And who had the gun now? That would be the next step for Carla. The subsequent shooter could easily be here, in the market with her. In terms of lax surveillance, this would be the logical place. Except that would imply that the next shooter had access to face tracking more sophisticated than the pay apps she herself had bought. At a corner between two aisles, Terri paused under a neon sign showing a glowing blue swordfish, smiling maniacally and bucking in an invisible tempest. She glanced down all four aisles, no one direction presenting itself. Her nearsightedness wasn’t as bad as some people her age, but she’d definitely had visual help with the PanOpts. She caught herself reaching a hand into space to ghost down to the corners, forgetting again that she was bare-eyed. She paused to stare up at misters twenty feet overhead, standing exhausted to watch the mist drift down in a fine curl of spray, the coil of vapor shaped like the bow of a surfer’s trench.
Her jacket pocket chimed. She slipped her PanOpts on, saw it was Zack calling, and glanced around at the slow-moving Caucasian herd, bracing herself for a conversation she didn’t want to have. She dinged the box already set back at City Hall, the one scrubbing out background details, then clicked on full view, placing his VT in the narrow aisle with her. Zack appeared agitated, pacing back and forth.
“Whoo boy, you ready to move?”
“Where are we going?”
“I need you over in Pershing Square, ASAP. I got all three of them.”
Out of morbid curiosity, she almost asked which three, instead clucking her tongue. “Naw.”
“What … are you in trouble? Where are you?”
“Where I’m at is none of your business. Tell me about Hyperion again.”
“That? I don’t know, what about it?”
“‘It.’ Okay.”
“Look Terri, don’t you want to know what I’ve been up to? I figured it out. All I …”
“Tell me about the books in your house.”
“Huh?”
“Just tell me the subject of the books in the two bookcases of your house.”
He paused, then said, “What are you doing, Terri?”
“You heard me. It’s a simple question. Tell me about the books in your house.”
“I don’t know … they’re books. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You can’t tell me about Hyperion …”
“They’re books. Books have all kinds of …”
“And you can’t tell me the subject of every book in your house.”
His VT stood opposite her and glared, an intensity of anger she’d only seen a few times in the six years they’d been partnered, and never directed at her.
“I. Just. Told. You.”
“No, you didn’t. Because you’re not Zack.”
He raised a finger to his chin and tilted his head. A slight smile emerged.
“Whoever you are, you’re the one who’s been setting me up.”
His smile grew wider, more confident. Very softly, he said, “Careful.”
“Careful or what?”
“Careful.” He was nearly whispering. “Because you really have no idea how bad things can get, Terri.”
“Who are you?”
Zack—not Zack—smiled. “The right question is where am I?” He smiled and vanished. She snatched off the shades, feeling a patch of goose bumps on her neck, looking down at the PanOpts as if she held all the bizarre horror of the last few weeks in one sweaty palm.
“Okay,” Terri ran a hand over her jaw. She looked up to a wooden sign depicting a cartoon crab with six human legs, each done up in fishnet stockings, its googly eyes sporting giant curled lashes. This was one of those junction points she’d been vaguely trained for. Except that the crux of all cop training was Don’t Go It Alone. She breathed deeply, trying to use the tools at her disposal.
Regulate. Concentrate. Analyze. So the civilian eyewear was all but useless for tracking faces. She could do the job with her own eyes, or she could use her PanOpts. Those were the choices. Were those the only choices? She could leave, that was a choice. And although she didn’t have a destination, anywhere certainly felt safer than here. No: that was false. Surveillance was low here. This was her best bet for catching Paula Pineda alive, and Paula Pineda was her best bet for stopping the chain.
Maintain. Breathe. Organize. She’d take her chances with cop eyes. Any incoming calls, even from people she no longer trusted—especially from people she no longer trusted—offered information about whatever it was that was happening. Back in PanOpts, she pulled up the layout of the Fish Mart, seeing it was almost entirely a grid, four rows by five rows with a scattering of kiosks at the entrance and a fringe of restaurants bordering the parking lot. She set up a walking path, setting out with an orderly plan that covered every aisle. Not having a physical photo of Paula on her, she could still question anyone wearing shades, which was maybe a quarter of the clientele.
Rounding the first corner, she set the shades to full alert if Paula’s face emerged for just a second, holding out her physical badge for an older couple dressed in all white, standing before a wine tasting booth. Even facing a cop, both continued obliviously sipping on long-stemmed glasses of chardonnay as if the countywide open-container ban somehow didn’t apply to them. Which, she supposed, it didn’t.
“Excuse me, LAPD, homicide. Have either of you seen this woman,” she said, motioning up to the flat photo of Paula Pineda that would be seen at eye level in their own EyePhones.
“No, Officer, we haven’t,” the older man said, placing an outstretched hand over his wife’s shoulder as if shielding her from the indignity of answering. The woman opened her mouth to say something, then took the signal from her husband.
Terri raised a hand to move the photo down below eye level, seeing thick curls of blue smoke spilling out of her fingertips. The effect was so otherworldly that she momentarily turned away from the couple and bumped the shades up to confirm that it wasn’t actually happening. Sensing her confusion, the man and woman laughed nervously and walked off. Terri glanced down the aisle and saw that a light dusting of snow fell across the bins and clients, even though all her apps were turned off.
“Hold up,” she said, even now letting her irritation with this couple get the best of her. “Ma’am. I need to ask you as well.” The couple kept walking.
“Ma’am,” Terri called out, holding out a hand, seeing the trail of blue mist left by the sweep of her wrist.
“Excuse me! Sir! Ma’am!” Terri reached out and put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, letting out an involuntary yip as her hand continued down, not touching anything, dropping into nothingness where her eyes told her there was a fellow human. She snatched off the shades, seeing no couple, only a few faces turned toward her further down the aisle. Terri realized she was blushing, her body approximating a response to a situation she’d never experienced. She hadn’t mistaken the couple for VTs; that wasn’t possible. These were counterfeits of living, breathing people. She thought of Carla’s words: an entirely different universe.
Returning to PanOpts, she was surprised to see the couple still there, sauntering toward a tabletop aquarium piled three deep with lobsters. She caught up and stepped in front of the couple to see if they’d acknowledge her own reality or simply continue right through her, as if she were the one who didn’t exist. They halted, expressions unchanged.
“What is this?” she said. “Showing me what you can do?”
The man smiled, displaying brilliant white teeth, turning slowly to his companion. As Terri watched, her face shifted, curling outward, lines deepening, the nose filling out, drooping, and then she was looking at Nuestro Quintiglio in drag, the shoulder-length blond hair framing his craggy features. But this wasn’t Nuestro in life. This face was ashen, with the waxy repose of the gurney.
“Answer your phone,” the corpseface said.
A chirp came. It was Zack. She put him on in audio.
“Nope,” not Zack said. “VT me. Got something you should see.”
/>
She did this, the couple vanishing, Zack appearing in their place.
“Guess where I am.”
“Not in front of me,” she said, the flutter clearly audible in her voice.
“I’m in Tammi’s kitchen,” he said with a laugh, then announcing a street address that Terri knew as well as her own. “Isn’t that a kick?”
She heard herself say, “What,” in a far-off voice.
“Don’t worry, she and Rex are out running errands. But look who I did find upstairs, trying to hide under a bed.”
Not Zack drew a swirled finger gesture in the air, linking VTs, and then Krista was with him, sobbing, held in a moderate chokehold.
“Aunt Terri … they found me …”
She looked from one face to the next, thinking, Calm, just stay calm, then, overlapping this, the significance of that one word: they.
“So here’s what’s going to happen. You’re in aisle B2. You’re going to go up one, and then left three. Paula Pineda is at the end. You are going to walk straight up to her, and you are going to blow her goddamn brains out in front of everyone. And you’re going to do that because you don’t want Krista here to die. Nod if that’s clear.”
She nodded.
“Make an outgoing call, ask for help, deviate in any way, and she’s dead. I’ll carve her up with that steak set you got Tammi a few years back. Start with her feet and work up. Get marching.”
Terri walked, the fake Zack and real Krista hovering alongside her. She turned left where she was supposed to.
“I want to talk to Krista.”
“What did I say about deviation, Terri?”
“I want to ask a question.”
“You know,” fake Zack sighed, sounding just like real Zack. “You’re in this whole goddamn mess because you asked too many questions to begin with. You know that, right?”
“Krista. Did they hurt you?” She could see the end of the aisle up ahead, a huddle of shoppers in which Paula Pineda must be included.
“My arm got twisted.”
“Listen, the other day …”
“Now you’re going on two questions,” fake Zack said.
“… when your school was closed. What was the reason?”
“What?” Krista blubbered.
She was one row away. Not far ahead, Paula Pineda turned, facing toward her, looking down to her hand basket.
“Krista, what was the reason?” Terri said, unsnapping her gun holster. “Why did you tell me you had the day off?”
“Enough,” fake Zack said.
Krista was sobbing, “I don’t wanna die.”
Terri halted in place. Paula was fifteen feet away, examining something in an ice-filled bin.
“Just say the words, Krista …”
“You’ve got five seconds, Terri.”
Krista blubbered, “Don’t let me die, Aunt Terri …”
“Yeah,” Terri exhaled. “Okay. Okay.”
She drew her gun with one hand, simultaneously yanking the PanOpts up and off her face, crossing the three steps and grabbing her prey by the wrist while the surrounding civilians reared back in shock.
“Paula Pineda, you are under arrest for the murder of Clay Tejada …”
Mirandized, handcuffed, limp and sobbing, Paula Pineda was entirely compliant. Guiding her the final fifteen feet out into the sunlight, Terri wondered if she’d ever arrested anyone so small. Even the adolescents she’d collared had seemed heavier, more willing to wriggle their low bulk as a weapon. Terri lifted a hand to call for a car, remembering once again that she had no shades, seeing a trembling thumb and quickly dropping her arm. The comedown from an arrest always gave her at least a slight flutter; who knew what the comedown from something like this would be.
She forced herself to systematically inspect each of her pockets, finding the badge and again pinning this on her jacket, then finding the disposables and calling Carla.
“We’re here. I got her.”
“I’m calling for backup. No signs of the next shooter?”
Terri scanned the faces in the crowd, the pedestrians trying to move around her as quickly as possible, and the gawkers further along both sides of the U-shaped dropoff road, her field of vision rapidly filling with more pop-up bubbles and banners.
“No, we’re good. Just get us out of here.”
“A car’s on its way. Does she still have her EyePhones?”
“I don’t know. Hey, Paula … shit …” Terri pulled up the disposables, her suspect’s face getting crowded by ads. As she did this, another dead man zoomed up from the crowd, his movement rendered in that strange slow-motion lucidity she’d only experienced once or twice before. As Froggy raised the pass-along pistol, Terri found herself registering how frighteningly awful he looked, eyes barely open, his face and forearms covered in an oily sheen of sweat that had stained the pits of his light hoodie like cooking oil.
Terri saw Froggy before Paula did, instinctually swinging herself right, around Paula’s body as the crack came, all three of them seeming to hit the ground at the same moment, the shock of pain in her wrist pushing time back up to normal speed, Terri thinking, Why did he fall?
She kicked the gun away from Froggy’s hand and then brought her heel down against his jaw, hard, drawing her own gun and mouthing something loud and authoritative. Her own wrist throbbing, she zipcuffed one of his thin arms to the pole of a bike rack, feeling the fever blazing off him, pulling aside his thin T-shirt and seeing the hideously inflamed wound in his shoulder. A shrill scream started up, but when she turned to tell Paula Pineda to calm down, Terri saw the blood and realized what had just happened.
Paramedics arrived, then backup, red and blue lights playing weakly across faces in the crowd. Terri realized she was still here, that this was actually happening. At some point, a strong hand hoisted her to her feet, draped her with a thin blanket, and ushered her into an empty cop car. She thought, I’m just shocked, not in shock, but then felt her legs buckle as she sat.
She patted down her own jacket with deliberate motions, like a blind woman, finally finding the disposable glasses in the same pocket she’d placed them in just a few minutes earlier. It was a Sunday. Krista would be home. She focused through the jittery hollowness as the phone rang.
“Hey Aunt Terri. Hold on?”
“Wait,” she said, hearing her own voice warble even as she saw no red letter D. “This is you, right?”
“Of course.”
“And is everything okay there?”
“Um … yeah. Should something be wrong?”
“I just …” her voice caught and she hung up abruptly, producing a low hoot that was half sob, half chortle.
Of course. Hostage Krista wasn’t real Krista. Villain Zack hadn’t been real Zack. All those phone conversations with her partner came flooding back, all those suspicious omissions and outright diversions. Follow up on leads that keep you off this main thread. She let this sink in. The last time she’d seen Zack in person was at the skyscraper assault. Any phone conversation could be suspect.
Terri stiffened in revelation. Any PanOpt conversation, period, could be suspect. The PanOpts themselves were suspect. She thought back to the lie-detector sessions with Torg and Liney, the readings leading her in the same direction the false Zack had. And she hadn’t spoken with Liney in person. If her cop shades were corrupted, how could she be sure what she’d seen was real?
She rubbed her eyes, then called up her glove box service and dinged the request box. Then she called Carla in audio, condensing the horror of the last ten minutes into a few simple sentences.
“I saw there was a shooting. I’m en route now,” Carla said. “I should be there in five minutes.”
“Listen, also. There’s a guy in Central Housing, Nate Posada. Know him?”
“No.”
“I was told of his death. That maybe was … false. I need you to call his number in the cop directory, then drop a link over to me.”
“Sure. Hold on.”
/>
Terri stared down at the light-gray carpeting, rethinking events from the last week. Froggy on the freeway. Debriefing Imsane. The Chief’s chew out. Gunshots ricocheting off her fleeing vehicle. Everything had been experienced through PanOpts. She examined the fleshy web between thumb and forefinger, once again experiencing that skipping sensation; her own hands, her real, actual hands.
Carla came back on the line, said, “Here,” and then she heard Mutty drawl, “Hey Terri.”
She exhaled slowly. “Heeeeey.”
“You calling from a pay phone?”
“Where are you?”
“We got a ga-zelle watch. What’s up?”
“Ahm. Lemme call you back.”
She hung up and put a thumb and finger to either side of her throat, trying stop her heart from slamming. Mutty had been there that night, during the skyscraper raid. She’d seen him. No, she’d seen him through cop shades. She thought of the meeting with Chandrika Chavan, on the far side of the building, the only exchange where she hadn’t been wearing PanOpts. She hadn’t glimpsed any of the cops—outside or inside—with her bare eyes. She thought about the forty-sixth-floor window glazed with dirt, turning to see that she stood in an empty room. One against fifteen thousand.
Carla arrived and said, “Give me a minute,” circling back to squat down next to the medical team gathered by the shooting site. Terri again stared at her shoes, trying to find somewhere for her mind to perch that wasn’t what had just happened or what she’d just realized. And although the detecting part of her brain felt inaccessible, she knew tumblers were still clicking, the mind still firing up conclusions without her consent. She’d been expertly steered. By who?
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