The Immorality Clause (25 page)

EIGHTEEN: WEDNESDAY

Jasmin Jones tried to get me to talk to her about my feelings after Paxton committed suicide in front of me. There wasn’t anything to talk about. I’d really liked the woman—who turned out to be a robot—learned of her scam and spent almost a week in jail disassociating my mind between the person whom I’d thought she was and the robot that she truly was.
A lying, conniving, whorebot that tried to frame me for murder
. I had no feelings for it.

Or at least that’s what I told Doctor Jones to keep her off my back.

The rest of Tuesday was a blur between the pain meds and answering questions from the Internal Affairs detectives who’d chosen to question me about my inadvertent violation of the department’s Immorality Clause after the video evidence of the suicide was released internally to the department. Great timing.

The Immorality Clause, officially item 234.7, subparagraph A of the
New Orleans Police Department Standards of Conduct for Officers and Full Time Employees
, stated, in part, that officers and employees of the NOPD would not engage in any sexual activity with prostitutes—human or robotic—nor would the exchange of money, goods or favors be exchanged for sexual acts. The remainder of the clause covered various forms of vice and acts deemed inappropriate by the department, including
any
type of intercourse with non-humans.

In the end, the IA dicks ruled that since I hadn’t known she was a robot and she wasn’t one of the sex droids, then the charges for violating the clause would be dropped. They still placed me on a two week administrative leave with half pay for initiating a relationship with a witness in an active murder case. The fact that I’d been drugged and tricked into it was the only thing that saved my job; otherwise, I’d have been booted off the force.

Brubaker had me turn in my service pistol and go speak to the human resources office before having the Tortuga take me home.

I was exhausted, once again, walking through my door and had Andi order food while I showered. The warm water felt nice on my battered body and I marveled at how much filth came off of me in the shower, even after the localized sponge bath I’d been given when the hospital ER staff sewed me up. The water was brown around my feet by the time I was finished as my blood mingled with synthetic robotic fluids and smoke film from the burning droids at The Puss ‘n Boots.

A delivery bot stood outside my door when I got out of the shower. Andi authorized my credit card and I took the sack of tacos from it. I carried the bag to the dining table and started to open it when I saw my notes on the pleasure club murder case sitting open.

I picked up the pen, wrote, “
SUNDAY,
” in big, bold letters and circled it. I drew a line to another area on the paper and scribbled, “
FATHER
.” The two clues came from one of the droids that tried to kill me.

What did the two of those things have to do with the other?

I wrote, “
SEX CLUB
,” near the top of the page. Those were the themes for this case—I thought. A large question mark went in the center of the triangle and I traced it repeatedly, thinking.

The Paxton piece had been a matter of convenience to get me off the case, like the Jeep and attack at the club had been, so I dismissed her out of hand. Thinking about it objectively, even the drive-by had been an effort to scare me off the case.

The question mark represented the killer. What did I know about him? He was a world-class hacker, but he also had some sort of connection with the sex clubs. He could have hacked into any of the droids working across the city, but so far, he’d focused exclusively on pleasure droids in Easytown. Why did he only use them?

“Andi, do some research about the security of droids used in New Orleans. Why is the killer only hacking into sex bots? Is their security system easier to manipulate than others?”

“Okay, boss. Give me a few minutes.”

While she did that, I ate the tacos. “Sex clubs, father, Sunday… Andi, do a search on those three terms together.”

“Working… First query is ready.”

“Tell me the sex bots are the easiest to hack.”

“It’s the opposite, Zach. Besides the police drones, the most secure public droids are the courier robots, for all the reasons you’d expect. Then pleasure droids are next in the security hierarchy. The primary reason cited is so jealous spouses can’t access proof of extramarital affairs, the manufacturers want clients to feel safe giving their credit card information to a droid, and intimate details may be passed between client and robot. The technology employed in pleasure droids is extremely expensive, so the manufacturers have invested significantly in security in order to defend against viruses—digital, not physical, they are immune to those.”

I remained silent while she ran down the list. Standard delivery droids were next on the list, followed by non-monitored automobiles and then construction robots. Household robots, such as maids and chefs, were the least secure.

“Well, shit. That means he could have used almost anything in the city, but he specifically focused on pleasure droids… Why?”

“Second query returned,” Andi stated.

“Send it,” I muttered as I wrote out the list of droid security hierarchy.

“Results in order of relevance, including police visibility as a parameter. Number one, the Head of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul the Fourth, will be in New Orleans Friday through Sunday. His visit was announced this week.”

“That’s it,” I stated. “He’s the target.”

“There are six other highly probable targets that align with your requested search, including the Secretary of Energy. He’ll be at the groundbreaking of a new solar research facility near the Port of New Orleans.”

“No. It’s the Pope,” I asserted. “Since he was elected, his platform has been to eliminate human trafficking, rape and prostitution through the worldwide legalization of pleasure droids. If he were to be murdered by a sex bot, then it would create a worldwide outcry against them…” I trailed off as I thought. “He’s being targeted by activists who want to ban the droids.”

“That would seem to be a plausible scenario,” Andi agreed. “However, if you are wrong and the hacker carries out his attack elsewhere in a similar high-profile manner, the police department will appear to be fools.”

“It doesn’t get bigger than the Holy Father.” I wrote the word, “
POPE
,” on my paper over the question mark. “Where is he staying and what’s his itinerary?”

“He will be staying at the Hotel Mazarin in the French Quarter. There will be a parade on Saturday, encompassing most of the major New Orleans streets. It’s expected to last for four hours. He will lead Mass, to include communion on Saturday evening, at the Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church. Sunday morning, he will lead a 10 a.m. service at St. Patrick’s Church. The last item on his itinerary is to deliver a speech and offer blessings to the crowd at the St. Louis Cathedral.”

“So the parade and the first service are out since they’re on Saturday,” I said. “That leaves the two services on Sunday.” I tapped the word on my paper.

“There is expected to be a much larger crowd at the cathedral,” Andi stated, obviously still data mining in the background. “It is expected to draw as many as twenty thousand spectators.”

“Holy shit!” I exclaimed. “I was just down there last week; Jackson Square can’t hold twenty thousand people.”

“You are correct. The square is two-point-five acres, at one meter per individual—assuming no structures or trees—approximately twelve thousand five hundred could technically fit into the square. They are expecting people to overflow and fill in the streets along a line of sight to the cathedral.”

“Televised, right?”

“As the first stop on the Pope’s North American tour to campaign against human trafficking, the event will be televised on every major network across the world.”

“It’s the speech,” I decided. “This is going to go down at the speech. The killer will have a worldwide audience for his event.” I crammed a bite into my mouth and chewed. “Andi, call Chief Brubaker.”

He didn’t answer and I chose not to leave a message. My father taught me that it was always easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. Since I was on administrative leave, I’d have to stay away from the Pope in an official capacity, but there was nothing stopping me from exercising my rights as a private citizen who wanted to see the religious leader.

As the evening wore on and the bourbon kicked in, I felt a voice calling to me. That same small voice that people say they hear when they commune with God told me that I needed a blessing from the Pope.

I spent a restless night worrying about the implications of the Pope’s assassination live on global television. If that happened, everyone in the NOPD who had anything to do with the security of the Holy Father would be out of a job—or worse. The state would look for a scapegoat to appease the one and a half billion Catholics.

The IA investigation put me on admin leave. I wasn’t allowed to work the case, but I couldn’t disassociate myself from it; the details of it would be implanted in my brain forever. Was there a critical piece of information that I’d forgotten to pass on to Cruz, something that I’d taken for granted that he needed to carry on and bust the killer?

I tossed and turned for hours until I finally came up with a plan to keep myself busy and fell asleep around four or five in the morning.

Andi woke me gently at eleven and asked if I’d like coffee. “Yeah, I’ll take enough to fill my travel mug,” I grunted.

“Are you going someplace,” she asked.

“I’m gonna go to the Pharaoh for lunch and then go check out that address I got from Tommy Voodoo. I meant to go yesterday, but got caught up with…well, with everything. I’m just gonna see what’s there.”

“Zach, you are on administrative leave. You are not authorized to conduct active field work on any cases.”

“Lighten up, Andi. I’m not investigating anything, I’m simply going to go over and knock on the door, see who answers.”

“Zach…”

“I’m going and that’s final,” I said loudly to be heard over the toilet computer’s analysis of the blood in my urine.

“Then at least call Sergeant Drake for backup. You got your ass handed to you yesterday because you were too stubborn to wait for him.”

“How do you know that? I didn’t tell you that,” I muttered around the toothbrush that I’d crammed into my mouth.

“The Easytown Police Department mainframe computer and I talk,” she replied.

“That’s just weird.”

“It’s not any different than you discussing a case with a peer. Anything that concerns you is my number one priority, so I seek answers when you won’t provide them.”

I regarded my bruised and battered face. Scabs covered multiple patches on my cheek and jaw. A half-moon shaped laceration on my forehead indicated where the doc had glued the skin together and both my eyes were swollen and bloodshot. It wasn’t worth the blood loss to attempt to shave, so I just got in the shower. After all, I was on
vacation
; I could afford to skip a day or two of shaving.

I felt much more human after the shower. I still felt like crap physically, but there’s nothing like the feeling of being clean to boost your mood. “Andi, please make sure the cleaning service comes today. There’s a lot of blood on the sheets and they haven’t been changed since Paxton was here.”

“I’m sure your bedding is sufficiently breeding bacteria on its own, Zach. Are you sure you want to terminate your science experiment?”

“Okay, I got it. I need to take better care of myself,” I replied with my hand hovering over the suit row of suits. “I guess I don’t need to wear one of these today.”

I shuffled over to the closet’s built in shelving and grabbed a pair of jeans and a plain black t-shirt. “No one will recognize you now.”

“God dammit, Andi. I love sarcasm, but only when I do it. Tone it down a little this morning.”

“Sorry. I’m trying to put you in a good mood.”

I paused in the middle of pushing my foot into the sneaker. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m being a dick. Joke away.”

“I’m over it now,” she replied. “You know, you shouldn’t wear running shoes with blue jeans.”