Inescapable (20 page)

No,
appeared in the text window a second later. Then, a second after:
I didn’t get around to the bra
.

Fox had to stop
herself bursting into laughter.
Naughty girl.
Fox added a
grinning emoticon for good measure, but the money talk seemed to be
dying down and she wanted to get them off the subject if she could.
‘Have we had any further results from the hunter-killer bots?’

‘They nailed
three more of the infiltration units,’ Jarvis said. ‘That
could
be all of them, but we’re continuing to run sweeps. We
know they operate in a dormant mode most of the time, but we’ve
caught one moving. They seem to be taking their time climbing the
tower.’

Fox grimaced.
‘I’m betting on two more. We may not spot them until they emerge,
but keep looking.’

‘If they come
out of any of the vents in the computer rooms, we’ve got them. No
doubt on that one, but I’d prefer to nail them before they get
there.’

‘Nothing much I
can do on that case until we snag one.’

‘Alice?’ Eaves
said. ‘Anything out-of-band to report on the facilities side?’

‘Nothing that
isn’t covered in the weeklies. We’re expecting the immediate
updates on Mister Clarion’s building to be completed by the end of
this week, Fox. He may wish to consider where he wants to go from
there. I’d be happy to draw up contract papers if he wants us to
handle maintenance.’

‘I’ll talk to
him. He’ll probably drop around for coffee later anyway.’

‘Good,’ Eaves
said. ‘Any other business?’

Fox’s eyes
flicked to the text window she still had open.
Lucky girl
was printed in it along with a grinning emoticon.

22
^nd
April.

When the door opened,
she looked at him as though she had no idea who he was or why he
was standing there. Her expression cleared and her mouth smiled
though her eyes did not. ‘Oh, yeah, we’re going through the… Come
in. You know where everything is, right?’

He fingered the
cylinder in his pocket and thought of the carefully cut lengths of
cord in his briefcase. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘Great. I have
some things to do here. Sorry, I totally forgot you were coming
over.’

‘It’s not a
problem.’ No, it would not be a problem. In a few minutes, he would
have her full attention. ‘There is one thing.’ His hand closed
around the aerosol cylinder, pulling it from his pocket.

She turned and
smiled at him, a sort of baffled smile, as though she could not
imagine what it was he wanted to say. ‘What?’ And then she let out
a gasp as the vapour washed over her face. ‘What?!’ She stumbled
backward, the chemical working quickly. She fell almost immediately
and was entirely unconscious in a second or two. The drug was
designed to incapacitate muggers and it was very effective on women
who weighed about as much as a wet sack.

‘Now you’ll
remember me,’ he growled as he began to drag her through her
apartment.

23
^rd
April.

‘We have the case files
through from Inspector Ivers,’ Kit announced as Fox emerged from
the shower.

‘You’ve started
working the data into our records?’

‘Yes.
Interestingly, none of the victims have had
any
data
surviving in their implants. Where there was no physical damage, a
virus was uploaded which wiped the data.’

‘Even in the
Remus case?’

‘Yes, Fox. I’m
going over that file in some detail. I assume you would like to as
well.’

‘Yeah,’ Fox
replied, sighing a little as she pulled a new bodysuit from a
drawer. ‘Murder with breakfast. It’s always appetising.’

‘Yes. Oh!’

Fox paused with
the suit halfway up her thighs. ‘Kit?’

‘I’m scanning
the news feeds. It appears that there may be another file to
follow.’

‘Damn. See if
Ivers can be reached.’

There was a
pause and then Ivers’ face appeared in-vision. She had not bothered
to mask the video and she looked tired. ‘You’ve seen the news feeds
then,’ Ivers said. ‘I’ve been up all night. Just wrapped the
initial report and I’m going to bed while the labs do their thing,
but it’s our guy.’

‘Same message?’
Fox asked.

‘Magic marker
on a mirror over the bed. We think he had her for about five
hours.’ There was a pause. ‘He’s getting more violent, Meridian. He
had her for five hours. Five fucking hours and he used most of the
time this time. I’ll see you get the reports as soon as I have them
all in.’

‘We got the
other ones today. Kit’s started working on them.’

‘Good luck. I
think we’re going to need it.’

Fox let the
connection die. She could recognise a woman on the verge of falling
asleep on her feet. ‘Ivers said the second victim, Clifton, was
drugged the same way as Hopethorne.’

‘Yes,’ Kit
replied. ‘The files confirm that.’

‘Can you
program biosensor systems to watch for the kind of neurochemical
response the drug produces in a victim?’

‘I couldn’t,
but someone at MarTech might be able to do so.’

‘Right. Get the
data over to the tower. I want all our managed buildings scanning
for people affected that way, if it’s possible. Get them to put a
rush on it, Kit. He’s shortening the interval between kills.’

~~~

Fox sat amid the
remains of murder. Kit had constructed a very basic viron in her
own server and it was acting as a virtual murder board on a grand
scale. The immediate area was focused on the immediate crimes, the
four most recent ones, since they were the ones which had to be
stopped. Beyond them, connected via ephemeral lines of light rather
than threads, were all the other related cases.

‘It’s not
enough to stop this new host,’ Fox mused as she wandered through
the maze of data, examining connections and details. ‘I don’t think
this is a virus we’re dealing with, Kit.’

‘If not a
virus, then what?’

‘It’s got more
intelligence than that, and it doesn’t just propagate. It began
happy with a single incident from each host. All the way back to
Pallo and Rossi, there are multiple deaths, but it’s all in one
incident. And then it got to Doran and it kept a hold on him, kept
him killing. Put effort into making sure he could keep going. When
he was caught it went back to the single, large incident.’

‘Toronto.’

‘Yeah, but that
didn’t satisfy it this time, or it wanted to leave a gap. It came
back to New York and found someone else it could manipulate into
killing again, and again. Now it’s mixing in sexual assault… That
could be the host. Yeah, I think that’s the lever it’s used to get
him going. Doran was annoyed, angry with the world, so he was easy
enough to turn violent. This one is timid, easily ignored. He’s
quiet, a loner, and he knows these women, but they barely know he
exists.’

‘Why do you say
that?’

‘The blinding,
the increasing violence. He wants them to remember him, even though
he’s going to kill them. He wants his face to be the last thing
they ever see. He wants them to damn well know who he is before he
kills them. He’s angry, like Doran, but with this one it’s the
rejection that’s important. This time, the rape is about sex. It’s
not just sex, it’s taking these women who would never look twice at
him, it’s control and domination… Might be he’s religious.’

Kit’s brow
furrowed and then: ‘If it were a simple matter of sex, he could
hire someone. He wants the sex, but can’t or won’t purchase
it.’

‘Yeah, so he
has some moral or emotional qualm about professionals. It can’t be
the money. These people don’t know anyone without the money for a
pro once a month. We’re not talking a sprawler here. This guy wears
good suits, maybe not the best, but good. He probably doesn’t have
much sense of style, and he’s not above-average in looks either.
He’s older than they are because he’s had time to get irritated at
the way they behave.’ Fox’s eyes narrowed. ‘The way they dress,
flaunting their bodies in short skirts and tight dresses. The way
they move and act. They spend money like it grows on trees. Yes,
he’s not in their class, socially, but he thinks he should be. They
don’t deserve their money because they’ve never worked for it. You
know, justice of a sort keeps cropping up.’

‘It is not
universal,’ Kit replied, ‘but it does appear in several of the
cases. Of them all, the first is the most obvious. Mister Pallo
intended to make Mister Rossi pay for his crimes. The policeman who
went on a rampage.’

‘And now this
guy who wants to make his victims pay for being dilettantes. Maybe
he sees them as sexually promiscuous and is punishing them for
that, but I’m not sure I buy that. If he won’t go to a pro, then
would he have sex with someone he feels is acting like a whore? I
kind of doubt it. What do we have on people they all knew?’

Kit’s face
screwed up. ‘Unfortunately, the MCD “set” is highly incestuous.
These women have a considerable number of friends and acquaintances
in common. LifeWeb is
filled
with connections between them.
If we include personal employees, that list grows larger.’

‘You got the
friends and acquaintances from the gossip feeds and personal info
pages, yes?’

‘That is
correct. The sociometric structure of this group could probably
keep a memetics specialist engaged for decades. LifeWeb is an
exceptionally good source given its mechanisms for sociometric
analysis.’

‘Well,
cross-reference the data against the murder dates. I bet you can
cut out some of the list because they were out at some club instead
of committing rape and murder.’

‘Oo! That’s an
excellent suggestion.’

Fox gave her
beaming assistant a smile. ‘Yeah, but I don’t think it’ll get us
anywhere. For once I agree that the VIPs are probably not involved
in this. Our guy is an introvert, and I’m willing to bet that none
of the men these women knew has an introverted bone in their
body.’

~~~

‘How’s the acting thing
going?’ Fox asked.

Marie blinked
at her, the neon streams of 27Lex appearing to reflect in her green
eyes; Fox had to admit that the viron of the club was well
constructed. From the dilation of Marie’s pupils, Fox suspected the
subliminals were working on the younger woman too. ‘I’m doing
weekly coaching sessions with someone Sam’s friend recommended. He
thinks I’ve got promise.’

‘Isabella wants
to get her in on a few casting calls,’ Sam said from across the
booth; they had decided on a booth tonight because they were,
theoretically, there to discuss business.

‘Isabella
Bournville?’ Fox asked. ‘She’s one of yours, right? I remember the
name.’

‘When he said
he had an “agent friend,” I didn’t know it was her!’ Marie
squeaked.

‘Isabella is a
discerning woman,’ Sam said. ‘She saw you because I asked if she
would be okay with passing on some advice. If she thinks you’re
worth more of her time than that, then she sees potential. Now you
need to make the most of it.’

‘Oh, I intend
to. Really.’ Marie tugged at the high collar of the tight, pink
plazkin top she had selected for the evening. ‘Is it hot in here or
is it just me?’

Fox let out a
little snort of laughter. ‘I’m sure Sam will agree with me, but
you’re pretty hot.’ Marie’s cheeks flared scarlet. ‘I think the
memetic programming in this place is getting to you. Sam, why do we
keep coming here?’

Sam flicked his
eyes around the club. They were on the bar level at the top, which
was actually fairly subtle. Below was a dance floor which was,
thanks to the v-tag components and sensors, transparent, which
meant that the patrons on the lowest level got the benefit of all
the subliminal tags
and
a rather explicit view of the
dancers above. Around the sides of the bottom floor there were
private booths which could be hired and closed off from the main
club. 27Lex was not especially subtle about its chosen theme.
‘Nothing new has opened up that piqued my interest and I like
teasing people with overclocked libidos.’

‘That’s mean,’
Marie decided. ‘
You
could give people a heart attack or
something. They could collapse from frustration.’

Sam favoured
her with an amused smirk. ‘Thank you, Marie. I believe they have
EMTs on site, just in case. Anyway, Fox does a quite adequate job
of frustrating the patrons, and you just need a little more
confidence in yourself.’

‘Me?! Oh I…’
Marie trailed off as both Sam and Fox stared at her.

‘Actresses,’
Sam stated flatly, ‘require self-confidence.’

‘Especially
where they have a right to be self-confident,’ Fox added.

Marie
swallowed. ‘You wanted to talk about the house?’

Fox smiled.
‘Yeah. Alice says the first wave of updates was completed this
afternoon. I think some of the paintwork is still drying, but
they’ve been over all the wiring and brought that up to spec, and
the security system has been upgraded. They’ve got that hooked
through to Palladium’s local monitoring suite for now, kind of as a
customer service.’

‘And because
the CIO is a friend of the house’s owner?’ Sam suggested.

‘I don’t think
it’s stretching their resources any, but Alice wants to know if you
want the place on maintenance.’ Fox’s lips curled. ‘I think she’d
be happy to come over from Chicago and negotiate the contract
personally, but she asked me to broach the subject.’

Sam’s brow
knitted and he sipped from his wine glass before leaning back
against the cushioned, jet-black seat. ‘And here’s where it starts
getting difficult. I’ve got money to keep the place ticking over,
but it needs some heavy work doing on it. If I refit the whole
place, I’ll be pressed to keep it running. If I
don’t
, then
I’d be pissing away the money Felix left to live in decaying
splendour. To be honest, if I get Palladium in, or someone else, to
do all the work that’s needed, I’d end up having to sell the place,
which would probably leave me with enough money to retire, but it’s
not what Felix wanted.’