Head On_A Novel of the Near Future

by John Scalzi

  “Suit yourself,” Parker said. “Let me know your answer as soon as you can, Chris. I don’t want to say I have a lot of money and planning riding on your answer, but I do.”

  I nodded and dove over the side, pushing down into the water in now wet clothes. The water looked clear and I could see farther down than three meters, to a dark and indistinct bottom several meters below that. There didn’t seem to be any reason why I couldn’t make it all the way down.

  Except for the fact that at three meters I clipped out of the lake into a featureless gray space. The bottom was an illusion, just like the rest of the space. I began to fall out of the bottom of the lake and turned my simulated body upward, to look at the water and the sailboat, rippling from the underside, farther and farther above me until suddenly I was standing in my cave, not falling, or doing anything else. I’d been unceremoniously booted out of Parker’s space and back into mine.

  That’s some bad coding, I thought.

  There was a ping in my awarenesss. Someone had been trying to call me. It was Vann.

  “Where have you been?” she asked when I connected with her.

  “I was fielding a job offer,” I said.

  “What?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Who was it with?”

  “Amelie Parker. She’s an entrepreneur. She’s trying to get my dad to invest in her company.”

  “Amelie Parker,” Vann repeated.

  “Yes. You know her?”

  “In a way,” Vann said. “Forensics got back to me about Kaufmann’s bed. Turns out there was another person in it. Want to guess who it was?”

  “It wasn’t Amelie Parker,” I said. “She’s a Haden.”

  “It wasn’t Amelie Parker,” Vann agreed. “It was someone named Lena Fowler.”

  “She’s an Integrator,” I said.

  “Why, yes, she is,” Vann said. “And guess who one of her primary clients is.”

  “If you say Amelie Parker I’m going to feel very uncomfortable.”

  “Start feeling uncomfortable. But that’s not the interesting part.”

  “What’s the interesting part?”

  “I got a preliminary report from the D.C. medical examiner about Alex Kaufmann.”

  “And?”

  “And someone might not be a suicide anymore.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I popped the image up in my view. “Okay, I see an X-ray of Alex Kaufmann’s neck,” I said. “What am I supposed to be seeing here?”

  “You’re looking at the C4 vertebra,” Vann said. She was driving us to Lena Fowler’s home in Arlington. It was now Tuesday morning, and we were betting we would have just enough time to talk to her before I had to go to Boston to interview Kim Silva. We were against traffic this time of day, so we had that going for us.

  “Which one is that?”

  “It’s the fourth one down, strangely enough.”

  “You’re helpful,” I said. “I’ve located it. What am I looking for?”

  “There’s damage to it.”

  “Right,” I said. “From Kaufmann’s body weight and the belt.”

  Vann shook her head. “It might be from that. But the medical examiner also said it was possible that it was damaged from something else, and then exacerbated by the hanging.”

  “And do we have an idea what that something else is?” I asked.

  “It could be blunt force. Like someone whacking him on the back of the neck.”

  “But there wasn’t any sign of a struggle.”

  “No,” Vann agreed. “Whoever did it would have had to knock Kaufmann out or at least daze him enough to get the belt around his neck.”

  I flipped to a picture of Kaufmann on the morgue slab. “And they would have had to do it fast,” I said. “If there was any time between the first neck injury and the injuries caused by the belt, there would be evidence of it.”

  “Yes,” Vann said. “Which is why I said the blow to his neck knocked him out rather than killed him. If it had killed him, there would be forensics evidence of two separate events by the way the body bruised and the blood pooled. There’s not.”

  “So why do we think someone snapped him across the neck first?” I asked.

  “The ME said the damage to the vertebra looked like it could be more extensive than might happen with just a hanging, especially one like Kaufmann suffered. It wasn’t a long fall with a sharp snap. He hung himself in the shower with no real drop. Kaufmann would basically have choked himself along with crushing his neck.”

  “So slower but with less bone damage.”

  “That’s what the ME said.”

  “But he’s not sure.”

  “No. He said the damage could have happened if Kaufmann put some force into it, as long as the hotel piping held. He also said that if Kaufmann had previous damage to his neck or bone disease affecting his neck or spine, it might be consistent with that. He’s going to look into those for us.”

  “So in fact he probably was a suicide,” I said.

  “Except for the fact that Fowler was in his bed just minutes before he killed himself,” Vann said.

  “You think Fowler did it, then?”

  “I think I want to hear how she denies it, at least.”

  Fowler’s house was in the Arlington Views neighborhood, just off Columbia Pike, a comfortable but unimpressive brick suburban home surrounded by other comfortable but unimpressive suburban homes, across the street from an elementary school. Just the place for a growing family, which Fowler, whose Integrator profile listed her as single, didn’t have.

  “Ever want a place in the suburbs?” I asked Vann, as we walked up to Fowler’s door.

  “It’s not compatible with my preferred lifestyle,” she said.

  “I’m sure there’s a bar around somewhere,” I said.

  “Nice,” Vann said. “I grew up in the suburbs. That was enough for one lifetime.” She knocked on the door.

  Lena Fowler came to the door, saw who it was, and looked back for a second into her home. Then she turned back to us with a sour expression on her face. “I’m with a client,” she said. Which meant that as we spoke, there was another person watching us from inside her body.

  “Right now?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “At your home?” Vann said.

  “We were about to head out.”

  Vann glanced at me at this. While it wasn’t out of the question for an Integrator’s client to connect with an Integrator at a home base, theirs or an Integrator’s, in most cases the integration happened at or near a destination. Integrators charged by the hour. No one wanted to waste a large sum of money for time in transit.

  “We don’t mind talking to you in front of your client if you don’t,” Vann said.

  Fowler made a face at this. We had already put her in a wildly awkward position by making her surface during a session with a client. That was a breach of all sorts of protocols. Questioning her in front of a client would be unheard of.

  Which, I suspect, is why Vann suggested it. She was happy to keep Fowler off balance for as long as she could.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” Fowler said, and closed her door. Vann and I looked at each other and then waited for about a minute. Then Fowler came through the door and closed it behind her.

  “Whatever this is about, it better be good, Agent Vann, Agent Shane.”

  “You remember us,” Vann said.

  Fowler pointed at me. “I saw this one yesterday,” she said. Then she pointed at Vann. “You I remember from the depositions and the trial of my client.”

  “It’s nice to be memorable.”

  “Not really,” Fowler said. “What do you want?”

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions about Alex Kaufmann,” I said. I gestured to her door. “May we come in?”

  “No, you may not,” Fowler said.

  “Why not?” Vann asked.

  “Because I said so, Agent Vann.”

  “You knew
Alex Kaufmann,” Vann continued, content to question Fowler on her landing.

  “Obviously I did, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Then you know he’s dead.”

  “I’d heard.”

  “You’re taking his death very well, considering you were in his bed just prior to his suicide.” Vann paused. “Unless you were in his bed on behalf of a client.”

  “If I were, you know perfectly well I couldn’t talk to you about it,” Fowler said. Integrators let Hadens borrow their bodies by syncing up the neural networks in their heads. The connections weren’t perfect, however, so the Integrator was always present and conscious to assist the Haden using their body. Because of the intimate nature of the work, there was a legal veil of privilege over the relationship, similar to doctor-patient or attorney-client privilege.

  “And if you weren’t acting on behalf of a client?” I asked.

  Fowler turned to me. “Then you may assume that whatever relationship Alex and I had was not something I’m going to tell you about without a lawyer,” she said.

  “We don’t need a lawyer to see you’re not exactly broken up,” Vann observed.

  “I don’t peg you as an expert on how people process bad news, Agent Vann,” Fowler said.

  “You don’t deny seeing him just prior to his death.”

  “Of course not. I’m sure by now you have physical evidence of my presence there, and of my being in the next room as well.”

  “The additional room paid for by Kaufmann.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Why did he pay for the extra room? You lived in the area.”

  “You’d have to ask him, Agent Vann.”

  “That’s difficult, Ms. Fowler.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “Did Kaufmann seem upset or agitated to you?” I asked.

  “You mean, before he hung himself in the bathroom with his belt?” Fowler asked, mildly incredulously.

  “So, yes.”

  “I’m not going to speculate on his state of mind,” Fowler said. “The only thing I will say was that he was alive when I left him.”

  “That’s not especially helpful,” I said.

  “Then you can assume that’s my intention, Agent Shane. Aside from my general belief in the sanctity of the Integrator-client privilege, as a general rule I don’t talk to law enforcement about anything other than generalities.”

  “Why is that?” Vann asked.

  “Call it my libertarian tendencies,” Fowler said.

  “I thought it might have something to do with your general client list,” Vann said. “I went through our records last night. You integrate with a lot of shady people, Fowler. And not just here in D.C. When you were in Denver your private client list featured people who are now spending time as guests of the government.”

  “It also featured tech CEOs, artists, and other perfectly normal people,” Fowler said. “I know about you, too, Agent Vann, through that client of mine you put away. You were an Integrator once, too. I suppose you still are, even if you don’t have a practice anymore. If we went through your former clients, would all of them be saints? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t.”

  Vann grimaced at this. She had stopped being a professional Integrator after one of her clients tried to throw Vann’s body in front of a Metro train. The client wanted to experience death without the inconvenience of dying herself. Vann’s death would have been close enough for her. Fortunately the attempt was not successful.

  “Are we done here?” Fowler asked, looking at both of us. “I have a client to get back to.”

  “Before you were an Integrator in Denver, you were in the military,” Vann said, to Fowler.

  “Yes,” Fowler said. “So?”

  “In fact, the army paid for your schooling and integration training.”

  “Yes, they did. I did ROTC at University of Texas and then was stationed at Fort Benning, where I assisted army officers with Haden’s. As I’m sure you know.”

  “In fact you were assigned to assist at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.”

  Fowler smiled. “Is this where you are going to get paranoid on me, Agent Vann?” she said. “Just because it used to be the School of the Americas during the Cold War doesn’t mean anything now. Those days were a long time ago.”

  “I’m sure,” Vann said. “But I imagine that as part of your skill set, and to better serve those you were integrating with, you had a certain amount of specialized training. Hand-to-hand combat. Close-up killing. That sort of thing.”

  “What a vivid imagination you have, Agent Vann,” Fowler said. “My service record is public information. You’re free to look it up. Otherwise, from this point forward, if you want to talk to me, you can set up an interview through my lawyers. Unless you are planning to arrest me right now?”

  “No,” Vann said. “Not right now.”

  “Good. Then get off my porch.” Fowler stepped back in without looking back at us.

  “The Western Hemisphere Institute of what?” I said to Vann, when Fowler had gone back in.

  “The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” Vann said. She stepped off Fowler’s porch. I followed. “It’s where we teach other countries in the Americas how to kill people they find inconvenient.”

  “I didn’t think we still did a lot of that.”

  “We never stopped,” Vann said. “We’re just quieter about it.”

  “And you think Lena Fowler is an actual assassin?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a certain set of skills that she doesn’t use much anymore.”

  “And she pulled them out to murder Alex Kaufmann? Why? He wasn’t exactly an enemy of the state.”

  “I think it’s pretty clear from Fowler’s client list she stopped being a flag-waving patriot a while ago.”

  “You seriously think she killed him. That she went in and snapped his neck.”

  “I think she knows why he died, at the very least.”

  “If you think any of that, you couldn’t have thought she was going to admit it to us on her front porch.”

  “Of course not,” Vann said. “I knew she wouldn’t say anything useful.”

  “Then why did we come out here at all?”

  “Because I want to see what she does next.”

  “I don’t actually understand you sometimes,” I said to Vann.

  “It’s not complicated,” Vann said. She reached into her jacket pocket for her cigarettes. “Whatever happened with Kaufmann, she was in the room for it, or close enough that it works for us. She’s not going to talk to us, and never was. But who she talks to next will tell us something.”

  “You’ll need to get warrants on her phones.”

  “I got them last night after I spoke to you. Judge Kuznia owed me a favor.”

  “You have to figure she assumes you have those warrants now. She strikes me as the suspicious type.”

  Vann nodded. “I’m working on the assumption that she thought we might be bugging her from the moment Kaufmann died, and forensics placed her on the scene. Which is another reason to be here right now.” She motioned back to Fowler’s house with her head. “You saw how she looked back into the house when she came to the door.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s got people in there, I’m guessing. Having a meeting. The client is a participant.”

  “Which means anything said in the meeting is protected under privilege.”

  “Unless they’re planning a criminal enterprise,” Vann said. “Which maybe they are, but it’s hard to prove.” She fished out her lighter and lit her cigarette.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “What I’m going to do is drive the car a couple of blocks away and then I’m going to walk back here, hide in some bushes, and see who comes out.”

  “And if she’s not actually meeting with anyone?”

  “Then I guess I get some fresh air in the morning.”
r />   “What about me?”

  “What about you?” Vann asked. “You’re going to Boston.”

  “Yeah, but my threep is staying here,” I said. “I thought we were heading back to the office.”

  “Surprise.”

  “It’s not going to look conspicuous or anything, a car with an inactive threep in it.”

  “That’s a good point,” Vann said.

  “So what are we going to do about it?”

  Vann took a long draw of her cigarette. “I suppose there’s always the trunk,” she said, finally.

  Chapter Thirteen

  My threep did not go into the trunk. Instead I called a car and headed to my parents’ place. Along the way I pinged Tony. “Any luck with that data vault on Donut’s collar?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” Tony said. “I’m running some of my standard cracking tools on it and they’re bouncing right off. I can see there’s something on it and I can tell you how large the file is, but I can’t actually get it to open up.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Encryption’s the problem. It needs an encryption key to unlock, which is common enough, but it’s how it’s asking for the encryption key that’s the problem. It needs another particular device to give it the key, and we don’t have that.”

  “A particular device.”

  “Sure. Some device that will connect to the vault through near field communication. You put the two within two meters of each other and the vault will unlock.”

  “Is that a normal thing?” I asked.

  “It’s not that unusual. Phone manufacturers have been doing something like this for decades, where a phone will unlock if it’s near a trusted device like a home computing device or known wireless network. It’s not something I would advise, from a security point of view, because a lot of those times those ‘trusted devices’ are horribly insecure. But in this case it’s working out because whatever the trusted device was, we don’t have it. Unless you salvaged anything from that fire.”

  “We have the charred remains of threeps.”

  “How charred?”