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Losing a math coprocessor implant might be an annoyance, but losing
a heart regulator was a different thing altogether. Detective William
Greene gazed down at the body lying on the polished marble of the landing,
trying to decide whether he felt sorry for the guy or not.
The suit had to be hand-tailored. The gray wool shone, a recent Italian
style touted in the newest fashion videos. The victim's dark hair had gray
at the temples; an affectation, most likely to lend him an air of dignity.
His body looked too fit to be natural, the kind of fitness only the wealthy
could afford—metabolism regulator chips, continual isometric toning programs,
possibly even a few DNA alterations. A man like that didn't have gray in his hair
unless he wanted to.
Greene decided he should feel sorry for the victim anyway. They had too much in common,
despite all the things they didn't. If an EM blast hit him, he'd be in a bad way too.
He checked the cards handed over to him by a weeping secretary in a yellow blouse—perhaps
it was orange. He couldn't quite tell. The young woman now stood in a spot where the light
didn't hit her directly, so he couldn't see her clearly any longer. He could still hear her
sobbing. He held the top card squarely in front of his eyes, its black text easy to read on
a white background.
DeVane Michaelson, it said. International Travel Litigation. A lawyer who specialized in suing
travel agencies, the secretary had told him.
"What kind of name is DeVane?" Sergeant Ellison asked. She leaned over and took the card,
her dark hand passing into and then out of the range of his cameras.
"One that sounds impressive," Greene said. "Looks like there's a lot of money in travel lawsuits."
"Huh. I wonder why the Purists would come after him. He's not one of their usual targets."
Her voice sounded only mildly curious.
No, Greene thought, the Purists usually went after the purveyors of Intelligent Medical
Implants—not the IMI users. Any manner of chip implanted in the human body to improve
performance or appearance, the Purists called a "pollution" of Nature's Creation. With an
implanted heart regulator, Michaelson certainly violated their standards of human purity.
It concerned Greene that the Purists might have gone after a user. So far they had managed
to vandalize several implantation facilities in the Greater Los Angeles area.
They concentrated on taking out the companies' computers using EM blast guns,
mostly homemade. Kits for the things were available all over the Internet, marketed for
"legitimate uses" such as the destruction of old data. So far, any humans hit with blasts
in the Purist's "raids" had only suffered inconveniences. DeVane Michaelson was the first to die.
"Who knows? There might be some link," Greene said. "Why don't you start running
down everything you can on him?" Ellison would spend the rest of the day with her
computer, he reckoned. His own forte was listening, not reading screens—the images
that the cameras embedded in his contact lenses fed to his retinal implants were
grainy at best. "If it was the Purists, do you think they intended to kill him," he asked,
"or just burn him out?"
"Normally, regulators are pretty heavily shielded," Ellison said. "The EM blast
would have had to come from close range to cause one to fail."
A strong blast could have come from a distance, but still inside. The building's
Faraday system kept outside electrical intrusions at bay, and nothing near the body
had shut down, suggesting a very localized blast. Two large screens on the wall nearby
merrily cycled some irritating, colorful art that changed just about the time Greene had
them figured out. He thought they might be Van Goghs.
Greene turned his eyes in Ellison's direction. His retinal implant ran a facial
recognition program and supplied her name—an annoyance as it scrolled slowly through
the bottom of his vision. He'd put Ellison into the program when she first started
working with him about a year ago and had never gotten around to taking her out.
"My dad has a heart regulator," Ellison added in a quiet voice. "He got a letter."
The Purists had gotten their hands on some of the implant firms' client lists and
sent threatening letters to the users in an attempt to dry up demand for implants.
Greene had gotten a letter or two himself, but hadn't taken them too seriously.
"You report it?"
Ellison shook her head. "Just a form threat. I'll ask him if he's still got a hard
copy, though. Those people start going after users, Dad might want to invest in a shield vest."
Greene turned back to the body lying on the landing. "Yeah. A vest might be a good buy."
He wouldn't have said that a day ago, but this murder had him worried. Unfortunately,
a vest wouldn't offer any protection for him.
****
The widow had a nice figure. As she stood silhouetted in the light of a large
bay window, it was easy for Greene to see that much. Her face remained elusive,
even though his program informed him it had pinned down her features to a seventy-two
percent probability of recognizing her later. Dark hair, worn long, medium skin,
moderately tall. She wore a white blouse and dark skirt, high heels—details that
would change.
She came back from the window and sat down across from him on a wide pale-colored
couch. With the window behind her, she was little more than an outline to him. She
crossed her legs, and said, "They told me that DeVane was leaving his office. That
he didn't tell his secretary where he was going."
"No, Mrs. Michaelson. We don't know where yet." Greene shifted in his chair, feeling
uneasy. "Did you talk to him at any time today?"
"I went into the office this morning to get him to sign some papers for the bank.
And before you ask," she added, "I went to the bank and handed them over. I was
there from eleven till almost noon."
Which gave her an alibi at the time of the crime. "What sort of relationship
did you and your husband have?"
She sighed and laid something down on the table next to her. "If you
talk to his lawyer, you'll find out we were in the process of a very civil divorce."
"Over the secretary?" he guessed.
"No, not her. She wasn't the first, Detective; I just got tired of
it. I decided it was time to call DeVane a mistake and move on. He
was tired of being tied down, so he was perfectly agreeable."
That explanation covered her lack of emotion on hearing of her husband's
death. "So you get—What? Half?—and he goes off with the secretary?"
"I sincerely doubt that," she said. "DeVane isn't... wasn't the sort to
settle for one woman. I doubt little Veronica would have held his attention
for more than a few months. I'm getting most of the money, by the way. You
can check with his lawyer on that, too. I had far more money coming into the
relationship than he did and at least had the sense to require a clear prenuptial
agreement. DeVane is getting this monstrosity of a house and his car."
"You don't want the house?" he asked.
"Good Lord, no. Would you?" Her horrified tone almost made Greene laugh.
She sighed and added, "It's a showcase, Detective, to display all of DeVane's nice
things, myself included. My tastes are far simpler."
"It must be worth a fortune," he said.
She moved her head. "There are two mortgages on it. Unfortunately, I was
cosigner on them, so now I believe I'm stuck with the thing. I'm meeting with
my business planner tomorrow to find out how bad it is."
"I see."
She tilted her head to one side. "Do you?"
"Meaning?"
"Hmm. Is there anything else I can help you with?"
"We're going through his office files to determine if he's
received any threats there. I need to know if he's received
anything discretely on the house link."
She shook her head. "He was a lawyer, Detective. Of course peop
le threatened him. He kept files. If you'll excuse me for a minu
te, I'll make a copy for you."
She rose gracefully, passing close to him as she swayed toward the
hallway. She smelled of lilacs. Her heels clicked intermittently, movi
ng from floor to rug to floor.
Once she'd gone, he crossed to the bay window and looked back at
the room, trying to see details from this angle. His cameras supplied in
formation to his implants, but lighting was always their critical weakness
. He needed light on the subject—not behind—to be able to get a good idea o
f how it looked.
His eyes started to go out on him in his twenties, falling quickly thr
ough the stages of Retinitis Pigmentosa—night blindness and then an esca
lating loss of peripheral vision. But while the disease ravaged his reti
nas, it left his optic nerve unharmed. His implants fooled his brain into
thinking his own eyes were doing the seeing, not a pair of cameras. They
weren't perfect, but were far better than nothing.
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