by Ander Nesser
the night."
"Then wake them up. How long does it take to pull data from a drive? I'd like this case closed before breakfast."
"Let's take our time and do it right. We have two weeks."
"We are doing it right. But I don't think it will take two weeks. There's no reason to artificially drag it out." His arm-comp trilled. "Ah, I got some hits. Assembling a time-line of her movements now."
Hakihea backed away from the transporter and dialed his phone. For a few minutes they stood apart on the platform, absorbed in their own devices, swaying gently in the night wind. Then Hakihea walked back. Kask turned to him, his long beard blown to the side. Hakihea dispersed the shadows on Kask's face with his arm-comp display. "Photographs taken by Cai's drone. They're just of trees, and tree branches illuminated by drone-light."
"Not just," Kask said. "There's more to those pictures than tree branches." Now he held up his own display for Hakihea. "After the park, she went to her flat. Now she's on her way to Helping Hand HQ."
Hakihea raised his brows. "How convenient."
"Indeed. Let's see if we can catch up and say hello," Kask said as he got into the transporter.
2:12 AM >
Most buildings in Wellington were lightly colored, thin spires. The headquarters of Helping Hand Robotics was stout and dark, occupying a whole city block.
Kask brought his face closer to the window of the transporter. "A cubist's sketch of a lead crystal," he said.
"What?" Hakihea asked sleepily.
"Nothing. Cai's face was last recorded by a walk-trough camera outside Helping Hand five minutes ago. She must have just gone inside."
"But Helping Hand wouldn't normally let people in. She must be working for them."
Kask leaned back in his seat as a dim red light crept over his face. The docking platform was not on the exterior, but in a rectangular bay. They slid inward. Ruddy floodlights illuminated several parallel rail termini.
As they docked and disembarked, a security squad of four armed guards rushed toward them, their glossy black armor blooming orange with transient reflections.
"Halt and identify yourselves," a guard said.
Hakihea displayed his ID on his arm-comp. "Municipal Sheriff Hakihea. And this is Detective Kask. We're looking for this woman." He displayed Cai's face. "We have reason to believe she entered your facility a few minutes ago. She's wanted for questioning."
"Just a minute. I'll see what I can do." He moved to the side to speak quietly into his radio while the other three, whose faces were hidden behind angular black helmets, maintained a close watch on Hakihea and Kask. The guard's murmurs lay under a blanket of wind resonating over the open docking bay. "This way," the lead guard said when he was finished, and proceeded to escort them from the bay, down a narrow passageway, and into a small room.
The room's fluorescent lights gleamed on metal walls and a table. The floor was a metallic grate with the occasional smooth access hatch. Kask sat in an unpadded chair without asking. "I'm guessing you guys have hired a different decorator than Pendant," he said while looking around exaggeratedly.
"I wouldn't know anything about that, sir," said the guard. "Please wait here. Someone will be with you in a minute." He left the room, the door automatically sliding shut.
"False imprisonment of a sheriff would be a serious infraction of GU law. I doubt they'd do it. But could you check just in case?" Kask said to Hakihea, who stood with his arms crossed.
"Huh?"
"Check to make sure the door is unlocked."
Hakihea went to the door and it slid open. Then he returned to Kask and looked down at him.
"Good. Now, if I were pessimistic, I'd say they'll keep us waiting quite a while," Kask said. "Then they'll send in an underling to make excuses. What they won't do is outwardly defy the request of a sheriff, so they have to make an effort to appear incompetent or inefficient."
"You think they don't want us to see Cai, so they'll stall."
Kask nodded. "Instead of bringing her to us, we should try to go to her. I think that's the best strategy."
"This place is way too big. And I'm sure we'd encounter locked doors eventually, though security cameras will--"
Kask was shaking his head. "As sheriff you have unrestricted access. To refuse you would expose themselves to an obstruction of justice charge, which carries a life-sentence in the case of a capital crime." He exited the room, and Hakihea followed.
"I told you this isn't a capital case."
"Regardless, obstruction charges have long prison terms. We just need to take control. You're in charge." They made it a few meters down the passageway before being met by another guard. "Take us to your nearest security station," Kask told the guard. "We need to access your internal cameras."
The guard smiled. "You're not authorized to--"
"I am an officer of the law," Hakihea projected his credentials for the guard to see. "Fail to comply, and you will be under arrest for obstruction of justice."
The guard entered Hakihea's badge code into his arm-comp and did a search. He nodded, no longer smiling. "Identity confirmed. I'm sorry for the delay, Sheriff. Right this way." He led them down the passageway to a deep alcove lined with concave computer interface projectors.
"Run a facial search for her location," Kask said, swiping her photograph from his arm onto a monitor. The guard dragged the picture into another window and entered a command. A security feed from an elevator popped up.
"She's headed down to Sublevel Three," the guard said.
"I'm going after her," Kask said. "Unlock all doors I need to get through from here to there. Sheriff, you'll stay here and make sure the guard signals no one."
"You'll need a security pass, otherwise you won't get very far," the guard said. He entered a code on a key pad opening a drawer in the wall. He reached in and pulled out a passcard on a lanyard, then handed it to Kask.
"Thank you," Kask said. "Do you have a map?" He put the lanyard around his neck.
The guard pulled up the route window and flipped it to Kask's arm-comp. Kask nodded and headed down the passage. He moved swiftly around corners, following the red line on the 3D map.
"Halt!" A guard raised his hand and approached him. He held up his passcard, and the guard nodded him onward.
Kask found the elevator, waited over two-hundred levels groundward, then two sublevels.
"Sublevel Three," the elevator announced pleasantly, and Kask exited into a broad storage bay. Storage containers were arranged into dozens of rows under a low ceiling with blue lights. He drew his stunner and began to walk the perimeter, listening. After a moment he caught the echoes of high-heels on the metallic floor tiles. He moved swiftly into the aisles, sliding past the bulks of esoteric shapes. The heels stopped clicking, replaced by other clattering noises.
Kask paused with his back against a large container. Carefully, he peeked around the corner. Evelyn Cai was just in the next aisle, squatting before an open container, reaching in. Kask whipped around the corner, aiming his stunner. "Stand slowly with your hands up!"
Cai stood slowly, but with her arms down. She spun suddenly, raising an object in her hand. Kask fired. There was a loud, low rushing sound which dropped in pitch several octaves until it was below the range of human hearing. Simultaneously, Cai jerked back, doubled over, and vomited. The object in her hand went tumbling across the floor. Kask picked up her stunner and put it in his coat while Cai recovered on her hands and knees.
"Ms. Cai, how nice to see you again so soon," Kask said.
"Detective." Cai kneeled and wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve. "What can I do for you at this late hour?"
"Just tell me the truth. The complete truth, this time." He kept his stunner trained on her.
"I will. But first, you have to know, I didn't destroy that Pendant robot. I didn't know that was going to happen." She pushed her hair out of her face and looked into his eyes.
"Go on. I'm listening."
"I was hir
ed by someone--I don't know who--to track the robot once it escaped Pendant Headquarters."
"Track how?"
"I have a small swarm of drones with infrared cameras. Not the one you saw, which was a decoy. I'm an expert in surveillance and in tracking several targets at once. The Pendant robot moved quickly and erratically through the city, camouflaged. It paused for a while in the park, moving among the tree-tops like a monkey. It stayed there for a long while. I went to the park, tried to get a glimpse of it with my own eyes."
"Why?"
"What do you mean?"
"You could have simply tracked it and sent the data to your employer. Why did you have to physically be in the same location as the bio-bot?"
"Oh, that was part of the deal. I was supposed to go to it, once it had settled down, and wait for further instructions. I didn't question why."
Kask nodded. "I see. So what happened when you got to the reservation?"
"I climbed up to the old observatories. It was in the trees near the ruins. I waited, keeping an eye on the robot. On the bio-bot. After a while, a quad-copter showed up. It hovered over the valley, and seemed to be facing me, looking at me. I began to suspect it was my employer. There was a cargo attachment on the bottom of the copter. He dropped it into the trees and flew away. At that point I got a little nervous; I don't like surprises while I'm on the job, but I had a feeling one was coming. I heard something crashing through the bushes, coming up the hill toward the observatory, where I was. The bio-bot got down from the trees and scampered over to the
