That’s fine,” Hoove says with a smile.

  “Not to put a dampener on it all, but how do you know for sure they’re working?” I ask. “The weapons are inconsistent, right?”

  Donal tilts a far too threatening muzzle towards me and says, “I had them tested on me when we came up with the theory. Well, not the homebrew one, but the other two. Believe me when I say they work fine on me.”

  I nod. “Fair enough.”

  “Okay,” Hoove interjects. “Next task is to get ready for today’s calls. Devereaux, Hanson, make sure you’ve got the updated files and head to victim twenty. Caz, I’m gonna need to get you tooled up before you and Donal can head out to number nineteen.”

  “Tooled up? How do you mean?”

  “WHAT ARE YOU carrying these days?” Hoove asks once we’re back on the weapons storage floor.

  “Glock Vintage.”

  “The 23 model?” he asks, and I nod. He rolls his eyes and unholsters his own gun, holds it out to me and says, “Trust you to go retro. You seen one of these before?”

  I take the handgun and turn it over in my hands. “Looks like a HK45.”

  “Mk 33. Same as most modern upgrades; fingerprint recognition, multiple tip compatibility, more accurate sighting. These ones are running Jolt.”

  “The auto corr
ection pack? I didn’t think it was out of testing yet.”

  “It isn’t. We may not be at the forefront as a city anymore, but we still get to try out the new shit.” Hoove takes the gun back from me and taps a small sheet of metal, barely raised above the top of the barrel. “This thing’s loaded with a camera and a heart-rate scanner at the front. Point it at a perp until the back end goes green, and it’ll track them. If your aim’s gonna be off, it pushes your hand in the right direction to correct it.”

  “So I hear. How does it work?”

  “You get a lightweight palm pad on your non-trigger hand, and it uses magnets to force you in the right direction.”

  We stop outside the door to the war room and I frown. “How accurate is it, though? Like, if you’re going for a precision kill, what if it thinks you’ll potentially miss and readjusts to something non-lethal?”

  “You’ll get to see that soon enough.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You’re licenced to carry the Glock, so you can keep that on you if you like. These are the standard now, so all the while you’re working with us, you’ll need to be signed off on one of them.”

  Change? Again? We hate that! Abort!

  I silently shoo away my brain’s reaction to the sheer amount of change I’ve had in my life recently. Some of it hasn’t been bad, but my standing with Allen Fuerza and whatever he’s up to isn’t as welcome. Knowing he’s been secretly running most of Utah’s criminal underworld for years now isn’t exactly comforting, even if his reasoning for doing so makes sense. That he could just decide to have me killed any time he wants doesn’t help.

  Hoove hands me a thin square of leather with straps hanging off the shaven corners and shows me how to attach it to my hand. Next, he plugs a fresh HK45 Mk 33 into the nearby computer terminal using a cable similar to the one that came with my phone when it was new. I wrap my fingers around the grip on the gun’s frame and wait until the machine confirms I’m registered for use. Next, he leads me through a side door to a small shooting range and, after rummaging through a drawer, hands me a clip of what I’m assuming are blanks. While I load them into the gun, he taps a couple of buttons on the keypad on the wall and a mannequin rises in the background.

  “Okay, quick tutorial. The mannequin is equipped with a simulated pulse. Point the gun at it and hold your aim… There, see the thin green strip at the back of the raised panel? That means you have a lock. Now, fire a couple of rounds. Put one in the shoulder, and one in the chest.”

  I widen my stance and readjust my aim, carefully picking my spot. In a real-life situation, I’d move quicker. Necessity and muscle memory are useful companions when you’re in a situation where you need to start wheeling out gun play. Here in a controlled environment, and under the watchful eye of the person who constitutes my commanding officer for the duration of the case, I’m happy to take my time. Well, not happy really. Comfortable with the usefulness of it. As such, when I do squeeze the trigger, I’m certain it’s helping instil the right sort of muscle memory in me.

  “Both spot on,” Hoove says. “Now, I want you to aim for the shoulder again, but let your hand drift to the side and down a bit.”

  “To the arm?”

  “No. Try to miss, but not by much.”

  I do as I’m told and, just as I start to pull on the trigger, I feel a jolt in the palm pad and my aim is forced almost violently back into place. A check of the mannequin shows that I hit a little above where I hit it the first time. “Diu.”

  Hoove gives his moustache a thoughtful scratch and says, “It has limits. Try aiming all the way over there.”

  I follow the direction of his finger to the far corner of the range and do as he said. Again, when I try to pull the trigger, the palm pad springs to life. This time, my arm is yanked back towards the mannequin at a terrifying speed, almost causing me to drop the weapon. “Damn thing nearly dislocated my shoulder,” I growl through gritted teeth.

  “You missed too. It’ll try to fix your aim, but it’s not a miracle solution by any means. Now, here’s a question for you. When you aimed at the chest, were you going for a kill?”

  “No, not intentionally. Did I catch a kill spot?”

  “No, you didn’t. Okay. In that case, try for the head.”

  I give my shoulder a few quick rotations to loosen it up again and do as I’m told. I line up the barrel, steady myself, and squeeze the trigger. Again, the palm pad forces my aim to change, dragging it down to the shoulder. “What the…?”

  “There’s the kicker with the Jolt system, at least how it is. The standard setting is non-lethal. In our experience thus far, it’s spot-on with being able to tell if you’ll hit the target most of the time, and I’m talking in the high nineties there. If it can tell you’re going for a kill, though, it’ll correct your aim to the nearest non-lethal point.”

  “So how do you carry out a precision kill? You can’t tell me police departments are honestly going to be expected to work without that as a potential.”

  “Of course not. The first models had an audio recognition thing built in. You had to say ‘Kill Box’ out loud to the gun to get it to loosen up. You can imagine how well that worked when you had to go into noisy areas. I tell ya, if we hadn’t been carrying the pre-Jolt models too, there would have been a few less cops on the streets after that debacle. The one you’re holding is working with an improved system. Take aim again. Now, the hand you’ve got on the grip? Tap your little finger on the grip twice, and fire.”

  I do so, and this time, my bullet flies true, impacting in the mannequin’s forehead, a little off where I wanted, but not so much as to make a difference to the end result.

  “I don’t like it,” I say, honestly. “I don’t have to use guns often, but when I do, I’m used to just aiming and firing. This adds an extra step to the process. What if someone forgets to do the tap in a life and death situation?”

  “My advice is don’t. What really sucks is it won’t let you fire without a lock unless you double tap too, but with your ring finger. We’re strongly recommending that feature is removed. Like I said, keep your Glock with you if you’re more comfortable knowing it’s there, but you’re gonna have to at least try with this, or you’ll be giving the higher-ups more ammo. They’re only partially sold on your involvement as it is. Oh, and the kill setting is time-limited once activated. Ten seconds, unlimited shots in that time, or as many as you can get out of the clip anyway.”

  “Great.”

  “Sorry, Caz, it is what it is. The final release should have the targeting as optional, but we’re stuck with this at the moment. Look at it like this, though. With the way the LV works, it should be useful in making sure we can actually hit the thing, even if the light show solution isn’t working. Anyway, we can’t hide down here all day. Grab yourself a couple of live clips from the drawer over there and meet up with Donal out back. He’ll fill you in on the victim.”

  “Sure, sure,” I say, walking to the drawer. “And LV? Is that what we’re calling the perp now?”

  “Yup. It stands for Light-Vamp. Came up with it last night. Cute, ain’t it?”

  I roll my eyes but can’t keep a small smile from forming on my lips. “Yeah. Real cute.”

  I BUNDLE INTO the back of a police van. It’s not the type the PD normally uses to transport criminals, but rather one of the ones they use to transport personnel. I’d say it was overkill to take two people to a routine interview, but looking at Donal O’Brien slightly hunched up opposite me, I can understand why it’s needed. There’s no way he’s fitting in a regular car, not fully suited.

  “Don’t worry, it’s soundproofed,” he says when he spots me glancing over towards the wall leading to the driver. “Unless the green light is on above the hatch, nobody’s listening, so it’s fine to talk about the case.”

  I rest back against the wall of the van and sigh. “You’ve given away that something’s up.”

  “How do ya mean?”

  “Captain
Hoover said it was odd you were so willing to work with me. I don’t suppose he knows who else you work for, does he?”

  “Nah. And it’s not like I never play nice, so it won’t be as big a deal as you’re making out. If he mentions it, I’ll just point out the obvious.”

  “That if me being bait is so important, it makes sense for you to be working with me?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, so what do I need to know about the victim? This is a follow-up meeting, so that means the brunt of the statement has already been taken, right?”

  Donal stretches his metal-covered arms and crosses his claws behind his masked face. “Name’s Joe Farrah. Mid-forties, licenced gun shop owner, got attacked in the early part of yesterday evening, right inside his store. Whoever this person is, they’re learning too; cut the power before entering, likely to avoid cameras, alarms, and all that shite.”

  “Pretty brazen, breaking into somewhere so well-armed by default.”

  “Aye. No fear, that’s for sure. Not yet anyway. Once their fancy little light show ain’t working, I’ll teach ’em to fear.”

  I smirk. “Sounds like you’re taking this all as a challenge.”

  “Oh, it is a challenge. You mark my words.”

  “Macho posturing aside, how is this gonna work? I get why you’re suited up, but won’t that cause panic if you get out into the public? I mean, you’re pretty recognisable, eh?”

  “I am that.” Donal chuckles. “Don’t worry, it’s all been thought of. There’s a wireless mic under your seat. You go in with that on, I’ll listen in. Any problems, I come running.”

  “Is that wise? I’m not dressed like a cop, and I don’t have a badge to flash. What’s to stop him—justifiably—refusing to speak to me?”

  “Ah, he won’t do that. It’s no accident we got this one, I requested him. Called ahead and let him know you’d be speaking to him, and everything.”

  I groan. “He’s King’s Guard, isn’t he?”