city blues 01 - dome city blues (10 page)

House woke me up less than two hours later with his
someone’s-at-the-door
routine.

“Who is it?”

“Two persons, identities unknown.”

I asked House to throw a projection of my visitors on the bedroom wall.  No real help.  One woman, one man.  She was in her early thirties and looked like a professional body builder.  He looked like an aging used car salesman.  I didn’t recognize either of them, but their body postures and off-the-rack suits said “cop.”

“House, scan them for weapons.”

“Both persons are armed with semi-automatic hand guns, stun wands, and handcuffs, all of which appear to be standard police issue.  The gentleman is carrying a briefcase-sized object that is emitting low levels of electromagnetic energy, consistent with active electronics.  If you like, I can run a signature-analysis of the electromagnetic emissions, and attempt to identify the contents of the briefcase.”

“No thank you.”

I was pretty sure that I already knew what was in the briefcase: a Magic Mirror.  That was the street slang for it, anyway.  The technical jargon was a string of polysyllables about a kilometer long: Multifaceted-Electro-something-something-something.

“Uh... give me two-way audio.”

I waited for the chime.  “Can I help you?”

The woman turned her head and stared into the camera.  “David Stalin?”

“Who are you?”

She leaned toward the camera.  Forced perspective made her image seem to grow larger and closer.  It’s a good trick if you do it right.  It feels threatening, even when you know it’s a projection.  She did it right.

“Don’t fuck with me,” she snapped.  “
Are
you David Stalin?  Give me visual.  I want to see your face.”

Her partner pulled out a badge.  “Los Angeles Police Department.  We’re here to...”

The woman glared at him.  “We’re gonna kick this fucking door down.”

I took a hit off the cigarette.  “I wouldn’t.  My house is equipped with an extensive anti-intrusion system.  Starting from stun level and escalating to lethal-mode in ten seconds.  All registered, and all perfectly legal.”

She flipped out a badge, flashed it at the camera for a millisecond and put it away.  “We need to...”

“Name and badge number?”

She glared at the camera.  “Detective P. L. Dancer, Alpha Two Seven Six One.”

Her partner leaned in.  “Detective R. Delaney, Alpha Two Nine Two Four.  We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Do you have a warrant?”

For a second, I thought Dancer would explode.  Then she visibly swallowed and spoke in a tense voice.  “No, we do not have a warrant.  I can have one transmitted to me in about five minutes.  Is that what you want?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.”

I told House to open the front door and start a pot of coffee.

I met them at the door and led them into the living room.  “Sorry there’s no coffee ready; I’m just getting up.  I’ve got a pot on now.”

Detective Dancer scowled.  “We’re not here for tea and biscuits.  We’re here pursuant to a murder investigation.”

I motioned them toward chairs.  Delaney sat down.  Dancer did not.

I sat in my favorite wingback.  “I thought the investigation was closed.”

Dancer arched her eyebrows.  “Closed?  What in the hell are you talking about?”

“The Aztec investigation.  It’s formally closed, isn’t it?”

Dancer’s brow furrowed.  “Aztec?  What does Aztec have to do with this?”

Delaney pulled an audio recorder out of his pocket and loaded a fresh chip.  “Are you David Stalin?”

“Yes,” I said.  “I’m David Stalin.”

“For the record, Mr. Stalin: do you object to our recording this interview?”

“What if I say yes?”

Dancer tried to stare a hole through me.  “Then we get that warrant, and things start to get ugly.”

I shrugged.  “No, I don’t object.”

Delaney punched the
record
tab and put the little unit on the coffee table.  Then he set his briefcase on the table and opened it.  The lower half of the case was packed full of electronics modules and the anodized louvers of heat sinks.  The inside of the lid was a flat-screen crystal display with an integral keypad.  It was a Magic Mirror all right.

Dancer smiled a hard little smile that had no joy or amusement in it.  “You know your rights, Mr. Stalin?”

“Why?  Am I accused of something?”

Delaney pulled a worn plastic card out of a small pouch inside the case and began to read.  “This is a Multifaceted Integrated Electroencephalographic Response Analyzer and Recorder.  It measures physiological changes that take place in response to certain visual stimuli.  It incorporates...”

“I know what it does,” I said.  “It’s a Magic Mirror.  An electronic mind-probe.  You can skip the dissertation.”

“This is just a little EEG scan,” Dancer said.  “You give us any shit, we’ll drag you down town and wire your ass up to the
Inquisitor
.  Then you’ll find out what a fucking mind-probe is.”

Delaney paused for a second, to see if we were finished interrupting, and then continued to read.  “It incorporates four dermal sensor pads that measure electrical brain activity, galvanic skin reflex, and fluctuations in skin thermography.”

I noticed that his pupils stayed locked on one spot of the card as he talked.  He wasn’t reading; he was reciting from memory.

“Although you are not currently accused of a crime, it is our intention to interview you regarding an on-going homicide investigation.”

He flipped the card over and continued to pretend to read.  “You have the right to terminate this interview at any time.  If you refuse this procedure, we reserve the option to take you into physical custody and transport you to the nearest Police Forensic Electronics facility for questioning under controlled conditions.  You have the right to have an attorney, real or virtual, present during this, and any subsequent interviews.  If you desire an attorney and cannot afford one, you will be granted real-time access to a fully cognizant Artificial Intelligence attached to the Public Defender’s office.”

He looked up at me again.  “Do you understand your rights as I have read them to you?”

“Whose murder are we talking about here?”

“Just answer the question, Mr. Stalin.  Do you understand your rights?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Do you wish to have an attorney present during this interview?”

“Not really.”

Dancer peeled off her jacket.  Underneath, she wore a cross-draw shoulder holster strapped over a light blue short-sleeved shirt.  Even through the shirt, I could see that the muscles of her arms and upper body were impressive.  She could probably bench press me a couple of dozen times.  She tossed her jacket across the back of a chair.  “Are we done with the formalities?”

“We’re done,” Delaney said.

“Good,” she said.  “Then hook him up to the fucking machine.”

Delaney slid the briefcase down to my end of the coffee table and unreeled a set of electrical leads.  He plugged one end of each of the leads into his machine, and connected the other ends to self-adhesive sensor pads.  He turned toward me, the sensor leads dangling from his left hand.  “I’m going to connect these to your forehead.  They will not hurt, and the adhesive is hypoallergenic.  Do you understand?”

Dancer had angled well to his left.  It struck me that she had taken off her jacket to clear the way to her shoulder holster.  She was ready to draw on me if she had to.

“Yes,” I said.  “I understand.”

Delaney stuck two of the pads to the skin above the outer edges of my eyebrows.  The adhesive was cold and had a cloying fake-lemonade smell about it.  Delaney glued the remaining pair close to the center of my forehead, just below the hairline.  He was careful to stand to the side, out of Dancer’s line of fire.

I was equally careful not to move while he was close to me.  The last thing I wanted was for Dancer to show me her quick-draw routine.

Delaney turned back to his briefcase and thumbed a switch.  The screen of the analyzer came to life, the electro-tropic crystal wafer strobing with shifting rainbow abstracts for a second or two before blooming into a full-color high-definition display.  Two internal cooling fans spun up, each emitting a tone that nearly harmonized with the other.

Delaney sat down and punched a few buttons on the keypad and a data window popped open in the upper right corner of the screen.  A series of jagged waveforms appeared in the window, complex, constantly changing, and looking very much like the scribbling of a small child.  Presumably, between them, they described my skin temperature, electrical conductivity, and some component of my brain waves.

Delaney gave Dancer a thumbs-up and turned the briefcase to an angle that hid the display from me.

Dancer nodded.  “Do it.”

Delaney pulled a stack of trids out of the pocket of his jacket.  He handed me the first one: a picture of a building that I didn’t recognize.  He watched the display.  “Miss.”

He handed me another: the Eiffel Tower lying in ruins, the shot that had become so famous after the European Liberation Front had tried to nuke Paris back into the Stone Age.  “Hit.  Irrelevant.”

...a young woman eating a slice of pizza.  “Miss.”

...a storefront with broken windows.  “Miss.”

...a pair of brown shoes.  “Miss.”

...a front view of my house from the street.  “Hit.  Irrelevant.”

...the lobby of the Velvet Clam Hotel.  “Hit.”

Dancer and Delaney exchanged glances.

...an overflowing dumpster.  “Miss.”

...a matchbook from the Velvet Clam, enough of the inside visible to reveal the last three digits of my phone number.  “Hit.”

Dancer flexed the fingers of her right hand slightly.  What in the hell was going on here?  Was she expecting me to try something?

...a man’s body sprawled on a floor, a lake of blood congealing around him on the tile.  “Miss.”

Dancer stepped toward the coffee table.  “What do you mean,
miss
?”

I stared at the image.  The man’s throat had been cut.  Not just sliced, but hacked open as though someone had been trying to take his head off.

“Have a look,” Delaney said.  He pointed to something inside his briefcase.  “This is what Mr. Stalin’s recognition-characteristic looks like.  He definitely did
not
recognize that image.”

I continued to stare at the trid.  The man was older, somebody’s grandfather.  There was something familiar about him.  “Oh Jesus,” I whispered.  “It’s Holtzclaw.”

Delaney pointed to the screen again.  “Hit,” he said.  “Delayed.”

“Goddamn it,” Dancer said.  “Are you sure?”

“I’m certain,” Delaney said.  “Mr. Stalin recognized the victim, but he was clearly not aware that Mr. Holtzclaw is dead.”

“When was he killed?” I asked quietly.

“Some time around four thirty this morning,” Delaney said.

Dancer snatched her jacket off the back of the chair and jammed her left arm down a sleeve.

“Who killed him?” I asked.

“That’s a stupid fucking question,” Dancer snapped.  “If we knew that, we wouldn’t be dicking around with you, would we?”

She wrestled her right arm into the other sleeve and looked back to Delaney.  “Pack it up, Rick.  Let’s get out of here.”

I peeled the pads off my face and handed them to Delaney.  The skin where they had been felt cool and prickly.

Delaney rolled up his leads and closed the case.

Dancer began buttoning up her jacket.  “Let’s slide, Rick.  There’s a killer out there somewhere.”

CHAPTER 7

I stepped into the shower stall; the door slid shut silently behind me.  I didn’t feel like going back to bed, and a hot shower seemed like the next best thing.

“What will it be this morning?” House asked.

“Let’s go with Program Six,” I said sleepily.

“Starting program now.  Enjoy your shower, David.”

“Thanks, House.”

The walls and ceiling of the shower stall cycled from featureless high gloss white to shifting patterns of mottled green and then, with a rapidity that was almost startling, the projection snapped into focus and I was standing in the middle of a rain forest.  The footage had been shot in the eco-modules in Dome 7, and the trees and foliage were a lush and vibrant green.  Vines hung in fat loops from the branches overhead.  The shower floor under my feet was the only flaw in the illusion; it remained its usual white porcelain, rectangular self, a safety feature designed to keep me from walking into the walls or shower doors that were now invisible behind the projection.

I could hear birds singing in the distance, the chittering of monkeys, and wind blowing through the leaf canopy.  House added those parts himself; there were no monkeys, or birds, or wind in Dome 7.

A fat drop of water hit my left shoulder, followed a couple of seconds later by another drop that struck me square on the top of the head.  Suddenly, drops were falling all around me, gaining in speed and density.  Except for the temperature, which I kept as hot as I could stand, it was as much like an actual squall in a forest as I could imagine.