Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [30]
“He missed you, you know,” it said, surprising me again. “That’s why he faked up your voice from the subnet records and downloaded this versonality. Didn’t feel the same unless he was chewing the rag with his partner.”
“I missed him too,” I said. I had, when I’d thought of him. But most of the time I’d been on the Farm I’d consciously shut out thoughts of the past. I had to. I should have called to let him know was all right. Mal and I went back a long, long way; long before our time in the NRPD together, right back to the Bright Eyes. But I didn’t call him, just like I sometimes hadn’t done other things, little things, which would have made other people’s lives a bit better. I just wasn’t good with things like that. I’d realize them in retrospect, but somehow at the time I was always too busy thinking of something else.
After a long pause the machine said, “What are you going to do when you find out who clipped him?”
“Kill them back,” I said. And I would, just as soon as I’d worked out what had happened to the spares.
Two small lights started flashing on the Matrix, and then another. “The agent says the first three packets got through without incident,” the computer said. We watched as a few more of the others reached the server. “Seven now. The key sequence is in the eighth. If the server barfs on that we can pull the others and no one will know where the inquiry came from.”
Eight—I held my breath.
Nine.
Ten. “We’re in,” the computer said gleefully. “Either they don’t know he’s dead, or someone’s been very careless.”
“Corrupt, lying, and duplicitous the New Richmond Police Department most certainly is,” I said, with a vestige of pride. “But they are not careless.”
PoliceNet flashed up a greeting to Sergeant Reynolds, and a pile of envelope icons spiraled down into the interface’s in-tray.
“You want to check his mail?” the computer asked.
“Later. First, pull the image from the digipic’s memory.” Almost instantaneously the picture I’d taken of the stiff lying in the garbage of Mandy’s Diner appeared in a small window on the screen. “Okay. See if we can get a make on this guy, country-wide—but first crop the image so it’s less obvious that he’s dead.” In addition to taking the picture, I’d dug my slugs out of the body, which was about as much fun as it sounds—especially as the guy’s skin had been kind of slimy.
“The host versonality’s trying to get through,” the computer said. “You want to talk with it direct?”
“No. It’s an officious little prick. Can you deal with it?”
“Sure can.” After a tiny pause it continued. “Just hassling you for not filing a report yesterday. Wanted to know where you’d been.”
“What did you say?”
“Buying pickles.”
“Why?”
“That’s what Mal always said. It’s doing a search on that picture now. And you’re right It is an officious little prick.”
“Meantime, send a couple agents to gather what they’ve got on homicides with ‘unspecified facial damage’ in the last month, especially the two in the last couple days. Keyword ‘eyes’ if necessary.”
“Right-o.”
“And let’s have a look at what Mal’s stored in his file area on the subnet” A screen appeared, with a long list of topics. I frowned. A quick scan down the list revealed them all to be mundane police business. Citations, court appearance stuff, all on minor felonies. “That’s it?”
“That’s all that’s there. You want it downloaded?”
“No, leave it.” Mal was evidently dissembling with the subnet computer, not storing any of his core interest stuff on it. Chances were it was somewhere on his hard disk. I was about to ask the computer to look for it when a blank make-screen popped into view. No picture, no name.
“No record on the dead guy,” the computer