Dues of Mortality

by Jason Austin

  “One might argue that he was actually stealing it back.” Gabriel said, maintaining his smoothness.

  Wallace looked at him, perturbed.

  “You two had been disagreeing pretty hotly since you 'scuttled' his implant; isn't that right?”

  “I had to. He never would’ve approved of the applications and I didn’t want him talking.”

  “You should’ve cut him loose.”

  “Do you have any idea how far that would’ve set us back? Brains like his don’t exactly grow on trees! God damn it! Who the hell do you have to hang over a bridge to get decent fucking security in this town?”

  Wallace vacuumed a hit of air up his nose and lowered himself into the chair behind his $12,000.00 marble desk. He palmed its digital blotter like a star pianist in a concert hall.

  “Play the recording again,” he ordered.

  Gabriel drew the Nanopod that contained the voicemail from his suit pocket. Deploying Hobson as a redundant shadow on Block and Jameson had proved invaluable. Although she’d nearly spotted Hobson in the adjacent building—a fact Hobson had kept to himself—he had outperformed Block and it made Gabriel regret not bending to Hobson's price for doing the entire job himself. Hobson had contacted Gabriel the second the police popped on the scene. After Block was carted out, handcuffed to a stretcher and the coast was clear, Gabriel ordered Hobson inside the apartment to pick up any possible breadcrumbs that the faltering lummox may have left behind. It was a damn good thing Glenda Jameson wasn’t completely wireless like most folks or they would have had nothing to retrieve. Her webscreen was flashing active when Hobson entered and efficiency demanded he check it, as well as take a few extra minutes to make it look like scavengers had encroached on the crime scene. Even Gabriel had to hand it to him for being thorough.

  Gabriel held up the Nanopod, and a trembling voice emanated from its invisible speaker. “Ms. Jameson, hello. This is Richard Kelmer. I...I don’t mean to disturb you...but I’ve been doing some...very special work here at Millenitech lately and I uh...uh, well l...let’s just say your name came up and...Oh, dear, this is difficult to discuss over the phone. I really wish you were there. I really need to speak with you. I’m sorry I can’t leave a number. I...I’ll try to get in touch with you again later, when we can talk in person, some place safe. It’s important.”

  Wallace ground his teeth. This was the second time Gabriel had played the recording for him, the first being via comwatch. Wallace still couldn't believe it. “Are you sure the police haven’t listened to this?”

  “No, they never had the opportunity, but she may have told them about it if she thinks it was significant.”

  Wallace’s eyes squeezed closed like fists. “Well, at least he didn’t mention the project.” Wallace thought twice about it and asked, “Did he?”

  “Dragonfly? No.”

  “Did he mention the customer to her at all?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know...or hasn’t completely put it together yet? Was that all you were able to get?”

  “If there were any other messages, they were wiped before we got them. Block may have heard something else. We’ll have to ask him.”

  “Play it again.”

  Gabriel thumbed the Nanopod once more. “Ms. Jameson, hello. This is Richard Kelmer. Ms. Jameson, I...I don’t mean to disturb you...”

  “Hold it,” Wallace said abruptly. “Go back.”

  Gabriel tapped it again and the message played from the beginning. “Ms. Jameson, hello. This is Richard Kelmer.”

  “Stop!” Wallace said quickly.

  Gabriel stopped the recording.

  “Did you hear that?”

  Gabriel was blank.

  “There was something about the way he said his name. He didn’t say, ‘My name is Richard Kelmer.’ He said ‘This is.’ And the inflection was...”

  Wallace relaxed and parted his lips. “Son-of-a-bitch. He knows her. That wormy little nerd knows her.”

  Chapter 7

  Glenda finally gave up on getting comfortable in the police station's unfriendly little chair. The adrenaline rush-and-flush had left her a drained husk and every muscle was now registering the slightest pressure as inescapable torture. She fingered the pits of her eyes. Thought of the job interview she had tomorrow morning. She would make it come hell or high water, but likely pay for her diligence later with a splitting headache.

  A hint of Old Spice glided beneath Glenda's nose and she looked up to see Detective Andrew Roberts on his way over. A paternal looking sort, Roberts was probably no more than fifty with stern eyes and a moderate head of graying hair. He somewhat reminded Glenda of her father: tall, unassuming, with a face that looked more experienced and weather-beaten rather than middle-aged. He carried two sheets of paper in his right hand. He pressed his lips together, looking at Glenda—probably a modest attempt not to smile that stupid cop’s smile that never reassures anyone—and promptly took the chair behind his desk. He placed the papers on the desk’s digital blotter and began jostling its drawers.

  “Where are my pens for Pete’s sake?” he said under his breath. “And who's been using my desk? It's never this neat.”

  Andrew Roberts had had cop in his blood from day one—always with a natural talent for discerning personalities and analyzing facts. He was adept at making both suspects and victims feel as if talking to him was like sharing a story with their favorite uncle—someone who never based his love on a good grade or refusal to clean one’s room. The general take in the department was that Roberts was next to unflappable, except when it came to crimes against women and children, office politics and, most of all, his personal workspace.

  “Who the hell’s been using my desk?” he shouted out. “I can’t find a damn thing!”

  After muddling through a few more papers, he found a plastic ballpoint and turned his attention toward Glenda. “You feeling any better?”

  Glenda eyed the detective judiciously. She ruled his concern as genuine. “What I’m feeling is an overall distaste toward the unfairer sex. You people have a way of making it hard to bow to your superior nature when you throw your weight around like this.”

  Roberts grinned. “I take it by “you people,” you mean men, not cops?”

  “Oh that's right; you guys are having a bit of a PR problem these days.”

  PR problem was putting it mildly, Roberts thought. The H-Ball trade was taking its pound of flesh from the department ranks with extreme prejudice, turning cops into crooks and now—pending the full FBI investigation—possibly, killers. “We are indeed.”

  Glenda shrugged. “So what happens now?” she asked.

  “Well...”

  “Here’s your drink, Ms. Jameson.” A juvenile of an officer in a perfectly pressed uniform had approached, interrupting the detective. Earlier, the same officer had ushered Glenda to Robert's desk and offered to fetch her a soda as a depressurizing gesture. He was a nice young man with clear skin and glowing eyes. Eyes much too innocent to be seeing the kinds of things they saw on a daily basis. Even in her distraught state, Glenda had kicked the young man's hormones into overdrive. He pretended he could smell her velvety brown hair from across the room. Feel the brush of her naturally long eyelashes against his cheek as they cuddled together on a park bench or in a soft warm bed after a night of passionate lovemaking. He could barely take his eyes off of her perfectly curved legs and was certain the smooth skin of her broad, even shoulders would taste like ambrosia between his lips.

  “Oh, thank you, officer...” She squinted at his nametag.

  “Bowen, ma’am, uh miss. I mean you certainly don’t look old enough to be a ma’am, Ms. Jameson.”

  Robert’s eyes rolled like loose marbles. “Kid, if you're gonna drool at least have the courtesy to bring paper towels.”

  Glenda pretended not to notice the chiding. The young man’s Prince Valiant air had not been entirely lost on her, despite her current anti-male status.

  Bowen smiled
, red-faced, waving off the embarrassment. “Well, if you need anything else, ma'am I’ll be over there,” he said, pointing blindly behind himself and beating a hasty retreat.

  “By the way,” Roberts said, stopping the young man, “you see anybody using my desk? Everything’s rearranged and it smells like ammonia.”

  “I think I saw Jones at it earlier.”

  Roberts grimaced. “What, did he spill something on it?”

  Bowen just showed his palms and walked off.

  Roberts gave a once over to the sheets of paper he'd brought with him. “All right, Ms. Jameson, we’ve got your statement. All I need now is your signature at the bottom of the hard copy here so we can proceed.”

  The detective slid Glenda the papers and she gave them a thorough read. Her nose slightly scrunched. While the description of her ordeal was accurate, it read absurdly like the notes she used to take in high school history class. She signed the papers where necessary and returned them to the detective. “What happens to him now?”

  “Well, it seems as though this particular knuckle-dragger has a record, mostly assaults, even against other women. So he'll be bunking here for a while. Even if his history couldn't get bail denied, the drug charges would.”

  “Drugs?”

  “We found a hyposhot along with three ounces of H-ball in his jacket. Only phone call he placed was to his lawyer, so it’s not likely he’s got any friends taking up a collection. He won’t be showing up at your door or anything if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I was worried about, yes.” She pressed her chest in obvious relief. “So who is he, anyway? I mean is he like some serial killer or rapist or something?”

  “No, actually he’s just about as common as they come. His name is Malcolm Block. His reputation is that of your average well-dressed hood. The female assault victims looked like they might’ve been attempted rapes, but they couldn’t be proven. Turns out he’d dated them a few days or weeks prior.”

  “So you do think he was going to rape me?”

  “Hey, Andy. Is this her?” someone asked.

  “Yeah, Jonesy, this is her,” Roberts answered. “Ms. Jameson, this is Detective Perry Jones.” Roberts gestured to the balding, plain-looking gentleman who'd crept up behind her, hands on his hips. A pair of weak prescription glasses rested low on the bridge of his nose.

  “Hi,” Jones said with a placid smile.

  “He’s been my partner on occasion,” Roberts said. “But he won’t be anymore if I find out he’s the one who did this obsessive-compulsive redecoration.” Roberts cocked back in his pneumatic chair and poised a finger over the desk blotter. “What's with all the right angles? And what did you use on here, Windex? I thought you were on extended vacation for the past two weeks, not maid school.”

  Jones's pupils danced on the rim of his glasses. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were so attached to your little pig sty. I don’t know how you got any work done in that trash heap.”

  “Oh, I see, Mr. Man of the Hour doesn't approve of my workspace anymore so I'm the one who has to change. You letting all that super-cop stuff go to your head.”

  “Yeah, to you I'm super-cop. To everyone else I'm the cop who went rat-squad on his fellow uniforms.”

  Glenda looked puzzled for a moment and Roberts noticed. “Detective Jones here was a major player in bringing some of our wayward colleagues to justice recently,” he said to her. “If you know what I mean.”

  She nodded.

  Jones hummed and glanced down at Glenda. “So you’re the one who put that hurting on the old Block-head, huh? He’s not a very happy camper, right now. The guys down in lockup have been riding him about it all day. At first, they thought he’d been in a bar fight or something. But we sort of passed it around that he got beat up by a girl.”

  Glenda said nothing, just hoped Jones wasn't looking for a smile.

  “Block-head?” Roberts inquired. “You know this guy?”

  “His name came up a couple times when I was working the case, after I started investigating Bonanno; mostly freelance.”

  Roberts sat up straight.

  “I’ve got to tell you,” Jones said to Glenda, “I’ve seen a lot of women who were victims of this sort of thing. The ones who fight back usually don’t score a knockout. I’m glad you weren’t seriously hurt.”

  “Thank you.” Glenda said.

  “You’re welcome.” Jones turned to leave.

  “Whoa, hey, the state attorney's office called here twice today, looking for you. Cosgrove said you hadn't returned her calls.”

  Jones rolled his eyes, looking thoughtful. “Ah, sorry, guess I hadn’t checked my watch.” He then looked back at Glenda. “Oh, and don’t worry about old Block-head. We’ll squeeze it out of him. He’s not that smart.”

  Glenda’s forehead wrinkled at Jones’s fading back. “'Squeeze it out of him’?” she asked Roberts.

  “He hasn’t said a word since we brought him in,” he answered. “We’re still not sure what he was doing there.”

  “It seems pretty obvious to me; he wanted to take what any woman with half a brain would never give him willingly. I told you what he said.”

  “Yes, I was getting to that before. You see, we found something, a...uh semen sample on the front of his pants.” Roberts was never very good at mincing words.

  Glenda squirmed. “Ew, ugh.”

  “We also found a fresh sample on the floor of your closet where he apparently hid. Now what makes it curious is that it's just not likely that a man who was about to commit a rape would...take care of business single-handedly and then commit the crime. It would be rather self-defeating, to say the least.”

  “Maybe it was the drugs. He couldn't...uck...control himself.”

  “H-ball has been known to heighten sexual stimuli, but he showed no signs of being under the influence when we brought him in and I don't think toxicology will find any recent dosing.”

  The detective leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk and laced his fingers. “Ms. Jameson, are you sure he didn’t say anything else about what he was going to do to you or why he was there?”

  “Just the quick and painless thing,” she said.

  Roberts looked away from Glenda, fingering the back of his neck.

  She found the cluster of body language almost offensive. “Excuse me,” she said, sharpened. “Is there something else I should know? You look as if there’s something else I should know.”

  “Oh, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to....” Roberts leaned back obviously searching for words. “I guess I’m just having a hard time with this. I mean it doesn’t really make sense. Guys like this almost always make sense.”

  “What are you saying?” Glenda asked, baring teeth. She did not like the way he said that.

  “Well, I think...”

  “You think I’m lying?” She shouted, drawing unwanted attention. “You think I made this all up?”

  Roberts gawked at her then passed a “help me” glance toward the closest of his colleagues.

  “What kind of cop are you?” she bullied him. “A man breaks into my apartment, attacks me, and for all I know was going to kill me, and you’re busy trying to make me the criminal?”

  “No, no,” Roberts said. The entire squad room was now transfixed. “That’s not...”

  “Damn police! Damn men! Blame the victim! Blame the woman!”

  “Please listen!” Roberts shouted back.

  Glenda had a flash of her father trying to shut her up whenever she went all “political” on him. He respected his daughter like no other man could, but that fourth-wave-feminist blather made his ears bleed.

  “I’m not saying anything of the kind,” Roberts explained.

  “Well, then, what are you saying?”

  The detective steadied himself. “Ms. Jameson, I checked this man Block's record and you just heard detective Jones confirm it. For all intents and purposes, he's little more than
a working stiff. He’s a hoodlum, not a sicko...well, not that type of sicko. If you’d had some kind of prior relationship with him, I’d be more inclined to believe it was an attempted rape. But you say you two have never even met.”

  “I don’t say! It’s the truth!”

  Roberts crossed his arms atop his desk, refueling his diplomacy. “You see, all things considered, it's hard for me to see him following you home and attacking you all on a whim. With guys like this, there’s usually a more...material reason involved. Do you understand what I mean?”

  She didn't.

  Roberts leaned closer, peering at Glenda like a doctor with bad news. “Do you have any reason to think someone might have a grudge against you, or might want to frighten or harm you?”

  Glenda took a breath and held it. So much for not alarming her. “Well, of course not,” she said. “I...” She couldn’t finish.

  “Ms. Jameson?”

  Chapter 8

  Roberts drew his gun and instructed Glenda to wait in the hall. The locking matrix on the front door lock had been ripped off and there was nothing left of it but exposed wires. After thoroughly surveying the apartment, Roberts called in a report and let Glenda inside. The webscreen along with a few other choice items was missing.

  “You said this man tutored you in college?” Roberts asked.

  “Yes,” Glenda answered. “He tutored me in chemistry at Case Western. He was always really nice to me. I really can’t imagine him doing anything so...” She gave up trying to find a word for it.

  “And you say you have no idea what this message could’ve been about?”

  “Yes, and could you do me a favor? Stop beginning every inquiry with ‘And you say’. It's a little disconcerting.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Jameson.” Roberts apologized like a loving boyfriend who had run over his sweetheart’s cat. “It’s a matter of getting it straight in my head, not accusing you.”