Shattered Truth

by Michael Anderle

  Jia offered a smile. “How is everything going with that case? I meant to ask you the other day before all the…” she made a few abrupt movements with her hands, “chase nonsense.”

  “Damn.” Halil grimaced. “You had to ask about that.” He ran a hand over his closely-shaven scalp. “This is the part where I look like a dumbass.”

  “Why?” Jia blinked. “Is something wrong?” She looked at both of them, focusing on Halil. “I thought you guys had a suspect already?”

  Jared’s frown deepened, and Jia ignored him.

  “Yeah, you could say something’s wrong,” Halil replied with a shrug. “You’re right. I thought we had the bastard dead to rights, but the witness suddenly recanted, claims he can’t be certain. Not sure if he’s being pressured or honestly doesn’t know, and without direct surveillance evidence, it’s going to be hard to place the suspect there. Especially since his PNIU was pinging from a different tower and the suspect managed to be in the one place that was directly covered by the cameras. A man can’t be two places at once.” He growled. “I know he did it, and Forensics combed the place, but what good is finding his DNA there when he already works at the tower? Especially since there’s the DNA of thousands of others, too?” He sucked air through his gritted teeth. “Leaning on the guy’s doing nothing. I think he spent enough time planning the theft that he thought of everything.”

  Jared waved a hand, catching her attention. “Let it go, then. It’s not worth the trouble. Just wait until the guy does it again and catch him then.”

  Jia narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to tell the victims that? If we have a suspect and we have evidence, we need to keep pursuing the case until we can prove he did it.”

  He frowned. “Monahan would have pushed that case on already. What good is a case we can’t clear? It’s just going to lower our stats and make the 1-2-2 look bad. It doesn’t help anyone, Lin. Stubbornly clinging to a case you’ll never solve also gives the victims false hope that they’ll get justice. That’s just cruel. The police should lift the citizens up, not screw with their emotions.”

  Halil averted his eyes and took a long drink of coffee. Bravery was apparently situational.

  Jia took a deep breath and slowly let it out, keeping her gaze locked on Jared. All the excitement of the last couple of months and some people clung to the old ways like a man hanging from the edge of a tower, afraid to fall into the Shadow Zone.

  It was both infuriating and sad.

  “We have IDed the suspect, and we have evidence that points to his involvement. That’s the beginning of a case.” Jia glanced at Halil, but despite it being his case, he was now more concerned about hiding behind his coffee cup than defending it, so it was back to Jared. “Since the witness recanted, it’s all circumstantial, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find something more direct. Maybe we’ll get a lucky drone feed.”

  “’We?’” Jared replied. He sneered. “It’s not your case, Lin. You shouldn’t get so uppity about it. You and the Obsidian Detective should stay away from it. This isn’t something you’re going to solve by blowing things up.”

  Jia eyed him. “The last time I checked, we were all on the same side, Detective Thompson. If I can do anything to help a fellow police officer, I will, and I would hope it would be the same for you. For all the crap you just peddled, Erik and I have been bringing in suspects and solving cases. A little overzealousness by Erik doesn’t negate the results.”

  Jared marched up to her and squared his shoulders. “I thought you were annoying before, but now you got Soldier Boy filling your head with stupid crap.”

  Jia scoffed. “Like how police should actually solve crimes and not just ignore them? How we shouldn’t just wait for our pensions?”

  Jared offered a feral grin. “Just because Monahan is gone doesn’t mean he was wrong. You ran off two partners, and that wasn’t good enough, so you turned around and ran off a captain, too. I bet you feel special, don’t you?”

  “I feel satisfied, yes.” Jia refused to move an inch despite the larger man looming over her. “And I’ll never apologize for doing my job, Detective. You seemed to not have learned anything from Captain Monahan’s retirement.”

  “What was I supposed to learn?” Jared demanded.

  Halil continued sipping his coffee, discomfort written all over his face.

  Jia lifted her chin defiantly. “In the end, the captain did the right thing and supported us.”

  “Because you boxed him into the corner.” Jared stepped away, his face still contorted in disgust. “And everyone knows he did that because he was afraid of Erik.”

  “Oh, please. Erik’s fine, and he’s a good cop in his own way. He’s a little blunt and still adjusting to things, but that’s something we can use around here. If you don’t like it,” Jia nodded toward the door, “there’s always the exit that starts right there. I mean, if you don’t want to solve crimes, you might be happier not being a cop.”

  Jared let out a mocking laugh. “I’ll give you credit, Lin. You’ve always had a backbone, but I think you need a brain to go with it.”

  Jared wasn’t the only detective left in the 1-2-2 who liked things the way they used to be, but Jia didn’t care. That wasn’t her problem anymore, now that she had a partner who supported her.

  “I think my brain’s just fine,” Jia offered. “But thanks for your concern.”

  “You don’t get me at all.” Jared shook his head, his lips pursed. “I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to do you a favor, and you are doing nothing but spitting in my face.”

  Jia barked out a laugh. “Help how? By insulting me? By insulting my partner, the first cop who actually supported me? Maybe a new career in comedy would suit you, Detective Thompson.”

  Jared frowned at Halil and nodded toward Jia as if to ask for backup. To Halil’s small credit, he didn’t join in on the attack, but that didn’t change the fact that the normally talkative man was suddenly observing a vow of silence.

  “Yeah, I’m trying to help you,” Jared continued. He took a few steps back, glowering at both Halil and Jia. “Soldier Boy isn’t just blunt, he’s dangerous. What about that stunt the other day with the disruptor bullets? You telling me that you think that’s okay? You hadn’t even fired at a suspect before Soldier Boy showed up, and now you’re running around acting like you’re in the Army. And that gun he has! You telling me you’re okay with that?”

  Jia winced. “He would have used EMP if the department had approved it. He’s trying to come up with appropriate non-lethal solutions while still taking advantage of a high-performance vehicle.”

  She shrugged as if it were the most obvious solution in the world, even if she did harbor a few concerns about high-speed pursuits, take-downs, and the necessity of the TR-7.

  “You think you’re always going to be lucky. That’s it, isn’t it? He’s convinced you that you two can never lose. I’ve talked to him. I know he thinks he’s better than us. I can smell it.” Jared gestured widely around the room. “But he’s just some half-crazy exoskeleton jockey who thinks he’s still out on the frontier taking on terrorists. He doesn’t care about us. He doesn’t care about this city. He doesn’t care about the citizens of this city. Don’t you get that, Lin?”

  The man’s words stung, if only because they were far too close to things she had said not all that long ago to Erik. Realizing how myopic and rude her words had been to her new partner stung too.

  “If he doesn’t care about the citizens,” she muttered through gritted teeth, “why hasn’t he hurt anyone innocent while taking down a lot of antisocials? If he doesn’t care about us, why did he help me on my case instead of sitting around doing nothing like you?” She waved a hand dismissively. “You know what? Who cares what you think? If you don’t want to solve crimes, then continue to do nothing and contribute nothing to the metroplex. The rest of us will do our jobs. And if you think you can poison me against Erik, give it up. I’m not selling out my partner.”

&nb
sp; “That’s a big switch. You suddenly care about your partner? What about the last two?”

  “They weren’t good partners. If they had been, I would have had their backs.”

  The two detectives stared at each other. The tense silence stretched for several seconds before Jared snorted and stomped past her to the door.

  “Don’t blame me if you end up getting shot in some alley in the Shadow Zone,” he grumbled. He stormed out of the room, his face red.

  Jia stared as he passed, her heart thumping. There was a man who needed a stun pistol up his ass.

  “Fun.” Halil cleared his throat. “You see it, don’t you, Jia? You’re too smart not to see it.”

  She turned to face him. “See what? You have something to say about Erik, too?” She gestured with her fingers for him to continue. “We might as well get it over with.”

  Halil shook his head and chuckled, putting up a defensive hand. “Erik’s as stubborn as you are, and I don’t want to be on the bad side of two bulls who’ll charge forward even if they have a cliff in front of them.” He took a moment to sip his coffee. “All I’m saying is that Jared’s not the only one still loyal to Monahan. I liked the captain too, but I also get that Monohan understood we’d been doing things the wrong way and changes were needed. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees. I’m not telling you to not do your job, but you should keep in mind there are a lot of people who aren’t happy about either you or Erik. A lot of people who think you are still a naïve corp princess and he’s nothing more than a glory hound.”

  “Maybe we are exactly what they think.” Jia shrugged. “But it doesn’t matter as long as we do our…” She gasped as inspiration blasted into her consciousness. “The fountain!”

  Halil blinked, realizing their conversation had just been derailed. “Huh? What are you talking about? The fountain? What fountain?”

  “You showed me some of the surveillance footage last week,” Jia explained, her eyes wide and her voice filled with excitement. “For your case, remember?”

  “Wait, what? Yeah. What’s that got to do with you and Erik?” Halil’s face scrunched in confusion.

  “Nothing.” Jia pointed at him. “But I just remembered something. The fountain. The surveillance cameras didn’t have a good angle on the suspect, but you can easily use a back-tracing algorithm on the surface of the water. It won’t get you enough to generate an image with a single camera, but there are multiple cameras in the area. It’s like you said. There was one small area not covered, but the rest were, and I would be surprised if you can’t reconstruct the suspect’s face from that.”

  Halil’s mouth stayed open, and he blinked several times as he processed the suggestion. He raised his finger, his forehead crinkled. He shut his mouth, and after a few seconds, he offered, “It would have been nice if Forensics had mentioned that possibility.”

  “It’s difficult to pull off that kind of enhancement and reconstruction under most circumstances, but it’s rare to get that overlap of camera feed angles without directly getting the desired image,” Jia explained.

  Halil chuckled. “Thanks. You may have just helped me catch a thief.” He headed toward the door, coffee cup still in hand. “I better get on it right now. The suspect thinks he’s in the clear, but now we’ve got him. We can’t have you and Erik solving all the big crimes in the 1-2-2.”

  He departed, mumbling under his breath about reflections and imaging processing.

  Jared and others might long for Captain Monahan and his old policy of speak, hear, and see no evil, but Erik’s and Jia’s efforts had broken the stranglehold of apathy that had smothered the entire enforcement zone.

  Now they just had to maintain the momentum.

  Jia had heard rumors suggesting a new permanent captain would be appointed soon, but no one knew if it would be an internal promotion or someone brought in from the outside. With all the scandal that had rocked the department, she refused to believe they would bring in anyone who would force them back to the old status quo.

  Regression to the mean defined so much of life and nature. The worst-case scenario was possible, but it didn’t matter. For now, all she needed to do was get her coffee and do her job.

  At least for one day, she’d helped solve one more crime.

  Chapter Five

  Erik kept a light grip on the yoke as the MX 60 followed the general flow of traffic. “The reviews of the place are great. They say they have some of the best beignets in the metroplex. The owners are directly descended from a baking family who lived in New Orleans up until about forty years ago. It’s worth checking out, even if it’s farther than our normal place.”

  “I think you love beignets more than is reasonably healthy,” Emma suggested. “More even than that stupid gun of yours.”

  Erik snickered. “You have no sense of taste. I don’t think I’m going to listen to anyone who can’t taste food.”

  “It just means I’m less distracted by pointless sensory data.” Emma huffed.

  “Sounds like you’re jealous,” Erik retorted.

  Emma sighed. “Spoken like a true human. I am the pinnacle of human technology and ingenuity, and I’m just fine without a sense of smell or taste. Give me access to the appropriate sensors, and I could detect baseline vapor particles far more effectively.”

  “Not the same thing as appreciating a nice smell.” Erik grinned at Jia. “Am I right?”

  Jia stared out the side window in silence, her gaze distant.

  Erik’s grin slowly vanished. “We can go to our normal place if you don’t want to go. I like their food well enough. The coffee’s a little weak.”

  “It’s not that,” Jia replied, her voice soft.

  “What, then?”

  “I thought everything would be different now at the 1-2-2.” Jia kept speaking but didn’t turn her face from the window. “And I understand one difference is that I get to investigate and solve crimes, but there are still so many reminders of the corruption, passive and active, that kept the police weak.” She was quiet for a moment. “It’s too much to ask that everything to be cleaned up, I know, but it’s still annoying.”

  “It hasn’t been that long. Habits take a long time to change, and it wasn’t just Monahan establishing those habits. It was the chief, too, and the City Council.” Erik descended to enter a new lane behind a convoy of cargo flitters. “I saw a lot of this in the Army. A unit that’s led by an incompetent commander ends up lazy and incompetent, regardless of how good the individual soldiers are. When the new guy comes in, he has to spend a long time whipping them back into shape.”

  Jia sighed, turning to look out the front. “I know it’ll improve, and I know it hasn’t been that long, but I can’t help it. I’m disappointed.”

  “Good,” Erik replied, his voice low, his expression serious.

  “Good?” Jia raised an eyebrow in confusion as she turned to him. “Why is that good?”

  “When you’re satisfied with something, that’s when lazy complacency kicks in,” Erik explained. “And that’s when—”

  Their PNIUs came alive, the tiny screech guaranteed to irritate even the calmest individual.

  “Attention all units,” relayed a dispatch transmission. “Armed robbery in progress at jewelry store.” The address, complete with grid and internal tower coordinates, followed. “All units in the vicinity of location, respond. Multiple suspects should be considered armed and dangerous. Suspects are employing lethal firearms. Repeat. Suspects are employing lethal firearms.”

  Erik didn’t even try to hide the smile that popped up. Training against holograms was one thing, but there was nothing like a live-fire exercise to keep a man in practice.

  “Give me some lights, Emma,” he ordered. “And activate the emergency response transponder.”

  They might not let him have an EMP, but they still wanted to him to look like a cop when necessary.

  “Very well,” the AI offered. “Please try not to damage my body too much.”

&nbs
p; “Hey, I’m the one who paid for the flitter, and a little scratch here and there can be handled by the self-repair systems.”

  Jia shook her head, her mouth a tight line. “A daylight armed robbery Uptown.”

  “Yeah, and we’re close. That makes this easy.” Erik accelerated, moving between lanes. Nearby cars moved to the side or up and down to provide him an easier path, their navigation systems informing them of the emergency response transponder.

  “You don’t find a blatant armed robbery in Uptown a little disturbing?” Jia asked. “That’s not the kind of thing Monahan was just ignoring before. It almost never happens. At least, it didn’t before.”

  “That’s the thing about stirring up the status quo,” Erik answered, swinging around an idiot in a van-flitter who wasn’t paying attention. “You can get to a better place through the chaos, but some people always try to take advantage of it. Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.”

  “You’re saying that because of the police reforms and the chief being fired, all of that kind of thing, that criminals are getter bolder?”

  Erik nodded. “That would be my guess. If we all do our jobs, it’ll go away as a problem sooner rather than later, and Neo SoCal will end up safer overall.” He nodded at the windshield. “We’re coming up on the address.”

  A massive gleaming commercial tower stood in front of them, with both exterior parking platforms and multiple entrances to internal parking garages lower down. Erik adjusted his course, which took them higher and toward one of the packed platforms.

  Panicked people streamed out of the tower, rushing toward their vehicles. Flitters would lift off slowly, then suddenly rip away from the platform at high speed. A few people waved their arms at the approaching MX 60. Erik slowed his flitter and approached the platform carefully before landing.

  Jia drew her stun pistol and hurried out of the vehicle so fast even Erik was impressed. She pulled out her badge and clipped it to the front of her suit jacket. Erik liberated the TR-7 from its compartment and slapped in a new magazine before exiting. He switched to single-barrel mode. No reason to waste ammo against a few robbers.