city blues 02 - angel city blues (14 page)

I closed the second police file, and opened the third. It was a summary of the available information (not much) on the unidentified criminal suspect who called himself the Dream Snatcher.

There were nineteen known Dream Snatcher recordings circulating through the black market. To-date, his body of work encompassed acts of assault, robbery, murder, rape, arson, and—oddly enough—vandalism. One of his SCAPE recordings featured the utter destruction of a priceless fifteenth-century bronze, by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, better known to the world as
Donatello
. This last act had been carried out in a major European museum with a reputation for impenetrable security.

Analysis of the available samples revealed that the POV subject was not always the same person. Or more precisely, the first eight recordings had been made by a single adult male, and the next eleven recordings had been made by a
second
man, of approximately the same apparent age and physical stature.

Why the change? Had Dream Snatcher ‘Alpha’ gotten tired of the game, and turned the position over to Dream Snatcher ‘Beta’? Had the second Dream Snatcher killed off the first guy and taken his place?

The file contained another interesting detail. Apparently, recordings made by Dream Snatcher Alpha were gradually disappearing from the black market, as though they were being quietly bought up, or recalled. By contrast, the recordings of Dream Snatcher Beta were practically flooding the streets.

Neither one of the Dream Snatcher perpetrators had been identified, so there was no way to know why the starring role had shifted from one man to the other. Nor was there any clue as to why the recordings of Alpha were being called back, while the recordings of Beta were hitting the market in ever-increasing numbers.

I closed the file. Once again, more questions than answers. I hadn’t stumbled across any great revelations, but at least I had a bit of background for the Dream Snatcher stuff.

I stood up, stretched the kinks out of my back, and reached for my cigarettes. I was just lighting up when something tugged at my memory. Some small detail that had escaped my conscious attention.

I exhaled a stream of smoke and turned back to the computer. When the menu appeared, I re-ran the Dream Snatcher search, and came up with the same trio of files. I didn’t bother opening them. The information was right there on the file menu, in the properties column. The creator of all three SCAPE reports had been an LAPD Cybercrimes technician named
R. Dancer
.

I stared at the holographic display. Dancer. It wasn’t exactly a common surname. In fact, in my whole life, I had only met one person that last name. Coincidence? Maybe…

According to Detective Delaney, his former partner, Priz Dancer, had a wife. What was her name? Rhiannon? Rhiarra? Something that started with an ‘R’.

I walked back into the living room. Dancer’s Turing Scion was still lying on my coffee table, where Delaney had left it.

I picked it up. The black rectangle of carbon-polymer fit neatly in my palm. I really did hate these things, and—truth be told—I wasn’t all that crazy about Dancer either. But I could always unplug the thing if it got too obnoxious.

I carried the Scion back to my desk and hunted around until I found the right kind of fiber optic cable. I connected one end to the desk comp’s optical port, and the other end to the Turing Scion.

The computer instantly kicked into restart mode. It took much longer than usual to boot up.

And suddenly, a holographic rendering of Dancer’s head was floating in the air above the desk. The image made eye contact with me, and gave me a smile that was more sneer than humor. “How’s it hanging, Stalin? Did you miss me?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I didn’t miss you at all.”

CHAPTER 9

My first impulse was to unplug the damned thing. I was about two nanoseconds from reaching for the interface cable when the Scion spoke again.

“I’m kind of surprised,” it said. “I expected this to be completely fucking bizarre, but it actually feels good to still be here.”

“You’re
not
still here,” I said. “No matter what your programming matrix tells you, you’re not Priscilla Dancer. You’re a stack of silicon and software that retains her memories and simulates her thought processes.”

The hologram shot me an expression that was pure Dancer. “Jesus, Stalin, don’t you think I
know
that? Do you really think that’s somehow escaped my fucking attention?”

I reached for the cable. “This was a bad idea.”

“Hold on!” the Scion said. “Please… Can you just give me a few seconds, here?”

I waited.

“This
was
a bad idea,” the thing said. “I realize that. The whole thing is creepy as hell, and it’s not like you and me were buddy-buddy even when I was alive. But I didn’t have a shitload of options, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what Delaney told me.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“Not a lot,” I said. “He told me about the attack on your wife, and that she died from her injuries. I was really sorry to hear about that. I never met your wife. I didn’t even know you were married, but…”

I didn’t bother finishing the sentence. It was a waste of time expressing sympathy to a heap of circuitry with delusions of consciousness. But I knew what it was like to lose a wife.

The last of Maggie’s things had long since been packed away. I’d spent one endless scotch-addled day removing every physical trace of her existence from the house. Every photo of her, every trid, every vid recording, every document with her name on it. I’d even replaced her favorite pieces of furniture, and the bed we’d slept in together.

Despite my efforts at emotional asepsis, memories of Maggie had a way of collecting in the corners of every room, lingering on the air like ghostly vestiges of her long-vanished perfume.

“Anyway,” I said, “Delaney told me that you went after the perpetrators. That you killed two out of three before you got caught.”

I didn’t like using the word ‘
you
’ to address the Scion, but I couldn’t think of an alternative pronoun.

The hologram nodded. “The third perp knew that I was zeroing on him. He made a run for one of the Japanese orbital colonies. I was making preparations to go after him when Internal Affairs caught up with me.”

“And that’s what you need me for? To go after the third perpetrator?”

“Yeah. I want to finish this, and I can’t do it without help.”

“What that brotherhood-of-the-badge thing? Why aren’t your cop buddies helping you?”

The facial features of Dancer’s projection seemed to harden. “Ordinarily, they
would
be helping me. But these aren’t ordinary circumstances.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that somebody high up is exerting pull.”

“Someone inside LAPD?”

“I never managed to find out,” the Scion said. “But I could feel the pressure. Everyone could.”

“Such as?”

“Rhiarra was one of our people. Not a cop, but still LAPD. She was under the department’s protection. Or she
should
have been. When those scumbags raped and killed her, it should have been treated like a cop killing. Her death should have triggered a department-wide manhunt. A fucking blue tornado, until those bastards were either dead or brainlocked.”

“I’m guessing that didn’t happen.”

“No,” the Scion said. “It damned well
didn’t
happen. Somebody… I don’t know who… put out the word that Rhiarra’s death was just a sex crime gone wrong. Rhiarra was LAPD
and
the wife of a career cop, but the departmental brass decided to handle the investigation as a routine homicide.”

“Not exactly proof of conspiracy,” I said. “I remember an old saying… Something about never attributing anything to villainy, which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

The hologram shook its simulated head. “Cops don’t have carte blanche,” it said, “but we
do
have some latitude when we’re dealing with known criminal perps.”

I nodded. This wasn’t exactly news.

“Both of the bottom-feeders I took out were career offenders. They were sleaze balls of the lowest order, with multiple felony convictions, and too many arrests to count.”

“And,
what
?” I asked. “You expected a commendation for cleaning up the streets?”

“No,” the Scion said. “I didn’t expect a medal. But I didn’t expect to get brainlocked, either. Investigated, yeah. Censured, sure. Even booted off the force, and prosecuted. I figured I would have to do some time in lockdown. But not brainlock.”

“So, you think the punishment was too severe for the crime?”

Dancer’s holographic projection sighed. “I probably had it coming. No matter what the provocation was, I stepped over the line.
Way
over the line. But Stalin, it happened so fucking
fast
.”

“Which part?”

“
All
of it. My trial. My sentencing. The rejection of my appeal. The entire process can take months, or even years, if the case is complex enough.”

“How long did yours take?”

“That depends… When was I brainlocked?”

“You don’t know?”

The hologram shook its head. “My memories don’t extend past the recording of this Turing Scion. Anything that happened after that is a blank slate to me. I know when I was
scheduled
for brainlock, but I have no way of knowing if the sentence was carried out at the appointed time and date.”

“According to Delaney, the sentence was carried out at around midnight of the eleventh.” I checked my watch. “A little over twenty-four hours ago.”

“That makes it about eighteen days,” the Scion said. “From arrest to brainlock.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Nobody gets shoved through the system that fast, no matter
what
they’re accused of.”

“I was arrested on the twenty-fourth of October. Do the math yourself.”

I did a quick mental count. Eighteen days. She was right.

The word caught my attention.
She
. I was starting to think of the Turing Scion as a person. I had to remind myself that it wasn’t Priscilla Dancer. It wasn’t a person at all. It was a
thing
.

I reached for the interface cable.

“Wait!” the Scion said. “I can help you with your case—”

But I didn’t wait. I pulled the plug.

The hologram of Dancer’s face disappeared. As the computer was powering down, I realized that I’d never gotten around to asking her about Rhiarra’s involvement in the analysis of the FANTASCAPE 389 chip.

It. Not her. The Scion was an
it
.

I reached for my cigarettes and went in search of a drink.

CHAPTER 10

It was midafternoon before House managed to prod me out of bed. After an hour (or maybe two) of his soft but persistent audio chimes and his gentle verbal reminders, I flopped over and levered my way up to a hunched-over position on the edge of the bed. Somewhere in the midst of my clumsy maneuvering, an empty Cutty bottle slid out from under the sheets. It plonked onto the floor, where it spun through three or four revolutions before coming to rest against a baseboard.

The concealed door to a maintenance alcove slid open, and a small housekeeping drone rolled quickly toward the downed bottle.

I did my best to glare at the little machine with one bleary eye. “Leave it.”

My voice was something between a burble and a belch, but House was apparently able to decipher my meaning. The drone halted instantly.

“I’ll clean up after myself,” I mumbled.

This was probably not true. In all likelihood, I would forget my half-hearted declaration of self-sufficiency about four seconds after I summoned enough strength to stagger out of the room. When I was safely out of sight, House would send his drones to tidy up behind me, and order would be restored to the universe.

But—for the moment at least—House would humor me by pretending that I might actually follow-through on my promise to pick up my own empties. The cleaning drone retreated to its cubbyhole, leaving the Cutty bottle on the floor.