Part 3
It was dark and we were still stuck in traffic on the way to
ADP headquarters. Wong was going over the reports coming in from
the NPD through the squad car's data link, scrolling down page
after page. In the gray twilight, the city glimmered through the
mist. While it was still raining lightly, it was the best
weather we'd had in a week.
Wong tends to make these little noises when he's thinking, like
he was on the brink of some great leap of intelligence. The
little clucking noises irritate me after a while, but I decided
long ago to deal with them in a civil manner.
"Wong, will you shut the fuck up?" I belted out as I swerved a
couple of lanes.
He grunted an affirmative, his expression hinting at a major
breakthrough in the case. I was sure he thought he was on close
to breaking this case, but through trial and error I was betting
he was wrong. He always is on the first try.
"What do you think?" I asked him, beginning the ritual.
"I'm not sure," he replied, admitting his own ignorance for the
first time since I started working for him. He'd usually have a
theory- "but I have a theory," he finished.
If I hadn't been driving I'd probably have rested my head in my
hands. "Let's hear it."
"I think I'm going to wait a little before I say anything,"
Wong murmured, already engrossed in his reports.
"I think you don't have a clue and don't want to admit it. That
way, when I figure out what's really going on you'll be able to
say your 'theory' was right on the money."
Wong looked up at me, pushing his glasses up on his face a
little. He was giving me that look that said: 'where did that
other head come from?'
"Never mind," I muttered, finally pulling off the 'expressway'
and down beside the hulking mass of the ADP's headquarters. I
could tell the sun was setting from the way the clouds were
turning a progressively darker shade of gray, and the rain was
picking up again. Just for curiosity's sake I called up a
weather report on the dash monitor. The seven-day forecast was
rain.
We pulled into the parking garage, dropped the patrol car off
and entered the building without a word. Wong was still thinking
about the case and I was thinking about how tired I was. Six in
the afternoon and I was ready for bed. I rubbed my eyes under
the florescent light and stepped out of the elevator at Nene's
floor.
Wong and I blinked as our eyes adjusted to the low light of the
Comptroller Room. Perhaps fifty stations were arranged around a
central hologram display of the city. At each station sat a girl
of between twenty and thirty five (the ADP learning that cops
respond to young female voices best) with the exception of Nene,
who might still be in high school for all I know.
It was sort of like a theatre in the way you had to step down
towards the front, and it took me a second to find Nene's
station. The low drone of noise from the displays and
conversation was almost relaxing, not like the commotion around
my office earlier in the morning. Maybe it was all the girls
talking.
"Busy Nene?" I asked when we arrived alongside her cubicle but
still outside its low walls.
"Leon-chan!" Nene bubbled excitedly as she looked up from her
game of Quake XVII. I noticed she was a lot further into it than
I had gotten. What else can you do with a police portable on a
long stakeout?
"Any luck with the hard drive, or have you been playing games
all afternoon?" I asked, with the proper amount of
disappointment in my voice.
"It only took me a couple of minutes to crack the encryption,
not that the data'll do you any good," Nene said, pausing the
game and looking up at me. "The pictures are pretty lame."
"Can we see them?" Wong asked, stepping a little closer.
"Sure," Nene said, exiting the game and calling up the media
player. "They were regular fractal format video files," she
muttered absently, "but the quality from the cameras makes them
look like something out of the Twentieth century."
The screen revealed a grainy image of the front of Akuto's
store. The speakers could pick up the regular sound of rain
pelting the door and window. Akuto was behind the desk, watching
GTV on a little television that I hadn't noticed when I'd been
in the shop the night before.
There's a shape in front of the door, wrapped in a full-length
raincoat that seemed like more of a plastic cloak. The hood was
pulled up around the head, and as the door opened the figure's
face remain hidden in its recesses. Akuto stood up, not alarmed
but merely in greeting. The two exchange words, too low for the
camera to pick up against the noise of the rain, and Akuto turns
woodenly to the rear, opening the hidden door.
The two go through the door to the secret room, which isn't
covered by any cameras. I guessed Akuto was too cheap to cover
it. A second later there's a shout, followed by a curious ripple
that played across the views of all the displayed views at the
same time.
"What was that?" Wong asked as the playback came to an end.
"You mean the ripple?" Nene said, "I'm not sure. Its not data
manipulation, that's for sure. I went over the code for any
signs of tampering. Probably just hardware failure or
interference."
Wong nodded seriously as if that were the single piece of data
that might break the case wide open. I fought down a chuckle.
"Got it all figured out yet Wong?" I asked.
"Still working on it," Wong replied. "Maybe we should get an
early night to night. Tomorrow will be a long day. Thank you,
Nene-chan," Wong said, turning to go. "You've been a big help."
Nene waved, "Goodbye Detective Wong," she said. I turned to go
as she said "Bye Leon-chan!"
I flinched. "Later, Nene."
I caught up to Wong a couple of steps past Nene's station. He
was walking with his hands in his pockets, looking ahead
thoughtfully. I think Wong's pretty funny when he starts
thinking. I usually look for the simplest answer; nine times out
of ten William of Occam is on the money. Wong, while in no means
prone to flights of fancy, tends towards the more imaginative in
his criminology.
I think its because I got C's in philosophy back in college.
"You really heading home?" I asked him.
"Might as well. The boomer data comes in tomorrow. The figure
on the playback could be anyone or anything, so its no use
waiting around for something to happen."
I snorted. "Hot date, huh?" I asked him.
"You wouldn't believe."
You get to know someone pretty well when they're you're
partner. Things that would annoy you about someone else are okay
with your partner, because you've spent enough time to know why
someone behaves a certain way. One thing I can never figure out
about Wong: he always seems to know when things are going to
happen.
Something about the way he answered my date question just stuck
in my head as a little odd, so when we both pulled up to the
Shiny Robot Boomer Emporium in the blue collar neighborhood
across the city from Gomi district at three thirty, I asked Wong
if this was the date he'd been thinking of. He just smiled and
pulled the hood of his raincoat over his head.
I think he smiled because I was wearing my fedora, the one my
ex-girlfriend gave me for a Halloween costume. I figured it
would keep the rain off my head, a job it was accomplishing very
well, but Wong could've thought I looked funny.
We stepped through the automatic doors at the Shiny Robot -fuck
it, the crime scene to greet two uniformed ADP officers, a
couple of normies and a plainclothes Sargent. "Wong and
McNichols," the plainclothes said, standing out against the two
paramilitary ADP guys. The two ADP boys knew me from my early
days as a grunt, and they looked amused at the fedora.
"At your service," Wong said. "Let me guess, a boomer related
burglary/homicide?"
"That's what it looks like," the Sargent replied. I read his
name off the badge hanging from his shirt's pocket. Davis, an
NPD Sargent that I didn't know. "The guy's pulped pretty bad."
He motioned towards the back of the store, behind a bunch of
overturned boxes. "Let me show you."
I looked at Wong as we followed our way through the
brightly-lit crime scene, with people crawling all over the
place picking for clues. It struck me as a little odd how much
attention this was getting; then again it was a much nicer
neighborhood than I'm used to operating in.
"What do you want to bet he's going to be here," Wong asked me
as we approached the body.
"No bet," I replied as I looked down at the corpse. Much better
shape than the last one, I thought dispassionately. You get a
little jaded after you see a lot of dead people, and I'd seen
plenty. "He'll show up any minute."
"There was a response from the alarm system that the victim,
who stocks late at night, cancelled a couple of seconds later.
That was two thirty five. The routine security check by the
building's boomer turned up the body a little under an hour
later." The plainclothes was trying to be nice, which surprised
me a little. Generally the NPD gives us as much shit as
possible.
"Cause of death?" Wong asked as we gazed down at the body.
Instead of the complete caving of the chest cavity as with Akuto
there were concise cuts across the chest, throat and groin. It
seemed like there were some chunks missing from the body, and I
made a note to have Akuto's body checked for missing parts.
"Blood loss, most likely." The plainclothes gestured to the
partially dried blood pooled around the body. "No blood tracked
around though, so he probably died quickly and without a lot of
struggling." He said it like it was supposed to make bleeding to
death fun.
"And what's missing?" I asked, looking to the store room door
and its torn off hinges.
"Three servitor boomers and a bunch of spare parts. Mostly the
new bio stuff." He meant the biotech boomers coming on the
market now, with the mix of biologically active components and
the traditional silicon and steel. "Strange thing is it took all
the stationary in the house. Every last scrap of unused paper in
the house is gone."
I looked to Wong. Wong looked to me. I made a note. "Is
Inspector Mitchell here, by any chance?"
"You missed him by a couple of minutes. He was the second on
the scene." My eyebrows went up, and the NPD guy must have
noticed because he added: "His house isn't far from here. You
might even be able to see it from here." He headed to the
window, eager to show us this guy's house. It was odd, even for
a late night cop.
He pointed up to one of the hills at the foot of Mt. Fuji.
Landslides after the Kanto quake had wiped out most of the
houses up there, but there were still some very old houses up
there. "Its right there," the cop told us, pointing to an old
Western style house a couple of clicks away. As we looked at it
the single light winked out, as if it noticed the attention.
Wong and I decided to call it a night.
Author's Notes:
Slow progress, mostly due to work and exhaustion. I'm not
rushing the story on this one, so it might take a little time to
develop. Unfortunately the parts/chapters are a little on the
short side for my taste, especially considering it takes me more
than a week each. Anyway, more of the elseworldish elements will
be cropping up in the next couple of episodes and thanks for
reading.
Fnord