The Big Sheep (2 page)

“Be sure to contact us if you find anything out,” I said. “If we're going to solve this case, it's vital that you not withhold any information.”

“Of course,” Dr. Takemago said after a slight hesitation. I glanced at Keane to see if he had picked up on it, but he was oblivious, seemingly transfixed by the wall of the lab.

“What about someone needing an organ transplant?” I ventured.

Dr. Takemago shot me a dubious look.

“You said these sheep are engineered as hosts for organs intended for transplant. What if someone was desperate for a transplant and couldn't get an organ through legal channels for some reason?”

“Not a chance,” said Dr. Takemago. “Anybody with the resources to pull off a theft like this could easily have gotten hold of a black-market kidney.”

I furrowed my brow at her.

“Black-market trade in human organs from the Disincorporated Zone is well-documented. It wouldn't be difficult for a motivated person with adequate resources to get their hands on a viable human kidney.” She was right of course, but something about the way she said it creeped me out. Takemago had a strange, clinical way of speaking that made me feel a little like I was conversing with a machine.

“What about a liver?” I asked. “Nobody's going to sell their liver on the black market.”

“No one's
own
liver, no,” Dr. Takemago said.

I nodded. She was right. You could get anything in the DZ if you had the money. “Still,” I said, “it would help if we knew a little more about the potential uses for a sheep like Mary.”

“There seems to be a bit of a disconnect here, Mr. Fowler,” she said. “There are no ‘uses' for a sheep like Mary. Her only value is as a subject of research. This is undoubtedly a case of corporate espionage. If the involvement of a ‘phenomenological inquisitor' in this matter is unavoidable, then that's where such a person's efforts should be directed.”

“Humor me,” I said. “When you say the organs are meant for transplanting into humans, do you mean the sheep actually have human organs inside them?”

“More or less,” Takemago said. “Their hearts, kidneys, and livers are designed from a subset of chromosomes common to sheep and human beings so they can be transplanted from one to the other with minimal complications.”

“Minimal complications,” I said. “Not
no
complications.”

I watched as Keane spun around and approached the sheep again. He sank his hand into the top of its fleece once more, and the sheep gave a quick bleat as it felt his presence. Dr. Takemago frowned, clearly agitated.

“There's always the risk of complications with any transplant operation,” she said, her eyes on Keane. “Particularly cross-species—even if the animal is specifically designed for the purpose. That's why it makes no sense to steal a sheep like Mary for her organs when one could more easily purchase a human organ on the black market. It's always better to stay within the same species, if at all possible. Not to mention that these sheep are still experimental. There's simply no advantage to harvesting organs from a sheep.”

“Then why breed them in the first place?”

“Because,” Takemago explained irritably, “Esper Corporation isn't selling organs on the black market. The idea is to supply usable organs through legitimate channels, without anybody having to die in the process.”

“Except for the sheep,” I said.

“Of course,” said Takemago to me. “But better a sheep than a human being.”

I nodded. “Why do you use such a large breed of sheep?” I asked. “Even allowing for the volume of its fleece, that one has to weigh close to three hundred pounds. I would think its organs are too large to fit inside a person.”

Takemago nodded, still watching Keane anxiously. “Another reason it wouldn't make sense to harvest organs from Mary. But in answer to the question, Esper uses several different breeds. These specimens are all experimental. Size is one of the easiest variables to control. Once the problem of organ viability has been solved, the next step is to breed a version with a mass approximating that of an average human being. What are you doing, Mr. Keane?”

Keane seemed oblivious to the question. He was running his hands through the sheep's fleece, pulling away loose fibers and regarding them with apparent fascination.

Dr. Takemago turned to me. “What exactly is Mr. Keane doing?” she demanded.

I watched Keane impassively for a moment. “Woolgathering,” I said, eyeing Dr. Takemago for her response. Crickets.

She continued to watch Keane for some time, clearly agitated. Her hands were clutched in fists at her sides. I saw her lips quivering as if she were preparing for a confrontation. She took a deep breath and said, “Mr. Keane, you have had adequate time to observe that sheep. If you have no other questions, I am going to have to ask you to leave.”

Keane mumbled something incomprehensible.

“Excuse me?” said Dr. Takemago.

“I said, ‘You'll do no such thing,'” Keane remarked.

“Oh?” said Dr. Takemago, rising to the challenge. “And why is that?”

“Because I'm your only hope to keep your job.”

Dr. Takemago snorted derisively. “And how is that, Mr. Keane?”

Keane sighed. He straightened, facing Dr. Takemago, his hands tucked behind his back. “Other than the three of us and Mark here,” he began, “this lab—which could easily accommodate twenty or more scientists and technicians—is empty. Not even a wrangler to help you with the sheep. I can't imagine all your research has ground to a halt simply because one of your subjects has gone missing, which means that the lab has been intentionally cleared of personnel for some reason. Not on your orders, I assume.”

Dr. Takemago didn't reply.

Keane went on, “It's possible that they're trying to hide the theft of the sheep—or some other detail about the case—from the other employees, but that seems unlikely. They aren't going to be able to keep the sheep's disappearance under wraps for long, and you haven't told us anything I couldn't have learned from any low-level employee. Speaking of which, my fee is high enough that ordinarily when I'm hired by a corporate client like Esper, I'm met by one or more board members. Corporate officers uniformly possess an exaggerated sense of their own understanding of the strategic business realities affecting a case. This leads them to believe I couldn't possibly solve the case without their input. But rather than being called into a meeting with the vice president of research and development, who ostensibly hired me for this case, I was directed to speak only to you, a lowly researcher. No offense.”

Dr. Takemago scowled.

“And then there's the fact that nobody has called the police. Perhaps, as you intimate, this is because the matter is too sensitive to be handled by the civil authorities. Or perhaps it's because your superiors didn't see the need.”

“What is your point, Mr. Keane?” demanded Dr. Takemago.

“My point, Doctor, is that your bosses have already determined who is responsible for your missing sheep. They set up this meeting with the sole purpose of seeing how you would react—to see if you would attempt to steer us away from suspecting you. This room is monitored, I assume. I'd wager that the VP of R and D—assuming he really did hire me—is watching us right now. You'll be followed when you leave the building as well. If you don't incriminate yourself during this meeting, they're hoping to spook you into making a mistake, like trying to contact your coconspirators.”

Dr. Takemago's mouth had fallen open in shock. “But I … I didn't—”

“What your superiors fail to take into account is that if you were the sheep thief, you'd have anticipated suspicion and surveillance. In fact, given that you're the obvious prime suspect, you'd likely have planned a strategy of misdirection, deliberately inviting suspicion in order to demonstrate your innocence and utter guilelessness. If you had conducted this heist directly under your superiors' noses, as it were, the last thing that would spook you into making a mistake is some eccentric detective poking around your lab, asking silly questions. This is one of the hazards of being an eccentric detective, by the way. Clients tend to rely on my reputation while discounting my ability. Esper hired me not to solve this case, but to put on my dog and pony show in your lab in order to flush you out. In addition to being completely misguided and doomed to fail from the outset, there's one major flaw with this plan.”

“I didn't steal the sheep,” said Dr. Takemago.

“No,” Keane said. “You didn't.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Do you see this sheep?” asked Keane, walking over to Mark and patting it gently on its head. “The poor thing is terrified.”

“So?” I asked.

“Sheep are herd animals,” said Keane. “They hate being separated from their herd. It's a little hard to tell, but this beast is having the sheep equivalent of a panic attack right now. Simply because it's standing alone in this lab, a place where it's probably been a hundred times before.”

The sheep let out a low bleat, and Keane scratched its ear comfortingly.

I held up my hands, indicating I wasn't following.

“Well,” he said, “imagine how
Mary
feels. She's in a strange place, alone, separated from her flock. She must be out of her mind with fear.”

I was about to interject, asking if he was going to get to the point sometime this week, but then I saw Dr. Takemago bite her lip, and I caught a glimpse of the picture Keane was painting.

“Dr. Takemago's surly demeanor is a cover,” said Keane. “She loves these sheep. She empathizes with them. You can tell by the way she fidgets when I approach it. It pains her to see poor Mark standing here, alone in the lab, being harassed by a strange man. Maybe at first they were just research subjects, but she's come to have strong feelings for them. She would never willingly remove Mary from her herd. I suppose it's possible that Dr. Takemago assisted the thief under duress, but it's hard to imagine what sort of leverage the thief might use.”

“The usual, I suppose,” I offered. “Threaten her family, or—”

Keane shook his head. “Dr. Takemago tends to avoid eye contact and personal pronouns, engages in the bare minimum of personal grooming, lacks social graces, presents a virtually asexual affect, and demonstrates an abbreviated range of emotions. These characteristics, along with her chosen career in a highly technical, specialized scientific field, indicate that she possesses traits of autism and social anxiety disorder. I expect she has no friends and no close family. This job is her entire life, and those sheep are the closest things she has to friends. To get Dr. Takemago to betray her employer and cause suffering to one of her sheep, the thief would have had to threaten to take away something she values more than her job and her research subjects. There isn't any such thing.”

Dr. Takemago stared at Keane with something that was either annoyance or awe.

“So,” I said, “this whole meeting has been a waste of time.”

“Not at all,” said Keane. “We've accomplished two important tasks. One, we've eliminated Dr. Takemago as a suspect and saved her job. Two: we've demonstrated that I'm the only person in this building smart enough to find the real thief.” Keane craned his neck back and addressed the ceiling. “So,” he said, “if it's all the same to you, I'll get to work on that.”

 

TWO

The Case of the Lost Sheep was to be the eighteenth investigation Keane and I worked together. My association with Keane had begun three years earlier, on the Case of the Mischievous Holograms. At the time I had been the head of security for Canny Simulations, Inc., a company that creates artificially intelligent holograms of celebrities. CSI had the rights to most of the big names: Elvis, Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Sheila Tong, the Weavil Brothers. A hacker had managed to get into our code base and was projecting our celebrities all over town: at strip clubs, children's birthday parties … Bette Midler showed up at a bowling alley in Van Nuys. The hacker didn't seem to be particularly malicious, but the CSI board of directors was understandably concerned that having unlicensed versions of our biggest names crashing bar mitzvahs in Glendale was diluting our corporate brand. The feds had pretty much given up on trying to enforce piracy laws by this point (this was shortly after the Collapse, so the feds had their hands full with more important things, like domestic terrorism and the threat of Chinese invasion), and the LAPD couldn't be bothered to expend much effort to catch someone who was essentially a high-tech graffiti artist. The board hired Erasmus Keane over my stringent objections, and I insisted I be present at all Keane's interactions with CSI personnel. I ended up accompanying Keane during most of the investigation, and spent much of the next three days thoroughly documenting his unprofessionalism, lack of social propriety, neurotic behavior, inability to execute mundane tasks, and poor hygiene. He was like an idiot savant without the savant part. At one point during the investigation, he locked himself in a bathroom stall for over three hours. After I'd gathered what I thought was more than enough evidence to get Keane fired, I asked to address the next board meeting. When I got there, Keane was already in the conference room, laughing it up with the CEO and the rest of the board. With him was a fourteen-year-old kid named Julio Chavez, who was conversing animatedly with Obi-Wan Kenobi, Teddy Roosevelt, and Greta Autenburg, who was the latest teen sensation at the time. Keane had not only found the hacker, he'd convinced the kid to come work for CSI. He's the director of simulation development now.

I'd been so humiliated by this turn of events that I quit my job on the spot. Truth be told, I'd been bored stiff by the corporate security gig; I was basically a glorified mall cop. I'd only taken the job because it seemed like a cushy gig after three years of running security details for VIPS on the Arabian Peninsula. Anyway, it paid better than civilian law enforcement, and at the time I'd had some thoughts of planning for the future. But then Gwen—my girlfriend at the time—disappeared, and … well, by the time dead celebrities started showing up around town, I'd pretty much given up on the future.