I checked his pockets and found he hadn’t been robbed. Still had his wallet and phone.
The marks on him made me angry. Same weapon that I’d survived at the scene of Foster’s death, only Dirk didn’t have a chronometer to help absorb the shock.
Back in the den I pocketed my shades and stared at the dog in the crate. How long had it been in there?
The dog watched me with a doleful expression.
Fine. I could contaminate the scene a little more.
I closed the door to the den, opened the door to the back yard, then let the dog out of the crate. She immediately went to the interior door instead.
“I’m sorry. He’s not coming back.”
The dog looked at me and when I failed to open the door, she slumped to the floor and pressed her nose to the crack.
I sighed.
Encouraging the dog to go out had no effect so I gripped her collar and guided her to the back door. She finally got the message and went out to do her business.
She was a beautiful dog. Animal services would be called when they found the body but how soon would that be?
After squatting in the grass the dog got distracted, sniffing a pile of dirt near the garden shed. I whistled high and loud and that got her attention. She plodded over to me and obediently slunk back in her crate.
Dirk P. Walls still had a landline in the kitchen. I picked up the phone and pressed 911. When the dispatcher picked up, I left the receiver on the counter. Someone would check it out. They’d find him.
When I looked down, I noticed the dog had crept out of her crate and was watching me. Still doleful.
Okay fine.
The dog followed me out the way I came. I locked the back door behind us and walked out via the side yard. The white shepherd stayed on my heels. I glanced up and down the street. Saw a house on the corner with a tree fort built into the lower branches of an oak. Tire swing.
“Come on.”
The dog obeyed.
I rapped on the front door. A tall, thirtyish black man answered. Friendly face. Kids squealed in the background.
“Excuse me. Found this dog running loose out here. Is it yours?”
Before the man had a chance to answer, a small face appeared around the corner. Girl of perhaps seven, hair up in pink rubber bands. She rushed to the door. “Oh what a pretty dog!”
“Sasha, stay back now,” her father scolded. But the little girl was already squeezing past him. “That’s a stray dog, don’t touch it—”
“It has a collar. It’s nice!” The little girl extended a palm which was immediately licked by the dog for her efforts.
“That’s not our dog,” the dad said. “Looks familiar though.”
“One of your neighbors possibly?” I suggested. “Hate to take it to the pound only to find it’s supposed to be on this street all along.”
“The pound?” The little girl looked horrified. “Daddy, don’t let him take it to the pound!”
And the rest was easy.
Dad begrudgingly agreed to take the dog off my hands.
“This is just till we find the owner,” he insisted to his daughter as I walked away. But she already had her arms wrapped around the dog’s neck, and its tail had begun to wag.
I walked back to the Boss and climbed in.
Waldo remained uncharacteristically quiet. No Kavinsky or Daft Punk emanated from the speakers when I started the car.
“You trying to unravel this puzzle too?” I asked the car’s interior as I wound my way home.
“You’re the detective. I assumed you had it solved already.”
“Thanks for saving my ass tonight. Don’t happen to have any video of that truck trying to ram us do you?”
“Only default video functions were enabled. The collision was not recorded.”
“Keep an eye on the local news for me. I’d like to know if they fish anyone out of the bay with Dirk’s truck. Something tells me they aren’t going to find a body.””
“The accident would have been difficult to survive.”
“Call it a hunch. Whoever was driving, it wasn’t Dirk Walls.”
When I got back to my apartment, I pulled into the garage and assessed the damage to the Boss. The impact to the rear fender was unsightly and had cost me a taillight, but I’d been lucky. Thanks to Waldo, I hadn’t been T-boned.
I plugged the car in and started a complete system diagnostic check on the time travel subsystems. Then I went to bed.
My neck was sore in the morning.
When I got out of bed, I stretched and shuffled out to the kitchen to load the blender. My protein fruit smoothie got me moving a little faster.
Hawk followed me down the stairs at an unhurried pace. He waited for me to open the garage and rubbed his cheek against the Boss’s front bumper like it was his only goal in life. I confirmed that all of the Boss’s subsystems were operational and set to work fixing the taillight. Hawk jumped onto the car, walked over it and planted himself on the trunk to supervise. I replaced the taillight bulbs but had to settle for red tape for a lens. The body work would have to wait too. I had people to see.
Back upstairs, I made myself a cup of coffee and assessed my plan of attack.
I was nearing forty-eight hours of linear time on this case with no straight line to Foster’s killer.
Maybe I was slipping.
My forearm itched. I pushed up my sleeve and studied the burn mark. Found some burn cream and applied it. The pattern on my skin glistened.
It gave me pause.
I located my phone and took a photo of the burn on my arm. Then I extracted a still shot from the video I took of Dirk’s body. I added both to a text message. I found the contact name in my list. Eon Whitaker. He was a trusted confidant and a veteran of some wars mankind hadn’t even dreamt up in my time. If anyone knew the answer, he would.
>>> What kind of weapon leaves this mark?
The phone synced to the tachyon pulse transmitter in my jump room and I hit send.
Despite the TPT having to relay the message to the future, the reply came back immediately.
<<< Did you see it fired?
I typed back. >>> No Blast. Invisible.
Again the reply was immediate. <<< Phantom pulse cannon. Custom tech. Don’t mess with it.
I typed a last question. >>> Who sells?
When the answer came, I wasn’t surprised. And I had my next destination.
15
I hated going to the future. And I hated alternate futures worse.
The latter part of the twenty-first century wasn’t awful. There is a period near 2080 where things are beautiful. Fully automated cars and wireless power have done away with the need for traffic signs and power poles which people had forgotten were an eyesore. For a brief window, the world looked uncluttered and clean. But it wasn’t long till the digital landscape filled the void. All the billboards and store marquees that vanished from physical space multiplied in augmented reality. Soon people were paying a fortune to have a hologram-free view of their own life.
Nowhere is the digital landscape more oppressive than Shanghai.
I’d jumped to an alternate timestream just outside of ASCOTT jurisdiction. The streets were crawling with mindpill dealers, synthetic upgrade sales bots, and trans-human prostitutes. Stella York and her surveillance van buddies would probably love a shot at this action, but on this street someone would have their van on blocks and stripped of parts inside an hour.
Plus it was raining. Nobody likes to catch bad guys in the rain.
I parked the Boss in a garage and had Waldo relocate it in time to avoid trouble.
Then I went hunting.
The name Eon gave me was Zigzag. I knew her. Supposedly the only source within a couple centuries dealing phantom pulse cannons—or PPCs. I’d brought a stack of cash, set my earbuds to translate and hoped for the best.
It seemed like every door in the city had a holographic woman out front begging me to come inside and samp
le Shanghai’s hidden pleasures. I put on my shades, activated the holo-filters, and worked on my whistling.
Waldo ran a search on PPCs and came back with not much. Street name for the weapon was “sucker punch.” Couldn’t find a single image on the web.
I found the spot I was looking for. Jade trinkets cluttered up a stall out front. A toothless Chinese woman with more wrinkles than God squinted at me and held up a few women’s bracelets. She apparently thought I’d look good in green.
I excused myself with an embarrassing attempt at Mandarin and pushed past her into the dingy interior of the store beyond.
Dusty boxes littered the entrance. A display case ran along one side but most of the glass panels were missing. The door at the back was steel with a black buzzer button. I pressed it.
Static crackled over a hidden speaker.
“I thought you were dead.”
I couldn’t spot the camera. “I’m sure I am some times.”
The door unlocked.
I paused before opening it. Waldo wasn’t screaming any warnings. But then again, he’d have a simpler life without me.
I pushed through.
There were enough power cables running up the stairs to charge a city. I stepped over bundles as thick as tree limbs as I ascended. The second steel door at the top of the stairs stood ajar. I pushed through and was met with the glow of projection screens surrounding a workstation. The walls were smart surfaces. One showed a city skyline and the Port Nyongo space elevator. Another was a view looking back at earth from the moon station. A third vista was obstructed by a mountain of industrial crates stamped with military logos.
Zhang Zi sat in a chair at the center of this nexus like a spider in a web. Her black hair hung long enough to cover her shoulders. She wore ripped black jeans, black boots laced halfway up her shins, and a white tank top set off by a vinyl jacket the color of a cherry Slurpee. Her meta glasses glowed neon blue.
She had a gun pointed at me.
“Greyson fucking Travers. You come to take me on a date?”
“Heard you married a synth girl from Romeo Prime.”
“Ugh. Didn’t work out.” She took her meta glasses off and tossed them to her workstation.
Her eyeshadow was multicolored and changed hues as she spoke. “Who told you I was here?”
“Whitaker.”
She lowered the pistol. “That’s one of the only names that gets you not shot.”
“I’ll send him a gift basket. You know where I can get one full of C4 and grenades?”
That got a smile out of her.
“Who are you hunting?”
I walked the rest of the way into the room and pulled my phone from my pocket. Zhang Zi made a quick pinching motion with her left hand and suddenly the home screen of my phone appeared from thin air between us.
“You need to beef up your security.”
She’d had an upgrade. Her left hand was fully synthetic now. I wondered what else was.
She started flipping through my recent image files and immediately found the video of me getting hit with the sucker punch in Foster Phillips’ home office. She made a tossing motion and the video started playing on the wall that had previously been the city skyline.
“I need to know what I’m up against here,” I said.
The video showed my view as I hit the floor.
“Somebody messed you up. Surprised you’re still alive to talk about it.”
“You know the user?”
“He’s got a mask on.”
“But you know the weapon. It’s one of yours.”
“You think I’d be stupid enough to admit to something like that?”
The image on the wall changed and suddenly it was a video of the room we were in now, only it wasn’t me standing there. It was a shot of Zhang Zi and Magic Max, AKA Squinty.
“The hell?” Zhang Zi swore and made some rapid hand gestures to try to stop the video.
“Sorry about that. Waldo gets a bit nosy. When you hacked my phone you let him into your system.”
“Get him out!”
She was using both hands now and trying to shut down her systems. Every time she’d close the video it would pop up in triplicate on the other wall. Soon the moonscape was covered in a hundred copies of the video all showing her selling the weapon.
Zhang Zi sprang from her chair and raced to the power terminal on the wall, flipping the lever and plunging the room in darkness. Red emergency lighting came on from the baseboards and cast her in an eerie glow. She was breathing hard and fuming.
“It was fair play.”
She fixed me with a murderous stare. “Give back whatever your bot took while I was trying to shut him down.”
“Gladly. What was Magic Max planning to do with the tech you sold him?”
She flexed her synthetic hand. “He finds out I told you, he’ll come for me.”
“No reason I need to tell anyone if you help me out.”
“Son of a . . .”
“Haven’t got all day.”
She put her hands to her hips. “No recording.”
I pulled my shades from my face and slipped them into my pocket. “Just you and me.”
She flexed her jaw, then spoke. “Max had something big going down. Some kinda heist.”
“What did he want to steal?”
“I don’t know. Just said he needed a weapon that wouldn’t be traced back to him.”
“How’d that work out?”
“You know I’m dead if you tell a soul.”
“What else did you sell him?”
“Nothing.”
I reached into my jacket pocket and removed the wad of cash I’d brought along. I pulled several large bills from the roll and held them up. “You sure? I came to play nice.”
“Nice is more expensive.”
I peeled off a few more bills and she watched. I held up the larger wad.
“Sold him some refurbished Temprovibe IIIs. Off-the-Grid stuff. No tracing.” Zhang Zi snatched the bills from my hand. “Who pays in cash anymore? You find this in a tar pit?”
“Would’ve paid more if you hadn’t made it so easy.” I put the rest of the money back in my pocket. “How many Temprovibes?” Max buying portable time travel tech changed things.
“Three.”
“Waldo. When Zhang Zi turns the power back on, kindly replace anything you took from her. Keep no copies.”
Zhang Zi pushed the power lever into the ON position and the room came back to life.
“All files have been restored,” Waldo said, his voice emanating from the speaker on my phone.
“Why are you following Max?” she asked. “He answers to dangerous people.”
“Just a job.” I put my shades back on. “Still want me to ask you on a date?”
Zhang Zi held up her synthetic middle finger.
“Always good to see you, Zee.”
“You won’t find me so easily next time. I gotta move now. I hate moving.”
I made my way to the door and stepped into the hall.
When I looked back, Zhang Zi was silhouetted against a starry sky. All I could see was the jacket and a faint reflection in her eyes.
“But next weekend I got no plans.”
I smiled.
Then I shut the door.
* * *
The trip back to the car was wet and miserable. Waldo’s small victory was the only thing keeping me warm.
“Hacking Zigzag’s implant might have been extreme, buddy. Did you actually have anything on her?”
“It took an exhaustive attack to find the video I displayed,” Waldo replied. “I only found it because she hadn’t purged it from the security camera’s active files.”
“Nice bluff then.”
“You should get her to upgrade your security. She’s good at what she does.”
“If she hadn’t had time to wipe the file from the camera, it must have been recent. How long ago?”
“According to the video t
ime stamp, Magic Max purchased the Temprovibes less than twenty-four hours ago.”
“Wonder if one was for Tommy the Tank. We still don’t know who the third is for.”
“I look forward to you participating in the investigation when you get time.”
“You’re a riot.”
The rain picked up, started coming down in sheets. Some kind of monsoon band. I ducked under an awning and tried to shake the water from my coat. People with glowing umbrellas dashed for cover as the wind blew the rain sideways.
“You’re letting the cold in.” The voice was in Chinese but instantly translated to English in my earpiece. I turned and found a door cracked open behind me, a golden glow coming from its edges. I took a step toward it, noting the flickering of firelight. Warmth too.
I eased the door open and took in the scene.
She was pouring hot water over a plump ceramic mug, steam wafting up and giving the air the inviting scent of lemon and ginger. A second cup was already waiting. She wore leggings that accented her womanly figure, with thick fuzzy socks. Her knitted sweater was three sizes too big for her, the sleeves bunching around her wrists and the collar hanging loose over one bare shoulder. Her brown hair was long but messily tied back revealing a slender neck and petite ears. She wore glasses and cradled her mug of tea with both hands, warming herself.
The room throbbed with heat. Out the far wall of windows was a view of heavy snow, still softly falling, piling up in drifts against the glass. The interior was hard wood and one wall was lined with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf stacked with dusty hardbacks and dog-eared paperbacks. The room had an underlying smell of cedar.
“Don’t you want to get out of those wet clothes?” She was watching me over the rim of her glasses, her impertinent lips slightly parted as she intermittently blew steam from her mug of tea.
“It looks good,” I admitted.
“So do you.” Her voice wasn’t translated from Chinese this time. She had spoken in English.
She came closer. The sweater was soft, something made to look like angora. She filled it out with a body that left curves to explore. She put her warmed hand out and pressed it beneath the folds of my jacket.
“You’re soaked through. We need to get you under the covers and heat you up. You can tell me all about your day.” The bed did look inviting; a plush comforter, a half dozen pillows and an extra quilt for good measure.
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