“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you saying?”
head tilted, eyes narrowed, brows lowered—suspicion
The surprise had been genuine, the suspicion natural. Seemed like Jones genuinely didn’t know Smythe was dead.
“Is Carl really dead?” Jones said. He ran his hand over the top of his head. “What the fuck?”
“Let’s take this outside.” They led him to the curb, and had him sit down. His leg was jiggling with nerves.
“What the hell are you going to do with me?” he said.
“You’re not under arrest, if that’s what you’re asking,” Laughton said.
“Under arrest? For what? Check me.” He held his arms out to either side as though he expected to be frisked right then. “Check my car. No sims. No memory sticks. Nothing.” He let his arms fall. Then his eyebrows crumpled into a groove above his nose as he realized. “You don’t mean Carl?” He scoffed. “You think I killed Carl?” Jones stood up then. Tall as he was, he probably wasn’t used to looking up to talk to someone. “I didn’t. You’ve got to believe me.”
“Then tell us who did.”
“How would I know?”
Laughton held up his phone, and read, “Carter Jones, six counts of sims possession, two with greater than twenty sticks.” He looked at Jones. “Given that you’re a sims dealer, and Smythe wrote sims, and you showed up at his house the day after he was killed says to me, you probably have a very good idea of who killed him.”
“You need to help me,” Jones said.
“Why do you need help?”
“Hello? They killed Carl. And where’s Sam? What happened to Sam?”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Do you really know shit?” He looked around for someone to share his incredulity, but was met with blank faces.
“Who killed Smythe?” Laughton said. “Do you know? Maybe we can protect you if we know the people to go after.”
“ ‘Maybe,’ ” he sneered. “At least you’re being honest.”
Laughton shifted his weight. “Mr. Jones. I know you’re scared, but unless you tell me what’s going on, I don’t know what I can do for you.”
Jones closed his eyes and put his fingertips to his temples, talking to himself. “This fucking app.” An edge of panic had entered his voice. He opened his eyes. “Fuck!”
At the word “app,” Laughton’s stomach seized. If Kir’s case was connected, the shit would really hit the fan.
“What app?” Mathews said.
Jones focused on Laughton. “My job is the hackers. My job is to protect the hackers, because I’m the only one who knows them. But if someone got to Smythe and now Sam’s gone, what do you think that’ll do to my reputation? And worse, what if they want to get to me so they can get to my other hackers?”
“Why would anyone be killing hackers?” Laughton said.
Jones’s shoulders fell, and he swallowed.
Dropping the pose revealed that he was much younger than Laughton had at first thought, maybe twenty-six at oldest. The beard was deceptive.
Jones shook his head. “You really don’t know shit, do you?” he said.
Laughton noted the inner corners of his eyebrows raise in sadness.
“You haven’t heard about the killer app? I thought it was all over the news.”
“Hot shots killing robots,” Laughton said.
“Yes. Thank you. God.”
“What?” Mathews said. “Someone want to fill me in?”
“You’re sure it’s connected?” Laughton said. “You’re certain?”
“No, but…”
“But what!”
“It just—what if it is?”
Laughton remembered what McCardy had said the night before about his partner’s work. Computers actually burning down. These robots melting from a program? Of course it was connected.
The dealer’s hand was shaking uncontrollably at his side.
tucked chin, the mouth stretched wide toward the ears—panic
Laughton knew the amorphous fear that victims’ friends and family felt after a murder. Off balance, generalized apprehension. This was more specific. “You know who did it,” he said.
Jones looked at him. There was a flash, a micro-expression, a fraction of a second that showed remorse before defensiveness replaced it. “What? No.”
He felt guilty about something. “What are you afraid of?” Laughton said.
“I told you.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“What? Nothing. It’s just, if people start pointing fingers at me… But maybe somebody thinks they know who wrote the code, and if it was Sam and Smythe…”
Laughton’s whole face felt heavy, as though his visage was going to slough off. “Who!” he snapped.
“Look,” Jones said. “I’m not saying it makes sense. Maybe they’re not connected, but all I know is that I was Sam and Smythe’s middleman, and I don’t know if that puts me in the line of fire. I came to find out what Sam knew about the robots who got burned, but it’s too late for that. Fuck.”
Jones had regained his sense of outrage. Whatever he was suppressing was gone. Laughton tried to think. He asked Jones, “How many hackers do you handle?”
“Six, no, seven. But you’re crazy if you think I’ll give up their names.”
“All on the preserve? Outside of Charleston?”
“Yes.”
“So you pick up the memory sticks. Then what?”
Jones hesitated, his eyes going up, searching for an answer.
“You know what,” Laughton said. “Fuck it, you are under arrest.”
“What! No! The Sisters.”
“Like nuns?” Mathews said, and laughed.
“The Sisters,” Jones said. “They get the product off the preserve. Pack it in with their produce, and then I don’t know where, out to stupid metals who like to fuck with their brains.” Seeing the next question, he said, “They run a farm.”
“Okay,” Laughton said, trying to get his head around it all—dead robots, farmers. Jones looked like he was ready to bolt, his fear growing as he stood there. For talking? “Sure you had nothing to do with those hot shots?”
“Why the fuck would I want to mess up my business? Use your brain, man.”
Laughton thought, If only he could use his brain. If only it didn’t feel so far away. He wished he could just plug in a memory stick and fix his head.
“You’re coming back to Liberty with us,” the chief said.
“Like hell I am.”
“Like hell you are,” Laughton said, and Mathews grabbed Jones’s upper right arm.
“You wanted help. Come with us. We’ll protect you.”
“I don’t know, man,” Jones said.
Laughton flexed his jaw. “Mr. Jones, I know you’re scared, but think for a minute. Forget whoever’s killing hackers, or sims, or any of that. We’ve got a murder on the preserve. We don’t come up with a killer, and the robots are going to use it as an excuse to come in here and take over the investigation. And then how long before they’re claiming we need robots on the preserve as peacekeepers, and then this whole place is an open-air prison instead of a wildlife preserve. You think they’re going to ignore the sims traffic the way we do? Like you said, who cares if the robots want to fuck themselves up, but if we don’t close this up fast, they’re going to fuck us all up, and then you can forget about sims.”