Hurley's Heroes Collection 2015-2020, page 40
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Katya said, pointing her fingers at the projection and accepting the data transfer. Her eyelids flick- ered as she reviewed the data privately, streamed onto her retinas. “Fuck’s sake.”
“The garda had three chances to solve this one,” Abijah said. “Now it goes private.”
“Provided somebody pays for it,” Katya said. “Who’s paying?”
“That’s confidential,” Abijah said. “You saw it’s been sealed.” “Concerned citizen, huh?” Katya said, stuffing her fists against
her waist. “Who else you working with?”
Abijah shrugged and gave a little smile. She turned her attention back to the body.
“Oh no, fuck,” Katya said, pulling at the cigarette case in the front pocket of her slick. “I have six complaints out against that—”
“She’ll be fine,” Abijah said. “She’s been sober a month.” “And you?” Katya said, tapping out a cigarette.
“Gave it up,” Abijah said, “the way you gave up smoking last summer.”
Katya grimaced and popped off the tip of the cigarette to light it. “Simple pleasures,” she said.
“You’re contaminating the scene.”
“Not my scene anymore, is it?” Katya said. “How’s Maurille and Savida?”
“Divorcing me,” Abijah said. “Said they were happier with each other.”
“Sorry to hear it. The kids?”
“Already on the continent for the exams,” Abijah said. She rose and tucked away her stylus. “Hold the scene for the medical exam- iner. Bill your time to the account.”
“This is the biggest shit,” Katya said.
“Definition of insanity is doing the same old thing, expecting a different result. You need fresh eyes on the case.”
“You don’t even know it’s connected to the other boys.”
Abijah snorted. “I don’t know if the sun will come up over that horizon today either,” she said, “but I can tell you that it’s pretty likely.” She crunched back across the sand, moving past Katya, and noticed a gleaming bit of detritus at the edge of a large, smooth hunk of volcanic glass. She stooped to pick up the object, and hooked it with her stylus. It was a gold-plated button stamped with a grinning round head fitted with a monocle. Abijah knew the farcical design immediately, because it was used on the all-weather coats issued to garda when they reached the Inspector level and above. She had one herself.
Abijah pulled out a bit of sticky evidence gum and gobbed it over the button, then slipped it into her pocket.
“What’s that?” Katya said, coming up behind her just as she hid the button from view.
“Bit of pretty flotsam,” Abijah said.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Katya said, and flicked her cigarette butt onto the glittering beach.
“Sorry about your pasties,” Pats said, chomping on the last two bites of something flaky with a gooey center as she pushed inside Abi- jah’s apartment door.
“Thanks for saving me some,” Abijah said.
Pats licked her fingers. She was missing the ring and pinkie fingers on her left hand; both ended cleanly at the knuckle. “Just making sure they aren’t poisoned,” Pats said. “I got your back. And your guts. Such as they are. Used to be my guts, some of them.”
“You get the files?”
“Sure,” Pats said. She set the pastry box on the divan and pulled a green folder from inside of her long black coat. Pats sank into the divan and put her muddy boots up on the rock table. She wet her fingers and opened the folder.
Abijah sat beside her. The folder contained several pages of sketches depicting the park and gardens nearest the local garda station.
“You’re getting better,” Abijah said, pulling out one of the slip- pery pages. The ink could be wiped away with a simple solvent and the pages reused.
Pats peeled back the inside front cover of the portfolio, revealing a double helix-shaped strand of green code. She pulled it free and it floated up into the air, untangling itself.
Abijah set her interface to receive mode and downloaded the data before it self-destructed, breaking apart into a fine mist and blowing away under the strength of her breath. Abijah quickly streamed the data across her vision: case notes, snaps, crime scene recordings, reports, for all three of the previous murder cases for the off-worlders who had washed up on the sandbar.
“This everything?” Abijah asked.
“Everything stored in the general case file,” Pats said. “It hasn’t been secured. So, yeah, if there’s anything else related to the case that they’ve got, it’s not linked to these cases in the server. Always a chance there’s something buried in a file another some code name. But I just don’t get that anyone cares enough about these cases to go to the trouble.”
“’Cause they’re off-world?”
“Sure,” Pats said, reaching forward to dig out another pastry. It oozed raspberry filling that glopped onto her fingers. “These are good.”
“Who left these?” Abijah said, pulling at the top of the box. “They’re for Maurille,” Pats said, “from that bakery she sponsors.”
“Shit, Pats, I’m already on the outs with Maurille.”
“All the more reason to eat her pasties.” Pats grinned wolfishly. “When they kicking you out?” Her gaze moved to the tubs and plastic barrels half-full of Abijah’s belongings.
“Had the talk last week,” Abijah said. “You don’t sound surprised.”
“Been bad awhile.” “What they tell you?”
Abijah popped open the top of the box and grabbed the last pastry; strawberry. Maurille’s favorite. “They told me I’m too emo- tionally unavailable,” Abijah said.
Pats guffawed and slapped her own knee. “That’s a great one!
Youse hooked up during the war! They expect you to change?” “Guess so,” Abijah said, and bit into the pastry. “You miss living on the continent?”
“Nah,” Pats said. “I live on a good disability pension.” She cocked her finger against her head. “Upside to being a nut. But I do miss the war.”
“You miss killing.”
“Eh, well, that too. Garda get touchy about that, way touchier than in the war, you know? Bad sports.” Pats stood and wiped her hands on her coat. “You let me know if you need anything else.”
Abijah dug into her pocket and pulled out the button in its clear webbing. “You take that to the medical examiner, have her look at it? She’s on your way home.”
“Sure,” Pats said, shrugging.
“Kids all worked at the same factory,” Abijah said, “judging by the tattoos. Can you confirm that, too?”
“Those reports should.”
“I need to know about this fourth one, though. Can you look into his family?”
“Aw, you always want me to do the messy people shit.” “It’s because you’re so personable,” Abijah said.
“Blah, blah,” Pats said, and waved her fingers at her. “Ah, before I forget!” She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a large, copper-colored can of rum, then winked. “A divorce gift!”
“I’ll need a lot more of those,” Abijah said.
Pats grinned triumphantly and pulled a second can out of her other pocket and thunked it down on the table with satisfaction. “One for each spouse!” she crowed, and flounced out the door.
Abijah popped open the can before the door had closed and took a long drink. Private work had its benefits. Sobriety was not regulated, and certainly not expected, when someone hired her. Her window screen covered the entirety of one wall, though a large section on the far left was glitchy, which meant the beachy scene she had programmed into it appeared to have a massive black hole zigzagging along the boardwalk through which tourists disap- peared as they rambled out of the frame. She opened her interface and ordered up a wintry scene from the continent, something re- corded in the Black Hills before the shelling of Solosia. Everything existed in some bio-digital memory these days, even the places long dead—countries, continents, starships, whole worlds, entire systems, so many one could get lost trying to count them, like trying to make a map of the stars from a starship heading out for the edges of a universe that was still expanding, stars blooming ahead and dying behind, endlessly.
She asked for one of her favorite curated news channels and watched the headlines streaming to the right of the projection. She could just as easily have played it all across her retinas, but when she was home she preferred to switch off. Boots on the table, drink in hand, she asked for the highlights of a few headlines about the case, mostly nonprofessional takes on the recent murder and the usual half-dozen conspiracy theories from unhinged folk on the edges of the colony. To each their own, she supposed.
Abijah finished her first can of rum as the world began to grow more bearable at the edges. A persistent message tap-tapped at the edge of her vision, a little red arrow indicating a conferenced call from Maurille and Savida. She brooded on it a long moment, then popped open the other can and accepted the call. The safety no- tification asked her to confirm she was not currently mobile or operating any type of machinery. She checked “no” and her wives’ faces filled her vision.
Maurille and Savida projected an image of themselves that was certainly far removed from wherever they were currently holidaying on the continent. They both looked severe and buttoned up, as if expecting a business negotiation to break out at any moment. Maurille, tall and lean, like an exceptionally well-bred tree, was older, her face softer now around the edges. Maurille and Abijah had married first, and Savida had come later, a slim woman a de- cade their junior whose fisher-family had supported her schooling in bio-environmentalism on the continent and then welcomed her back as a local government resource steward. Somehow the two of Abijah’s spouses grew more serious, brought together, no doubt, when Abijah had gone away to the war. When Abijah came back, maybe, there had been time to repair what the three of them had, but she hadn’t been ready back then. Wasn’t ready now.
“Are you drinking?” Maurille asked, softly concerned. “Nah,” Abijah said, sipping her rum.
Savida made a face, because though Abijah had chosen a fine upstanding image of herself to project to them, they could certainly hear everything.
“We’re calling about the dog,” Maurille said. “What dog?” Abijah said.
“There was a dog in the apartment,” Savida said, “when we came to get our overnight bags for the trip up. Did you get a dog?”
Abijah turned to look around the room; the motion of her head flipped the full-screen of the faces to the bottom left corner of one eye, letting her get a view of her actual surroundings instead of the projected ones. “No dog here,” Abijah said, but she got up anyway, sipping the rum as she did, and checked the two bedrooms, the closet, and the little balcony, just in case.
“No dog,” Abijah said. “No paw prints. Not even a shit.” Maurille said, “It was quite clearly in the apartment.”
A knock came at the door. Distracted, Abijah wondered if Pats had come back to try and lick the inside of the pastry box. She opened the door, hoping for a distraction from her wives—and got a fist in her face.
The blow was so unexpected it took her right off her feet. She sat back hard on her ass, black spots juddering across her vision. The can of rum sailed off to her right and collided with the cold box in the kitchen. The call with her wives went dead; their faces disappeared. Her window blinked dark, and then lights cut. She had already pulled her blackout curtains, so she couldn’t see any- thing at all. She had time to note three figures advancing, one of them with a six-legged dog on a leash, before they swung the door into the hall shut, completing their cover.
Three against one was bad odds sober during a fair fight, let alone drunk while on the floor and parted from her interface. At least it solved the question about the dog. These folks had been casing her place earlier. Thank fuck they hadn’t touched Maurille or Savida.
They proceeded to beat the ever-loving shit out of Abijah. They wore heavy, steel-toed boots that landed hard, savage blows to her chest and stomach and back. One mashed her in the face, dazing her. She wished, then, that she had finished the second can of rum, because she would have felt less and blacked out sooner. Instead, she went limp, letting them think she was down and out for good. The boots gave them away. This was a small town, and only garda wore boots like that.
As Abijah squinted at them through her one good eye, blood leaking down her face, one of her attackers opened the door, and in that slanted light from the hall she saw one of them, a squat figure, put her fists to her broad hips, and then self-consciously pat at her left breast pocket for a cigarette case.
“Little fucking weasel,” Abijah muttered, or tried to. Her face wouldn’t cooperate, which was just as well.
They gave her a couple more kicks, and then the combination of pain and drink finally took her away, mostly.
Abijah dragged herself into proper consciousness only to find she had a dry mouth and painfully empty stomach. She wanted to eat a whale. She gagged and heaved, but only drooled saliva onto the floor. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been out, because her curtains were still drawn and her interface still wasn’t back online. She crawled to the door and planted her hand in something soft and foul. Dog shit. The fucking dog had shit in her fucking apartment.
She snarled and flailed to her feet, fumbling her way to the wash room with her non-befouled hand. The lights were still off— nothing came on as she entered the room—but the water worked, and she scrubbed her hands and face clean. She put some pain- killers in via fast-acting eye drops and pocketed a vial for later. They were prescription-only drugs, but she didn’t technically have her own prescription for them.
Abijah tripped the emergency generator, cycling the power back on, and tromped down the stairs to the pub to get a drink, because sometimes that was the only thing that solved her problems. Certainly calling the garda to report being beat up by gardai wasn’t going to further her cause. The stiffness and pain bled out of her with every step as the drugs did their work, fuzzying the edges of her discomfort until she felt tired more than anything else.
She pushed open the door to the pub and found the pub owner, Maliki, engaged in an engrossing game of some kind on her inter- face.
Abijah waved a hand at her and called out, breaking Maliki’s concentration. Maliki blinked and focused on her. “Where the fuck you been?” Maliki said. “Been trying your interface for an hour. Maurille called and said you cut out.”
“Need a reboot,” Abijah said. “Got a juicer in the back?” “Sure, the kid’s back there. You in trouble with the law again?” “Pour me a drink and I’ll tell you,” Abijah said.
“Pay your tab and I’ll pour a drink!” Maliki called after her, but Abijah was already through the heavy curtains into the sprawling muck of the back room. Maliki’s kid, Popsy, bore a huge monocle over one eye, surgically implanted more for show and shock value than practicality. Popsy sat hunched at a loom full of disembodied interfaces. She swung her massively magnified brown eye in Abi- jah’s direction. Her hair was bright green, shaved on both sides and curled up on top into delicate ringlets like a fancy sea anemone.
Abijah sat next to her on the skull of a whale and held out her blank arm. “Garda wipe,” she said.
Popsy clucked at her. “In deep already? Didn’t you take the case yesterday?”
“Always been popular with the garda. Bestest friends.”
Popsy rebooted her interface and got it blinking at her again. There were two messages already from her wives, one from Pats, and one from her client.
“Thanks,” Abijah said, blinking open the message from her cli- ent as she headed back out to the bar and initiating a call before it had even started replaying.
“You owe me another favor!” Popsy said.
“Sure!” Abijah said. “I’ll pretend I didn’t see all those illegal interfaces.”
Popsy spit at her.
Abijah settled up at the bar. She and Maliki were the only ones up. Her interface told her it was only three hours after dawn. Good a time as any, she supposed, and chugged the beer Maliki had left on the bar.
Rylka vo Morrissey dominated her vision as the call connected, and Abijah blinked her back to her left eye only. Rylka sat out in her garden in a little automatic chair, or was projecting herself that way, surrounded in white and red roses with little purple tongues and waspish petals. During very wet seasons, roses often bred wasps, which made them the sort of hobby only those with a lot of time and maybe some masochistic tendencies got into. In the garden behind her, Abijah glimpsed a few laborers’ heads bowed to the task of cutting back the roses and watering their little flickering tongues. Rylka, like most of the vo Morrisseys, had a degenerative condition caused by chemical bursts during the war that limited her mobility. Abijah had the same thing, from the same cause, the doctors all said, but it was curled up in her like a serpent, waiting for some external condition to trigger it, like a bomb waiting in her body.
“Your interface went down last night,” Rylka said. “Is everything all right?” She was young, slender and reed-like, with bold features and a full mouth that lent her otherwise willowy appearance some gravitas.
“Got beat up by some garda,” Abijah said, “so your instincts were right. They’re certainly eager to keep me from finding any- thing out.”
Maliki reappeared with a cold pack and bashed it on the coun- ter to activate it, then handed it over to Abijah. Abijah gratefully pressed it to her throbbing head.
“You’re continuing the search?” Rylka asked, and her eyes got all big and dewy. “I’d hate to think—” Rylka was descended from some of the founding families. While terms like rich and wealth weren’t really in vogue out here where everyone was supposed to toil alongside each other and share in the world’s prosperity, she was certainly well insulated and . . . well-gifted by her colleagues in exchange for political favors. Abijah was counting on being well- gifted for her own services, too. Everybody needed a good word at the council when shit went down.
