by Mel Odom
When I turned back around to look at Shelly, she was gone as well. I was alone in the basement.
I stared at the strange face on the 3D and wondered where it had come from. Someone had to have programmed the features into the nanobots’ resource files. No one had said anything about it at Haas-Bioroid.
Accessing my PAD again, I pulled up the seccam vid from the tube-lev entrance under the Haas-Bioroid building. I entered the time of my arrival and requested the seccam files. Once I had found them, I downloaded them to my PAD.
When I went into and out of Haas-Bioroid, I’d looked like the me I remembered. So sometime after that, perhaps overnight, I had changed.
What Shelly had said about my face belonging to someone else stuck in my mind. I looked at the 3D image of my face hanging in mid-air.
Working quickly, I created a program that put hair and beards on the face in different colors and lengths. I entered other parameters to change skin pigmentation. There was no guarantee that the face I wore—if it had been based on another individual—had been Caucasian. I wrote further code that allowed the program to add and take away age, to make the face older and younger.
I even wrote supplemental code that allowed the face to be a different gender, though I was fairly certain that was not the case. Still, I liked to be thorough when I started hunting for the truth.
Once I had the program detailed to the degree I wanted it and could see nothing it lacked, I uploaded it to the facial recognition search program. For a few minutes, I watched the faces cycle through the 3D holo with an anticipation I had never known. It was strange to me that I even knew what to call it.
Knowing that the program would take a long time to run, I turned my attention back to the files on my desk.
*
I worked on the files until 2015. Now that I no longer had Shelly, I no longer had to keep regular hours. Lieutenant Ormond hadn’t come down to tell me to go home, nor had he contacted me since my return from Haas-Bioroid. I kept an eye on the media, tracking various cases the NAPD was working. Crime continued all around me. Investigations into the serial murderer case and Mara Blake’s disappearance were ongoing. Even as one mystery was solved, another opened up.
The Adrian Graham case had made the media spotlight for a time. The nosies had been out in force gathering eyewitness reports from people that might have been there. The nosies had access to the public traffic cam vid, as well as vid from people who had actually been out on the street, but they liked the human element. People in the news bytes brought on more emotion than simple footage.
The footage had been impressive, though. As I’d watched back through it, at all the carnage unleashed in the sky and the way the hoppers had jostled for position in the traffic, I knew our chances of survival had been distinctly dim.
“It was the bioroid cop that started everything.” A dancer identified only as “Vesper” stood in front of Roxie HT’s. I reviewed my vid files of my visit and didn’t find her there. She was small and blond and plastic-looking, in some ways less human-looking than even a clone. “He came in after Adrian Graham—may the Blue Elvis watch over him—and went crazy. He chased Adrian outside, threw him in that hopper, and zoomed off into the sky. I don’t blame those other guys for getting mad at him. If I’d had a gun, I’d have probably shot him myself.”
A group of men wearing Human First shirts cheered in the background and the cam swerved over to include them briefly. As Shelly would have said, I didn’t have any friends in that camp.
Vesper dabbed theatrically at the fake tears in her eyes.
I’d already gotten the memo from Lieutenant Ormond that the confrontation was turning into a public relations nightmare. Haas-Bioroid had sent a spin doctor to help handle the fallout in public trust.
The whole thing was an overreaction, but the public had reacted more violently three months ago when Detective Geoff Baskins had shot and killed a teen who had been breaking into his flat. Baskins had gotten a month’s suspension with pay and was tasked to four meetings with a counselor. The public had forgotten about it before Baskins was back on duty.
Baskins had termed his time away from his desk as his vacation. Shelly had taken umbrage with that, gathered a bag of dog feces, and dumped it into Baskins’s locker. She’d arranged it so that a chemical accelerant sparked to life when the door opened and the feces had burned in a super-hot blaze. No one had known for certain who had done the deed, but Baskins was still the butt of a lot of crude humor.
Shelly’s revenge had outlived her.
My PAD pinged for my attention and I brought it up. I still had several searches going on simultaneously regarding different cases. A man’s face stared at me, and beside it was the glowing image of the chimera that tied him to the Cartman Dawes investigation and Brock Thurman’s old unit.
I read the information below the face and discovered that the man was Dante Pace, an ex-mercenary turned bouncer at Kilgore’s Venus, a pleasure palace that was in a much higher tax bracket than Roxie HT’s. He was also a suspected assassin.
And, according to the vid that accompanied him, Pace had been a mercenary on Mars with the same unit as Brock Thurman.
I hadn’t told Craig Dormoth or Lieutenant Ormond about the chimera tattoo. Possibly, it had nothing to do with the homicide investigation into Cartman Dawes. I told myself I didn’t want to deflect their efforts.
But I wanted to discover what I could of Brock Thurman’s associates, present and past. I noted the address of Kilgore’s Venus, then headed up to the rooftop to claim my hopper.
*
Green and yellow neon swathed Kilgore’s Venus. The club occupied three of the top four floors of a downtown office building. The top floor was a casino that had no name, only a 3D advertisement of black dice rolling through fire.
The rooftop parking was marked PRIVATE in huge orange laser letters that hung in the air above the roof. Expensive hoppers lifted and descended, all of them beamed in by secpoints manned by humans, probably with cyberware implants or genetic modifications, as well as computers.
I descended to the street and had to hunt for parking, finally finding a public tower two blocks over. I left my hopper there and walked back to the building.
*
I took the elevator to the hundred-and-fifth floor, the first level of the club, and got out. Secmen held me up at the door for a moment, then let me through when they pinged my e-ID and saw my badge. I’d already let the dispatch officer know I was there to meet with a snitch.
The snitch’s name was Rooney. He was off the grid for the most part, no records anywhere. Guys like Rooney who dispensed special information had to be able to disappear because people they snitched on often came looking for them.
The problem with that was when someone else found them and they went disappearing not of their own volition, no one knew where to find them.
Rooney was one of Shelly’s snitches. He specialized in intel about hitters and assassins. He’d been reluctant about meeting me when I’d commed him, but he’d shown up once I’d explained there was cred attached.
He sat at one of the back tables where he had a pretty good view of the club. Asian and thin, with startling red hair and silver facial piercings, Rooney almost faded into the background of the festive club scene. Even with his neon animated tattoos lit up, he was sedate compared to the moving mass of colors, shapes, and near-nudity contained within Kilgore’s Venus.
“What’s up, tin man?” Rooney nodded at me and knocked on his tabletop with his knuckles. He grinned and revealed a mouth full of gold and porcelain. Shelly had warned him that his mouth “treasure” would get him buried one day.
She’d also warned him about calling me “tin man.” Obviously, he’d chosen to ignore that for the moment.
“Rooney.” I stood in front of him. “I’m glad to see you.”
He cursed and pointed to the chair across from him. “Man, sit yourself down before somebody notices you.” He shook his head. “Bad enough
you come in here looking like Five-O, but you gotta try to stand out, too? You’re gonna get us both killed.”
I took the chair, but didn’t try to defend myself.
Rooney peered at me closely in the club’s darkness. “That is you, ain’t it, Drake?”
“Yes. You don’t know many bioroids that carry a detective’s badge.”
“No. You’re the only one.” Rooney touched his face. “But you got something different going on with the face, man. What’s that about?”
“Just trying something.” There was no way I was going to explain that I didn’t know what was happening to me.
“Whatever it is, it’s working.” Rooney shook his head. “You look a lot meaner.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say. “Haas-Bioroid puts out an excellent product.”
Rooney held up a hand. “Save the product placement endorsement, tin man. It’s you.” He grimaced. “I heard about Detective Nolan. That was a sad thing.”
“Yes, it was.”
“This have anything to do with that?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Shelly had always insisted that Rooney was very intuitive, part of his survival mechanism. Lying to him outright, or disrespecting him, could produce bad information.
“I’m not sure, but I anticipate that it does.” The tie to Brock Thurman wasn’t a random occurrence.
Rooney nodded. “Detective Nolan was a righteous cop, tin man. In this city, they make ’em like that few and very far between. If this earns some payback for her, I’ll be happy to help out.” He paused and exposed his gold and porcelain again. “For a price.”
I had access to the snitch fund the NAPD had for street tips. I produced a credaccount stick. “I came prepared.”
“Good.” He named a price, we negotiated, but he knew he had me because this was potentially mixed up in Shelly’s death and I wouldn’t walk away. On the other hand, I thought he cut me a deal because he asked for an amount that I could easily make a case for.
I set the credaccount stick for the amount we’d agreed on and handed it over. He put it into a pocket and looked at me, waiting.
“You wanted to know about the bouncer.”
“Pace, yes.”
Rooney shook his head. “Not the man’s real name.”
“What is his real name?”
“Taylor. Dwight Taylor. He’s ex-Special Forces and served on—”
“Mars. I know that.” I hadn’t known the man’s true name, though. None of the pictures or vid that Brock Thurman’s sister had given me had listed the man’s name, just his face. Apparently, he’d had his e-ID scrubbed clean and linked to the new name, though why he’d left the Mars connection, I wasn’t sure.
I started running a search on him using the new name, but quickly discovered there was very little in the way of information on him. His past was largely unknown, except for his military experience at the early stages of his career. I didn’t know anything he’d been doing for the last nine years.
Except for that picture of him with Brock Thurman.
“Okay, so you know some stuff. Not bad, tin man.”
“I need to know what Taylor is involved with now.”
“On the books, he’s a bouncer here. Been here three years, according to one of the pleasure bioroids I know.” Rooney nodded over toward the table next to us where two female pleasure bioroids sat talking and being looked at. A lot of men stopped by their table, but evidently the price was high.
“But off the books?”
Rooney shook his head and smiled. “Off the books, that man is a stone cold killer for hire. Pricey, but he can be bought.”
That explained why Taylor had left his Special Forces experience on his record. That kind of background encouraged job hirings as a merc.
“Does he hang out with anyone?”
Rooney sighed. “For your cred, for the time you gave me, I don’t have the whole story. I got what I got. You want more, you gotta give me more time. Gimme a week, let me shadow him, and I’ll let you know what he eats for breakfast.”
I didn’t have that kind of time. For the moment, I was a step ahead of whatever was going on, and I wanted to keep it that way.
“There are rumors about Dwight Taylor.” Rooney took out a cigarette and slid it through his fingers like a magician warming up to do a trick. “Some people say he didn’t use to work alone, that there’s a small group of mercenaries who do headhunting jobs within the corps.”
“Headhunting jobs?”
Rooney smiled. “They cull from within the corps. You want somebody whacked in a big corp as a career builder, or to slow down someone else’s R&D? You call these guys. They’re expensive, but they get the job done.”
“If that’s true, what’s Dwight Taylor doing in a place like this?”
“Heard he got busted out of the ranks and had to go private.”
That was interesting. It meant that Dwight Taylor wasn’t connected to any of the organized crime groups, or to the corps, which some days was pretty much the same thing.
“How does this guy tie into what happened to Detective Nolan?” Rooney leaned across the table and spoke quietly.
“I don’t know. I’m going to have to ask.”
Rooney grinned. “I don’t think he’s gonna like being asked. That guy? He’s not the kind of guy that likes questions.”
“Thank you for your time.” I got up to go.
“Just be careful, tin man. I liked Detective Nolan more than I like you, but I don’t have that many people I trust.”
I nodded and focused my attention on Dwight Taylor as he stood by the bar and flirted with a couple of young women. As I neared him, I tried to figure out what I could do if he chose not to talk to me. There weren’t any outstanding charges. Dwight Taylor had managed to keep a low profile.
I had no leverage.
Then, he saw me coming. Evidently my direct approach to him set off a preternatural warning system. Shelly had always insisted that people who lived on the wrong side of the law long enough often developed senses like that. It was like an animal sensing a predator’s attention.
I wasn’t a predator.
But Dwight Taylor pulled out a pistol and pointed it at me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The women Dwight Taylor had been flirting with fled as soon as the pistol put in its appearance. Their panic initiated a wave of swift departures that sent out ripples through the club crowd. In only a few seconds, the entire bar was in an excitable state.
I stopped where I was and slowly raised my hands. “Dwight Taylor, I am—”
Before I could finish my introduction, as well as my intention to arrest him for pointing a weapon at a New Angeles police officer, he squeezed the trigger. The heavy caliber bullet smashed into my chest and rocked me back.
“You’re dead!” Dwight Taylor snarled an oath at me and fired twice more.
Both bullets struck me and my self-repair subroutine kicked in. My diagnostic showed no threatening damage, so I let the nanobots do their work. I reached for my Synap.
“Hey, Pace!” One of the other club bouncers took a defensive position at the end of the bar a short distance from Dwight Taylor. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
Unnerved by the shouts, Taylor turned and fired two rounds at the man, a quick double-tap that spoke volumes about the training he’d had. At least one of the bullets caught the other bouncer in the head. Blood and brain matter exited his skull in a violent rush. The corpse dropped to the floor amid screaming patrons.
“New Angeles Police Department.” I used my public address voice and my words cut through the throbbing music that filled the club. “Put down your weapon and step back.”
“Liar!” Taylor turned back toward me and pointed his weapon again. This time, he aimed at my head. “You’re dead!”
I fired the Synap, but Taylor dodged the blue bolt as it cut across the distance. His reflexes must have been cybernetically augmented. He was too
fast, too smooth when he moved.
Taylor turned and ran through the panic-stricken crowd. Vicious and merciless, he used his hands, elbows, and forearms to clear a path. Men, women, and pleasure bioroids went down before him, and many of them were bloody. None of them had life-threatening injuries, though, or I wouldn’t have been able to pursue.
I sprinted after Dwight Taylor, dodging through the crowd rather than forcing my way through them. Dwight Taylor was no longer a person of interest in a murder investigation. He was now a full-fledged fugitive in a homicide. I hurdled a man and a woman cowering on the floor, leaped onto a table that creaked threateningly beneath me, and vaulted from there to the top of a blond pleasure bioroid’s head because she wasn’t human and I didn’t have to concern myself with injuring her.
As I threw myself forward again, the pleasure bioroid reached up to her platinum locks and gave them a quick shake to recover her style. She howled curses at me just like a real woman would do.
I landed on the floor and raced after Dwight Taylor as he ran—literally—through a door. The door ripped from its hinges and fell inside, going down instantly under Taylor’s feet.
Inside the room, nine people involved in a private party in various stages of undress broke apart and gave way before Taylor. One of the women pulled a pistol from her purse and tried to take aim.
Taylor shot her through the left eye and she sagged back into the arms of the man standing beside her. I reached her in a second and put a hand on her shoulder to take her biometrics. Her EKG had already flatlined and I knew from the visible extensive damage that she was already dead. I couldn’t help her.
I pushed back up and gave chase again. During my distraction, Taylor had gained another half-dozen paces on his head start. He waved his hand over the sec panel on a door marked PRIVATE: CLUB PERSONNEL ONLY at the back of the room, reloaded his weapon as he waited for the door to cycle open, then dashed through.
The door started to close as I arrived. I shot out my hand and managed to catch the door before it shut. For a moment, I thought the door was going to amputate my fingers. It cut deeply into the synthskin and blue fluid sprayed the surfaces for a moment before the nanobots could constrict the damage.
