Laughton hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. Maybe. Is that a problem?”
“No, of course, it’s just, I’m tired, I don’t feel like hosting. Is this the… case from yesterday?”
Erica jumped up. “Ready,” she said, throwing herself against Laughton, wrapping her arms around his waist, and hooking her feet around his leg. “Uncle Kir is coming to visit!”
“Erica. Get down,” Betty said.
“Yes,” Laughton said.
“Yay!”
“Erica!” Betty snapped.
“Call me,” Laughton said, physically prying his daughter off of him. “We’ll talk later.”
Betty opened the storm door.
“Goodbye, have fun,” Laughton said as Erica bounded out the front door, nearly crashing into Mathews.
“Call me,” Betty said as she walked out the door. “Morning, Jim.”
“Betty,” Mathews said.
The younger officer came inside. “Ready, Chief?” he said.
“Give me five minutes,” Laughton said. Upstairs, Laughton entertained the wishful thought that he could just get back in bed, but instead he brushed his teeth and changed his shirt. At least his head didn’t hurt. The beginning of the day was always the best time for Laughton, and it usually filled him with hope and a sense that life was manageable.
As they drove to the station, Laughton tried to run through the normal order of things in a homicide, certain he was missing something, but his mind remained blank. He half expected a loitering handful of reporters at the station, but there was no one. It meant everyone’d kept quiet about it for the last fourteen hours, even the Kramer’s people, something that seemed impossible. He wondered how long the vacuum would last. He needed to make the most of it.
When the preserve system was being developed, there had been a long debate about policing and jurisdiction. Most robots saw the preserve as a way to rid themselves of the human “problem.” They were more than content to let the preserve have its own justice system. Robot law enforcement, however, despite the fact that they had always employed a small number of human officers—Laughton having been one of them—and could therefore, when being open-minded, vouch for their competence, still wanted to have final jurisdiction. They knew that crime would not obey borderlines, and that there would no doubt be a flow of criminal activities onto and off of the preserve, and they didn’t want to accept any limits on their power.
In the end, a small list of crimes was designated as federal offenses, giving jurisdiction to the FBI with mandated oversight by the Department of Health and Human Services: sim trafficking, abduction/missing persons, and cybernetic crimes. Murder had been included on many of the early proposed lists, pushed for by the human population, who assumed, without good evidence, that most murderers would be robots. To pass the bill, however, murder was struck from the list, seen by the federal government as a strictly human problem. Robots just didn’t care. Humans were assured unofficially that any crime perpetrated by a robot on preserve land would fall under the purview of the FBI and that preserve law enforcement could expect federal assistance.
Laughton knew that this murder would be a test case. Many who had lobbied for the federal designation of murder would use Smythe as a rallying call. It wouldn’t help that there was the possible connection to sim trafficking, or that the use of a Taser might point to a robot assailant, both cases that would mandate FBI involvement. On the robot side, the more militant contingent in law enforcement wanted any excuse to invalidate many of the protections of the preserve by moving in as a standing army or rescinding the preserve altogether.
At his desk, Laughton opened the video chat on his tablet, and added Beaufort police chief Tommy Tantino, Georgetown chief of police Al Bell, and Commissioner Ontero to the invitation list. They needed to coordinate a manhunt for Jones and, more importantly, how they were going to handle the politicians and the press once this went live. There would be tremendous pressure to wrap up the case quickly while most of the country waited for the police department’s failure. His finger hovered over the call button. What was he going to tell them, though? It would be better if he had something to show that the investigation was advancing before he talked to them. Leave them deniability a little longer until he could provide some sound bites. He let his finger linger long enough to become uncomfortable, and then pulled his hand away. He yelled, “Mathews!”
Mathews appeared in the doorway.
“Call Dunrich also,” the chief said.
Mathews looked over his shoulder. “Dunrich. Come here.” He stepped into the office, and Dunrich stepped in behind him. The officers stood just inside the door, unwilling to commit a full entrance, like infrequent offenders called in to the principal. Laughton took a moment to consider the entire Liberty police force stuffed into a room that would have served as a maintenance closet at the Baltimore PD headquarters, where he used to work. It made him feel very small-town, and not in the good way he’d enjoyed over the last nine months. God, they hadn’t even made it a full year.
His men shifted their weight from one foot to the other, waiting in silence.
“You get anything from the interviews at the supermarket?”
Dunrich shook his head. “Nobody saw anything. Most people had never been behind the market ever.”
“Anyone seem off?”
“Chief, every single person said almost the same thing, and half of them were people I recognized. Nobody knew anything.”
Laughton nodded.
“I need to call Beaufort, Georgetown, and the commissioner,” he said, pointing to the tablet sitting on his desk, “hopefully before the press hears about it. But I want to have more than half a name when I do. If we can get out in front of this thing, maybe even catch the guy, we’ll avoid a mess of trouble far bigger than one dead hacker.”
Dunrich looked at his feet while Mathews chewed his lip. They wanted orders.
Laughton tried to think. What was their play? Find Jones, of course. Find anyone else Smythe might have known; he came to town to shop, they should check the bars, women, that meant the clinic… Maybe see if McCardy had thought of anything once he’d calmed—
Oh, shit. McCardy. He’d already fucked up. He jumped up. “We need to get back out to the house,” he said. “Idiot! We should have brought McCardy in last night. He could be a target. Dunrich, we need a better picture of Smythe’s life. Check the bars, the café, anywhere he might stop when he comes through Liberty. Mathews, you’re with me. We’ll take two cars. One of us should stay out there. Jones might show up.”
They waited for more.
“Go!”
Dunrich left. The sound of the outer door closing on its pneumatic hinges marked his exit.
Damn headache. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t posted someone there last night. He had wanted to get home so badly, the possibility that McCardy could be a target too hadn’t occurred to him. What other rookie mistakes had he made in his nightly funk?
He grabbed his tablet, and rounded his desk, Mathews backing out of the office to clear the way. “Did you manage to get ahold of Smythe’s sister?” he asked as they headed for the door.
Mathews shook his head. “The number McCardy gave me didn’t work, and I haven’t been able to find anything about her online. No social media, nothing.”