Soulminder

by Timothy Zahn

  “Yeah.” For a long minute he was silent. “You want to know the really funny part of it?” he said at last. “One of the reasons they hired me to be a Pro-Witness in the first place was that I knew a little about what was going on in the world. They said it showed I wasn’t just some loser off the street trying to make crack money.”

  Blanchard stared at him. “They said that?”

  “Oh, not to my face. I got someone to let me see the file they did on me a couple months later.” He shook his head. “And you know the first thing I did when I got my first paycheck? I went ahead and sent off to get Time coming to my apartment. If I hadn’t … ”

  “It probably wouldn’t have helped,” Blanchard told him. “What mattered was that Holloway didn’t have access to the magazine at all. If you hadn’t had a subscription, you still could’ve read it at the library.”

  “I never read magazines at the library,” Lamar said. “But I used to read ’em at the dentist.”

  Blanchard raised her eyebrows. “At the dentist?”

  “Yeah. You know—in the waiting room. They always had piles of magazines there.”

  “Old ones, probably, if I know dentist waiting rooms.”

  Lamar shrugged. “A little. Didn’t matter much when I was a kid. I guess probably that’s why I sent away for the subscription. So I could get ’em all new.”

  He launched into a story about how once he’d snuck back into the dentist’s office the next day to return a magazine he’d borrowed overnight. But Blanchard wasn’t really listening. In her mind’s eye, she caught a memory of Lamar, hunched over a fancy glass table, his dark hair blocking his face as he leafed studiously through a magazine …

  “Dr. Blanchard?”

  She blinked. Lamar was frowning up at her from his cot. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said, standing up and knocking on the door. If she was right … “I’ll be back soon. Hang in there, and try not to worry.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Assistant D.A. Dorfman griped as his secretary pored through the box of old magazines in the bottom of his coat closet. “Completely ridiculous. You and Holloway were in here exactly five times, and in each instance you came directly into my office or the deposition room and then went straight out.”

  “No,” Blanchard said, her eyes on the secretary. “On one of those occasions you shagged us out of the room for a few minutes so that you and Austin could confer in private.”

  “And you don’t remember when that was?” Everly asked, shifting the bulk of his Smythson 88 fingerprint scanner to his other hand.

  Blanchard shook her head. “I’ve been to too many depositions and meetings here over the months. But I have a clear mental picture of Holloway sitting by the glass table in the waiting room reading a magazine.”

  “Holloway, or Lamar.” Everly grunted. “Remember that Lamar has been here before, too.”

  “Yes, but not for months,” the secretary said over her shoulder. “I checked my appointment book, and I would have remembered if a Pro-Witness came in unexpectedly—here it is.”

  She half turned, the copy of Time in her hand. “Who gets it?”

  “I do,” Everly said before Dorfman could answer. Plucking the magazine deftly from her hand, he carried it to Dorfman’s desk, opening it up to the page with Griffin’s sidebar interview. Blanchard moved to the opposite side of the desk, craning her head sideways to reread the article as Everly unpacked the scanner part of the Smythson. There was still something about the write-up that bothered her. Something not quite right …

  “Here goes,” Everly muttered under his breath. He held the scanner over the left-hand page, and abruptly the office was bathed in an eerie ultraviolet-tinged light. The light cut off, and Everly repeated the procedure with the right-hand page. “Okay,” he said, tapping keys on the computer part of the unit. “Let’s see what the print files come up with. You looking for something?”

  Blanchard shook her head, starting the article again from the top. “Yes, but I don’t know what. There’s something important here—I know it. But I can’t figure out what it is.”

  “It’s just a normal article,” Everly said, leaning over to look at it. “Pretty much like every other newsmagazine interview.”

  “I know.” Squeezing her hand into a frustrated fist, Blanchard shifted her gaze up to the photo. To Griffin, smiling professionally at the camera; to the expensive desk and curtains, framing that smile as if they’d been arranged in their positions for exactly that purpose; to the cloud-mottled blue sky outside the window, with the top of the Soulminder building just visible.

  And suddenly, she caught her breath. “Everly—”

  The last syllable was drowned out by an electronic beep. “Hang on,” Everly grunted, flipping up the Smythson’s small display screen. The first image that came up was that of the two magazine pages, dotted and smeared with the delicate patterns of dozens of fingerprints. Everly tapped the switch again, and the image was replaced by a list of those prints’ owners. Blanchard craned her neck—

  “Bingo,” Everly said, swiveling the screen briefly toward her and then keying back to the image of the pages themselves. “You were right on the money, Doctor. Here, here, and here. Walker Lamar’s thumbprints, right where someone reading the magazine would hold it.”

  “Doesn’t prove he read the sidebar, though,” Dorfman said.

  “Oh, it proves it, all right,” Everly countered. “You can see—right here—where he moved his hand so that he could read what his thumb had been covering up. No, he read the sidebar, all right.” He looked at Blanchard. “But all that does is bring us back to square one.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Blanchard said, shaking her head. “Because Griffin wasn’t just a random killing. There’s no reason why the murderer would have gone to a sixth-floor office if he’d just wanted any old victim.”

  “So he wanted someone who deserved to die,” Everly said, nodding. “Or at least someone who came close to it. So?”

  Blanchard gestured to the article. “So look at the interview again. Look at it closely.”

  “I’ve read it so many times that I’ve just about got it memorized,” he growled.

  Blanchard took a careful breath. “Then tell me what the article doesn’t tell you.”

  For a long moment Everly frowned at her, and she found herself holding her breath, willing with all her might for him to see it. If he didn’t—if it didn’t therefore strike him as at all significant—then it was probably nothing more than a figment of her own wishful thinking—

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, very softly. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

  “Right about what?” Dorfman said suspiciously.

  Everly cocked an eyebrow at him, then turned back and began to reassemble his fingerprint scanner. “You’ve seen this picture, Dorfman. You can see the Soulminder building in the background, which says that Griffin’s office building bordered Ridley Square. But how did the killer know which building it was?”

  “Well, obviously—” Dorfman broke off, an odd expression flooding across his face.

  “Exactly.” Everly straightened up, hauling the repacked Smythson off the desk. “You know what we’re looking for, Doctor. Let’s get to it.”

  He looked down at the article, tongue playing nervously across his lips. “No, I don’t remember reading this,” he said, looking up.

  Looking up … but with his eyes never quite meeting Blanchard’s. Or anyone else’s in the deposition room, for that matter. “I’m sorry, Mr. Holloway,” Dorfman shook his head, “but I’m afraid that won’t wash. We found your fingerprints all over a copy of the article from my waiting room. A copy, I may add, that Walker Lamar never had access to.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it,” the other said, trying his best to sound huffy. It didn’t really come
off. “So okay, let’s assume I did read it. What then?”

  Dorfman looked at Blanchard, then at Sommer, Everly, and Porath. “What then, Mr. Holloway,” he said quietly, “is that, for whatever reason, you decided to kill Eliot Griffin. You want to tell us what that reason was?”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Then look at that article again,” Dorfman said, an edge beginning to form in his voice, “and I’ll try to explain. Go ahead, look at it … and notice that nowhere in the article is Griffin’s office address given.”

  For just the briefest instant the eyes flattened, the look of a man who suddenly realized he’d made a fatal blunder and that all was lost. But only for an instant. “Well, that’s pretty much normal, isn’t it?” he shrugged, the mask back in place. “Stories like this don’t usually print addresses, do they?”

  “Almost never,” Dorfman agreed. “And it brings up a rather awkward question. Namely, how did Griffin’s killer know where to find him?”

  “Probably from that photo.” He waved at the article on the table with a hand that was just beginning to tremble. “You got that view through the window—I suppose someone could figure it out from that.”

  Dorfman shook his head. “No,” he said. “It looks like it could be done, but it really can’t. Not without special equipment or professional experience. The picture was taken too far back from the window—it doesn’t show nearly enough outside detail for the exact location to be pinpointed. You vary the angle, position, and elevation of the camera and you can get almost the same view from offices all over that side of Ridley Square. I know; I sent a photographer there this afternoon to do just that.”

  The eyes flicked around the room: to Dorfman, to Blanchard and the other Soulminder people, to the court recorder quietly taking it all down. “Then I don’t know how he did it,” he muttered.

  Again, Dorfman shook his head. “You miss the obvious, Mr. Holloway,” he said. “Perhaps because you don’t want to draw our attention to it. But it’s already too late. Mr. Everly, Dr. Blanchard, and I went to the courthouse annex this afternoon. Given the annex’s clientele and visitor base, it’s one of the few places left in the country where there are actual pay phones and physical, paper telephone directories.

  “And we found the directory with your fingerprints on it. One of those prints, the right-hand index finger, is directly beneath Mr. Griffin’s listing.”

  He seemed to hunch back in his chair, eyes staring out of a frozen face like a trapped animal. “It wasn’t me,” he said, the trembling in his hands now transferred to his voice. “It must have been Lamar.”

  “No,” Dorfman said. “If Lamar had decided to kill Griffin he could have looked up the address at home or at any number of other places. You were the one who had no choice but to locate your victim, get a weapon, and commit murder, all in that single half hour.”

  “You’ll never prove it,” the other gritted out. “Never in a million years. Fine, arrest me. I’ll fight it all the way to the Supreme Court if I have to.”

  “You misunderstand, Mr. Holloway,” Dorfman shook his head. “This isn’t going to go to trial. I’m not filing any charges against you.”

  For a moment he just stared, a look of horror on his face. “What do you mean?” he whispered. “You can’t do that—a man’s been murdered, damn it. You can’t just—you can’t.”

  “Yes, I can,” Dorfman said. “And I’m going to. Sometime next week the jury will deliver a verdict in People v. Battistello, and you’ll be back in the courtroom to see that. And after that … ”

  “Oh, God,” he whispered. “Oh, God, no. Please. I demand a trial,” he said, his voice surging abruptly toward hysteria. “You hear me? I’m a citizen—I have a right to a trial.”

  “You’re not a citizen anymore,” Everly said, his voice deliberately hard. “You’re legally dead.”

  The air went out of him as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. “Oh, God,” he whispered.

  For a long minute the only sound in the room was the muted tapping of keys as the recorder caught up with the conversation. Then, steeling herself, Blanchard reached across the table and took the witness’s hand. It was trembling and cold as ice. “It’s all over, Michael,” she told him gently. “Won’t you please tell me why you killed him?”

  He turned his face to her, his eyes vacant. “He was a thief,” he said dully. “He stole other people’s money. He deserved to die.”

  She shook her head. “He deserved punishment, but not death.” She hesitated, but looking at him now, it was suddenly, achingly clear. “You did it for yourself, didn’t you? You killed a man, and deliberately dragged Walker into it, hoping the case would be snarled up in court for years.

  “So that you wouldn’t have to leave Soulminder.”

  He licked his lips, first the upper and then the lower … and suddenly his face twisted in anguish. “I don’t want to die,” he sobbed. “Please. I don’t want to die.”

  The knock came on her door a third time, and Blanchard reluctantly looked up from her work. Katovsky, almost certainly, here to respond to her letter of resignation. “Come in,” she called.

  She was wrong. “Dr. Blanchard,” Sommer said gravely, shifting the folder he was holding into his other hand and closing the door behind him. “I wonder if I might have a minute of your time?”

  “Of course, sir,” she said, indicating the guest chair. “I was just closing out a couple of my files.”

  Sommer sat down, laying his folder down on the edge of her desk in front of him. “I thought you’d like to know that the Holloway case is all over. The jury came back just after one with a guilty verdict on Battistello. About an hour ago they brought Holloway back here and gave him final release.”

  Final release. From Walker Lamar’s body, and from the Soulminder trap that had been his only existence for six months. Now, indeed, he was truly dead. “Did he ask why I wasn’t there?”

  “Yes,” Sommer said. “I made an appropriate excuse, though I don’t think he believed me.”

  Blanchard felt her stomach knot up. With revulsion or guilt, she couldn’t tell which. “I was going to go,” she told Sommer. “But I couldn’t face him. I just couldn’t.”

  “I understand. I almost couldn’t face him myself.” Sommer shook his head slowly, his eyes distant. “It’s strange, you know. I spent over a month in a Soulminder trap ten years ago, and came away with a sense of utter peace about whatever it is that lies in store for us after death. And it wasn’t just me. I’ve talked to others since then, all of whom had similar experiences.

  “And then along comes someone like Michael Holloway.”

  Behind his cheeks, Sommer’s jaw tightened. “He was terrified of death. Really, sincerely, terrified of it. So much so that he actually killed a man to try and postpone it.” He focused on Blanchard, his gaze discomfiting in its intensity. “Why would anyone do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe he saw something different there than you did, or maybe he was more in love with this world than you are. Maybe there was something he’d done in life that he regretted. Something he’d done, or something he’d failed to do.”

  Sommer’s gaze seemed to soften a little. Or perhaps the intensity was merely turned inward. “I’ve done many things I’ve regretted, too,” he murmured. “None of them seemed to matter when I was in Soulminder.”

  “Maybe you knew somehow that you would be coming out again,” Blanchard suggested quietly. “That you still had a chance to try to make up for those things.”

  Sommer sighed. “It’s funny, you know. For ten years now I’ve been trying to convince Jessica that death isn’t something to be feared. You know Jessica?”

  Dr. Jessica Sands, co-creator of Soulminder. And, inside rumor had it, the true driving force behind everything the corporation did. “I’v
e heard of her, of course,” Blanchard said. “Never met her personally.”

  “For ten years I’ve been trying to calm her down on that fear,” Sommer said. “And I thought I’d made some progress. Now—” He shook his head. “It’s all come to a head again. The funding proposals she sent from Washington this morning showed a fifteen percent increase for the various life-extension studies we’ve been supporting.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with looking for ways to let people live longer and more fulfilling lives.”

  “No, not with the idea itself,” Sommer said heavily. “Only with the motivation behind it.” He focused on Blanchard again. “But, then, you’re a psychologist. You know all about motivation, don’t you.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve resigned as Pro-Witness liaison,” she said. “I presume Mr. Katovsky’s told you that.”

  Sommer nodded. “That’s the main reason I’m here, in fact.”

  “If you’re here to try and talk me out of it—”

  “I’m not. I’m here to offer you a new job.” Picking up the folder, he swiveled it around and put it down on in front of her. “Take a look, if you would.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t want to work for Soulminder anymore.”

  “If it’s because we all but accused you of murder—”

  “No, that’s not it,” she assured him. “From your point of view I suppose it was the most reasonable scenario. It’s just … I don’t know. I guess the Pro-Witness program has soured me on what Soulminder’s doing these days.”

  “In that case,” he said quietly, “you’ll definitely want to look in that folder.” Reaching over, he opened it and then sat back.

  She stared at him for a moment before lowering her eyes to the folder. The top page, written on the Capitol Hill stationary of a New York Senator, was a summary of a bill currently working its way through committee …

  She looked up at Sommer again, stomach knotting within her. “This is crazy,” she breathed, jabbing a finger on the paper. “You can’t make it legal for people to will their bodies to someone else. Think of the pressure from family members, from society—my God; the whole public perception of suicide prevention and counseling would be turned a hundred eighty degrees over.”