Memory Blank

by John Stith

  “I think you should listen to your doctor.”

  “You’re right. I want to save this sequence for a while, though. Can you store the frames we’ve looked at just now, and one every ten seconds for the whole time we were with Leroy? Label it and don’t overwrite it as you keep recording.”

  “I obey even as you speak. What’s next, boss?”

  “What was Leroy doing all this time? Show me the section with him in it, in real time, starting a second before the cutover.”

  Leroy’s only reactions during the interval were a brief compressing of his lips and a glance at Cal. Cal inspected the image a moment longer before he gave up. There was nothing obviously sinister about Leroy’s behavior.

  “Maybe it’s time I sent my boss a status report,” he said. “Tom Horvath is on my phone list, and it seems I report to him.”

  Aided by computer prompting, Cal prepared a message that said, “Communications test with Krantz passed.” As he finished and started to sign off, he noticed an information block that said, “One message waiting.”

  Depressing two keys brought the message up on the screen. “I missed you last time” was all it said. The originator block, rather than containing a name, said, “Monthly.”

  Cal thought a moment longer before he made the connection. It had to be a message from the person to whom he paid monthly payments. But it still didn’t explain why. If the message referred to a meeting, then Cal had no way to tell what the meeting was. If it referred to the incident on the tube car, then “Monthly” hadn’t missed him. Unless the gas had been intended to be fatal.

  “I’m spending too much time in front of computer terminals,” Cal said abruptly. “I need more direct exposure. Is the news station open to the public?”

  “Yes. But most of their data is available at any terminal.”

  “That doesn’t matter. It seems that I recall more when I’m dealing with people.”

  “It seems you also run more risks.”

  “Something’s wrong. I can’t find out what it is by ignoring it.”

  “You’re not worried about joining Domingo in the marble orchard?”

  “Let’s go, Vincent.”

  “I don’t have a whole lot of choice, do I?”

  “About as much as I have.”

  Cal kept a watchful eye for anyone coming too close to him on the way over, but saw no one. The news station was in Machu Picchu, near the center of the city. The facilities available to the public were similar to Cal’s desk computer, but there were no thumbprint squares. The terminals were always on, available without specifying an ID.

  Cal studied the lineup of screens in small cubicles, wondering if the trip had been worth the effort, when a calm voice sounded behind him.

  “Not sure how to use the system?”

  Cal turned and found himself facing the reporter he had seen on the earlier newscasts, Michelle Garney. Her vivid green eyes hadn’t shown up well on the video.

  “I think I can figure it out,” Cal said. “But I’m a little tired of dealing with machines.” No offense, Vincent.

  The woman smiled and nodded understandingly. “It’s hard to avoid. What were you looking for?”

  Cal hesitated. He didn’t want any links between himself and Gabriel Domingo, but the woman appeared friendly and willing to help. “I’m investigating drug-related killings. And the death of the fellow on the news yesterday.”

  Michelle gave him a brief appraising gaze and said, “Why don’t you join me in the break room? Maybe I can get you started.”

  They exchanged first names, and Cal followed her to a nearby room equipped with a few tables, chairs, and vending machines. Michelle smiled. It was a welcome change, and it felt good to sit down. He looked up and found her watching him.

  “Hard day?” she asked.

  Cal smiled. “Perhaps I’m just out of shape.”

  She raised her eyebrows, as if to disagree, but said nothing.

  “Have there been many killings lately?” Cal asked.

  “I guess that depends on what you mean by ‘lately’ and ‘many’. Quite a few in the last year. But Vital Twenty-Two hasn’t been linked to any before.”

  “So maybe this last murder wasn’t a typical case?”

  “I don’t know that there is a typical case. But, yes, it’s a bit unusual.” Michelle looked thoughtful for a moment. “The body being moved, that particular drug, the injuries…”

  “What about the injuries?” Cal tried to keep his voice calm.

  “Messy. Crude. I guess it’s a little more typical for the victim to end up with a laser hole or a knife cut. Domingo was—well, it’s more like a whole gang beat him to death, or he fell a long way. His injuries were massive.” Michelle shivered almost imperceptibly.

  “So you saw the body?”

  “Pictures. That was enough.”

  “Any chance they were faked?”

  “Not any. He was way past hope. Some of my more morbid friends call a case like that a sidewalk soufflé.” She leaned forward. “Why? What reason would anyone have for faking a murder discovery?”

  “None that I can think of. Just curious.”

  “And why do you ask that? I thought maybe you were the police.” A small frown wrinkled her forehead.

  Cal was nervous. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pretend to be the police.” He put a hand on the table and began to push himself up. “I apologize for giving you the wrong impression.” He was halfway through his motion when she put her hand on his.

  “Wait,” she said. “I didn’t mean to chase you off.”

  Her hand was cool and firm against Cal’s. He looked at it for a moment. His hand tingled where she touched him. Her eyes were bright, alert, questioning, but still friendly. She didn’t remove her hand until he sat down again.

  “I guess it’s my day for overreacting,” he said, guiltily wishing she hadn’t taken her hand away.

  She said nothing, but watched him closely.

  “Where did Domingo live?” he asked.

  “An apartment here in town—on the west side.” She gave him the address.

  Cal didn’t know how compass directions had been defined, but decided to ask Vincent later. “Is there anything you know that hasn’t reached the public?” he asked.

  “No. I’m not with the police either.”

  “Is that supposed to make me tell you why I’m interested in all of this?”

  Michelle smiled quickly, but was silent.

  “You know,” Cal said, “you’re not as opaque as we’d all like to believe we are. Your curiosity must be on full alert, but you’re hoping I’ll answer your unspoken questions.”

  She nodded and grinned again.

  “You really enjoy your work, don’t you?” he asked.

  “You’re right again. Why? Don’t you enjoy yours?”

  “Let’s say I’m undecided. Look. I can’t tell you the reasons for my interest. I’m just looking for the same thing you are: the truth. If I find it, I’ll tell you. Fair enough?”

  “You realize the information flow in this conversation is all backward?”

  “Michelle, I—thanks very much. I enjoyed talking with you.” Cal rose to leave. This time she didn’t stop him.

  “You really will tell me what this is all about sometime?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t go and get yourself killed.”

  Cal stopped. “Whatever makes you say that?”

  “Like I said, I enjoy my job. I’m good at it. I trust my hunches. You didn’t saunter down here simply to gather data. You’ve got a personal stake in this.”

  “You know, you’re right.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “You are good at your job.”

  Michelle smiled once more as Cal left. This time, however, he thought he saw worry mixed into it.

  Out on the street Cal asked, “Which way is west?”

  “The side of the continent opposite the direction of rotation,” said Vincent.
“North is the sun end.”

  “So I’m walking west right now?”

  “Right.”

  “You heard Domingo’s address, I assume. Want to give me directions?”

  “It’ll be a long walk without a bike. If you take the tubeway up the hill and switch to one that runs on the west side, you’ll save some steps.”

  “Up the hill is up to the south pole?”

  “Correct.”

  A half hour later, Cal was on the streets of Machu Picchu’s west side. There were no nearby businesses, only apartment buildings and occasional town houses, all with bicycle racks near the doors.

  Domingo’s address was a large building containing perhaps twenty units. Cal walked by it without entering.

  The building was typically long and narrow, lined up east-west, with all the units on one level. Each had a window overlooking the valley to the north. Oak and pine trees provided a modest amount of privacy to the areas near some of the windows. Cal could see only two main doors, one at each end of the building.

  Some of the windows were open. The apartment number Michelle had told him was eight. If the units were numbered sequentially starting at one end, there was a fifty percent chance that Domingo’s was open.

  Cal entered the building and found himself in a tiny, deserted foyer tiled in red and black. Without hesitation he continued into the long hallway beyond, until he came to the first apartment door.

  Number sixteen. So the numbering started at the other end. Which meant—he did a short calculation—none of the open windows belonged to number eight.

  He kept walking. Maybe, against all odds, the police had left the door unlocked. He didn’t believe it, but he was halfway there already, so he might as well continue. Fortunately, no one was in the hall.

  Domingo’s door looked like all the others: closed and locked. No notes marred the solid brown surface of the door. Disheartened, Cal was just about to give up and leave, when, struck by a sudden idea, he reached up and pressed his thumb against the white square.

  The door to Gabriel Domingo’s apartment slid silently open.

  CHAPTER 8

  Hologram

  Surprised and apprehensive, Cal hesitated before the open doorway. He licked the ball of his thumb and cleaned the thumbprint square outside Domingo’s apartment. The hall was deserted. He entered.

  The door closed behind him. The apartment looked as though Domingo might have just gone out for a quick meal. Apparently his personal possessions hadn’t been confiscated. There was a risk that the police had left behind a hidden video camera, but Cal had to find out as much as he could.

  “You know anything about police procedures, Vincent?” he asked. “For instance, do they leave a deceased’s home intact for a week or anything?”

  “Sorry. You could be right, but I have no way to confirm or deny.”

  Cal took a long, slow look around. He had been here before. What things he had done, what conversations he might have had, were lost, but he knew he had been here before. Maybe if he saw Domingo sitting in the empty rope chair-hammock, more would come back to him.

  All the furniture except the hammock and a desk chair was built in. The outline of a foldaway bed showed under the window. Dresser drawers came flush with the wall. The desk computer sat on a fold-down support. Shelves set into the wall held a small hologram and other knickknacks. The guilt of trespassing, as when Nikki had found him looking at her file, came back stronger.

  Cal searched the drawers, finding nothing out of the ordinary. He was about to examine the closet when instead he went to the window and slid it open, noticing with surprise that it had been unlocked. Vincent’s compband came off his wrist, and he hung Vincent from a nearby tree branch.

  “Vincent, can you see both ways from there? I want you to warn me if anyone starts in either door.”

  “No problem.”

  It was only after Cal started searching the closet that he unhappily realized how natural it had been for him to use Vincent as a lookout. Maybe all this wasn’t as unusual for him as he wanted to believe.

  The closet held mostly clothes that seemed to have been bought for durability. Work clothes, heavy materials, patches on elbows and knees. With them were exactly what Cal would have expected to find in a construction worker’s closet: a hard hat, tool set, reinforced-toe boots, an empty Thermos, and not much else.

  Most of the items on the shelves meant nothing to Cal, but he found himself going back for a second look at the hologram. It wasn’t a professional job, merely a do-it-yourself in a cheap, back-lit frame. But the view was what had inexplicably drawn Cal’s attention. The hologram showed the outside of a church with a large gold starburst on the wall in front.

  Maybe Domingo had been a religious man. Perhaps that explained why the hologram was there. But nothing else Cal had uncovered in his search fit with that hypothesis. There were no other holograms, and no other objects that implied anything more complex than the normal possessions of a construction worker. The police could have removed items, but that made no sense.

  Still not knowing why the holo of the church attracted him so strongly, Cal had an idea. He found a pair of scissors in the desk. Taking apart the holo frame, he removed the film and cut it in two. One half he replaced. The edges of the frame slid closer together to block off the space now uncovered, and Cal put the other half in his pocket.

  Back on the shelf, the hologram generated by the remaining film half showed graininess not noticeable earlier. Other than that, it looked as though it had never been touched.

  By the time another minute had elapsed, Cal had examined everything of interest in the apartment except the desk computer. He started to retrieve Vincent, but then thought back to the way the door had responded to his thumb. He touched the desk computer square.

  The screen lit. Green letters said, “Gabriel Angelo Domingo. Personal.”

  Cal drew in his breath, looking at Domingo’s middle name. It had to be. A minute later, his suspicion was confirmed. Still stored in Domingo’s message file was the note Cal had sent yesterday to “Angel.”

  He shivered and erased the message. Angel was past responding.

  So there was far more to his relationship with the dead man than simple recognition. Sending coded messages to each other wasn’t the hallmark of casual acquaintances. Or of people with nothing to hide. He understood now why he hadn’t met Angel at Tinsdale Park.

  Cal tried to ignore the building fear. So much for the easy explanations. The biggest questions were ones like why Cal knew Domingo. Learning more about the nature of his relationship with Domingo generated even more unknowns.

  “See anything yet, Vincent?” he asked.

  “Not a thing.”

  Cal turned back to the computer. It took him only another few moments to realize that Domingo’s stored information was as sparse as his apartment. There were almost none of the indications of personalization that had shown up on Cal’s home computer. There was no bank transaction log, no summary of employment or personal history. Other than the standard database, there were only a couple more entries in his acknowledged message file.

  The first one said, “Investigated comments overheard at Galentine’s. Read S and G 1:19:24 before Tinsdale. Imperative.”

  Was this message from himself? Cal frowned. Galentine’s was a bar he had passed earlier in the day. But what about the phrase? He tried to make sense of the number series as a date or a time, but failed to see any significance. “S and G” made no more sense than when he had seen the phrase in his own computer. He would have to go back to it later. He shouldn’t stay here any longer than absolutely necessary.

  The last file provided one more filament in the web. It was a message to “Jam.” “Not sure about tonight’s plan. Got a crazy message from my associate today. Will tell you more later.”

  Cal was just about to print the screen contents, when Vincent’s voice made him change his plans.

  “Someone just started in the door. Could
n’t tell if it was police or not.”

  An instant later, Cal had Vincent snapped back on his wrist. He moved toward the door, but checked his motion and instead took a quick glance outside, then scrambled over the windowsill. He slid the window closed.

  Cal crouched, partially shielded by an oak and a couple of pines. His breath came heavily. No one should find him here. He had to get away fast. He tried to decide which way to run. Whomever Vincent had seen could simply be a neighbor of Domingo’s, or there could be police on both ends of the building.

  An upward glance decided him. The oak was just tall enough to reach the roof. Cal climbed, the exercise bringing back aches that had begun to fade. The tree’s branches provided ample concealment from the view of pedestrians on the terrace above. He pulled himself into a position where he could stand on a limb and waited for the area to clear.

  Come on, he thought. One lone walker passed by in front of the tree, and then he was gone. Cal jumped lightly to the roof of Domingo’s apartment building. That maneuver should confuse any follower. No one seemed to notice that Cal had stepped out of the tree. He briskly walked until he came to a break between buildings and began to jog up the hill, trying to appear casual, but making occasional backward glances. No one seemed to be following.

  He didn’t relax until the tubeway had carried him well away from the area. He stayed on the car all the way to the south pole.

  “As long as we’re this close already, Vincent, I think it’s time to visit the place they found Domingo. By now it should be safe.”

  “Famous last words.”

  As Cal moved into the docking disk, an image of a criminal returning to the scene of the crime bothered him. Shortly an elevator deposited him at his destination.

  The room labeled C5 was nothing more than a large storage bay. Rows of crates, protected by motion sensors, lined the walls. The floor in the center was scrubbed clean. Cal walked to one end of the room.

  Maybe Cal had pushed Domingo off the top of a stack of crates, intending to disable him. Domingo could have landed on his head, making the fall fatal. But no, the police had said Domingo was apparently brought here after death.