The Sensation

by Amanda Bridgeman

  Salvi nodded to herself as she stared at Ford, wondering whether Solme had heard the news from her boss. When she’d interviewed Solme during the Bountiful case, he’d told Salvi that he and Ford went way back. Turns out, as Mitch had discovered, it was way back to a drink-drive accident where Solme had taken the hit for Ford.

  “Anyway,” Ford said, “he wants to introduce you to his new head psych at the complex.”

  “Why?” Salvi asked. “The Bountiful case is closed.”

  “The case may be closed but apparently Subjugate-52 has been asking for you.” Ford’s eyes seemed to pierce Salvi’s as though testing her true resolve on returning to active duty. Despite not wanting to, Salvi couldn’t help but pause at the mention of Subjugate-52’s name.

  “52?” she said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, I’m just the goddamn messenger. You call ‘em, or you don’t. It’s up to you. Whatever you do, just be careful,” Ford said.

  Salvi stared at her. “Why?”

  Ford shrugged. “I don’t know, Brentt,” she said sarcastically. “Maybe an ex-serial killer personally requesting to see you isn’t something you should take lightly. The last thing you want is to befriend this guy. The man was a brutal murderer.”

  Salvi nodded, then smiled as she stood. “But there’s no problem, right,” she said, “because the Solme Complex’s treatment works.”

  Salvi left the office with Ford’s eyes hot on her back. Although the Subjugates and Serenes had aided her in the Bountiful case, indicating that perhaps the treatment did work, deep down there was still a part of her that wondered about Subjugate-52. After all, she had managed to get him to break his Serenity relatively easily, and that was something she just couldn’t shake. Her old partner, Stan Stanlevski, had always driven that into her: to listen to her gut, to use her senses. Right now, her gut still felt unease when it came to the Subjugate.

  She made her way back to her desk and saw Beggs watching her from where he sat opposite.

  “What was that about?” he asked.

  Salvi waved it off. “Just my last case.”

  “Well that’s closed, right?” he said. “So let’s get to closing this Kelto’s Diner one.”

  Salvi shook her head at him.

  Beggs smiled. “Hey, I know you want to hit the streets now you’re back, but we gotta close this other shit out first. It’s ain’t all fun and games, Brentt.”

  “Especially with you as my partner,” she said dryly.

  “Well,” he said, “you can always go back to Grenville.”

  Salvi shrugged. “Ford wanted the switch up. Not my choice,” she lied.

  Beggs stared at her a moment and she thought she caught a look of doubt in his eyes, before he turned back to his screen.

  Salvi was ready to close the Kelto’s Diner case. She’d read through the report carefully and was satisfied everything was in order. With dozens of witnesses to the murder and security footage inside the diner, it was pretty clear as to what had happened and why. At approximately 2.16pm on Wednesday November 14th, Tynan Williams, 23 years old, entered Kelto’s Diner and walked up to Joseph Delroy, 47 years old, who sat eating his lunch at a table in the middle of the restaurant. Williams pulled a gun and fired at Delroy. Delroy somehow managed to pull his own gun and shot back, but quickly succumbed to his wounds. Witnesses state that as Delroy lay dead on the floor in a pool of blood, Williams reloaded and continued to fire, screaming at Delroy that he owed him money. Witnesses stated that Williams paced the diner, breathing heavily in an agitated state, possibly on some kind of narcotic, before he too succumbed to his injuries and collapsed on the floor. Ambulance staff arrived in time to perform CPR and keep Williams alive long enough to make it to the hospital where he later died.

  Further investigation by Salvi and Beggs had confirmed Joseph Delroy owned a cleaning business in the city and that Tynan Williams was an employee. Having checked their banking records, it appeared as though Delroy had been paying Williams the same amount for some time and didn’t look to have missed any payments. With the tighter gun ownership laws in California, neither of their weapons were registered. As much as Salvi wanted to know what Williams was referring to when he said Delroy owed him money – was it a card game? Overtime payments? – they did not have the time nor the resources to pursue the finer detail. There were other cases that needed their attention. Besides, the details would not alter the facts of this case, nor would they affect its closure. Williams murdered Delroy in cold blood and Delroy killed Williams in self-defense, in front of several witnesses and captured on security footage. End of story. Case closed.

  Salvi tapped the glass display of her console, shutting the file down. She pressed her left thumb against the authorization panel beside her console. It flashed blue as it read her print, then green, indicating the department’s system had accepted it. She then scrawled her signature onto the scratch pad, it registered on the display, then she tapped “File Report”. Off it went, to be stored in their archived data bank.

  “That Kelto’s Diner case wound up yet?” Ford asked, approaching her from behind.

  “Yeah,” Salvi said, swinging her chair around to face her. “That should help your monthly stats to Chief Garrett.”

  “I do like a closed case,” Ford said, pulling her coat over her broad shoulders. “Now if you could just tackle the thousands of other unsolved cases we have that’d be great.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Salvi smiled, as Ford checked her iPort.

  “I gotta go or my wife will kill me. My kid’s recital is tonight.”

  “Enjoy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Ford nodded, walking to the door. “Don’t burn yourself out on the first day back, Brentt.”

  Salvi watched her leave then turned her eyes to the mugshows by the door again. She looked over at Hernandez and Bronte working away silently at their desks, then shifted her eyes to the empty desks of Mitch and Caine, then to that of Beggs. She checked her iPort, saw it was nearing 7pm, so decided to take Ford’s advice, log off and head home.

  She walked into her Sky Tower apartment complex close to 7.30pm. The auto-concierge hologram came to life, projected from a sensor on the wall, welcoming her. As usual she ignored it, heading straight to the elevator, listening as her boots tapped on the white polished tiled floors of the grand foyer.

  When she stepped inside her apartment on the 77th floor and closed the door behind her, she paused a moment listening for the chime of the digital lock behind her.

  Then she waited a few moments more.

  She listened for any sounds that shouldn’t be there, studied the apartment for anything out of place. It was the only thing that had changed about her life since the Bountiful case. Since she’d arrived home to the noises coming from her bedroom. Since she’d found surveillance cameras set up within her air conditioning vents. Since a serial killer had been watching her private moments. She regularly checked the vents now, just to be sure no one else was watching her. Of course, she never told Doctor Marr this. He didn’t need to know she’d merely added a few seconds onto her daily routine.

  She moved to her bedroom and lost her lenses, her iPort and comms earpiece, then changed into her gym wear and began to jog on the treadmill in her workout station in the corner of her living room. As she ran, she stared out her floor-to-ceiling windows at the Golden Gate Bridge in the near distance, alight and peeking through the surrounding mist, and as she raised her heartbeat and began to sweat, her mind cycled over the day. She kept wondering what had been on that data pane Doctor Marr had been reviewing, kept seeing Mitch hand her the coffee, kept wondering how Attis Solme had known she was back on duty so fast, kept picturing Subjugate-52 covered in Bio-Lume staring at her.

  She gave up running after a while, looking to distract her mind. She ate her nutritional micro-dinner, then relaxed beneath the massaging hydro-spray of her shower, before making her way to her soft white bed and falling into it.

  As she lay in the dar
k, staring up at the faint light upon her ceiling, partly starlight this high up but partly neon hue from the city around her, she thought once more about her last case; about the camera in the vent opposite her bed, and what it had filmed her doing.

  With Mitch.

  Then she thought of the disc Mitch had handed to her after their last case; the footage, of them. He thought she’d want to be the one to destroy it, for peace of mind.

  Her eyes drifted to the set of drawers beneath the vent, where, buried deep within the back corner, alongside Faith’s rosary beads, now sat the disc of her and Mitch. For some reason she hadn’t been able to bring herself to be rid of it.

  Salvi was sure she had just closed her eyes when her iPort began to ring on the bedside table. It was Beggs, and she’d come to realize the guy was old school and rarely opted for holo-calls. She answered it, projecting the voice call from its speaker.

  “Brentt?” he said, as though he’d just awoken too.

  “Yeah?” she answered, her own voice husky.

  “We got a body in the Sensation. Riverton’s sending you the exact coordinates. I’ll meet you there.”

  2: ABSENT MINDS

  Salvi stood on the apartment’s balcony, dressed in her crime scene containment suit, gloves and sole plates, as she studied the body before her. The man, whom Riverton had identified as 34-year-old Devon Barker, the owner of the apartment, lay face down, surrounded by shattered glass. Beside him on the ground lay a metal pole of some kind; no doubt the reason for the back of his skull being smashed in.

  “Jesus,” Beggs muttered as he crouched down to take a better look. His wrinkled face studied the wounds. “That’s gotta take some effort.”

  Salvi nodded in agreement. “Or some anger. Wonder what he did to deserve that?”

  Beggs stood up again, groaning a little and rubbing his creaky knees. “Let’s ask the girlfriend that.”

  He left the balcony and stepped back inside the apartment. Salvi glanced up at the police drone hovering in the sky close by, filming the scene, then she turned and followed Beggs inside.

  It was a high spec pad in a high spec neighborhood. Minimalist, with lots of white smooth surfaces and everything controlled by the house AI. At least, when the house AI was working. The system had apparently crashed and was currently offline. The tenants were young and beautiful. At least the guy had been before the pole to his head. From the looks of the moving photos on the walls, the woman was a model, and, from the equipment laying around, the victim had probably been the photographer.

  They found the girlfriend in the bedroom with a beat cop, named Vincent, watching over her. She was sitting in bed with the satin sheets resting around her waist. She had a petite frame with dark bottle-blonde hair and East Asian features. Her top half was adorned in a pink slinky camisole and her hair was all messed up like she’d been sleeping. Or maybe fighting. The woman looked tired, numb. Perhaps she was still drunk. Salvi spotted an empty wine bottle on the bedside table and clothes strewn across the floor. She smelled incense and saw the remnants in a small glass container on a dresser.

  “She been there the whole time?” Beggs asked Officer Vincent, who nodded.

  “We came out on a domestic disturbance. Neighbors reported glass smashing and banging. When we got here another neighbor told us about the body on the balcony. No one answered our knocks, so we broke the door down. Found her in bed. Looked like she just woke up at the sound of our arrival.”

  Beggs nodded and Salvi stepped closer to the woman, angling the projection of her holo-badge toward her.

  “I’m Detective Brentt and this is Senior Detective Beggs,” she pointed to her partner. “We need to ask you some questions about what happened here tonight.”

  The model looked at Salvi, but her eyes were distant.

  “That’s you in the photos on the wall, right?” Salvi asked. “You live here?”

  She nodded, still vague, and looking a little green, like maybe she wanted to throw up.

  “What’s your name?” Salvi asked.

  The model didn’t answer. Instead she just stared ahead at nothing, her long hair hanging forward over the sides of her face. Salvi clicked her fingers in front of the woman, until her gaze moved back to hers. Salvi was starting to question whether her state was due to some narcotic rather than the wine.

  “Have you taken something?” Salvi asked. “Do you need medical attention?”

  “We offered that before,” Vincent said. “She declined. Said she just wanted to sleep.”

  “We’ll get you some medical attention, huh?” Salvi said, but the woman shook her head and turned back to stare at nothing.

  Beggs moved over to a small glittery handbag lying on the floor. He picked it up in his gloved hands and rifled through until he pulled out some ID.

  “Myki Natashi,” Beggs said.

  Salvi turned back to the woman. “Myki? That your name?”

  The woman continued to stare at nothing.

  “Hey! Myki!” Salvi called to her, snapping her fingers again. “You need to tell us what happened. Did you attack your boyfriend out there or did someone else do this?”

  Myki rubbed her hand over her face and shivered. Salvi eyed the slinky top she wore, then moved to where a jacket lay nearby on the floor. She picked it up and went to drape it around Myki’s shoulders, but as soon as Salvi touched her, the woman flinched back, scrambling away. As she did, Salvi saw she was naked from the waist down, then noticed bruises on her wrists and minor blood stains on the mattress.

  She turned to the officer. “Get a paramedic in here.” She looked back at the cowering, still-dazed woman as Vincent vacated the room. “Myki, it’s okay. We’re here to help you. We’re going to take you to a hospital to get checked out. Alright?”

  “Rape and murder?” Beggs said quietly.

  Salvi nodded. “Maybe.”

  Vincent returned with the paramedic who, armed with a needle, tried to approach Myki, but it only made the woman cower even more, throwing herself out of the bed and crawling into the corner of the room.

  “No, no, no,” she whimpered, still dazed.

  Salvi moved to her. “It’s alright, Myki. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  The woman suddenly lashed out and nails slashed down the side of Salvi’s neck. Wincing, Salvi grabbed the woman’s arms and pinned them at her sides. Myki screamed and struggled in response.

  “No! No more. Please!” she cried.

  “Can I get some sedation here!” Salvi barked, holding her down.

  The paramedic swooped in and jabbed a needle into the woman’s arm.

  Myki’s eyes filled with tears. “No more… Please…”

  The room filled with her soft cries as they waited for her body to relax and her eyes to close, before they hauled her onto a gurney. Salvi watched as they covered and strapped her in. They were about to wheel her out of the apartment when she noticed a mark on the side of Myki’s face.

  “Wait,” Salvi told the paramedic, stepping closer. She took Myki’s unconscious chin and turned her face to view both sides of it. There were two strange markings on either temple, indentations, like something had been pressed against her skin. Salvi glanced around the room but couldn’t see any kind of fashion headwear that Myki might’ve worn that night. She looked back to the unconscious woman and the strange indentations. She knew her holo-badge would be recording footage, but Salvi engaged her iPort camera and captured the markings regardless. When she was done, she nodded for Vincent and the paramedic to take Myki away, and uploaded the images to Riverton, to put into the case file.

  “We’ll get more sense out of her once she sleeps it off anyway,” Beggs said.

  Salvi nodded and touched her burning neck. She pulled her gloved fingers away to see blood on them. Beggs chuckled.

  “A catfight on your first day back, Salv? Thatta girl.”

  Salvi shot Beggs an unaffected look. “Thanks for your help, by the way.”

  Beggs shrugged. “Ah, y
ou had it covered.”

  Salvi glanced around the apartment again. “So… the question is, did he rape her, then she killed him? Or was someone else here?”

  “Well, the cop said they had to break down the door, so it was locked. It wasn’t a break-in.”

  “The AI system is down. Coincidence?” Salvi moved out onto the balcony again into the dark night air, glancing around at the neighboring apartments. “Unless someone came in this way.”

  Beggs sized up the distance between balconies, then glanced over the side to the street below. “It’s a looong way down.”

  Salvi looked at the flashing neon lights of the district below known as the Sensation, saw the bodies mingling around on the street, even at this hour. The ‘Sation promised to deliver entertainment 24/7, and it held true to its word. The party precinct never slept and whatever party you wanted, the ‘Sation catered for it.

  “Plenty of apartments around,” Beggs said. “Someone must’ve seen something.”

  Salvi nodded then tapped at the iPort strapped to her wrist and initiated her comms. The lenses in her eyes turned a transparent silver and Riverton appeared.

  “Detective Brentt,” it said, “how may I help you?”

  “Riverton, the apartment’s AI is currently offline. We’ll need a warrant to analyze its data and see if someone hacked it for entry.”

  “Yes, detective,” it said. “Warrant underway for access to security footage, voice recordings, and engagement of lighting and other electronic sensors.”

  “And I need you to get the drone to scour the surrounding apartment balconies. If the perp came in that way, I want to know if they left anything behind. I also want a good look at any snooping neighbors.”

  “Yes, detective.”

  Salvi, through the silver sheen of her lenses, saw the SFPD drone move to begin scanning the surrounding balconies in a sweeping pattern.

  “Also check the drone and street footage in the area for the past, say, two hours also.”

  “Yes, detective.”