The Dyson File, page 4
The station was a city in its own right, and while its core activities revolved around law enforcement, the station was also home to a plethora of civilian businesses, with the most common taking the form of food and entertainment venues.
Becky’s Quiet Corner was one such establishment, a modest café nestled in the hard edge of one of the station’s corners, one level above the central hangars. The square “equator” where the two pyramids met formed a solid wall over ten levels tall and housed the majority of the station’s hangars for corvettes and other craft of similar sizes, while larger vessels docked externally. Patrons at Becky’s watched the comings and goings through two of the cafe’s inward-slanted walls.
Isaac stood at the threshold for a moment, his eyes taking in the room. The café was packed for the midday rush, but the seating was arranged so that it didn’t feel crowded. Its hardwood floors and cloth drapes pulled back from the windows gave the establishment an old-fashioned, earthy ambiance. He spotted Nina at a small table by the window, walked over, and sat down across from her.
“Any luck?” Nina asked, her cheek resting on a fist as she stared out the window, her tall, perspiring glass of cherry cola fizzing beside her. Outside, the massive sphere of a Sentinel-class cruiser slid past on its way to a nearby docking arm.
“I don’t know. Raviv still hasn’t assigned us a new case.”
“Give it time. It’s only been two weeks.”
“Two weeks I could have been doing some good out there rather than warming my office chair.”
“Yeah, but look at it from his perspective. He almost lost two people under his command.”
“It’s not the first close call—or worse—the department has had. Not by a long shot.”
“No, but it is the first one since he took over.”
“I suppose you have a point there,” he conceded.
A waitress in a brown summer dress served him his iced mocha before he ordered it. He and Nina followed a predictable routine when they met at the café, and the employees at Becky’s knew their patterns well. He picked up the drink, nodded to the waitress, and transferred a generous Esteem tip to her account. She gave him a quick smile in recognition of the gratuity, then headed to her next table.
“Plus,” Nina said, “I bet he has a soft spot for you.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Why not? You mentored under him for how many years?”
“Three.”
“And you think that isn’t a factor?” She leaned toward him and spoke softer for emphasis. “Come on. Raviv may have taken lessons from porcupines on how to make friends, but we both know he’s got a good heart. He’d stick his neck out there for any one of us, and I bet that goes double for you.”
“You think he’s coddling me, then?”
“No, I wouldn’t call it that. But maybe—just maybe—he needs to get over your near death, too.”
“I almost wish I needed to get over it. I was unconscious for the whole thing! Cephalie had to show me videos of what Susan went through.”
“What about her? Is she really okay with what happened?”
“Honestly, I think so. I know I found some of her DTI stories a little hard to accept when she first shared them, but looking at her now, it’s clear that wasn’t the first time she’s had limbs shot off.”
“Good thing you had someone like her watching your back.”
“Yeah. No kidding.” Isaac took a sip. “How about you? How’s your day been?”
“Richeny keeps trying to drop spoilers from the new season. It’s getting annoying.”
“Richeny . . . ” Isaac thought for a moment. “Isn’t he the one who’s been hitting on you?”
“Yeah.” Nina paused, then frowned. “Well, one of them. Anyway, the sooner I get off this station the better. And I was this close, too!” She held up her thumb and forefinger.
“What’s keeping you here?”
“Lack of seniority. You hear about all those people disappearing in the Second Engine Block?”
“I’ve heard.”
“I wanted to be on Grace’s forensics support. Was even on the list to fly down before I got booted off. I’m not sure who it was, but someone decided to restrict the job to senior specialists only.”
“That might have been Raviv. He made it sound like SSP was about to stir up trouble over our lack of progress.”
“Well, of course they are. It’s their favorite pastime. Next you’ll tell me space is black and Saturn is tan.”
“Point taken,” he agreed, shaking his head. “By the way, Grace said we can go ahead without her.”
“Really? She sure about that?”
“I asked, and she said she’d catch up later.”
“Well then.” Nina shrugged. “In that case, what about a session right after work?”
“Hold on.” He opened an abstract window. “Let me check my calendar. I may have an opening.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Nina laughed, knuckling him in the arm.
CHAPTER THREE
Trooper Randal Parks of the Saturn State Police couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. This wasn’t his first corpse while working for the SSP. He wasn’t that green, but it was the first corpse that made him go “hmm” in a meaningful way.
He focused in on the corpse of Esteban Velasco once more, and his avatar bent down as if taking a closer look.
He wasn’t physically in the room. More to the point, he didn’t have a physical body to begin with, being a purely abstract entity. He’d transferred his connectome from the police quadcopter to the Atlas HQ’s infostructure shortly after he and Sergeant Boris Chatelain had arrived, and that was the first time he’d gone “hmm” to himself during this call.
That first “hmm” wasn’t related to the crime. At least he didn’t think it could be, but it didn’t change the fact that the abstract environment within Atlas was one of the most barren, depressing virtual realms he’d ever visited. No style. No personality. No flair. Just an endless black plain with a dark gray grid stretching out to infinity beneath a black sky. Why would anyone want to work in such an environment?
The few ACs he encountered inside didn’t bother to acknowledge his presence, and their simplistic avatars—mere glowing points moving from node to node along the grid—made him feel unwelcomed and out of place, since his avatar was the only object with any sense of realism in the stark expanse. He wore the dark green of the SSP with a cap over his dark green eyes. He’d once considered changing his sandy brown hair to green as well, but that might have been pushing it.
Back in the victim’s office, he scrutinized the corpse through a combination of the local infostructure, the feed from a disk-shaped SSP conveyor drone, and the senses of any physical citizens who’d set their wetware to PUBLIC, which was exactly zero since only the sarge was present. Parks could see the room through his eyes, too, but that was over a secure link shared between them and the drone.
The corpse reclined unnaturally in the chair, jerked back and somewhat to the side by the weapon’s discharge and the secondary detonation of the shell. A fist-sized hole had been blown out the back of the man’s head, splattering bits of brain, bone, and hair in a conical pattern behind the desk and up the back wall. The gun sat on the desk, the end of the barrel slick with saliva.
“Welp.” Chatelain stuck his thumbs behind his belt. “I think we have the cause of death figured out.”
“No note,” Parks said.
“Excuse me?”
“He didn’t leave a note.”
Chatelain ran a finger along the edge of the desk. He came across a sticky sauce spill underneath a plate and wiped the goo off on his pants.
“Anything local?” he asked Parks.
“I checked the desk infosystem and ran a search through the unrestricted parts of the company’s infostructure. No note.”
“Not every guy who kills himself leaves a note.”
“He was legally obligated to write one.”
“Somehow”—Chatelain gazed down at the corpse’s open mouth and vacant, rolled-back eyes—“I’m guessing that wasn’t a priority for him.”
Suicide was technically legal within SysGov, though it was by no means encouraged from both a legal standpoint and a societal one. SysGov was a culture where synthetic bodies and abstracted minds left people virtually immortal after they transitioned into a post-organic state, and it was inevitable that some citizens would yearn for the exit door as the centuries rolled by.
Saturn State law required any citizen planning an act of self-termination to submit their plan for government approval before carrying out the act. Parks had some serious doubts about the wisdom behind said law, but he supposed it had been put in place as one more measure to discourage citizens from taking their own lives.
As for how such a law could be effectively enforced, the politicians had left it up to SSP’s “discretion,” for what little sense that made.
“No note means we should investigate further,” Parks stated.
“What? Are you kidding?”
“No,” Parks replied, somewhat defensively.
“He clearly blew his own brains out.”
“The victim did not declare his intent to die.”
“He did that when he stuck the barrel in his mouth!”
“Which happened under suspicious circumstances.”
“Suspicious!”
“The company had just landed the biggest contract in its history, and he’s the lead engineer on the project. Why would he kill himself after receiving news like that?”
“Who knows what was going through his head?” Chatelain let out a quick snort. “Besides the bullet, I mean.”
“This doesn’t make sense.”
“So what? One piece of good news doesn’t mean jack in the long run. Everyone’s got problems, and who knows how deep his ran? The motive could be anything. For one, his wife could have been sleeping around.”
“Ah!” Parks perked up. “Good thinking! Should we interview her?”
“Uhh, how about this? How about I file the report with the station, which will declare this an open-and-shut suicide, and you”—Chatelain knocked on the conveyor drone’s hull—“can collect the body for processing. All hundred or so pieces of it.”
“I—”
“Don’t worry. If something weird happened here, the autopsy will spot it.”
“But—”
“Hop to it, Rainy. That body won’t bag itself.”
Chatelain stepped through the virtual police cordon over the door and headed down the corridor.
Parks returned his focus to the body. He switched his avatar off since there was no one physically left in the room. Alive, anyway.
“Hmm,” he murmured, unsatisfied with where his disagreement with the sarge had ended.
But he had his orders, so he interfaced with the drone, set its operational mode to evidence collection and corpse removal, then specified the work area. The drone floated over to the rear wall, and its two flexible limbs began the tedious process of collecting the victim’s brain spackle.
Parks watched the drone’s progress through its own sensors as it placed each piece of flesh or cut-away blood splat into separate sealed containers, which it then stored in an internal rack. It would take some time for the drone to complete the evidence extraction, and Parks used the delay to mull over what he knew about the suicide.
He understood why Chatelain had been so dismissive. The what of the death seemed painfully clear, barring an unforeseen piece of evidence turned up by the forensics review.
But that wasn’t what bothered him; it was the why that continued to stick in his mind like a splinter. Why would Velasco kill himself? And not just kill himself, but do so after receiving news of the winning bid?
Death didn’t have to come invited or need some special meaning. Lives began and ended all the time, but Parks couldn’t shake how something felt off about this one. A suicide following bad news made logical—if morbid—sense to him. A suicide following good news? Not so much.
But Chatelain would be the one to file the report, and so that would be the end of it.
Unless . . . Parks thought as a second possibility came to mind. Chatelain would be the one to file the state police report, but there was the possibility of a federal look at the death.
He opened a personal folder with all the presentations and manuals he’d received during basic training and ran a search for “SysPol.” The search flagged a single document, and he opened it and skimmed through it until he found the entry he was looking for.
I was right, he thought. Any member of the state police can request assistance from SysPol, regardless of rank.
The connection string for the support line stood out in vibrant text.
He considered his next actions carefully.
This might tick the sarge off, he thought. But will it be worth it?
“Hmm.”
He didn’t know the answer to that question.
He placed the call anyway.
“SysPol Support,” the dispatcher said warmly. “Good day to you, Trooper Parks. How may I be of service?”
“Umm, hello.”
“Hello.”
“Yes, umm.” Parks cleared his nonexistent throat, which was purely a delaying tactic as he composed his thoughts. “I’d like to put in a support request.”
“I can certainly assist you there. First, are we dealing with an active emergency?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Always good to hear. What sort of issue are we looking at, then?”
“We were called out to Atlas HQ for a death by gunshot. Initial impressions are it’s a suicide, but I’m not so sure. I’d feel better if someone from SysPol could take a deeper look at this.”
“Sounds like a job for Themis Division. One moment while I open a new case. Can you send me the call record and any other pertinent files? I’ll attach them to the case log.”
“Sure thing.” Parks grouped all the files he had together and transmitted. “Sending them your way.”
“And . . . received. Thank you. Are you making this request yourself or on behalf of a superior?”
“Myself. Why? Is that a problem?”
“It’s not so much a problem as a matter of priority. SysPol resources are limited, and we do take the requestor’s seniority into consideration when allocating resources. Since there is no active emergency, you may experience some delay before Themis Division can dispatch a detective or specialist to your location.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Though, there are a few measures you can take to reduce the delay. Is there a sergeant nearby or—even better—a lieutenant who can endorse your request?”
“Umm, no,” Park replied, choosing his words carefully. “No one I can get to endorse it.”
“Then, do you have anything you’d like to add to the case file before I forward it on to Themis?”
“No, that’s all I’ve got so far.”
“Understood. Your case is now in the queue. You can expect follow-up instructions from Themis once the case has been assigned.”
“Got it. And thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”
“My pleasure, Trooper Parks. Have a pleasant day.”
* * *
Parks waited for the drone to finish, ordered it back to the quadcopter, then transferred his connectome. His perception of the physical world blinked from Velasco’s office to the copter’s tandem-seat cockpit.
Chatelain sat in one of the chairs, which he’d spun around to face the cramped cabin, a deep scowl on his face as he rapped his fingers on the top of a knee. Parks appeared in Chatelain’s virtual vision as his usual avatar seated across from him.
“Hey, Sarge.”
“Hey yourself, Rainy.”
“Drone’s finished. Should be back here with the body in a few minutes.”
“Is that so?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing.” Chatelain shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing at all.”
“Is something wrong?”
“What makes you think something’s wrong?”
“You seem a little off. That’s all.”
“Well then.” Chatelain leaned forward until his face almost touched Park’s. “Maybe it’s because my partner called SysPol behind my back!”
Oh dear, Parks thought. He knows. How could he—
“I’m guessing by your dumbfounded face you don’t know how this works.”
“Uhh.”
“You see,” he began in a conversational tone, even though his eyes were pits of fury. “If you’d ever put in a support request before, you’d know one of the first things the call center does is set up these annoying automatic updates for everyone. And that includes all the troopers on the original call.”
“Oh dear.”
“Which means I received one of their little messages right after you finished.” Chatelain drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “Care to explain yourself?”
“I thought they might be able to help.”
“That wasn’t your call to make. It’s mine!”
“I’m sorry, Sarge, but I don’t see the harm in being thorough. This suicide doesn’t sit right with me, and I’d feel a lot better if someone were to take a closer look.”
“You only think that way because you haven’t had to deal with SysPol before.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re right either.” Chatelain let out a heavy sigh. “Look, you’re new, I get that. I remember how I was when I started out, just a regular bundle of optimism and energy, ready and willing to help everyone. Before I came to grips with reality. Before it sank in that not everyone can be helped, and not every story receives a happy ending.”
Chatelain opened an abstract window and pulled up the alert from SysPol. He scrolled to the bottom and tapped the highlighted connection string.
