The Administration Series (38 page)

Seiden sniffed. "Aren't you going to tell me not to break her?"

"She's waivered for anything short of taking her apart with a scalpel. Do whatever it takes, just get me a result."

"That's funny," Seiden said after an hour.

Two of the best words to hear during an investigation. Taking a deep breath, Toreth crossed over to peer at the screen over the mindfucker's shoulder. Figures and multicoloured images that meant nothing to him filled the screen. "What?"

"I'm not sure. It looks like something . . . not just a block, though. It's — "

"Wait a minute. You said, 'not
just
a block'?"

"That's right. You can see the block here. See?" He pointed to an incomprehensible mass of coloured peaks on the 3D map. "Or at least that's what it looks like on the preliminary scan. She's a mess — worse than the last time I saw her." The screen changed to a more complex map. "But when it's processed . . . if anything, it looks like an implant." Seiden turned to another screen. "It's concurrent with this part of the statement. From 'I finished my work' until 'we left together'. The retrieval patterns for those memories are different to the segments before and after. If you look at this trace — "

"Hang on. You're saying it's not real?" Toreth had forgotten about holding his breath.

Seiden shook his head. "I'm saying it's an anomaly. If it's an implant, it's a bloody good one. Better than I could do."

The sim. It had to be the sim. "It's like a real experience, slotted in afterwards so the edges don't quite join up."

Seiden looked round. "Something like that. Where the hell did you learn to read retrieval traces?"

"Nowhere. I'm a lucky guesser. Can you stick it all in a report and send it to me? I need a one-page summary simple enough that a head of section will sign an arrest warrant on the strength of it."

Warrick put up more resistance than Tanit.

The director pushed his way into the psychologist's office only minutes after Toreth, B-C and a pair of I&I guards arrived. Toreth continued to read the warrant out, simply raising his voice to make sure that Tanit could hear it over Warrick's protests.

When he'd finished, and asked her if she understood, Tanit nodded and turned to Warrick.

"Don't worry," she said. "I don't have anything to hide."

"Don't —" The guards started to move forwards and Warrick stepped quickly in front of Tanit. "She's not going anywhere until I get her a lawyer."

"Arrange it with the Justice rep," Toreth said. "I'll send you the name as soon as one's appointed." He turned to the guards. "B-C, get her back to I&I. Process her, put her in the cells."

"Yes, Para."

"You can't — " Warrick began.

Toreth caught Warrick by the arm and pushed him back a few steps, holding him as the guards escorted Marian from the room. Warrick tried to jerk his arm free, then hissed with pain as Toreth dug his fingers in strategically.

"Listen to me," Toreth said, his voice low. "I'm doing my job here. Just because I've had my cock in you a few times doesn't mean that I give a fuck about what you think — about Tanit, about I&I, or about any other fucking thing. One more fucking word out of you, and I'll arrest you for obstruction."

Warrick stared at him, his mouth open. Then it snapped closed, and he nodded sharply.

Toreth released him and turned to find B-C and the guards still waiting in the outer office. Tanit was watching them through the door with a slight smile. Her calm was mildly unnerving.

"Go on — get her out of here."

As the guards started to lead her away, Warrick took a step forwards, then stopped himself. Silence in the office, until the sounds of footsteps had faded, and Warrick turned to him.

"She didn't do it," Warrick said. Toreth noticed that he made the statement with the same confidence that he usually applied to pronouncing the sim completely safe.

"That's what we'll find out at I&I."

Warrick's lip curled briefly, contempt familiar to Toreth from a hundred previous cases, and then he left without another word.

As Warrick walked out, the forensics team walked in. Toreth hung around outside, waiting for them to finish the first pass of the room. They found only one thing, but it had the potential to be all he needed: two ampoules, in a box marked 'sedatives', pushed to the back of a drawer.

Why the hell Tanit had kept them — if they were the toxin — and why they were here to be found, Toreth didn't know. Still, it gave him something with which to open the interrogation in the morning.

Down in the interrogation room, Tanit kept up an impressive front as she read through the analysis of the ampoules in her desk drawer, which perfectly matched that of the toxin in the injector found by Lee. After reading it carefully, Tanit shook her head.

"I have no idea at all where those came from," she said calmly. "They're not mine, and I didn't put them in the drawer."

"Your own office records show that Yang came to see you last week. Twice."

Tanit looked at the copy of the record with equal composure. "Indeed he did — about his future with SimTech. And, regrettably, that was all he talked about. Perhaps I should have guessed that there might be more to it."

"He told you nothing about his suspicions that the sim might be killing people?"

Her lips quirked. "If he had, don't you think you'd have been the first person I would have told? How long have I been trying to tell you that the sim isn't safe?"

He flicked the screen to the third item, and she looked down again. Her expression froze. "Is she all right?"

Toreth shrugged. "I didn't ask. No one mentioned that she died."

"Tara was in no condition for a deep scan!" Her hands tightened on the edge of the screen, knuckles whitening, and when she looked up, her eyes were blazing. "You knew that — they must have known that too. She was in the hospital. That's why — " She stopped dead.

"Why you sent her there?"

She stared past him, lips pressed together.

"Look at the summary. Look at the scan results. Who else at SimTech could do that?"

Composure returning, Tanit simply shook her head slightly.

"I know about your training. I have a file that proves you have the necessary skills."

No response. Toreth shrugged. "Well, if you won't do this the easy way." He stood and gestured to the interrogation chair.

Tanit was already rising, setting the screen down with a sharp click. "You have a noticeable theatrical streak in your nature, Para-investigator Toreth," she said as she crossed the room and took the seat, settling her wrists into place as he came over.

She looked up at him as he fitted the restraints, her pale eyes clear. "One might almost call it playful. An uncommon trait in the personality disordered. Someone should write a paper."

Straps secured, he dismissed the guards and cut out the external feed — he didn't like an audience, and with a commercially sensitive case and the possibility of a corporate sab team still in his mind, he couldn't risk information leaking.

Popular rumour gave I&I wonder drugs that made subjects talk instantly and truthfully, and scanners that could read minds. Toreth had never understood how people could believe both that and the horror stories of brutality and maiming.

The truth was, as usual, somewhere between the two. They had drugs, and they often worked if given enough time and experimentation. Neural monitors and behavioural analysis gave a high probability of detecting lies, but they couldn't pluck out the truth. If the drugs didn't do the trick, or if someone needed the information quickly, there were other methods available.

Toreth worked carefully, adjusting dosages and adding extra compounds to the mix, until Tanit's denials trailed off into confusion and stumbling half-confessions. It took him five hours before he found the right combination to keep his prisoner both truthful and capable of stringing together a useful sentence.

He started with his entry point to the whole case. "How did you kill Kelly Jarvis?"

"I went into the room with Tara, when she opened the door." She spoke slowly, concentrating. "Then, while she was using the mike, I injected Jarvis. Next morning, in the rehabilitation session, I altered her memory so that she didn't remember I was there."

"Warrick said that the sim can't do that."

"It can't. Not —" She frowned. "Not without drugs. Right drugs."

"Which were supplied by?"

She shook her head. Toreth crouched down beside the chair. "Come on. You had help — to get hold of the drugs and the toxin, you must have had. Who?"

Another shake. Standing up, he considered. Another dose might send her over the edge of coherence, but he was too frustratingly close not to risk it. He could always wait for her to come down and resume later, although every lost minute gave whoever was using Tanit more time to get away.

She watched, unreacting, as he gave her the injection. He sat down, tapping his fingers on the edge of the table, while it took effect.

When he repeated the question, she answered at once.

"I was contacted. Three months ago. Four."

"Why you?"

"Don't know. Because I'd made objections, maybe. Maybe they'd seen the paper on Tara's episode."

"Who?"

She shook her head, the gesture exaggerated. "Corporate. No names. They wanted to cripple SimTech's funding. I arranged everything with them. I wanted people to know the sim is dangerous. It damages users — not all users, but some. Warrick won't
accept
it. None of them will."

Justifications that didn't interest him. "So you killed Jon Teffera?"

"No. Jon Teffera died." She smiled, relaxed in the grip of the drugs. "Just died. Coincidence. Or the sim — it would serve him right. I warned him. Said it was dangerous. I didn't know what to do, and then, when he died, I saw the way."

"What was the plan?"

The smile became almost mischievous, oddly out of place on her usually austere face. "Which one?"

"What do you mean?"

"I told them I would kill users, one or two. I picked them — Jarvis and Keilholtz. Do you want me to tell you about Keilholtz? They said you were going to call it natural causes, so I contaminated one ampoule in the batch. That's all. Easy." She giggled. "It was all very, very easy."

"Why Keilholtz?"

"He had no children, no family. No one close except Nissim. Nissim was dangerous — she backed the sim. She could have helped them — SimTech. I'd sent her information about it. Anonymously. She wouldn't listen. I had to neutral — neutralise her. Better than killing her — that was a mistake. Wanted to make her hate us. Them. SimTech."

"And Kelly Jarvis?"

For the first time, Tanit looked away from him. "I needed someone. She was Tara's friend — the one Tara went to see in the sim."

"You could've picked Yang."

She nodded. "I had to pick one, didn't I?" Her face was bleak. "One of them. And he's married and Kelly was Tara's friend. Her only real friend. The shock. Isolation. Makes it easier to implant. To get close. To — God . . . such a long time ago when I learned it all. I'll never forget it. I see their faces in my sleep, all of them."

It took Toreth a moment to realise she must be talking about her psychoprogrammer training. "You said there was more then one plan?"

"Plan . . . oh, yes." She shook her head. "Corporates. They wanted the sim — no good if it's been killing people, yes? You understand?"

He nodded.

"I told them when SimTech was gone, I would give Tara the memory of carrying out the killings. She'd confess. They could have the sim, cleared of blame. Easy to do. She was ideal. So vulnerable. All those rehabituation sessions . . ." She smiled bitterly. "Best work I ever did. So well prepared — putting the memories in would've been easy."

"But you weren't going to keep your promise?"

She giggled again. "No. Wasn't that naughty of me? Let them blame the sim — it would never be sold." The humour disappeared abruptly. "I never planned to hurt Tara. She should've been fine. You. It was your fault. You were supposed to blame the sim." She looked almost angry now. "I made it easy for you. I told you it was dangerous. It
is
dangerous. I sent the note about Marcus. I knew about that — about his girls. He told me he'd tampered with the security system. It was
obvious
it was the sim."

"Not obvious enough. Or maybe too obvious."

She nodded, biting her lip. "I never wanted her to get hurt."

"So what about Yang?"

She shook her head emphatically. "It wasn't me. No. Not him. He'd — he'd done nothing." Her voice sank to a whisper. "Or maybe . . . I don't know. Maybe it was me. I didn't want anything to happen to him, but it was my fault. He came to me with the sim logs. I knew what it meant, that it could lead you to the toxin. He trusted me, because I doubted the sim. I shouldn't have told them."

"Who?"

"No names. Anonymous contact. I didn't think. Should've seen it, that they'd try to silence him. So . . . yes. That's my fault. As much as the others. I killed him. Price — "