by Eric Brown
He recalled the periods of blackness he had suffered three times since finding himself here, the sensation of plummeting though the universe similar to, but different from, the sensation of movement in the matrix he had just experienced. After these occasions, he had the subtle but nagging sensation that great periods of time had elapsed.
Had Lew Kramer lied to him about how long he’d been incarcerated in the site? Had he been in here for months?
For the first time in a while, he realised that he was looking forward to a strong coffee.
* * * *
Fifteen
Halliday stared at the screen of his desk-com.
He had built up the face slowly, little by little. The eyes had been the hardest part. In the index of eye-types from the Identi-fix program, which he’d pirated from the NYPD a couple of years ago, there were over five thousand different eyes to choose from. Many he’d tried this morning had appeared as near as dammit identical, but each pair altered the appearance when placed in the context of the face he was building up.
Now he thought he pretty much had the likeness of the silver-haired guy called Charles.
Grey eyes in a well-fed, fleshy face, a big, hooked, Roman nose, a wide mouth.
He’d seen the guy twice in the real world, once in Anastasia Dah’s apartment, and again up at Nyack. He’d got a closer look at him in VR earlier that day, and it was on this image of the guy, threatening him with death in the virtual reality construct of his childhood attic bedroom, that he based the Identi-fix.
Of course, it was a very real possibility that the face that Charles presented to the world might be nothing more than the disguise of a capillary holographic unit.
He saved the image and printed a dozen pix for future use, then fixed himself a coffee in lieu of breakfast and stared at the pix.
The silver-haired guy was his only real remaining lead. Find Charles, and he would be a good way to finding out what the hell was happening.
Not for the first time he considered the threats Charles had issued in VR, and he wondered how they had managed to enter his mind and create the image of the fire with such accuracy.
His com chimed. ‘Halliday here.’
Casey smiled out, waving fingers before her face. ‘Hi, Hal. Good to see you back.’ She peered. ‘You okay?’
‘Sure, Casey. Fine.’
‘You had breakfast yet?’
‘Ah ... No, as a matter of fact.’
‘Well, is it okay if I bring something round?’
He hesitated. Hell, why not? It was still only nine, and he hadn’t planned to hit the streets till midday anyway. He nodded. ‘Sounds good.’
‘Great! I’ll be round in five minutes.’
She was around in two, making him think that she’d snuck up the stairs to see if his office light was on, and then called him from outside the deli.
She burst in bearing a box of food in both hands. She hooked her leg around the door and kicked it shut, smiling at him above her purchases.
Halliday fixed her a coffee and sat beside her on the chesterfield, the breakfast box between them.
‘Wholewheat cheese and salad, egg mayonnaise on rye, yoghurt...’
‘You trying to feed me up, Casey?’
‘Someone has to.’
She was dressed in jeans, and a T-shirt a size too small for her so that it pulled tight across her small breasts and revealed a strip of skinny belly.
He concentrated on breakfast.
It felt like old times, not long after Barney’s death, when Kim had left him and he’d found Casey out on the fire escape, trying to sleep in the pouring rain. He’d let her in for the night, a scrawny Georgian refugee, and one night had turned into months as they shared the bedroom on a shift system. Who would have thought that the cynical, street-wise urchin he’d befriended that night would turn into this pretty, personable teenager inside a year?
‘How’s the job hunting going?’
She gulped down a mouthful of sandwich, bobbed her head and waved a hand. ‘Ah ... terrible, Hal. Nobody wants to employ an ex-refugee with only three months experience of restaurant management. They all want older people with years and years of experience.’
‘So what you doing for money?’
‘Oh, I have a little saved. I’ll manage.’
‘The rent on your place must be pretty high.’
She shrugged, munching. ‘Was okay when I was living with Ben, but since we split...’
‘Didn’t work out, huh?’
‘And I thought it would last for ever. Am I a dummy or what, Hal? What did I do wrong? Everything was okay, and then after a few months when the physical side of things...’ She shrugged, blushing. ‘We just drifted apart.’
‘It happens, Casey.’ He finished his sandwich, considering. He wondered why he had never given her a cut of the Artois money a year ago, as he’d intended. Was it because she’d moved out, shacked up with Ben? Had he felt jealous, resentful, and one way of getting back at her was to withhold the money he would have given her had she stayed?
It sounded like him, he thought.
He pulled open a drawer in the desk and found his cheque book. He wrote a cheque for twenty-five thousand dollars, which should set her up, see her okay for a few months at least.
She watched him. ‘Hey, there’s no need. Breakfast’s on me, okay?’
He tore the cheque and passed it to her. ‘I got a big payout on a case a while back. Been meaning to give you this for some time.’
She took the cheque and stared at it, her mouth shaping the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars in disbelief. She looked at Halliday. ‘For me? Twenty-five grand?’
‘Unless you want to donate it to charity.’
‘Twenty-five thousand dollars?’ she whispered.
She pulled the box separating them onto the floor, leaned over and took him in her arms.
He held her, comparing this experience with that of holding her construct in the Virginia site, and realised that there was really no comparison at all.
‘Don’t know what to say,’ she said, the words muffled against his shoulder.
He ran a hand up and down her slim back, feeling the notched cord of her spine. ‘Don’t say anything. How many times you bought me breakfast? How many times you sat up with me after Barney died and Kim walked out?’
She gave a teary laugh, pulling away to look at him. ‘Not twenty-five grands’ worth, Hal!’
‘Who’s to say? Values are relative, Casey. I’d’ve paid more than that to have you around, back then.’ He pulled her to him again, stroking her hair.
‘Christ, Hal...’
‘What is it?’ he asked.
She pulled away, kneeling on the cushions now, and rubbed at her eyes. She sat on her legs and stared at him. ‘It’s frightening. I mean, how things might’ve turned out. Like, if eighteen months ago I hadn’t decided to sleep on this fire escape. If I’d try to get in the homeless hostel on 87th, only I’d heard it was full ... so I walked down the back alley, looking for somewhere to spend the night. It was destined, Hal.’
He laughed.
‘What? Don’t you believe in destiny?’
He shook his head. ‘Everything’s accidental, far as I can make out. Random. Things happen and we call it good luck or bad, but they happen nevertheless. Events don’t consider human feelings, they just happen.’
‘That’s frightening, Hal. I mean, I like to think if I’m good and I work hard, then good things’ll come to me, know what I mean?’
He smiled, gave her worried face a playful hook on the jaw. ‘Sure I know. Don’t listen to me. You were good, you worked hard, and look what happened.’
She held up the cheque. ‘I’ll bank it,’ she said. ‘Maybe buy a few clothes, save the rest.’
He wondered if, all along, on some subconscious level, he’d meant to ask her if she wanted to move into the loft above the office? It made sense, the rent was dirt cheap, and food stalls and the laundry were nearby ... and she w
ould be close to him.
Was his gift of the cheque no more than a bribe to get her back? Or was it nothing more than a subconscious desire to enable her to leave him for good?
She reached out, silent now and her eyes downcast, and ran the back of her hand up and down his thigh, and something in him was appalled that she wanted to pay him back in the only way she knew.
Or perhaps she was genuinely lonely and needed his love and affection?
He took her hand. ‘Hey, how about more coffee?’ he said, breaking the spell, and Casey smiled and nodded. ‘Yeah, great...’
He refilled the mugs. She sipped, peering over the rim at the face on the desk-com. ‘Who’s that, Hal?’
He looked into the face of the silver-haired guy. ‘Pretty sure it’s the guy who killed Kim.’
Her eyes expanded. ‘It is?’ She looked at him. ‘What happened last night? You get anywhere?’
Where to begin? ‘I’m looking for someone called Suzie Charlesworth,’ he said, and he outlined the case in detail, as much for his own clarity of mind. When Barney was about, they had talked through assignments constantly, going over every detail no matter how insignificant and seemingly inconsequential. He’d missed that over the past eighteen months.
He told her about the inaccessible VR code he’d found in Anastasia Dah’s jellytank, and how he thought it might be a lead.
‘I have a contact who hacks into VR sites,’ he said. ‘She got me in.’
Casey shook her head. ‘What happened, Hal? Something bad, right?’
‘There was a construct of Kim in there,’ he said. ‘I was discovered, locked in a cell. I couldn’t get out. Imagine that, imprisoned in VR ... Then the scene changed and I was in the attic bedroom I had as a kid.’
He paused as he realised that he had never spoken with anyone, other than his sister and his father, about the fire that had killed Eloise. For so many years he’d blocked it from his memory, and when he did finally access the truth of what had happened all those years ago, Barney was dead and Kim had left him.
Now he told Casey. He described the fire as he recalled it, and how he had a choice. Susanna or Eloise? He had made his choice, and Eloise had died.
Casey stared at him, shaking her head.
‘But how did they know, Casey? How the hell did the bastards get into my head?’
‘How did you get out of there, Hal?’
‘He—’ Halliday indicated the face on the screen. ‘He appeared and gave me an ultimatum. He said that if I continued with the case, then they’d kill me. Then I was no longer in the attic.’
Casey opened her mouth, but no words came. ‘So ...’ she managed at last. ‘What now?’
He regarded her. ‘What would you do in my position, if the guy who’d murdered your ex-girlfriend told you to drop the case, let him walk free?’
She whispered, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Would you just shrug your shoulders and let him get on with whatever he’s doing, or would you try to nail the bastard?’
The silence stretched. At last Casey said, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘What do you think? I’m going to nail the bastard.’
He drained his coffee, stood and switched off the desk-com.
He took his jacket from the coatstand by the door. ‘I’ve a couple of things I need to follow up. What you doing now?’
She shrugged. ‘I have an interview, just waitressing. Still, I could waitress part-time now I have this.’ She folded the cheque and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans.
He took an automatic from the top drawer of his desk and stowed it in his body-holster. ‘You ever thought of going to college?’
She made a ‘who-me?’ face. ‘As if. What do I know about anything!’
‘That’s the whole point. You go into college not knowing anything, and you come out knowing something. At least, that’s the theory. You could try management. You want to run a restaurant, don’t you?’
She shrugged. ‘But I don’t want to study, Hal. I mean, Kim never studied, did she? She just worked at it. And look at how successful she was.’
He smiled at her. ‘She was lucky. She got the breaks.’ She was lucky, he thought, until she no longer got the breaks...
‘I dunno. I’ll see what happens, okay? Maybe I’ll fall on my feet and land myself a good job. Say, what you doing tonight?’
‘Nothing planned.’
‘Not working?’
‘Don’t think so. Then again, in this job ...’
‘Well, if nothing comes along, how about we go out? There’s a great new holodrome opened around the block, showing all the old dramas. We could see what’s playing.’ She tapped her butt pocket. ‘I’ll buy you a meal.’
‘Why not? I’ll be back sometime after six.’
‘I’ll drop by around seven, okay?’
He collected his cheque book. He’d go visit Kat later, pay her what he owed and see if she could tell him anything more about the site he’d been imprisoned in last night.
He opened the office door, let Casey through, and locked it behind him. ‘Need a lift?’
She looked over her shoulder as she descended the staircase. ‘Nah, the diner’s just around the corner. I need the exercise.’
They reached the sidewalk and Casey waved and walked off, fingers inserted into the hip pockets of her jeans.
Halliday watched her until she turned the corner, then climbed into the Ford and eased his way through the pedestrians in the street and headed downtown.
As he drove he tried to calculate how many times, over the years, his life had been threatened. Once or twice when he was a cop, by thugs too drank or drugged to realise what they were saying. Maybe two or three times when he’d worked with Barney, warned off cases by parties with vested interests. He’d always discussed the situation with Barney, assessing the risk, the likelihood of whether or not the concerned parties were serious in their threats. Only once had Barney advised to leave a case well alone, the threatening parties being the type of people who would think nothing of mincing two private investigators and feeding them to the fish.
Halliday was in no doubt that Charles meant what he said, and would have no compunction about carrying out his threat. He’d seen him kill Anastasia Dah, and knew that at least two other victims had suffered at his hands. What was different about this case, as far as Halliday was concerned, was that he had a personal stake in seeing the killer apprehended.
He’d just have to be more vigilant, was all; he’d keep a wary eye out for anything untoward, the attitude of strangers, the possibility that he was being tailed. In his line of work, it helped to be careful at all times: now, considering the situation he found himself in, he would have to be extra careful. Trust no one, question everything. Stay alive.
He drove down Park Avenue and parked outside the ComStore.
He booked a private booth at the rear of the store and patched himself into the NYPD network. Using a restricted code, he slipped into the known-felons file. He scanned the Identi-fix pix of the silver-haired killer into the com and requested the closest hundred matches from the library of stored identities.
Seconds later he was scrolling through a rogues’ gallery of middle-aged, silver-haired offenders. It was a long shot, of course. Even if Charles were not hiding behind the assumed visage of a chu, the chance that his man might turn up on this file was remote, to say the least. But it was another one of those avenues of investigation that had to be ruled out in order to proceed along the right track.
There were three or four very near likenesses, but even these Halliday discounted. He’d caught a close look of the guy in Dah’s apartment, and then in VR, and he thought he’d recognise him again in a mugshot.
Fifteen minutes later he closed the file and cut the link. He could discount the possibility that the mysterious Charles had a police record, which was not much help at all. The next job would be to try to match the pix against an existing likeness in business journals, newspape
rs, or any other online publication. It would be a long and painstaking business, with no guarantee of success at the end of it.
He was about to initiate the search when his com chimed.
