The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue (12 page)

The Eighth Precinct was definitely
special. It was an urban hell out that way. They would take
anybody, and if they had any talent or integrity at all, they were
just as loath to give them up.

From across the room, his partner
Francine was waving imperiously, as was her fashion.

MacBride waved back and shut the
screens down, as it sure looked like they had another
body.

With his rank and experience, it was
the only thing that really interested him these days. He looked at
his watch, a private joke between he and Emily. It was a countdown
watch. There were four years, six months, nine days, and a few
hours, until he could take early retirement. He swallowed the rest
of his coffee hurriedly, made a quick note for later, and then got
up out of his chair.

Detective Suleiman was the
investigating officer of record, and this one was her baby. She
gave the Inspector a wintry grin and then cleared her throat.
That’s what you get for answering the phone sometimes.

Wait a minute. He nipped back to his
desk. Grabbing a pen, he made a quick notation.

Drones. Flood the area with drones.
Somewhere. Some area.

He really couldn’t think of anything
else. It was like his mind went blank. He shook it off and joined
the others.

They were all in the huddle, looking
expectantly at Francine.

“
All right people, listen
up.”

***

Scott awoke with a start,
shivering.

It might take a while for it to
pass.

While he hadn’t slept outdoors in
years, but the dampness in the air and the fitful chirping of
robins told him that it was dawn or shortly before. With nothing
but pitch blackness, and the place beside him cold, he knew
instantly that Betty was gone.

“
Fuck.”

His own voice startled him, and he
resolved to shut up in any such future situations. It was a risk he
didn’t have to take. The sounds of the wilderness were all around
him. Betty had said they were in an old auto parts
plant.

He had to accept her word for it, but
the sounds said otherwise. The wind luffed in the treetops, and he
imagined them in his mind’s eye, growing out of broken windows and
holes in the roof. There were crickets and spring peepers—how many
years had it been since he’d heard them?

There was always the sound of distant
traffic off in the background. That part was familiar enough,
although not very reassuring.

Scott’s lower back hurt from sleeping
on the ground. He had to go to the bathroom, and there was no sense
in just lying there frozen in fear.

It was no pleasure lying on the hard
ground, but he was reluctant to show himself. He had money on him,
he was alone, and he was blind. He didn’t even have the stick. The
sounds were reassuringly natural. It was interesting not to hear
voices. It was so quiet he could hear a solitary jet airliner
coursing from east to west overhead at something like ten thousand
metres. It didn’t mean much, but it was something.

He sat up, carefully taking stock of
his situation. If he wandered too far, he’d lose the blanket and
the backpack, the food, the water.

“
Damn.”

The little flutter in the region of the
heart wasn’t very nice.

All right. Time for a pee. He got up
creakily, and thought it through. Walk a few steps, pee and then
return.

No stick. That was bad. There might be
some obstacle directly in front of him. Tottering there on one leg,
he poked with a foot. Nothing. He took a step, prodded with his
foot again. Nothing there, and he cleared his throat. There was no
real echo.

“
Shit.” The thoughts of
another fucking ravine, or a steep drop like a loading dock, made
the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

Shuffling onwards as carefully as he
could, he went about three metres and then relieved himself. It
sounded like it was splashing on concrete, but the ground under him
was still soft, dead leaves, moss, maybe even grass and weeds.
Something scraped his hand, and he felt small, soft leaves and
shrubbery to his left.

Feeling a little bolder now, he turned
and felt his way back carefully to their sleeping area.

A smoke, some water, and maybe some
candy or something from his backpack would keep him going, at least
for a little while.

Feeling around, the suitcases didn’t
seem to be right there.

That made a lot of sense.

He began to feel better about
things.

Betty had left him somewhere safe. He
had to believe that. She had gone on, not needing nearly as much
sleep as he did. 

She must be scouting ahead and she’d be
back as soon as she could. That didn’t do much for the
fear.

Scott stretched and his jaw worked back
and forth. His mouth tasted like a garbage can.

He’d poke the Devil’s eye out for a
good cup of coffee right about now, that and an actual chair to sit
on.

His sensitive fingers fished out a
cigarette and the lighter was in his jacket pocket.

“
Come on, Baby. Don’t
leave me here waiting too long…please.” Oh, God.

Betty.

Where in the hell had she gotten off
to?

They weren’t even really out of the
city yet.

Travelling in daylight was going to be
a problem no matter where they were.

Chapter Nine

The briefing ended and the gathered
detectives were grabbing jackets and briefcases. This particular
killing was nasty enough. A woman and her two little girls were
watching TV, when her husband answered a knock at the door. Hearing
an altercation, she was just hustling the kids to a back bedroom
when her husband was shot with an automatic weapon.

She made the girls go down in the
basement, picked up a knife in the kitchen and then her husband
bled to death in her arms even as emergency responders
arrived.

“
Francine.”

“
Yes, boss?”

“
I don’t think I really
need to go down there. You guys can handle this.”

“
Sure. Okay.”

“
I need to call the chief,
and then I might have to pull you off too.”

“
Sure. Whatever.”
Detective Francine Suleiman gave him a wry look, patted him on the
bicep and then did up the final fasteners on her vest.

“
If I can get us in there,
we need to know a lot more about that damned robot.”

“
Still on that bullshit,
Gene?”

“
Yeah. I got the lucky tap
from above, and the Cartiers are VIPs.”

“
So where is this
place?”

“
SimTech. They’re in
Buffalo.”

Her shoulders tensed. She was winding
up, thinking of babysitters, endless calls and texts, another
monkey wrench thrown into her day.

“
Okay. Try and give me a
little notice, okay?” It was three hours by high-speed
train.

It was two and a half hours by air. Too
much of it spent in terminals and waiting on the ground in the
aircraft.

“
Why do we got to go up
there, anyways?”

“
Because. I like to look
people in the eye when they lie to me.”

His frosty smile took some of the
warmth and humidity out of the air. There wasn’t that much to begin
with.

She nodded ruefully, inclining her
head.

It was true enough, she
supposed.

“
Thanks,
Francine.”

He watched her turn to go. The last of
them filed out of the room. They were loaded for bear and carrying
far too much electronic gadgetry for his liking. The helmets alone
weighed eleven pounds each.

So far the lady of the house wasn’t
talking. She claimed she had no idea of who had shot her husband or
why anyone would ever want to do so.

The only thing she had admitted, was
that her husband might do a little ADHD from time to time. The lady
denied ever doing it herself, and no one had the heart to test her
blood just then as it would just rub salt in the wounds. Privately,
a lot of cops thought the kids were better off with the parents,
rather than being seized and re-assigned to other parents. She was
pretty sure there were two males out there on the porch. As to
whether her husband Dwayne had been buying or selling, or maybe he
just owed the wrong somebody a little too much money, she claimed
not to know.

The trouble was that no one ever did
anything for no reason.

She knew more than she was letting on.
It was a question of whether she would cooperate, or did they have
to do everything the hard way.

***

Gene MacBride and Francine Suleiman
stood in awe.

The great room stretched off into a
haze of atmospheric perspective. The air was blue with soldering
fumes, and rows of heads, all robot girls, bent in fixed
concentration upon their tasks.

There must have been ten thousand
overhead lights, sodium or halogen, all hanging on metal tubes and
looking like rocket engines more than anything else.

“
Our products are the
finest on the market today.” Mister Burch was in full sales pitch.
“Right now we are at only twelve percent market penetration. With
full amortization, certainly within the next twenty years, we
foresee the cost coming down somewheres in the range of thirty to
forty thousand a copy for the base models. Think of it, a household
servant, one that does windows, walks the dog and can even
home-school your children.”

He beamed at them, and then extended
an arm in invitation. Gene wasn’t quite sure if Allan Burch was
selling ‘bots or selling shares. He probably did both, when you
thought about it.

Sell, sell, sell.

That’s just the way of the
world.

Allan Burch led them on to another
workstation. Here a torso, with gaping holes for the waist, neck
and arms, had a pair of hatches on the back. It was clamped to the
bench and separate robotic arms were working on the placement of
small components. There was a more complex robot involved as well.
This one was moving around, looking at a screen for specifications
if Gene was interpreting correctly, and adding in accessories. Just
like a new car, he thought.

“
What are we building
here?”

“
This is a typical
ambulatory robot.” Burch stepped in, leaned forward, and read off
the screen. “It’s for commercial applications. Oh. This one will be
driving for United Postal Service.”

“
Ah.” Francine’s eyes met
his, eyebrows raised in amusement. “At least he’s not flipping
burgers for Mickey D’s.”

Gene nodded.

The machine would have to have some
independent reasoning skills. The nature of its job and the modern
traffic landscape meant it would be presented with unforeseen
circumstances. This might include anything from traffic snarls to
customers refusing to sign, ducking payment or even just the usual,
more run-of-the-mill psychopaths. They would have to defend their
cargo from thieves and high-jackers on occasion. If nothing else,
they would have to find someone or something of record to accept
delivery.

A gynoid, a lady robot designed to
mimic human form, albeit in a shiny blue-chrome and featureless
way, was just attaching a small chip or something into a set of
sockets deep in the interior of the machine. Her hands, very deft
and sure, were amazing to watch. It reached into a plastic bin and
picked out more parts. It soldered them into place, with tools all
lined up neatly. It took a wire harness and began snapping the
leads into place. There were plastic ties to bundle the wire
harness. Gene felt smarter just watching this.

There were more bands of wires bonded
together in wide straps, brightly coloured and plugged in here and
there.

“
Yes, this is all very
interesting.” Interesting, it was fascinating as all hell, thought
Gene. “But more to the point—”

“
Oh. Yes.” Burch cleared
his throat and looked a bit uncomfortable.

In accepting an appointment from two
senior cops, out-of-towners, naturally his able (and fully robotic)
secretary had asked what it was about.

“
Well, anything,
really.”

“
Anything?”

Burch was more confident now. Taking
Francine’s arm in a proprietorial manner, he led them
on.

Standing there, the factory was
curiously quiet, but all the stamping and welding were done
elsewhere.

They watched as the legs were attached
to a ball-joint and actuator arms were attached to pins at gusseted
hard-points.

“
Originally, our ‘droids
were designed for military, police, and security use. Then we
branched out into mining, nuclear waste handling, all kinds of
hazardous occupations. Fire-fighting and forestry for example, when
you need boots on the ground, ones with autonomous capability and
not too large, if you know what I mean.”