by Mel Odom
“Yeah, and I don’t understand that. I’ve been with the NAPD here on the Moon longer than you have, and I started with the department a few months ahead of you. I should be senior partner on this.”
I nodded. “Karanjai made me lead detective for another reason.”
“What?”
“My ties to Haas-Bioroid.”
The answer hit Royo then and he cursed. “Haas-Bioroid has a lot invested in you. On whether you work out with the department.”
“That’s right. Floyd and I are test cases for the introduction of more bioroids to the rank of detective.”
“If you get crossways with Skorpios Defense Systems, Haas-Bioroid will probably help with legal defenses.”
“To at least muddy the waters, yes.”
Royo grinned, somewhat mollified by my explanation. “The captain’s a pretty smart guy.”
“Yes, he is.”
“The captain also picked you because you’re brighter than your partner.” Rachel’s venom-laced sarcasm echoed inside my head. The fact that she spoke so bluntly to me told me that the comm-link frequencies contained different layers. She could selectively talk to Royo or me. I was curious to know if she had been talking to Royo as well, but I didn’t ask. “It’s going to be a while before he makes head cheerleader. That’s why Karanjai told me to stick with you till this gets sorted out.”
I didn’t say anything.
Royo looked at me more attentively. “Do you have a preference for Boc or Karasz?”
I shook my head. “Pick one. I’ll take the other.”
“Give me Karasz. Guy’s got a potential murder beef hanging over his head. I’ll sweat him a little and get him to roll over.”
“All right.” I didn’t think for a moment that Royo would get the man to do that. Of the two, I had actually wanted Boc. He was wanted for the destruction of the Eve gynoid. He had a thing about bioroids.
Shelly fell into step with me, appearing when the shadows next to me cleared. “Can you imagine how Traian Boc is going to feel when he finds out you’re in charge of his interview?”
Actually, I could. I was counting on it.
Chapter Twenty-One
I surveyed Traian Boc through the seccam loop connected to the interview room where he waited for me. He looked surly and impatient, dressed in jailhouse orange. His record showed he was a narcotic addict, among other vices. Sitting in a jail cell hadn’t agreed with him. At present, he was handcuffed to his chair while he sat at a small table.
Rachel stood beside me, holding a steaming cup of coffee. “Guy’s jonesing for a narc stick. You take one in there right now and you’ll have a friend for life.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“Because it’s against the rules.”
“That’s one reason.”
“Rules can get you killed.”
“They also remind me which side of the game I’m playing on.”
She chuckled. “So what are you going to do?”
“Let Boc sit for another seven minutes, bringing his time to a full half hour of him waiting to see what’s going to happen to him. Then I’m going to go in there and convince him that his life is going to be even worse than he’s been imagining.”
“You’ve got a sadistic streak in you, Drake.”
“Yes.” I had no choice but to agree. An interrogator had to be somewhat ruthless. “It’s in my programming.”
“I like that about you.”
I ignored her. She had arrived at the police station, one of the satellites that operated in its own precinct outside main NAPD headquarters in Heinlein, and been readily accepted by most of the uniformed officers there. Based on her warm reception, I gathered that Rachel Beckman was a popular visitor.
She’d exchanged pleasantries and reminiscences with some of the officers while getting her coffee, but she had stayed at my side. Evidently she took her contracts seriously.
She sipped her coffee and stared through the window. I found myself wondering what she was thinking.
“Have you worked for Captain Karanjai before?”
She lifted her shoulders and dropped them. “Now and again.”
“In what capacity?”
“Bounty hunting and bodyguard work. Sometimes Karanjai’s detectives can’t find somebody. He comes looking for me, then I go looking for whoever he wants found. Or maybe the people Karanjai was looking for get holed up in a hard to get to place, someplace his detectives aren’t welcome. He comes looking for me then, too.” She pursed her lips. “I get the job done.”
“You stay abreast of things that take place in the criminal world.”
Rachel glanced at me suspiciously.
“Sometimes you work that side of the street, too.”
She turned to square up with me. If I’d been human, I might have recognized her rebuttal as threatening. As it was, I did recognize it, but I ignored it. “I don’t especially care for what you’re insinuating. When I take on a contract, I stay straight with it.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m expressing myself adequately. That was not an accusation, just an observation. I only meant that you were in a position to…learn things that police officers might not be able to.”
“Do you have a point?”
“I do. I’m trying to find Mara Blake.”
“The woman exec that got herself kidnapped?”
“Yes.”
That announcement kept Rachel silent for a few seconds. “I’ve heard about that. Does that connect to this?”
That was a good question. I didn’t know. The only indicator I had was that the call to work on the Gordon Holder hostage situation had triggered a flashback. For the few weeks preceding that, I hadn’t had a single one, though I had been actively engaged in searching for her. I did not view the event as a coincidence. There was something here that I couldn’t quite grasp.
I avoided her question because I knew that answering it would only open a cascade of inquiries I wasn’t prepared to address. “I want to find Mara Blake.”
She smirked at me, an expression that neither bioroids nor clones could quite pull off. I believed the look was something that was dependent on a true human condition. “Looking for brownie points?”
“Finding Mara Blake would enhance my career.”
“So you’re not just motivated to save lives. You’ve got a personal agenda in there, too. Man, you next-gen androids are getting more human all the time.”
I didn’t say anything.
Rachel sipped her coffee and returned her attention to Boc on the other side of the transplas. “I like that about you. I guess if Haas-Bioroid continues upgrading bioroids, soon there won’t be any difference between humans and golems.”
The term was a collective derogatory used to refer to bioroids and clones, intentionally depicting them as soulless animatrons. I wondered if that was how Rachel truly felt, but decided that her personal feelings were in no way conducive to my investigations.
“Can you help me find her?”
Rachel smiled. “Can you pay me?”
“I draw a stipend.”
“Then I can ask around.”
“Will you require payment up front?”
“No.” She smirked again. “For the next few days, I’ll know where you are.”
The seven minutes were up. I left her standing there and entered the interview room.
* * *
Traian Boc looked up at me as I closed the door behind me. When he recognized that I was a bioroid, he leaned back in his chair, arms resting on either side of his barrel chest where they were handcuffed, and narrowed his eyes to slits.
“What are you doing here?” His voice was gravelly and intentionally demeaning. He had no respect for me.
“I am Detective Drake of the NAPD. I am here to interview you.”
Boc shook his head. “I’m not talking to you.”
I ignored him and took off my duster and skullcap, intentionally showing off my mechanical natu
re. “You’re going to talk to me.”
Boc cursed. “I want my attorney.”
“You haven’t been charged with anything. You’re being held on an outstanding warrant. You’ll have an opportunity to talk with your attorney before you see the judge.”
“Then why am I here?”
“You’re a person of interest in the illegal munitions manufacturing plant discovered in the Vulcan Technologies warehouse.”
“You can’t hold me for that. The way I hear it, the NAPD can’t prosecute anyone involved in that because you blew the search and seizure rules.”
I sat in the chair opposite Boc and dropped my hands on the table. Even with the synthskin layers, they sounded heavy. Boc flinched at the thump but I took no pleasure in the response.
“Whoever depended on you to help with the munitions plant isn’t going to be satisfied with your performance regarding the continued protection of their operation there. Even without legal problems, they lost a lot of product and the munitions plant itself—a considerable investment by any accounting.”
Boc’s pulse quickened at the hollow of his throat. His pupils dilated slightly and his respiration sped up as well. The thought of repercussions wasn’t a new one to him.
He tried to be sarcastic. “Are you worried about me?” His voice cracked and the effect was undermined.
“Yes.”
His eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean?”
“I am a bioroid. I am supposed to protect human life. I cannot—through action or inaction—allow a human to come to harm.”
“Yeah, well you seemed plenty able to hurt humans when you came after me.”
“No one was permanently injured as a result of my actions. I only incapacitated those who resisted arrest.”
Boc looked at me with a little more interest then. He’d gone down early in the confrontation, but he’d known the number of men I’d faced.
“So why would you be worried about me?”
“The people you work for might want to take out a pound of flesh from you for their losses. If I released you from custody and you were harmed, I would be remiss in my duties.” The fact that I was essentially summing up my programming unnerved him slightly.
“You can’t keep me here.”
“It was the only way I could think of to keep you and Karasz safe.”
“You’re not keeping us safe.”
“Are you certain about that?”
“Yeah.”
I let him consider his situation for a moment, then I went on. “You’ve been in police custody for twenty-two hours. Your employers have to wonder what you’re telling the NAPD.”
“I’m not telling you anything.”
I nodded. “You and I know that, but do you think they believe that?”
The question ground into him and I could tell from his discomfort that it wasn’t setting well with him.
“The blast that destroyed the munitions plant killed three workers inside that room. Did you know that?”
Boc raised his manacled hands from the armrests and leaned down to scrub at his jaw with a knuckle.
I laid my palm over the vid projector built into the table. Immediately, a holo opened in the space between Boc and me. I ran the footage I’d archived at the scene.
Inside the room, two workers in protective suits reached for pistols while the fleeing man ran up the steps. I slowed the vid down to a crawl so the events could easily be tracked.
One of the workers had a pistol in his hand and was about to open fire when at least four incendiary devices exploded. The progression of flames and flying debris spread out. Shrapnel cut down the worker with the gun. Blood suddenly drenched his cleansuit and the impacts spun him around like a broken toy. The muzzle flash flared but was quickly lost in the lab’s destruction.
Another worker tried to run from the room but was covered in flames. He beat at them with his hands, but quickly succumbed to the heat and fell. The third man fell under the stairs and I never saw him again. My vid coverage of the event grew sketchy at that time because the concussive wave had caught up to me at that point and hurled me backward. Still, I managed to capture those deaths.
I didn’t look at the images. I watched Boc and saw how the violence wore on him. He was used to being on the other end of the delivery. His expression grew flat and his face turned pasty.
“It’s my opinion that the men in the munitions plant room didn’t set off those explosives.” I spoke a little more softly, underscoring the death and destruction revealed in the holo. “They were set remotely by someone who realized the operation there was compromised.” I paused. “Whoever you’re working for doesn’t want any loose ends.”
Boc’s right eye twitched.
“You’re getting to him, partner. Just stay with him.” Shelly sat beside me in the interview room as she had so many times before.
“Right now, Boc, you’re a loose end. So is your partner. The thing is, the NAPD only needs one of you to start talking. We don’t need both. Whoever decides to come forward first gets the deal. My partner is talking to Karasz right now, and he’s got a murder charge hanging over his head.”
“So? That means there’s even less reason for him to open up to you guys.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Except for this: Karasz isn’t going to bail bond out the way you are. The destruction of private property charge we have you on isn’t going to hold you. You’ll bond out, get a new court date, and you’ll meet that or not. Doesn’t matter. You have a chance to run. Karasz isn’t going anywhere.” I paused and lowered my voice. “That means he’s going to be a sitting duck inside lockup. How do you think he’s going to like his chances?”
Boc tried to get up, but the manacles bolted to the D-ring mounted on the floor under his chair wouldn’t let him. He cursed and remained in the chair. Then he cursed some more.
“Leverage, Drake. Give him something else to think about.”
I thought for a moment and believed I had something. “Do you remember destroying that Eve gynoid, Boc?”
He pulled back from me then, putting his guard up again. He thought I was going to make the matter personal in some fashion. I wasn’t. There was nothing I could do to take away that bioroid’s destruction. Her “death” was regrettable, but already done.
I put my palm over the holo projector again. This time the images of that destroyed Eve filled the space between us. The gynoid had been a beautiful unit, blond hair and a curvy figure that men and women who purchased her services would desire.
In the images, though, she lay in pieces. Various fluids used to keep her functional mechanically and sexually dripped from her arms and legs, which were lying in separate places in the room. Her head sat on the bed, upside down so that her spinal servos were revealed. An icepick pierced one of her eyes.
“What did she do to you, Boc?”
He didn’t answer.
“What did she do to deserve this treatment at your hands?”
“She was just a machine.”
“Nothing you cared about.”
“No.”
“What did she do when you started damaging her?” I held the image steady.
Boc shook his head.
I continued relentlessly. “That Eve was stronger than you. Faster than you. She could have fought you off. She could have gotten free. Why didn’t she?”
“I’m not saying anything about that.”
“I think she laid there and let you take her apart because you told her to. Or maybe you incapacitated her in some way. Electrical shock, if applied properly, will do that. Is that what you did?”
Boc cursed and refused to answer.
“Either way, that Eve had no choice about what happened to her. You decided to kill her and you did.”
“You can’t kill a machine.”
“The point is, you didn’t care about her. You took her and you did what you wanted to do to her. Then, f
or whatever reason, you destroyed her.” I paused. “Do you think the people you’re working for are really going to care for you? Or do you think they’re just going to consider you as a simple cog in their machine? Something that can be easily replaced?”
Boc took a deep breath. “If I do this, I got to know that you people are going to protect me.”
I blanked the image of the Eve. “We will.”
“I don’t want just you telling me that. I want somebody high enough up in the food chain that I can know we have a deal.”
“All right.” I accessed my PAD and put through a call to Karanjai.
Chapter Twenty-Two
What’s he going to give us?” Karanjai stood on the other side of the transplas glass with me as we watched Boc.
The man seemed to have dwindled in the hour and twenty minutes it had taken the captain to meet us. He had stopped along the way to get an assistant district attorney out of bed as well. Karanjai had been surprised I had gotten results so quickly.
I stood at the window beside the captain. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”
ADA Dana Clarksdale was a young brunette with fierce dark eyes. Her expression was grim and tight, and she didn’t look like someone who smiled easily or often. She was impeccably dressed in an expensive suit that semi-masked her figure but didn’t hide the fact that she was a woman. Her eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep.
“Did your partner get the other guy—” Clarksdale checked her notes on her PAD. “—Karasz, to crack as well?”
“No.”
“You told him that his buddy is rolling over?”
“Yes. He doesn’t believe it.”
“Maybe if you showed him vid, he’d be more predisposed to believe.”
“I did show him vid. He believes that it was a construct.”
“Okay.” Clarksdale took a sip of her coffee. “Even if we get a full confession from Boc, we’ve still got zilch for evidence.”
Karanjai cleared his throat. “We’ve got Drake’s vid.”
Clarksdale shook her head. “A good defense attorney will have that thrown out. That vid had nothing to do with your detective’s arrest of Boc and Karasz regarding the outstanding warrants. That won’t stand up as probable cause.”
