looked nonplussed. “Bob?”
Bob glanced up from his station screen. “Code CPD1; superhuman homicide call.”
Blackstone grimaced. “How long ago?”
“Fifteen minutes. Details?”
“Through Dispatch, please.” He turned to me, tapping his shoe with his cane. “I’m sorry, my dear. We’ll switch out your days, and in the future we’ll send Galatea when you’re off—Vulcan has her forensic analysis routines close to fieldable.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh yeah, she’d be so reassuring. It’s okay boss, really.”
Chakra covered her mouth with a henna-decorated hand.
Galatea was a gynoid (female android) robot, the work of our team’s new Verne-type mad scientist. Vulcan had made her out of The Stuff—polymorphic molecules, his specialty—and he was a true artist; she moved like a human being, even looked like one from a distance, but human expression was beyond her.
“If you’re sure,” Blackstone said. “Carry on then.” He gave me a mock-salute and I scampered. Five minutes later I was changed and in the air headed west.
“Shell?” I said as I flew over Michigan Avenue. “I don’t want you to use our neural link at the scene.”
“Why not?” She’d passed the address to me, with no comments about the cute Detective Fisher this time.
“Because this could be really messy.”
The quantum-ghost of my best friend, Shelly had been left to me by the Teatime Anarchist when he arranged his own murder-suicide. He’d gone back in my past, made a quantum-copy of Shelly just before she stupidly killed herself origin-chasing, and plugged her into the operating system of his future-tech computer system. Our bioneural link let Shelly experience the world through all my senses, and even appear and talk to me by direct stimulation of my aural and ocular nerves. Yes, I heard voices in my head. They told me to eat Skittles.
Blackstone had arranged for Shelly to become my Dispatch wingman (the fact that our neural link couldn’t be interfered with, and that Shell could multitask like the fastest supercomputer, was a huge factor in his decision-making). But, super-genius computer brain or not, she died when we were both fifteen and emotionally she still was. No way was I letting a kid too young to get into an R-rated movie see a homicide scene. Especially a superhuman homicide scene.
“It’s not like I haven’t seen bodies before,” she objected.
“I know, but you don’t have to. I don’twant to. So, no link. Only the earbug.”
“But—”
“No.”
Silence.
“Shelly?”
“Okay…” she sighed. She had to accept it; the Anarchist had made it part of her privacy protocols. But though I heard token sulking I could tell she wasn’t too disappointed. Like me, she’d already seen things that made her want to bleach her brain.
The address for the call took us to one of the luxury condo towers on Ohio and Dearborn. Detective Fisher simply had one of the uniforms, Officer Wyatt, stand out on the fifteenth floor balcony where I could see him as I came in. Landing and peering inside, I whistled.
It looked like someone had gone through the condo and fed every piece of furniture into a wood-chipper; bits and pieces of frame and upholstery covered the floor. A hardwood box about the size of a wine crate sat in the center of the mess. Fisher stood in the separated kitchen, talking to Phelps. Though thankfully I couldn’t see evidence of anything beyond extreme vandalism, I could smell the copper tang of blood. Lots of it. Maybe in the bedroom?
“Detective?”
He cut off his argument with Phelps and waved me in. Carefully picking his way through the mess, he handed me some foot covers to slip on. I was getting too used to them.
An unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth. He looked uncomfortable, and I realized he might have the same problem with my viewing the crime scene as I did with Shelly. He might actually be more comfortable with Galatea for scenes like this.
“What are we looking at?” I asked quietly.
“Ralph Moffat’s apartment.”
“Ralph—the banker?”
He nodded. “You were right about the lady in the vault footage being his date; he confirmed it when we questioned him. Never seen her before, brought her home for coffee, woke up when we knocked on his door the next morning. She roofied him.”
“Then why—”
“The enhanced vault footage gave us the contents of the document case. Bearer bonds. Japanese treasuries, hundred thousand dollar denominations.”
“Oh.” I wanted to sit down. It had been a thick document case. Assuming at least a hundred sheets... “How much, do you think?”
“Jenny figures, assuming all the bonds are the same, close to ten million dollars. That’s a big