The part of Jones’s face that could be seen above his beard had gone splotchy, whites and reds. He pulled his arm from Laughton’s grip. “How do I know it wasn’t you guys killed Carl?”
“Two of us…,” Mathews said.
Jones whipped around at the sound of Mathews’s voice.
“And one of you. If we were going to kill you, you’d be dead.”
Jones looked back to Laughton.
The chief knew the dealer hadn’t really thought the police were dangerous. But he didn’t trust them either. Laughton could see him weighing his options: police protection or running.
“You leave the preserve, how safe are you going to be?” Laughton said.
Jones pulled his shoulders in. His eyes turned toward the ground. He was withdrawing.
“Just help us out with a couple names and addresses—”
“You’re asking me to kill myself?” Jones said without looking at Laughton.
“Not if you’re with us. We will protect you.”
Jones started to shake his head. “Nah,” he said, “no.” He stepped back. “Forget this,” he said, and turned toward his car.
Mathews reached for him, but Laughton held Mathews back.
“No,” Jones said, walking sideways to his car, so he was half facing them. “I’m not under arrest. I’m not sticking around.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Laughton said. “We can’t protect you if we don’t know where you are.”
He was at his car now. “You can’t protect me if you know where I am,” he said, opening the driver’s-side door and getting in. “Ask around about the Sisters. That’s all I’m going to say.” He got in the car and slammed the door.
Mathews took a step toward the car as it came alive.
“No,” Laughton said. “He’ll be more useful as bait. We’ll track the car.”
“Won’t he figure that?”
Laughton watched the sims dealer as the car drove away. Jones’s face was stricken. “He won’t be thinking straight long enough for it to occur to him. Start recording the scene in there.” Laughton nodded at the house. “3-D scans, catalog everything. Ontero’s already sending Computer Forensics in from Charleston to start digging through the mess of servers in there, and I want you here when they get here. I’ll head back and see what I can find out about these Sisters.”
Mathews’s jaw tightened.
“You don’t agree with letting him go. Soon, I might not either. But we had nothing to hold him on anyway.”
“Sure we did. A laundry list.”
Laughton nodded. “Let me know if you find anything.”
By the time Laughton made it back to Liberty, he’d exhausted every database he could access looking for the Sisters. It was just too common a word, and with nothing more to go on, he couldn’t bring up anything in the system that seemed right. He was thinking over next steps when he heard Dunrich laughing, and his tension turned to anger. The officer was leaning far back in his desk chair in hysterics. Manuel Guthrie was in the slatted, wooden chair to the side of Dunrich’s desk. He was holding out his phone for Dunrich to see. Whatever had the officer in hysterics was displayed there. Kara Letts was at her news desk on the muted flat-panel TV on the wall. The closed captions said something about garbage dumps. At least Kara had other things than homicide to get people worked up about.
Dunrich sat up suddenly when he caught sight of Laughton, his chair almost rolling away with him. He grabbed his desk and pulled himself in. Manuel Guthrie turned to see what had spooked his friend. “Chief,” Guthrie said.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he said, ignoring Manny. “You’re supposed to be out canvassing.”
Guthrie held his phone out to the chief, trying to run interference for his friend. “Check this out.”
“Another time, Manny,” Laughton said. He wasn’t in the mood for any humor. He raised his eyebrows at Dunrich.
“I did canvass,” Dunrich said, his eyes not meeting the chief’s. “Nobody knew anything.”
“You canvassed the whole town in two and a half hours? Everyone?”
“You just said the bars.”
“Show some initiative! Anyone, everyone. Did you even ask Manny?”
“I don’t know nothing about anything, Chief,” Manny said.
“I’ll go now,” Dunrich said.
“Damn right you’ll go now. You— No, just wait.” He needed to get to this autopsy. Time was just draining. “Did you at least find out who the ME is?”
“I—”
“That’s a no,” Laughton said. “And you’ve got nothing better to do than sit around joking?” He threw his hands up with a “God!” and went to his office. He sat behind his desk and rubbed his forehead. Who’d he know in electronic narco who might know who the Sisters were?
Before he could even reach for his tablet, Dunrich called from the front of the station, “Chief! You want to see this!”
Laughton jumped up, yelling, “Fucking Dunrich,” heading out of his office, but Laughton’s attention was already on the television screen. The sound was on now, the closed captions a few paces behind. The commissioner stood at a lectern outside Charleston Police headquarters with the preserve governor and the mayor of Charleston flanking him. Two other figures stood just behind them. One—a small woman in narrow red glasses, black hair pulled back in a loose ponytail—Laughton recognized immediately: Kir’s boss, Grace Pattermann, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Her presence as a representative of the federal government was worrisome, but it was the other participant that had Laughton’s attention: a seven-foot, uniformed military robot called Colonel Brandis. The sight made Laughton’s stomach drop. Here was the nightmare, a robotic intervention, and Brandis the worst possible representative, a seventy-year-old robot of the old guard, and one of the most vocal anti-orgos in the world.
Laughton realized he was holding his breath, and forced air into his lungs. The on-screen text read “Homicide Sims Connection.” Damn! This was the opposite of keeping the investigation quiet. The commissioner was saying they had multiple leads, and nobody had to worry. As though Brandis and Pattermann weren’t reasons to worry on their own. He went on to say there was no evidence that suggested robot involvement. The text switched to “Robots Not Involved.” The robot government had sent a delegation to assist and consult only.
At least they weren’t publicly linking Smythe’s death to the virus that was killing robots. There was that, at least.
“Fuck,” he said. He turned and saw Dunrich just standing at his desk. “Get on the phone,” he said. “Find out about that autopsy.”
Dunrich sat down quickly and grabbed his phone. Laughton felt a little guilty for taking out his anger on Dunrich.
The outside door opened, but Laughton started for his office without waiting to see who it was. He hadn’t gotten around his desk, however, when Kir walked through his office door. Six foot with dark hair, protruding cheekbones, and sunken cheeks, Kir was an imposing figure who could pass as human. On the preserve, where no one expected a robot, most people wouldn’t even realize he wasn’t human until they spent a little time with him. “This is it?” the robot said.