Head On_A Novel of the Near Future

by John Scalzi

  “He’s not going to show up there,” Vann said.

  “He’s not a rocket scientist. He might. Now. The driver of the vehicle is Terry Abbot. He did time a few years ago for assault and battery but has kept out of trouble since then. Well, until today, anyway. He was a livery driver for a long time but is recently employed privately as a driver by some company named Leavitt Shipping.”

  “Anything shady about Leavitt?” I asked.

  “Not that we can find in the very little time you have given us to look,” Burgess said. “It’s a local company, been around since the 1930s, was acquired by some multinational about ten years ago.”

  “Which one?”

  Burgess flipped to the next page of her legal pad. “Richu Enterprises? I don’t know them.”

  “They’re based out of Singapore,” I said.

  Burgess looked over at me. “And you have this information right at your fingertips how, Agent Shane?”

  “It’s been a long week.”

  “I don’t doubt that. We also have Philly PD looking for Mr. Abbot. Your third man was a bit of a mystery to us since he had no criminal record to speak of, so he didn’t turn up in our databases. But since you stood still long enough to get a nonfuzzy shot of him, Agent Shane—”

  “There was a reason I stood in front of a moving car,” I said to Vann, who shrugged.

  “—we went ahead and did an image search of him on the Internet. And through the magic of social media we have one Phillip Tucker, originally of Ipswich, England, whose online profiles have him as an executive assistant to a Martin Lau, who is—”

  “Legal counsel for Richu,” I said.

  “I have him as counsel for Leavitt Shipping, but yes,” Burgess said. “Neither Lau nor Tucker are citizens, so when they attempt to leave the country they will be invited to a chat by our colleagues at border control.”

  “They’re already gone,” Vann said.

  “It’s possible,” Burgess agreed. “In which case they won’t be coming back anytime soon.” She set her legal pad down. “Now. What does all of this mean to you?”

  “It means it’s time for you to bring Ms. Sanborn in, Director Burgess.”

  “Vann, one of my agents died today. I need to know what’s going on.”

  “Bring in Sanborn, Burgess,” Vann said. “And then stay in the room.”

  Burgess stood up. “Fine. Just so you know, Sanborn got herself a lawyer.”

  “That’s fine,” Vann said. “We like lawyers.”

  “Ms. Sanborn has nothing to say to you,” Sanborn’s lawyer, a particularly unctuous fellow named Dawson Curtis, said. He sat next to his client, who as promised was keeping her mouth shut. They were on one side of the conference room table. Vann and Burgess and I were on the other.

  “I don’t need her to talk,” Vann said. “What I need her and you to do is listen. And look.” Vann shoved the evidence bag of syringes at the two of them. “That’s the evidence that shows that Ortiz didn’t murder Chapman but that someone else did. We have it despite your client’s attempt to make it disappear. We have warrants for her phones and computers and every single scrap of communication she’s had for the last three years. Her former client Alton Ortiz is working with us and has told us everything he’s disclosed to her.”

  “He’s currently under federal protection very far away from here, incidentally,” I said.

  “Yes he most certainly is,” Vann agreed. “Because of your client, a federal agent is dead and we have evidence linking her to the assault of another federal agent—”

  I waved here.

  “—not to mention an entire raft of other charges.” Vann turned her attention to Sanborn. “You were in the room when we read out the charges to your former client. Most of those accrue to you now.”

  “Plus others,” I volunteered.

  “Oh so many others,” Vann said. “So, no, Sanborn. I don’t need you to talk. I don’t need you to do anything. We already have you. And what we already have you for is enough to keep you locked up away until you are roughly older than the fucking moon. I didn’t bring you here to talk, Sanborn. I brought you here just so I could have the pleasure of telling you how much I’m looking forward to having you rot away the rest of your goddamned life.” Vann pushed up from the table, and then looked down at Curtis. “I’m done with your client.”

  “Wait,” Sanborn said.

  “No,” Vann said. “You’re not talking, Sanborn.”

  “Wait,” Sanborn said again. It was obvious she was about a minute away from tears.

  Vann waited.

  “Keshia,” Curtis said. Sanborn held up her hand. Curtis sighed but kept quiet.

  “You told Alton that you weren’t interested in him,” Sanborn said. “That you would trade for higher-ups.”

  “We do trade for higher-ups,” Vann said. “But not after an FBI agent has been shot dead in front of Independence Hall, Sanborn.” Vann pointed at Burgess. “Tell Director Burgess here that you deserve leniency after one of her people was assassinated after receiving information you provided. I want to see you actually do it.”

  Sanborn looked over at Burgess, who was a stone. “I didn’t know that was the plan.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Vann said. “Duane Chapman’s dead. Marla Chapman’s dead. Alex Kaufmann’s dead. Kim Silva was shot through the gut. For Christ’s sake, someone tried to murder Silva’s cat.” Vann sat back down. “All of that happened before you made whatever call you made today. So don’t you dare tell me that you thought Agent Ramsey’s death wasn’t part of the plan.”

  Sanborn started crying for real.

  We all watched her sob for a bit, and then Curtis cleared his throat. “Let’s talk about what you want,” he said.

  Vann pointed to Sanborn. “This is doing me just fine, Mr. Curtis.”

  Curtis blinked at this, and then turned to me. “Agent Shane?”

  “We want all of it,” I said. “Everything.”

  “That covers a lot,” Curtis said.

  “Yes it does,” I said. “Your client is going to sit here and tell every little bit of it to the agents here in the Philadelphia office. She’s going to tell them knowing that they know she helped kill their colleague.”

  “And when she’s done, what then?” Curtis asked.

  I looked over to Burgess. “Your agent. Your call,” I said.

  Burgess stared at Sanborn like she was a bug, and did that for close to a full minute. “She gives us everything and everyone and we’ll talk,” she finally said. “But let me be very clear, Mr. Curtis, Ms. Sanborn. Someone is going to spend the rest of their life in prison for the death of Agent Ramsey. If your client doesn’t want it to be her, then she damn well better convince me it should be someone else. Are we clear?”

  Curtis nodded. “May I have the room for a few minutes?” he asked. “I need to confer with my client.”

  “It’s nice to know I’m not the only person you’ve strong-armed today,” Burgess said to Vann, outside the conference room.

  Vann shrugged. “It’s my gift,” she said.

  “Interesting way of putting it,” Burgess said. She motioned with her head to Sanborn, who was still crying. “Do you want to lead the interrogation?”

  Vann shook her head. “We have other people to deal with before they can all get their stories straight. I only have one question for her and then your people can do the rest.”

  Curtis looked up and motioned us into the room. “How do you want to do this?” he asked when we were back in.

  “That’s on the director,” Vann said. “What I need to know is this: Who at the league did she give her information to?”

  “No one at the league,” Sanborn said.

  “No one,” Vann said, skeptically.

  Sanborn shook her head.

  “You need to explain this, quick.”

  “I have hundreds of thousands of dollars in school loans. I have credit card debt. My parents are on a fixed income and my brother
and sister don’t help them out. I’m junior counsel for the NAHL. They don’t pay us all that much. I’m broke, all right? Last year I was approached with a deal. Share confidential details of NAHL business and legal issues when I was asked to, and they’d help.”

  “So they give you money.”

  Sanborn shook her head. “My mom called to tell me my father has started selling driftwood sculptures to a private buyer for a ridiculous amount. Dad uses half of that to pay down my loans because parents can do that tax-free. Nothing comes to me directly, but I get the benefit of it anyway.”

  “Who is the buyer?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t know. It’s through an art dealer.” Sanborn gave a little laugh. “Dad has been doing driftwood sculptures as a hobby since I was a kid, and now magically there’s a market. He calls himself the Grandma Moses of driftwood.”

  “Why you?” Vann asked.

  “I work in Oliver Medina’s office. I see or hear just about everything.”

  “But the league told you to represent Ortiz.”

  Sanborn shook her head. “I suggested it after I was told to. Medina thought it was a good idea. He’s a proponent of pro bono work.”

  “Who told you?” Vann asked. “Who is your contact?”

  “It’s mostly through encrypted texts at this point. But the first time, I talked to a woman. She said she was representing another interested party. This was when we were in Washington, D.C. We were laying down the initial groundwork for putting a franchise into the city.”

  “You met her while you were doing league business?” I asked.

  “No, at the hotel bar. She bought me a drink and I thought she was trying to pick me up.” Another small laugh. “I mean, I guess she did.”

  I thought about it for a moment and flipped up a picture on the conference room monitor. “Is this her?” I asked.

  Sanborn looked and her eyes got wide. “Yes,” she said. “How did you know?”

  Vann and Burgess turned to look at the image.

  It was Lena Fowler.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “I hear you destroyed yet another threep,” Tony said, as I connected to him. Vann and I were heading toward Lena Fowler’s house as quickly as we possibly could, which in the early evening Washington, D.C., traffic was not nearly fast enough. Vann was driving. As she was driving my parents’ car, I was nervous about it.

  “How did you hear about that?” I asked.

  “You have me working with your people here in the FBI office enough that I’ve had time to develop my own sources,” Tony said. “So is it true?”

  “I did not destroy another threep,” I said. “A car did.”

  “You got hit by a car.”

  “Twice.”

  “So, once for the experience and twice to be sure?” Tony asked. “Hey, weren’t you hit by a car when you were a kid?”

  “It was a truck.”

  “Same concept. Three times is a fetish, Chris,” Tony said. “Which is your business. But it gets pretty pricey. You might want to take up a less expensive hobby, like cocaine.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said. “I need something from you, Tony.”

  “Of course you do,” he said. “It’s one of the things I like best about you.”

  “So the IV bag had Attentex in it.”

  “Of course it did.”

  “But Attentex isn’t effective without corresponding electrical stimulation.”

  “That’s what Tayla told us.”

  “So what I need you to do now is to find how to provide that electrical stimulation.”

  “Aside from the obvious answer of, however it was that Neuracel did it, I assume.”

  “You are correct. And here’s the extra challenge.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “Figure out how it could have been done in a way that would affect Duane Chapman and Clemente Salcido and Kim Silva.”

  “Is that all? I thought you were going to ask something hard.”

  “And if you can get the answer to me in the next hour or so that would be great.”

  “Ah, okay, there it is,” Tony said. “You know I’m charging you out the ass for this one.”

  “With the amount of work I give you I think I should get a volume discount,” I said.

  “Yeah, no. There’s that old saying: Fast, cheap, and good, you get to pick two. The two you just picked are fast and good. Cheap has just left the building.”

  “Then make it worth my money, Tony.”

  “I always do,” he said, and disconnected.

  “Tony’s on it,” I said.

  “I don’t know why we don’t just hire him at the Bureau,” Vann said.

  “I asked him about it once. He said he makes more as a consultant and besides he’s already got the security clearance so he’s got the only cool thing about the gig.”

  “It’s not the only cool thing,” Vann said. “You also get to shoot people.”

  “That’s not actually all that cool, though, is it,” I said. “Blood. Death. Paperwork.”

  Vann looked over to me. “I’m having a long day, Chris. Indulge me.”

  We turned onto Fowler’s street and immediately saw a festival of flashing red and blue lights in front of her house.

  “Well, fuck me,” Vann said, and drove up to the barrier set up in the road.

  A cop came up and started making rotating motions. “Turn it around,” he said.

  Vann grabbed her wallet and flipped out her badge. “Tell me where to park,” she said.

  The cop was not impressed. “I told you to turn it around.”

  “And I told you to tell me where to park,” Vann said. “But if you want to get into a pissing match about it, Officer”—she read his badge—“Wheeler, I’m sure we can find a way to have you be a school safety officer for the rest of your natural life.”

  Wheeler looked at Vann, exasperated. “What are you, an asshole?”

  “Yes,” Vann said. “I am an asshole. Now tell me where to park.”

  Wheeler decided Vann wasn’t worth his time and moved on to the next car he wanted to turn around. Vann decided that the car was already in its parking space and got out.

  “If we get towed, you’re paying for it,” I said.

  Vann waved me forward, to Fowler’s house. Inside, Arlington police milled around, trying to look important but mostly gawking. There was a detective in charge of the scene. Vann ordered him out of the house.

  Fowler was dead, to begin with. But she wasn’t the only dead person in the house.

  “Does he look familiar to you?” Vann pointed to a man slumped on the floor of the living room. Roughly half his face had been carved away by the knife Fowler had in her dead hand, but what remained was indeed familiar.

  “Terry Abbot,” I said. You don’t quickly forget the person who ran you over, twice.

  “Uh-huh.” Vann walked into the kitchen. “And here we have Phillip Tucker. Dead as a doornail.”

  “How?”

  “More stabbing, it looks like. All those years at the Western Hemisphere Institute taught her some skill with a knife.”

  I looked at Fowler, who had had a bullet applied directly to her forehead. It appeared to have been provided to her by Abbot, who was still clutching a gun. Fowler had another bullet wound, this one to her side. I was supposing that one came first.

  “I’ve found contestant number three,” Vann said, from farther inside the house. I followed her back to a bathroom, where a third man lay propped up between the toilet and the tub, a trail of blood behind him leading back to the kitchen.

  “Martin Lau,” I said.

  “Abbot and Tucker had to really be moving to get back here in time for this,” Vann said. “Whatever this is.”

  I went back to Fowler and bent down and noticed something on her wrist. It was a number written in black Sharpie: 73495. I called Vann over and we looked at it together.

  “What is that, a zip code?” Vann said.

  I looke
d it up internally and it came up a blank. “No,” I said, but Vann was already looking around the living room. Abruptly she walked away, toward the back of the house. I got up and followed.

  Vann was in Fowler’s bedroom, sliding open the closet door. “There it is,” she said. She turned to me and pointed into the closet. “Enter the code,” she said.

  I walked over to the closet and looked. There was a fire safe in there, with a keypad. I entered “73495.” The safe door beeped and unlocked.

  Inside the safe was a handgun with ammunition and magazine separately stored, a passport and a birth certificate, another passport and another birth certificate with a different name from the first set, about $5,000 in U.S. currency and another thousand in euros and pounds, and a large folder with a Post-it note on it.

  The Post-it note said: Agents Vann and Shane, FBI.

  Inside the folder was a truly impressive amount of highly incriminating evidence.

  “She knew we were coming,” I said, quickly thumbing through the pages.

  “She saw the body count rising,” Vann replied. “She knew we’d get back to her.”

  “There’s something underneath the folder,” I said. I reached in and pulled out a computer tablet. The screen was blank. I clicked the power button once, gently, and the screen woke up, showing a fish-eye view of the kitchen and living room from above, the carnage gently curving away from the focal point above the kitchen table.

  Vann stared at the tablet for a moment and then walked out of the room. A second later she appeared on the screen as she walked into the living room.

  “It’s live,” I yelled. I looked more closely at the screen and saw the timer. “And it’s recording.”

  Vann walked back into the bedroom. She nodded at the tablet. “Can you scrub back?”

  I nodded and moved the time frame backward. There was a bustle of activity as Arlington police scurried backward through the scene, followed by long minutes of nothing but dead people. Then the dead people sprang back to life and after a few seconds of reverse murder, arranged themselves at Fowler’s kitchen table. We stopped and let the video play forward in real time, with no sound.