Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [31]
“Crap,” I said. Guys like him had rap sheets that were full to bursting. “How are the other agents doing?”
“They’re… oh, hang on, they’re back. That’s weird.” Both agents had returned, carrying a variety of grayed-out files listing the names and case numbers of the murders I’d requested information on. Each file was stamped with “Insufficient Security Clearance” markers.
“Bullshit,” I said. “Mal was a fucking Homicide Detective.”
“You were a Lieutenant,” the machine said. “Use your security code.”
“I can’t,” I said. I had a bad feeling, and it was getting worse. “Get out of there. Leave a hanging match for that picture, but hyperlink it to Mal’s records. Set the inquiry to implode if they find out Mal’s dead before the stiff gets reported.” As the machine did this and retreated from the subnet I sat back in the chair and lit a distracted cigarette.
When it was off the net I got the computer to do something else—check who owned Safety Net. Answer, nobody: Safety Net’s holding company was part-owned by about a billion others, spreading out into the financial ether like wine poured into water.
Nothing to go on, but my mind was already busy. Two thoughts.
First. Mal’s killer was clean. Unusual to the point of unheard-of. I’d talked to the fucker and knew that with an attitude like his there was no way he could have stayed out of trouble all his life.
Second. Murder files were never security-locked. You might have to go through a process to get hold of them, but they were never simply out-of-bounds. Especially when the cases were still wide-open.
Conclusion. Mal was working on homicides which someone didn’t want solved. Stuff which somebody was prepared to kill him over, hiring in a mechanic maybe from out of state and wiping his jacket for the deal.
Which proved: The NRPD were involved.
I sat in Howie’s office for a while, skimming Mal’s private files on the facial damage homicides. I tried to follow them from the beginning, starting with the scene reports, but soon lost the plot. Mal was in way over his head, the murder reports impenetrable crystals of obsessive detail. In the end I just pulled the victims’ addresses and got the computer to print them out.
I slipped Mal’s hard disk back into my pocket and went to the storeroom. Suej was sitting on the floor, her back resting against crates of raw materials for salsa. She was trying to read a women’s magazine.
“You haven’t found them,” she said.
“Not yet. I’m looking for them, but I have to work out who killed Mal first. I don’t think it’s the people who owned the Farm.” I paused. “And there are some other things I have to do.”
“Have to?”
For someone who’d spent most of her life in a tunnel, she was pretty hard to fool. “Need to.”
She looked at me. “Are we safe here?”
“As safe as we’re going to be anywhere,” I said, and left. I was remembering fast that the easiest way to behave badly is just to do it quickly. After the door shut behind me I turned and stared at it for a moment. I didn’t know what I was going to do with Suej. I didn’t know what I was going to do about anything, and I hated the fact that the only person looking into Mal’s death was me. It felt like I was living in a cliché, for a start, and I hate doing that. You always know what’s going to happen, and it never rains but it pours.
Howie was sitting over at a table in the corner of the bar, surrounded as usual by a pile of paperwork. I nodded at him and then had a brief contretemps with the bar droid, who insisted on serving me what it deemed to be my favorite drink. Every time I’d talked to it so far I’d had a whiskey, and so it had decided that’s what I wanted now. I didn’t. I wanted a beer, and said so. The droid reminded me that in its experience I’d always had Jack Daniels, and I’d probably prefer one now. I said I wanted a beer. The droid suggested that I was mistaken, and mused that my Preferences file might have become corrupted. In the end, I pulled my gun on him, and he served me a beer with relatively good grace.
“I’m considering getting rid of him,” Howie