Soulminder

by Timothy Zahn

  Blanchard clenched her teeth hard enough to hurt. Exactly what Carstairs had suggested he might be doing.

  And despite her resolve, she could feel her anger melting away into an impotent frustration. How—really—could she blame him for something like that? “I understand. I guess. But you still shouldn’t have done it.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. Well.” He swallowed, his lip twitching slightly as the doctor applied his hypo. “Gotta go, Dr. Blanchard,” he murmured, eyes already glazing over. “Walker needs his exercise.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Holloway,” she murmured. A moment later Michael Holloway’s soul was back in its Soulminder trap, and Walker Lamar’s body was again dead.

  She sighed, looked at her watch. Twelve thirty-two exactly. They’d gotten Holloway out of Lamar’s body two minutes late.

  “A technical violation only,” the doctor assured her. “Two minutes aren’t even worth anyone slapping our wrists for.”

  Blanchard nodded silently. The doctor and techs busied themselves with their work, and a minute later Walker Lamar was back in his own body.

  Blanchard stepped to his side, forcing her best imitation of an unconcerned smile. “Hi,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

  He blinked at her, then at the ceiling. “About the same as always,” he said. “Fine. I guess.” He focused on her again. “How did it go?”

  “Dorfman sounds confident,” she said with a shrug. “Though who can tell what that means with lawyers? So. You ready for lunch?”

  “In a little while, maybe.” With a jerk of legs and shoulders he sat up on the table. “I think I’ll take a little walk first—get used to having legs again, you know.”

  “Sure.” Blanchard glanced over his shoulder at the doctor. “Actually, I’ve got some things I have to do first, anyway. What do you say I meet you up in the cafeteria at one o’clock or so?”

  Lamar seemed to bring his attention back from somewhere else. “Okay,” he said. “Sure. See you then.”

  Easing his hips forward to the edge of the table, he touched feet to floor and got his balance. Walking a little unsteadily, he passed between the two security guards still flanking the doorway and left.

  Blanchard watched him go. Then, steeling herself, she headed over to the intercom. Somewhere, she knew, there would be a mass of paperwork waiting for her on this one.

  It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared it would be. Under Carstairs’s watchful eye she filled out the first wave of forms, accepted with thanks his assurances that his own report wouldn’t blame her for what had happened, promised to be back by two to tackle the second wave of paper, and managed to make it to the cafeteria by ten after one.

  Lamar was waiting for her. “I was starting to wonder if you were coming,” he said as they picked up trays and started down the line.

  “I had some paperwork to do,” Blanchard told him. “It took longer than I expected.”

  He reached over and selected a salad, and placed it on his tray. “You’ve never had paperwork to do right after a transfer before,” he said quietly, making a minute adjustment in the salad plate’s position on his tray. “Something went wrong, didn’t it?”

  Blanchard grimaced. She’d hoped to keep Holloway’s little solo run quiet, at least until Lamar had had a little more time to recuperate. “Holloway got away from me at the courthouse,” she told him. “He just had a little time out on his own, that’s all.”

  Lamar seemed to straighten up, shoulders hunching as if settling himself more comfortably into his clothes. Or into his body. “What did he—I mean—”

  “He was out for barely half an hour,” Blanchard said, keeping her voice as reassuring as possible. “The worst he could have done was get you a little sunburned.”

  “Yeah.” The corners of Lamar’s mouth twitched, as if he were trying to smile but couldn’t. “Well … I can tell he didn’t eat, anyway.”

  They completed the line in silence, handed in their ID chits at the register, and found a quiet table over near the windows.

  “So,” Lamar said, hunching over his tray as he carefully sprinkled salt on his chicken. “Are you in trouble now?”

  Blanchard shrugged, trying to look casual. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Carstairs says this has happened before at other Pro-Witness programs.”

  “What did they do? The other witnesses who escaped, I mean?”

  “Walker.” She reached over to squeeze his hand. “It’s all right. Really it is.”

  A muscle in his cheek twitched. “I know,” he said. “I was just wondering—you know, just what someone could do out there in half an hour.” His eyes flicked to her, turned away. “I mean, he didn’t eat. He didn’t get drunk. What else is there? A woman?”

  “It’s all right,” she said again. “Holloway was probably doing just what he said he was: taking one last chance to walk alone out under the sun.”

  “Yeah.” Gently, Lamar pulled his hand back from her, picked up his coffee. “I don’t blame him, you know,” he said, staring into the mug. “I was just wondering if … you know, if he found a hooker who had a disease or something.”

  “It’ll be all right,” Blanchard told him, realizing she was starting to sound like a looped program. “As soon as we’re finished here we’ll go back downstairs and set up an appointment for a complete physical, okay? And right after that, we’ll go talk to the Pro-Witness people about getting you a month or so of leave time after this case is wrapped up.”

  Lamar’s lips compressed into a thin line. Then, regretfully, he shook his head. “Thanks, but I can’t afford to take that much time off.”

  “So we’ll make it a paid leave,” Blanchard said firmly. “No more argument. In fact, no more shop talk at all. Eat your chicken before it gets cold.”

  He smiled, the first genuine smile she’d seen on him all day. “Yes, Mom,” he murmured.

  They ate at a leisurely pace, with Blanchard working hard to steer the conversation to Lamar’s twin passions of sports and old movies. The tactic seemed to work, and by the time he pulled his dessert over in front of him she could see he was almost relaxed.

  “You ought to watch that stuff,” she commented, eying his chocolate pudding. “It’ll give you zits like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Old doctors’ tale,” he retorted around a mouthful. “Nothing here that isn’t healthy for a growing boy like me.”

  “Oh, come on. You stopped growing at least two years ago—”

  She broke off. Lamar had looked up from his bowl and was staring over her shoulder, a strange look on his face. She turned just as a pair of uniformed policemen stopped to either side of her. “Mr. Walker Lamar?” one of them said, his gaze steady on Lamar.

  Lamar’s eyes flicked to Blanchard, then back to the policemen. “Yes?” he said, the word half statement, half question.

  The second cop started around the table. “Please keep your hands on the table, sir,” the first said.

  “Is there a problem, officer?” Blanchard asked, a sudden dread twisting through her stomach.

  “Afraid there is, ma’am,” the cop said as his partner gave Lamar a quick frisking and then pulled out his cuffs. “Seems that sometime between twelve-thirty and one o’clock this afternoon a man named Eliot Griffin was murdered in his office across the square.”

  Blanchard looked at Lamar, his eyes wide in a horror-struck face. “And you think Walker had something to do with it?” she demanded.

  “It seems likely, ma’am,” the cop said. “Seeing as his fingerprints were all over the murder weapon.

  “Mr. Lamar, you have the right to remain silent … ”

  Within an hour she got word that McGee had taken her off her scheduled owl-shift floater duty, citing the potential emotional stress of Lamar’s arrest. It took fifteen minutes to convince him she could handle it, and though he reinstated her
he made it clear that he thought she was letting professional pride and plain simple mule-headedness do her thinking for her. At the time she half agreed with him, and wondered if perhaps she should have gone home instead.

  By eight that evening, she was very glad she hadn’t.

  “Saw you on TV tonight,” a familiar voice said into the fog.

  She looked up, brushing away the mental wool, as Carstairs sat down across the duty room table from her. “I imagine half of Los Angeles saw me,” she countered tiredly.

  “Probably,” he nodded. “Rough day, huh?”

  She closed her eyes briefly. “I used to do police psychology work, sometimes dealing with the most infamous twisted minds you’d ever seen. People on the level of Bundy or Manson, and I never got the media attention from any of that that I did this afternoon.”

  “Scary, isn’t it? You’d think that after ten years Soulminder wouldn’t be such a media magnet. But it is.” He glanced around the empty duty room. “At least you found a cozy place to hide.”

  “A case of my subconscious being smarter than I was,” she admitted. “I’d talked McGee into letting me stay here tonight long before the media dragged me into the number two ring of their circus.”

  “You did a good job, if that helps any,” he offered. “At least on the interview I saw. They kept trying to get you to convict Lamar right there on the spot, and you kept politely refusing to play ball.”

  “He’s not guilty.” The words sounded more reflexive than really convincing. Or convinced. “Walker wouldn’t have killed anyone. He wouldn’t.”

  Carstairs tapped his fingertips gently on the tabletop. “There’ve been quiet suggestions that maybe Lamar wasn’t doing so well. That the strain of being a Pro-Witness might have pushed him over the edge.”

  Blanchard winced, her early-morning argument with McGee flashing through her mind for the umpteenth time that day. “I’ve heard those suggestions, too,” she growled. “The people making them don’t know what they’re talking about. Walker isn’t the type to spew his internal pressures out on other people. He’d just turn it inward on himself.”

  “Okay,” Carstairs said. “But if Lamar didn’t do it—”

  “And there’s one thing the cops so far don’t seem to have considered,” Blanchard cut him off. “Richardson’s Garden Spot—the place the murder knife was taken from?—Walker and I had lunch there less than a week ago. Someone could easily have picked up the knife he used and kept it until now.”

  Everly shrugged. “In theory, sure. The Smythson 88 scanner they used at the scene is notorious for reading latent prints like they were fresh. Though a proper confirmation check ought to pick up something like that.”

  “Assuming they bother to make one,” Blanchard said bitterly, dropping her gaze back to the tabletop. “Everyone seems to have made up their mind already that Walker’s guilty.”

  “Well … not everyone.”

  She frowned up at him. “What do you mean?”

  His eyes were thoughtful on her. “Tell me, Doctor. When exactly was Eliot Griffin killed?”

  “Between twelve-thirty and one this afternoon.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because—” She paused. “Because that’s what the cops told me.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they told everyone,” he nodded, that thoughtful expression still there. “About half an hour ago I finally got to wondering how in hell they’d pinned down the time of death that neatly. So I did some checking.”

  “And?” she prompted.

  “And it turns out,” he said quietly, “that the cops called us just before one-forty to find out if we knew where Lamar was. The operator told them he was in the cafeteria. And then they asked whether he’d been checked out at all in the previous hour or so.”

  Blanchard stared at him, the mental fog burning abruptly away. “My God,” she breathed. “And of course she obligingly told them he’d been out of the building between twelve-thirty and one.”

  “Uh-huh.” Carstairs pursed his lips. “So I did a little more checking. It turns out that Griffin’s secretary was out of the office from noon to one. The whole hour, not just the second half.”

  “You realize what you’re saying?” she asked, her voice trembling with sudden emotion. “You’re suggesting—”

  He nodded. “That our runaway witness Holloway is at least as good a suspect as Walker Lamar.”

  Blanchard took a deep breath. The implications … Abruptly, she reached over to the tabletop MiNex console, keyed in a location request. “Good; Katovsky’s still here—third floor conference room.” She got to her feet. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait a second,” Carstairs cut her off, catching her hand. “Before you go charging in on the director, take a minute to think about what we’re going to be telling him: that a man legally dead might have committed a murder. You think the media circus today was bad, just wait until they get their teeth into this one.”

  She glared down at him. “Are you suggesting that we just keep our mouths shut and let them throw Walker to the sharks?”

  “Of course not. I’m just warning you not to expect peals of joy from the upper echelons over the news. Lamar is a city employee, under the jurisdiction of the D.A.’s office, and if he’s guilty they’ll get the bulk of the public flak. The minute you bring Holloway into it, you drag Soulminder in, too.”

  “Soulminder thrives on publicity,” she said shortly. “You coming or not?”

  He stood up, releasing her hand. “Right behind you.”

  There were three men waiting in the receptionist’s niche just outside the third-floor conference room when they arrived. Men whose quiet watchfulness and efficiency, Blanchard would reflect later, ought to have given her some warning of what she was about to walk into. But she was tired and preoccupied, and so she just stood beside Carstairs, her thoughts on other things, while one of the loiterers held a brief intercom conversation with someone inside the conference room and then opened the door for her. Nodding her thanks, she strode through the opening—

  And came to an abrupt stop.

  “Dr. Blanchard,” Los Angeles Director Robert Katovsky said gravely into the bright fog that seemed suddenly to be interfering with her vision. “Come in and meet our visitors.” Without waiting for a response, he half turned, gesturing to the three men seated across the small circular table from him. “This is Frank Everly, overall head of Soulminder security; Murray Porath, chief legal counsel for the corporation; and I imagine you recognize Dr. Adrian Sommer.”

  With an effort, Blanchard found her voice. “It would be difficult,” she said, “to find an adult in the civilized world who wouldn’t recognize Soulminder’s creator.”

  “Co-creator, please,” Sommer corrected. He sounded less dynamic, somehow, than he always appeared in interviews and newscasts. “Mr. Katovsky tells me you were Walker Lamar’s Soulminder liaison.”

  Some of the dazzlement cleared. “I still am,” she corrected in turn.

  Katovsky harrumphed warningly, but Sommer merely smiled. “Yes, of course. Please sit down—you too, Mr. Carstairs—and tell us what’s on your mind.”

  Blanchard took the chair across from Sommer, Carstairs sitting down beside her. “I want to apologize for barging in on you like this,” she began. “Although”—she made a quick scan of their faces as a new thought suddenly occurred to her—“given your presence here, Dr. Sommer, perhaps we don’t have anything new to tell you, after all.”

  Katovsky made a face. “If you’re referring to the news that Walker Lamar isn’t the only viable suspect in the Griffin murder, then you’re correct.”

  Blanchard looked at Sommer. “Can I assume you plan to release that news sometime in the near future?”

  Sommer raised his eyebrows slightly. “You can sit in on my press conference tomorrow morning if you’d like. Were you thinki
ng we might not?”

  “It’s a long way from Washington,” she said. “You could have made the announcement hours ago.”

  Katovsky harrumphed again, but Sommer waved him silent. “We suspected we had a problem right from the start,” he said, meeting her gaze without flinching. “We didn’t know, however, until about an hour ago. At that point it seemed best to try and collect a few more facts before flooding the public with what could easily become a morass of confusing and possibly self-contradictory information.” He looked at Everly. “Frank?”

  “We got the final police report on the murder weapon a few minutes ago,” the security chief said, his cool eyes steady on Blanchard. “Lamar’s prints were definitely fresh. They were superimposed on another set, presumably those of the person who’d used it last.”

  Blanchard felt her lip twist. “Meaning that no one picked up the knife he used last week to try and frame him with?”

  “Basically,” Everly nodded. “Actually, it is still barely possible that someone did that, but it would’ve been one hell of a slick job—ditto for getting those little blood stains onto the underside of Lamar’s wrist. Which, by the way,” he added, looking at Sommer, “the lab says definitely came from the victim.”

  Sommer nodded. “All of which presumably takes this out of the realm of a random framing. As to non-random framing … ” He looked at Porath, raised his eyebrows.

  “At last check, my people were about halfway through the complete national list of state and local Pro-Witness cases,” the Soulminder attorney told him. “So far they haven’t found anyone who might have the money or contacts to try and throw this particular kind of monkey wrench into the program generally. We’re still looking.”

  “All right,” Sommer said. “We’ll leave that line open”—his eyes hardened, just noticeably—“but until and unless you find something, we’re going to have to assume that Lamar’s hand did indeed wield the murder weapon.