Timecaster Page 4

  —where he disappeared into thin air right before he climbed on.

  SIX

  The Mastermind checks the time. He wonders how long this is going to take. Wonders if it will play out according to plan.

  The tension is delicious.

  It all began as an experiment. One he wasn’t even sure he’d go through with. But it fed on itself. Got bigger. More seductive.

  Planning and scheming had to become action. Knowledge is for using, not hoarding.

  The testing period had been heady. Exhilarating. But the true potential of what he’d accomplished hadn’t been realized until now.

  What started as a solo was quickly becoming an ensemble piece.

  So many layers. So many variables.

  Such fun.

  He waits, forcing patience, while he really wants to run around and cheer. Shout. Scream.

  There’s much left to do. But too many variables.

  So he listens. And he waits.

  The mouse has found the cheese.

  Soon the trap will spring.

  SEVEN

  WTF?

  I played the rewind/pause/fast-forward game again, but the results were the same as before. One moment Alter-Talon existed. The next moment he didn’t. If I wasn’t 100 percent positive I was watching an actual past event, I’d think someone somehow tampered with the transmission.

  But TEV was tamperproof. The past was the past, and couldn’t be changed or faked. The only reason I didn’t think I killed Aunt Zelda was because I didn’t kill Aunt Zelda. Even though every bit of evidence pointed to the contrary.

  I turned to Neil, who was sitting at the breakfast bar on a stool, one eye on me and the other on the EPF at the front door.

  “Neil, did your aunt have any enemies?”

  His nose was running, and he sniffled. “Are you going to kill me?”

  I sighed. “I’m a peace officer, Neil. I don’t kill people.”

  “I’m sure that’s a huge reassurance to the dead woman in the refrigerator.”

  “Enemies, Neil. Did she have any?”

  “You mean besides you?”

  I thought about hitting a button on the remote control and activating either the Taser needle or the supplication collar. Or both. But as a representative of the law, I was limited in the use of force when questioning subjects. In fact, I wasn’t legally allowed to ask Neil anything without counsel present on both sides. But then, I wasn’t placing Neil under arrest. The only one who could be brought up on charges in this room was me.

  “Your aunt has a lot of nice things,” I said, noticing a painting on the wall. It was real art, not a monitor. Old paintings, and the organic canvases they were painted on, were spared from the Great Recycling Effort with a grandfather clause. You didn’t see too many of them outside of museums. “Was she employed?”

  “Retired.”

  “From what?”

  He sniffled again, a big one that sucked in a long line of snot that had been hanging down his chin. “Are you going to kill me?”

  He looked like a whipped dog, and if he had a tail, it would surely be between his legs. But when I stared at him, I couldn’t help but see him on top of my wife, grunting away. That didn’t leave me much left in the sympathy department.

  “Honestly, Neil, I’m starting to consider it. Can you tell me anything at all relevant to what might be happening here?”

  His shoulders shook. “I shouldn’t have gone to you. This was a huge mistake. Are you going to put me in the icebox?”

  Neil started to cry. I rubbed my jaw and decided to take a closer look around. Aunt Zelda had books and a painting, both indicators of wealth. I wondered what else she had around the old homestead.

  I began in the bedroom. There were more books, and the pillows and comforter were stuffed with real feathers. Two other paintings, both real, and taking up valuable wall space that could have been used for growing ivy or hemp. Her clothes closet was filled with synthetics, save for one spectacular piece: a raccoon fur coat. I thought of my fourlegged friend on my green roof. Maybe if I put this on, I could make him think a giant had moved in and scare him away.

  I checked all the drawers, but didn’t find her DT. Aside from accessing the personal data on a chip implant, a person’s digital tablet usually revealed the most about them.

  I tried the living room next, and uncovered more contraband. A collection of antique tech magazines. There were paper issues of Wired, PCWorld, Science Digest, and a number of others. Some of them were almost as old as she was, which meant she must have bought them off the black market, or new when they came out. But why? The content of these magazines was available on the intranet on every DT. Why spend what had to be a small fortune for paper copies?

  In the bathroom, I discovered cotton towels and a silk kimono. She also had one of those new ComfortMax toilets—the kind with a seat warmer, heated bidet, music player, scent control, and an autoflush so powerful it could suck down a boot without getting clogged. This went way beyond rich. Aunt Zelda was easily the wealthiest person I’d ever encountered during my years on the peace force.

  Who was this woman?

  I went into the kitchen. Neil had abandoned the breakfast bar and opened a utensil drawer. He had a pair of scissors against his neck and was getting ready to cut the supplication collar.

  “Neil, that won’t work. And if you try it—”

  He squeezed the scissors. They didn’t cut through the nanotubes. But they did activate the tamper sensors, sucking electricity from the Tesla field and giving him a harsh jolt.

  “—you’ll get shocked again.”

  Neil dropped onto his butt. The jolt continued.

  “Neil, you need to let go of the scissors for it to stop.”

  He probably heard me. But the muscles in his hand remained locked on the blades, and the collar kept shocking him in self-defense. I saw a small cloud rise up and hover above his head. It wasn’t smoke. It was the tears on his face turning into steam.

  I gave his hand a kick—away from his neck so he didn’t stab himself—and broke the connection.

  “I want to go home,” Neil cried.

  “I know, buddy. Tell me how your aunt got so rich.”

  He touched his face, then his forehead. “Do I still have eyebrows?”

  “Most of them.”

  I lost Neil to another sobbing binge, and took the opportunity to search through the kitchen. Still no DT. But I did find a can of blackstrap molasses that was worth more credits than I earned in a month. I’d never tasted the real thing before, and was tempted to try it.

  Government subsidies, and competition with biofuel companies, caused food farmers to sow what could be grown and harvested the quickest. Things that took longer to grow were proportionally more expensive. The universal availability of synthetic food drove the price up even higher.

  Indulgent as the molasses was, it was downright decadent when I figured out what she was doing with it. In one of the cabinets, Aunt Zelda had a Mr. Distiller.

  Alcohol was never actually outlawed. In fact, the biggest manufacturer of alcohol in the world was the US government, which sold it as fuel. But it became illegal to drink it. Stupid, too. Alcohol pills were safer, and cheaper, than the real thing. And from what I understood, the pills didn’t damage your liver, or give you bad breath and hangovers.

  I stared at the antique silver device, retrofitted to function off of the Tesla grid, and noticed behind it on the shelf were several full bottles with Rum written on the sides.

  Next I searched the bathroom to see what sorts of pills she took. I found the standards. Morphine. LSD. Ibuprofen. Penicillin. Antacids. Methamphetamine. Antihistamine. Pretty much the same contents as every other person’s medicine cabinet, mine included. Except for two exceptions. Antiandrogen and Estrolux. Both in high doses.

  Time to power up the intranet and see what I could see.

  I took out my DT and accessed uffsee. While having every bit of human knowledge accessible
on a digital tablet was an overwhelming experience—so overwhelming that many folks had to go into therapy because of their DT addiction—information was essentially useless unless you were able to find it. When I was a child, pre-intranet, the Internet was the place to go to learn things. But search engines were limited back then, and you spent most of your time trying to sort out the good information from the ads, inaccuracies, and plain old bullshit.

  Then a man named Franklin Debont created UFSE. An acronym of Use the Fucking Search Engine, the uffsee search algorithm was intuitive and user-specific. In layman’s terms, it learned what the user was seeking, and pinpointed data to match individual search requests.

  No more wasted hours searching. WYSIWYW technology had made the overwhelming wealth of accumulated human knowledge as easy to navigate as a walk around the block.

  I hit the voice button on my touch screen and told uffsee, “Detailed biography of Zelda Peterson, thirteen twenty-two Wacker Drive, Chicago, Illinois.”

  Three-thousandths of a second later the screen filled with data.

  Or perhaps filled was too optimistic a word.

  It listed all the standard stats. Height, weight, age, eye color, chip number, previous addresses, and assorted public information like the charities she supported, moped license, estimated biofuel consumption, etcetera. No criminal record. And strangely, no mention of education or work history.

  “Peace officer eyes only,” I told my DT.

  That brought up the private info. No known associates. The excessive amount she paid in taxes, which was more than Vicki made in a year. Credit history. But it came up blank in regard to family, college, and previous employment. No mention of how she got so rich, or how she managed to avoid penalties for the contraband she made no effort to conceal. It also didn’t list her medical history, or the obvious reason she took Antiandrogen and Estrolux.

  The average ten-year-old kid had more information available about them than Aunt Zelda did. Which meant it was time to have another chat with Neil. I set the voice-stress analyzer on my DT to record a neutral baseline.

  “Oh, no.” Neil’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates when I walked up to him. “You’re going to kill me now.”

  “Soon, Neil. But first I have some questions. Your aunt Zelda was a billionaire. I’m assuming you knew that and just neglected to mention it.”

  “I . . . uh . . . didn’t know that.”

  My DT said it was the truth.

  “Did you know Aunt Zelda was once Uncle Zelda?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “She was TG, Neil. Transgender. She took hormones because she used to be a man. Did you know that?”

  “Uh . . . no.”

  I checked the touch screen. Truth.

  “You apparently weren’t very close. Did you know the intranet didn’t actually mention you as a next of kin?” I moved closer to him, making him cringe. “Are you really her nephew, Neil?”

  “Yes.”

  Inconclusive.

  “Say it. Say she was your aunt.”

  “She was my aunt.”

  Inconclusive.

  “Do you know how she got so rich?”

  “No.”

  Truth.

  “Do you know who murdered her?”

  “Yes.”

  Truth.

  “Who murdered her, Neil?”

  “You did.”

  Truth.

  Shit. Neil wasn’t helping the investigation much. I decided to take it in another, unprofessional direction.

  “Okay, Neil. One last question. Are you ready?”

  He gave me a small, frightened nod.

  “Do you love my wife, Neil?”

  Neil swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbling. “Uh . . . no.”

  Untruth.

  I made a fist, and he cowered away, covering his face. While hitting him would have felt pretty good, it wouldn’t have accomplished anything. Of course he loved Vicki. All men who met Vicki fell in love with her. Guys like Neil were the reason I drove a Corvette.

  Guys like Neil were also the reason my wife had a dozen more orgasms a week than I did.

  My shoulder muscles bunched and I threw the punch, feeling the solid connection when my fist hit its target.

  Neil screamed and scurried away. I stared at the hole I made in the plasterboard wall, and glanced at my knuckles, already beginning to swell.

  Nice one, Talon. Hitting walls was about as mature as jealousy. Pretty lame coming from a man who helped rid Chicago of crime.

  I glanced at the refrigerator. Apparently I hadn’t done a good enough job in the crime department.

  A feeling somewhere between panic and despair began to take root in my head. I seriously considered grabbing a bottle of rum, and some of Aunt Zelda’s LSD, and zoning out for the rest of the day.

  Instead I pressed my earlobe to activate my headphone. I wanted to call Vicki. Wanted to apologize for being a dick.

  “Service not available.”

  Shit. Neil’s collar must have been jamming my phone as well.

  The rum and hallucinogens called, but I decided to man up and do my damn job. I couldn’t hide the evidence of this murder forever. And once the news broke, I’d be arrested and convicted within an hour. With so few criminals these days, trials were often faster than the time it took to get dressed for them.

  I still had no idea how the TEV showed me committing the murder.

  But I did know someone who might be able to figure it out.

  “Neil, there’s some food in the cabinets when you get hungry,” I said, heading for the front door. “Remember to stay out of the refrigerator. I’ll BRB.”

  Then I left the apartment and went to see Michio Sata.

  EIGHT

  Outside the building, I called Vicki from my headphone as I walked to my car. She didn’t pick up. Probably blocking my calls because I had acted like a cretin. I left her a message.

  “Look, babe, I’m sorry I was an asshat. It’s just that I love you so much, I can’t stand thinking about you with other guys. Call me old-fashioned, but the only man you should be with is me. When I picture some tool like Neil . . .”

  No. That wasn’t an apology. That was continuing the fight.

  “Erase. Restart. Vicki? I’m sorry. I knew when I married an SLP that you would spread your legs for other men . . .”

  That didn’t sound good either.

  “Erase. Restart. Vicki, I’m sorry, but how can I help feeling jealous knowing you’re sucking some other guy’s . . . Shit. Erase. Restart.”

  “This isn’t working, Talon.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Vicki? Were you listening to that?”

  “If you’re not mature enough to accept what I do for a living, maybe we shouldn’t be together.”

  I felt my heart stop. “Vicki . . . I’m sorry . . .”

  “I’ve been discussing this with my therapist. She doesn’t feel like this marriage is healthy for either of us.”

  I leaned against the hood of my Corvette. My Corvette, paid for because she boffed other men. “You discuss this with your therapist?”

  “Don’t you discuss it with your therapist?”

  Both of our jobs required us to see therapists once a week, Vicki to retain her SLP license, me to remain a peace officer.

  “No. We don’t discuss anything. We spend the session watching hyperbaseball.”

  “My therapist thinks it’s unhealthy for me to feel guilty about my profession because you’re too insecure—”

  “Insecure? I’m always one hundred percent sure of myself! Aren’t I?”

  “—too insecure to realize sex is simply a biological need that is completely wholesome and natural and impersonal. It’s no more intimate than a massage.”

  “Then why can’t you become a masseuse?”

  “Dammit, Talon, you’re acting so twentieth century. Other animals don’t get jealous. This is your hang-up, and it’s ruining our marriage.”

  I didn’t like where th
is conversation was heading.

  “Ruining? I thought our marriage was solid. We rarely ever fight about this.”

  “You mention it at least once a week.”

  “That’s not a lot. Is it? Do you really think I’m insecure?”

  “Maybe we need to take a break from each other for a while.”

  I thought about Aunt Zelda, and the speedy conviction that awaited me. “Maybe we’ll get a break, whether we want one or not.”

  “So you agree with me?”

  “What? No. I don’t agree at all. But something came up at work that may—”

  “Is it Neil? Did you help him? Is he okay?”

  “You sound awfully concerned about Neil, babe.”

  “There you go again. He’s just a sad, lonely little man.”

  A sad, lonely little man who nailed my wife today, while I was mowing our lawn.

  “He’s in love with you,” I said.

  “He’s just got a crush. That’s all.”

  “No. It’s love. I asked him.”

  “You had no right to do that!”

  “You say sex is harmless, but this tool would jump off a building for you. Is that harmless?”

  “Where is Neil? You didn’t do anything stupid, did you?”

  “Can you give me a little credit, maybe?”

  “I’m calling him.”

  “Vicki . . .”

  She hung up.

  “That went well,” I said to my car. I stared out into the urban jungle, green buildings scraping the sky, thousands of anonymous biofuel scooters flooding the roads. My city. Vibrant, alive, and beautiful in its way.

  The thought of living here without Vicki was unbearable.

  The thought of living anywhere without Vicki was unbearable.

  I climbed in the Vette and plotted a route to Sata’s house. One crisis at a time.

  Michio Sata lived in the northwest suburbs, in the city of Schaumburg. The twelve-lane highway was predictably stop-and-go, bikes clogging everything. Even the frog-leg lane was full, the kermits going slightly slower than the rest of traffic, probably because they enjoyed stopping every so often and bouncing around like idiots.