The Authorities, page 2
“That’s right,” Stoker said. “And you are?”
“Terri Wells,” the woman said. She had stopped short of the end of the hall, so Rutherford couldn’t see her. He tried to draw an impression from her voice, and settled on friendly but crisp.
She said, “I trust you got the call from the Chief of Police’s office.”
“We got a call from our boss. He got a call from his boss, who probably got your call from the chief.” Stoker grunted. “And neither of them were happy about it. We aren’t either, for the record.”
“From what I gather, neither was the chief when he got the call from the mayor after he got a call from the governor, but the point is, you’re expecting us. Now, if I could just get your signatures on these forms. They say that you won’t divulge anything you see or hear about my team and its methods unless compelled to do so in the course of your duties. You know, you can file your reports and testify and all that, but no talking to the press or your friends. Are there any other officers in the building at the moment?”
Stoker looked down the hall at Rutherford and jerked his head slightly, expending the least possible amount of energy to beckon him forward.
Rutherford finally got a look at Terri Wells as he approached the detectives. She was a black woman somewhere in her midforties who was neither particularly tall nor particularly thin. Her attire was extremely professional, like that of a realtor who specializes in properties you will never be able to afford. She looked at Rutherford, said, “Good morning officer,” and smiled. She wasn’t what you’d call “beautiful,” but Rutherford wouldn’t have respected the taste of anyone who didn’t think she was cute.
She reached into the large leather bag she was carrying and produced a metal clipboard and a disposable pen, both of which she handed to Stoker. The clipboard held several copies of a boilerplate nondisclosure agreement, which laid out the penalties for telling people anything about her team’s techniques, methods, and technologies in terms simple enough that even a layman could be haunted by them for life.
When all three had signed their lives away, she thanked them, turned her head slightly downward and away from the officers, and said, “You’re clear to enter.”
“Who are you talking to?” Volz asked.
Wells said, “The team. So, where is the victim?”
“Second door on the left,” Stoker said.
“And are there any witnesses?”
“None that we know of yet, but we just got here. The kid who found him and the landlord are being questioned out front. All the other tenants—”
Wells held up a hand, silencing Stoker midsentence. “Thank you, Detective, that’ll do. We’ll read the details in your report.”
“I don’t report to you,” Stoker said.
Wells said, “Not directly.”
The front door of the house opened, admitting a bearded man in his late fifties. He wore a cardigan, a jaunty cap, and a friendly grin. He nodded quickly to the officers and said, “Good morning, gentlemen,” as he stepped lightly around the door and held it open for the rest of the team. Next came a man in his twenties. If forced to guess, Rutherford would have said he was of Korean origin. He wore a tweed three-piece suit and carried a briefcase so large it nearly qualified as a midsized suitcase. Behind him was a tall black man with graying hair who wore black slacks, dress shoes, and a blue nylon windbreaker.
They had been described to Rutherford as a top-secret group of high-tech specialists. He had pictured a cross between a SWAT team and an MIT study group. So far, Wells’s team didn’t look anything like what Rutherford had expected. But the final member to enter the house looked almost too much like what he’d expected.
The woman was wearing a sleek black pants suit over what appeared to be a dark gray turtleneck. It was an ensemble that was undeniably both feminine and menacing. With her left hand, she was using a cane. Between the thickness of the polished black wood and the knurled silver head that resembled the business end of a very small Polynesian war club, the cane looked as if it had been designed more as a means of defense than support. The cane’s shaft boasted a gleaming metal inlay pattern that, while decorative, also undoubtedly added to its heft. Rutherford didn’t have the opportunity to develop an impression of her face because he couldn’t see it. Her entire head was covered by what appeared to be some sort of high-tech helmet, complete with an opaque, featureless front shield. She entered in silence. She made no sound, and the world seemed to quiet itself in her presence. It was as if reality was trying to keep her from noticing it.
The bearded older man closed the door behind her and continued his thought from earlier. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. Sorry it has to be under such unfortunate circumstances.” Rutherford thought he detected some sort of European accent, though he couldn’t quite place it.
Wells said, “The person who found the body is out front being questioned. Sloan, Warmenhoven, you know what to do.”
The older man clapped. “Yes, certainly we do.” After rubbing his hands together as if preparing to chop wood, he opened the door he had only just closed. The woman in the helmet stood motionless for a second or two, then nodded to the detectives and walked out the door, followed by the older man.
Stoker and Volz were apparently too thrown by the woman’s appearance to return her silent farewell, but as the door swung shut, Volz managed to spit out a feeble, “Bye-bye.” Stoker seemed embarrassed at his partner’s behavior, and glared at him. Volz seemed embarrassed at his own behavior, and glared at Rutherford.
She really does dress like a ninja, Rutherford thought. A ninja from a kid’s cartoon. A really unrealistic one that’s based on a series of action figures. She might as well be wearing a sandwich board that says: “Trouble Wanted.” To even attempt a look like that you’d have to be either stupid or incredibly badass. I doubt a stupid person would keep it up for long.
When the helmeted woman and the bearded man were gone, Terri Wells turned back to the detectives. “Would one of you gentlemen please show my technicians to the crime scene?”
Stoker glanced at Volz, who shook his head slightly and looked at Rutherford. Stoker too turned his dull gaze toward Rutherford, who got the hint.
“I’d be happy to,” Rutherford said, and for the first time that day, he meant it.
Wells turned to the young man with the large case and the three-piece suit. “Albert, please be thorough.”
“Always,” Albert replied.
“I’ll be thorough as well,” the older man in the light blue windbreaker said. He lifted his hand. Only then did Rutherford notice he was carrying some sort of device. It resembled a handheld metal detector, but it was smaller, looked lighter, had a small display screen, and was emitting a faint buzz. “But I warn you,” he continued, “there may actually be too many scents in there for me to get any clear readings.”
Wells’s smile strained a bit as she said, “I’m sure you’ll do your best.”
Rutherford led the two men down the hall, back to the doorjamb he was sad to admit he now thought of as his territory.
The man Wells had called Albert glanced at the name tag on Rutherford’s uniform, then thanked him by name. Turning to the man in the windbreaker, he said, “Professor Sherwood, you could take a look at the scene while I set up. Just please don’t disturb anything.”
The older man said, “Of course,” then entered the room and started waving his device at everything but the dead body. The buzzing grew uneven as he moved around the area. Rutherford noticed that Professor Sherwood’s windbreaker had “B-9” written on the back in bright yellow lettering.
Albert sat his case down on the floor and opened it, revealing a black screen almost the exact internal dimensions of the case. The screen was hinged at the front, and swung forward opposite the case’s lid, briefly revealing the interior of the case. Half of the space was taken up with a brushed metal box, perforated with holes. The other half was filled with a dull black jumble of spherical and cylindrical shapes. Albert tilted the screen back at an angle, then swung the suitcase lid forward to meet the upper edges of the screen, propping the case open. The screen lit up and filled with a familiar Windows desktop, complete with a wallpaper image of a classic Aston Martin.
“I’ve never seen a computer like that,” Rutherford said.
“I bet you have,” Albert said, unbuttoning his suit jacket and crouching over his computer. “I built it myself, but I got the idea from a prop computer in the first Avengers movie. That one was larger, like a small trunk, and had a transparent screen, of course, which is just silly. Still, a good idea’s a good idea. The roomy case allows me to build and upgrade it with desktop components. They’re cheaper and more powerful, and there’s storage room to spare.”
Rutherford said, “That’s really interesting. Still, it is kinda big.”
“Yeah,” Albert admitted, grinning up at him. “Design is about compromise. On the plus side, it doesn’t have to fit in a laptop case. It’s its own case.”
Rutherford glanced into the crime scene, gratified to finally get a good look after being stuck outside it for so long. Unlike Stoker and Volz, Albert and Professor Sherwood didn’t seem to mind letting Rutherford watch them. He craned his neck until he could see the bruises on the victim’s cheek. Just as Stoker and Volz had discussed, he could make out fingers and a thumb, and also, like they’d said, the direction of the blow and the shape of the fist were all wrong.
Rutherford glanced down at Albert, who was crouched over his computer in his three-piece suit, swiping through submenus on the hinged touch screen. Then Rutherford looked down at his own hand and tried to replicate the fist that caused the bruises. The fingers were skewed with the index finger and the tip of the thumb almost making a point. It was as if the assailant had been holding a stick, or preparing to knock on a door with the second knuckle of his index finger. It was a weird way to knock, and an even weirder way to hit a guy.
He glanced to the end of the hall.
Stoker asked, “How long is this going to take?”
Wells said, “As long as it takes, Detective.”
“Look, lady,” Stoker said, “this is all real cute, but we need our crime scene back.”
“Detective,” Wells said in a calm, even tone, “you don’t have a crime scene. I do. When my team is done with my crime scene, I will hand it down to you. Until then, think of this as an opportunity to practice patience.”
The look on Stoker’s face demonstrated that he badly needed the practice.
The older man, Professor Sherwood, emerged from the crime scene looking ashen, but not displeased. “I got some good readings,” he said, “in spite of the environmental obstacles.”
“That’s good,” Albert said. “Now it’s my turn.” He reached behind his computer’s screen, into the side of the case that held the jumble of simple shapes, and pulled out one of the objects. It was a sphere the size of a softball attached to four open-ended cylinders. It was like someone had glued a grapefruit to four juice glasses and painted the whole thing black.
The young man pressed a hidden button. As soon as the object started to emit a loud whirring noise, Albert lobbed it into the room, directly over the victim. It stopped at the top of its trajectory, stabilized with the four cylinders pointed downward, then bobbed in midair. Soon it was joined by three more drones, all identical to the first, all lobbed into the room by Albert. It would have seemed quite graceful if not for the earsplitting racket produced by the four of them. Rutherford winced at the noise.
“Yeah, I know,” Albert shouted, seeing Rutherford’s discomfort. “The ducted fans give more lift and cut way down on the air disturbance, but they don’t help with the noise as much as I’d hoped. I tuned them so that they’d at least create a pleasant chord, but it was the best I could do.”
Albert pressed a green button on his computer screen and the drones immediately scattered to the four corners of the room. Each emitted a red laser that scanned the contours of the space and every object in it. Rutherford looked at the computer screen, where a sketchy model of the crime scene was slowly taking form. After five seconds of shooting lasers around the room, each of the drones emitted a bright white flash. They dropped halfway down the walls, one of them moving forward to allow for the desk, then ran through the entire light show again. Finally they sank to almost floor height. Rutherford saw the lasers shooting across the room from under the bed frame, again exploring every crevice of the crime scene.
After emitting one final burst of white light, they returned to their starting position in the center of the room, then one by one flew back to Albert, who caught them and returned them to the storage cubby of his computer case.
“Done,” Albert said. “Just let me pack up, and the place is all yours again.”
“I thought she told you to be thorough,” Rutherford said.
Albert smiled. “She did, and I set the scanners for thorough.”
Rutherford looked at the screen and saw that what had been a low-resolution wire-frame model of the room was now a detailed, full-color re-creation, complete with the victim’s body and a glimpse of Albert and Rutherford waiting outside the door. Albert must have noticed he was looking, because he spun the image around and zoomed in close enough for Rutherford to read his own name tag.
Rutherford said, “That’s amazing.”
Albert said, “Thanks, but it’s not much really. The drones mostly just shoot lights and take pictures. All of the real processing’s done by the computer.”
That didn’t make it any less amazing to Rutherford, but he chose not to say so.
Albert closed his computer, and he and Rutherford left the room to join Wells and the detectives. Professor Sherwood was still wandering around, waving his buzzing wand at various objects.
Wells said, “Detectives, Officer, thank you for your cooperation. The crime scene is yours again. We look forward to reading your report.”
“I told you, lady, we don’t report to you,” Stoker snarled.
Wells’s smile did not fade. “Call it what you like, Detective, but you will be writing a report, and we will receive a copy of it. Part of our understanding with the department is that we will receive all of the relevant paperwork generated by the investigations we take part in.”
“Will we get a copy of that scan you just took?” Rutherford asked.
“Of course,” Albert said, “It’s evidence. But the Seattle PD doesn’t currently have a computer that could run it.”
Professor Sherwood approached the group, still looking down at his wand. As he neared the detectives, he seemed transfixed by what he saw on the wand’s readout. He waved the wand toward Volz and the buzzing grew louder. Professor Sherwood squinted at the readout and smiled.
“What?” Volz demanded, sounding slightly alarmed. “What’s it say?”
“Nothing, Detective,” Professor Sherwood said, with a knowing grin. “Don’t worry about it. I’m certainly not detecting anything that isn’t legal in this state.” He winked.
Wells handed Stoker her card and quickly explained that if—ahem, when—her organization had determined the identity of the culprit, their findings would be forwarded to the case’s lead detective so that the Seattle PD could make the collar. She thanked them for their cooperation. Stoker, Volz, and Rutherford stood and watched as Capp’s people left. Through the open door Rutherford caught a brief glimpse of the kid who’d found the body, still being interviewed by a uniformed officer while the older European man and the woman in the helmet watched.
Looking at her again, Rutherford was struck by the strange size of her helmet. It seemed only slightly larger than a normal-sized woman’s head.
I doubt that thing’s DOT approved, he thought, unless her cranium is the size of a fist.
The forensics team had been waiting for their crack at the crime scene. Technicians filed into the house, lugging their equipment and supplies.
Volz mumbled, “I still don’t know what to make of the bruises.”
“I know it,” Stoker agreed. “A guy would be hard-pressed to kill someone by punching him in the head, even if he did take three or four swings, and that’s making a fist the right way. Swatting like that, you’d have to be Superman.”
Maybe the kid was hit with an object,” Rutherford offered.
Stoker and Volz stared at him in silence until they were satisfied that he was uncomfortable enough for them to continue. Volz said, “An object?”
“Yes,” Rutherford said. It was something that had occurred to him while he was in the room with Albert, only the lasers had distracted him from thinking it through.
“An object . . . with fingers and a thumb,” Volz clarified.
“Yeah, well,” Rutherford stammered. “I have a theory about that. I think it’s . . .” Rutherford trailed off, having realized that he didn’t want to finish the sentence out loud.
“You think it’s what?” Stoker prompted him.
“A sex toy,” Rutherford forced himself to say.
“A sex toy?” Volz repeated.
“Yes, I think it’s a sex toy. They make them of . . . of this,” Rutherford said, holding up his hand in an imitation of the pointed fist suggested by the bruise.
Volz laughed. “It’s always the quiet ones.”
“Wait, guys,” Rutherford said, “I’m not into that kind of thing.”
“And you’re not that quiet,” Stoker said.
