by Mel Odom
At the same time, I researched the light blue paint at the Gwangju corp and found it had been proven defective. Vehicles painted that color for two successive years had been recalled for repainting in dove grey.
I added that to my search parameters.
Within fifteen minutes of processing, I had only one hit: an eight-year-old Gwangju Petrel owned by Steven Carmichael. Mr. Carmichael owned the hopper at the time of the accident, and he had lived seven blocks away. He’d also owned an older model Cruiser.
I checked for ownership of the car and discovered that it had last been registered the year of Matti Harcourt’s death. Thinking that Mr. Carmichael had been in another accident, I searched accident reports for the hopper’s Vehicle Identification Number and cross-referenced that with Mr. Carmichael’s name.
There was no report of any such wreck, but Steven Carmichael had problems with drugs and alcohol. He’d last been popped on a Driving Under the Influence charge seven months ago. His driver’s license had subsequently been taken away for a year.
I noted his address, which was different than it had been, and in a much worse neighborhood. According to Mr. Carmichael’s court records, he was currently employed as a clerk at a shoe store not far from his apartment. It was close enough to walk to.
I renewed my efforts to find the hopper. I needed physical evidence to tie Steven Carmichael to the hit-and-run.
There were only so many ways for something as large as a hopper to disappear. One way was to sell it, but then it didn’t truly disappear. It was merely masked as someone else’s property, but the VIN remained the same.
Vehicle Registration had no record of the hopper’s VIN ever hitting the system again.
Another way was to take it to a chop shop where the VIN could be altered and the vehicle could be shunted off to Mexico or Canada. A thorough examination of Steven Carmichael’s background showed no affinity with chop shop gangs.
It was possible that Mr. Carmichael could have left the hopper out to be stolen, but that left too many things up to chance. The vehicle could still be tied back to him. There had been no reports of theft the evening Matti Harcourt had been killed.
No, he had gotten rid of it himself.
And there was only one way left that I knew could be arranged. I opened up an address book on my PAD for the Greater and Outer New Angeles areas and emailed every salvage yard I could find.
Salvage yards sometimes took in stolen property. Most of the time, they couldn’t verify the ownership of car parts unless they were marked and put into the recovery system. For thieves that moved quickly or made strikes while owners were out of town, a few days could sometimes pass.
A complete hopper was a different matter.
Thirty-seven minutes passed before I got a hit on Steven Carmichael’s missing hopper.
Chapter Eleven
“Yeah, I remember that guy.” Jake Conlee, in his forties and lean as a rake, studied the 3D image of Steven Carmichael that I showed him. Conlee wore stained navy coveralls with his name sewn in red thread over his right breast.
Steven Carmichael was in his fifties now, a taciturn man in the 3D with large ears and a small mouth. His hair was bronze and didn’t go well with his sallow complexion.
I blanked the 3D. “Can you tell me why you remember him?”
Conlee ran a scarred fist over his stubbled chin. “Well, it’s like you said: he came in to sell that hopper. I told him I didn’t buy hoppers, that he should go to a dealership, but he wasn’t having any of that. He told me he just wanted junk price for it.”
“Was there anything wrong with the vehicle?”
Conlee motioned me back to a small office where he had an antiquated computer set up on a stained desk littered with car parts. “Sorry. Place is a mess.”
“I don’t mind.”
Conlee sat at the desk and powered up the computer. “I keep good records. You have to in this business. The police check on things. The tax people.”
“I understand.” I waited patiently as he looked for the file.
“Here it is. Steven Carmichael.” Conlee turned the monitor so that I could see it.
The digital image showed Mr. Carmichael standing in front of the dove grey hopper out in the salvage yard.
“He let you take the image?”
“I insisted. Didn’t give him a choice. The last thing I needed was him filing some kind of claim that I’d somehow conned him out of that hopper.”
I noted the date on the file. “This was taken two years ago?”
Conlee checked as well. “Yeah.”
That meant Carmichael had held onto the hopper for three years before getting rid of it. I went back through the timeline I’d made for him and realized that was when he’d lost his job at Solomon Pharmaceuticals. Carmichael had been a warehouse manager. He’d been fired for tardiness, and there had been an investigation into disappearing product. He’d been forced to move into the apartment he’d lived in before the one he currently lived in.
The house Carmichael had lived in at the time had had a garage. The probability that he’d hidden the hopper there was almost definite. He’d only moved it because he’d had to. In that time, he’d come up with the salvage yard as a possible solution.
I looked at Conlee. “What happened to the hopper?”
“As soon as I gave him a fair price for it to be junked out for scrap metal, this guy walked back to the vehicle, took a two-liter bottle of alcohol—vodka, I think, because it was clear—and poured it all over the interior.” Jake Conlee shook his head. “By then, I knew I was dealing with an insane person. I didn’t know what to do. Carmichael flicked a lighter to life and tossed it into the hopper. Then he just walked away.”
I nodded. “Did you put the fire out?”
“Sure. Had to. Otherwise it might have spread.”
“What kind of shape was the hopper in?”
Conlee grimaced and wiped at his face. “It was toast, Detective. A burnt-out shell. It hadn’t been junk when he’d driven it in here, but it was junk when he left it.”
He pulled up another image from the Carmichael file and showed me the torched hopper. Not much remained of the interior and smoke stained the transplas.
“What did you do with the car?”
“After I was sure it was through burning, I used the exosuit to stack it with the other wrecks that would be sold as scrap metal.”
That was a setback, but Shelly had taught me to cover every base. “So the remains have been scrapped?”
“Not yet. Prices for scrap metal fluctuate. Kind of like the stock market. The best thing a salvage yard can do is buy low, hang onto something till the price is right, then get rid of it.” Conlee shrugged. “For the last two years, the salvage business has done pretty good, and I’ve set up a mechanics shop on the premises. One of my sons got certified for hopper repair. I’ve been helping him.” He grinned a little and I detected pride in his expression. “Kid’s brighter than his old man. He’s been teaching me things.”
“Congratulations.”
“The long and short of it, Detective Drake, is that I haven’t junked that car out. It’s still sitting in the yard.”
“Can you show me?”
“Sure. But it ain’t in the same shape as either one of those images.”
*
Conlee climbed into a refurbished golf cart in front of the small salvage yard office. The vehicle started with a rattle that woke a massive black pit bull lying in the sun by the door. The animal roused itself and trotted over to the golf cart, then hopped in back.
“That’s Barney.” Conlee jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the dog. “He patrols the yard at night. He catches what the seccams don’t.”
The dog watched me with bright interest. Animals didn’t often react well to bioroids because bioroids looked man-shaped, but didn’t carry the same kind of smells—bioroids didn’t sweat and didn’t use cosmetics.
Conlee drove through the maze of stacked, rusting ca
rs with easy familiarity. I studied the cars and hoppers, the trucks from decades gone by, and the large exosuits designed for moving heavy equipment and cargo on docks, near-space exploration, and cargo vessels, and realized that the place had a long history.
The exosuits looked out of place, like fallen iron giants from some mythological tale Shelly would have read to her children. They stood ten meters tall and were half as wide and deep. They were blocky and functional, with no cosmetic streamlining. Pressure hoses lined their arms and legs like veins. They could substitute different hand attachments, but most of these had the cargo clamps designed for latching hold of things.
“You said the salvage yard was a family business.”
Conlee nodded. “My father owned it. His father before him. Six generations of my father’s people have lived here. We’ve seen a lot of things come and go.”
He pointed out his son’s shop, a newer building with its own access road to the main streets as well as a hopper pad.
Then we arrived at the section of the yard where he kept the vehicles that had been smashed into large metal blocks. Dozens of them sat there in tall, yellow grass. Crows perched on some of the blocks and grey-white excrement trailed down the sides.
Barney leaped off the golf cart and gave chase to the crows, stirring them up into a small black blizzard above the cubes.
Conlee took a handkerchief from the back pocket of his coveralls and wiped sweat from his neck. “We’re going to have to look for your hopper, Detective Drake.”
I nodded and stepped into the forest of dead hoppers. I noticed numbers and letters spray-painted on the cubes. “Are these identification numbers?”
“They’re the VINs of the hoppers that were run through the crusher. Like I said, I tend to keep good records. Just in case.”
“That will make it easier.”
*
We found Steven Carmichael’s abandoned, burned-out hopper just after the sun started to dip below the horizon. I was just about to ask for permission to continue searching while Conlee closed down the yard when his son, Keith called out to us.
“I found it. Over here.” Keith was a slightly taller man than his father, but he had the same rugged looks and easy manner. His hair was cut in a wilder fashion and neon animated tattoos covered his tanned arms.
I joined him in the weeds.
Keith turned his flashlight on the cube we’d been looking for and revealed the VIN number written in bright yellow spray paint. The hopper had been compacted into a cube shape roughly 1.4 meters on all sides. The crusher had pushed it in on itself and ironed the features flat, more or less.
I knelt and pried some of the paint from the hopper. Keith helpfully shined his flashlight on my hands and my synthskin stood out whitely. The paint fleck contained the two-tone coat I’d been looking for. I took out an evidence bag, placed the fleck within, sealed it, and labeled it with the proper documentation.
Conlee looked at me. “This is the hopper you were looking for?”
I nodded. “It is.”
“You never said why you were looking for it.”
“Five years ago, it was involved in a hit-and-run that left a little girl dead.”
Conlee took in a deep breath and shook his head. He’d been curious, but I knew that once he knew the reason he regretted having asked the question. I’d learned humans were often like that. They gave up their innocence cheaply when curiosity was involved, or profit, then wished they hadn’t.
“I will need to take possession of this cube, Mr. Conlee. It is now evidence.”
Conlee waved a hand at me. “Sure, sure.”
“I am authorized to pay you for it.”
“No.” Conlee glared at the cube. “I knew that hopper was bad news when Carmichael drove it in here. I just didn’t know how bad. I’ll be glad to get rid of it.”
“I’ll need to arrange transportation.”
“I can do that, too.” Conlee started to walk away.
Keith trotted over to his father’s side. “Let me do it, Dad. I’ll get one of the exosuits and be right back.”
“Okay.”
Keith turned to me. “I’ll haul that cube wherever you want it to go.”
“Let me know how much that will be.”
Keith shook his head. “For a favor.”
“A favor?”
“Yeah. I’ve never gotten to see a bioroid up close and personal. When you get time, if it’s cool, I’d like you to stop in my shop sometime and let me take a closer look at you.”
Conlee raised his voice. “Keith, that’s not something you ask someone like Detective Drake.”
I thought about Keith’s favor and the curious interest I had seen in him. It was more welcome than the attention of Human First from that morning. “That will be acceptable, Keith. Within certain parameters—Haas-Bioroid does not give up technical edges.”
The young man grinned. “Cool.” He trotted into the darkness with Barney at his heels.
“I’m sorry about that.” Conlee looked embarrassed. “Kid’s a mechanical genius, they tell me. He was always tearing down things here in the yard. Best thing I ever did was scrape together enough to send him to school.”
“No, it’s acceptable. His curiosity is welcome.” I wondered what Shelly would have thought of the situation. I didn’t know. I realized then that my life would go on without her in it, and I would have many unresolved questions about how she would see things. I missed her input.
*
Full dark had fallen over New Angeles when I arrived at Steven Carmichael’s address. The apartment building was small and old. Graffiti marred the walls and two hoppers sat up on blocks in the street. A small park nearby was overgrown with weeds and I smelled smoke from contraband drugs coming from the area.
A handful of young streetbangers wearing gang tattoos sat on the steps as I went up. They said nothing to my face, but they spoke disparagingly of me when I passed. I ignored them. None of them were wanted for anything.
The elevator wasn’t working. I walked up three flights of stairs to Carmichael’s flat. There were no seccams in the building, and I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t plug into the building’s sec system to watch over the hallways and stairwells.
I’d thought about contacting Lieutenant Ormond to let him know I was about to make an arrest in the Matti Harcourt hit-and-run, but he’d told me to contact him only if I needed him. As of yet, I didn’t need him.
Usually, two law enforcement people were necessary at an arrest. The precedent was for the safety of police personnel, and for later testimony in court. I had a built-in recording system, and I felt safe enough.
Except for the hit-and-run, Carmichael didn’t have a history of violence. I expected no problems.
The door was scarred, but looked sturdy. I lifted a hand and knocked.
Movement sounded within. A shadow passed over the peephole in the door. The security within the building was exceedingly primitive. “I don’t want anything. Go away.” The voice was coarse from too much drinking and too many cigarettes.
“I’m not selling anything, Mr. Carmichael. I’m with the New Angeles Police. My name is Detective Drake.”
A bloodshot eye stared at me through the peephole. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“You don’t have a choice. I can either talk to you here, or I’m going to take you downtown.”
The eye vanished from the peephole. I knew there was a fire escape at the back of the building. I felt certain Carmichael was running.
I set myself and hit the door with enough force to rip the hinges free. I put a foot on the door as it fell and entered the room on Carmichael’s heels.
He was drunk and not moving with any real agility. I caught him easily without truly getting up to speed. I closed a hand around one of his wrists and yanked him around.
“Let me go.” Carmichael struggled against me. His breath was foul with alcohol. My olfactory systems pulled in his fumes and registered him at below p
ublic intoxication levels. There was no law against getting drunk in your own home, but if he offered testimony, I needed to know that it would be admissible.
“You’re under arrest, Mr. Carmichael.” I tripped him and placed him face down on the floor. I took a pair of zip-strips from my pocket and bound his hands behind his back. I yanked him to his feet.
“Arrest? For what?”
“For a hit-and-run five years ago.”
As he looked at me, Carmichael paled. He knew exactly what I was referring to.
I turned my empty palm up and projected a 3D of eleven-year-old Matti Harcourt. “For killing this girl and fleeing the scene.”
“No. I didn’t.” Carmichael shook his head in denial.
“You did. I found the hopper at Conlee’s Salvage Yard, Mr. Carmichael. I have secured it and turned it over to the crime lab. Forspec teams will be going over it. Despite the way you burned it, they will find DNA that will tie the hopper to that hit-and-run.”
Carmichael stared at the image I’d projected in the palm of my hand. Tears filled his eyes and he shivered and would have fallen if I hadn’t held him up.
“No.” His voice was hoarse and rough. “It was an accident. I didn’t see her. The hopper failed out.”
“You misjudged your hop distance due to your inebriation, Mr. Carmichael. The sec vid reveals that.”
“No.” Carmichael got sick and threw up. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“You could have stopped, Mr. Carmichael. The penalty would have been less if you had.” I grabbed his elbow and marched him from the room. Along the way, I notified Dispatch that I was coming in with an arrest.
*
I was filling out the arrest report at my desk in the basement when Lieutenant Ormond arrived. He was seething, obviously upset at being pulled back into the station after he’d ended his day.
He rolled up his sleeves as he towered over me. I continued working because I had not been told to stop or even been addressed. He cursed, then he put a hand on the desk.
