Lock In (19 page)

“I think he said he lived at the Bradbury Park apartments,” Willis said. “Bradbury Park, Bradbury Villa. Something like that.”

I immediately did a search and found Bradbury Park Apartment Homes about half a mile away. Next stop, then. “Did he ever talk about his work?” I asked.

“Not really,” Willis said. “He mentioned it once but then said what he was doing was confidential, so he couldn’t talk about it. I didn’t think about it much at the time. I thought he was trying to make a joke.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t think he liked his job, though,” Willis said.

“What makes you think that?” I asked.

“The last few times he was in he didn’t seem really happy,” Willis said. “He was quiet, which was unusual for him. So I asked him if everything was all right. He said the job was getting him down. He didn’t say anything else other than that.”

“All right,” I said.

“And now he’s dead,” Willis said. “Did that have to do with his job?”

“I couldn’t really say at this point,” I said. “We’re still looking at things.”

Juarez cleared his throat. I looked behind me and saw two new little old ladies, waiting. I nodded to him in acknowledgment.

“Looks like I need to wrap up,” I said. “Anything else about Oliver Green that sticks out in your memory?”

“He asked about a post office box one of the last times he was here,” Willis said. “Wanted to know how much one was and what he’d need to get one. I told him the price and that he’d need two forms of ID. He seemed to lose interest after that. I told him he’d probably be better off with a security deposit box anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because he said he had something he wanted to put somewhere safe.”

*   *   *

“Oliver Green,” said Rachel Stern, the Bradbury Park Apartments manager. “Nice man. Rents a one-bedroom ground floor, near the orchard and laundry room. Well, he doesn’t rent it directly. His company does.”

I looked up at that. “His company.”

“Yes,” Stern said. “Filament Digital.”

“I don’t know that I’ve heard of it,” I said.

“They do something with computers and medical services, I think?” Stern said. “I’m not really sure. I know they do a lot of work with City of Hope, which is why they rent the apartment from us. So the people they have working there will have a place to stay.”

“So Mr. Green isn’t its first tenant,” I said.

“No, there have been a few before him,” Stern said. “Most of them have been fine. One a couple of tenants back we had to tell to keep quiet after ten
P.M.
He liked to play his music loudly.”

“But not Green.”

“No,” Stern said. “Model tenant. Traveled a lot, especially recently. Hardly knew he was there.” She looked puzzled for a moment. “Is Mr. Green in trouble with the FBI for something?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “He’s dead.”

“Oh my God,” Stern said. “How?”

“Ms. Stern, would it be okay if I looked at Green’s apartment?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Sure,” Stern said. “I mean, if he was alive I suppose you would need a warrant, but now that he’s dead…” She trailed off for a moment, apparently trying to decide how to proceed. Then she nodded to herself and turned to me. “Of course, Agent Shane. Come with me.” She motioned me out of the door of her office.

“This is a nice complex,” I said to her as we walked, mostly to make chitchat, and to keep her from thinking about whether she really should ask for a warrant.

“It’s all right,” she said. “We have nicer complexes elsewhere. This one is in the middle of our portfolio. But Duarte’s a nice little town, I have to say. Agent Shane, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Go right ahead,” I said.

“Are you related in any way to Sienna Shane?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Is she somebody famous?”

“What? Oh, no,” Stern said. “I went to high school with her in Glendora, and when I went back to our ten-year reunion she said a cousin of hers got Haden’s. I thought maybe it might be you.”

“Nope,” I said. “I’m not even from here. I was born in Virginia.”

“Why did you ask me if she was famous?”

“When people ask you if you know someone, they’re often someone famous,” I said. “That’s all.”

“I can’t think of anyone famous named Shane,” Stern said, and then pointed at an apartment. “Here we are.”

I looked up and then grabbed her arm. “Hold up a second,” I said.

“What is it?” Stern asked.

I pointed at the apartment’s patio. Most of it was hidden by a privacy wall, but the top of the sliding glass patio door was visible. It was open, just a crack.

“Does Green have roommates?” I asked, quietly.

“Not on the lease,” Stern said.

“Was the patio door like that before?”

“I don’t think it was,” Stern said.

I reached for my stunner to flick the clasp on my holster and then realized I was wearing a rental threep. “Shit,” I said, looking down at where my stunner wasn’t.

“What is it?” Stern said.

“You have your phone on you?”

“Yes.”

“Stay here,” I said, and then pointed to the apartment door. “If I don’t come out of that door in exactly one minute, call the police. Then get back to your office and stay there. Got it?”

Stern looked at me like I had just turned into an octopus or something. I left her, went to the patio wall, and heaved myself over it, landing as quietly as possible on the bare patio. I crouchwalked over to the patio door, turned on my recording mode, slid the door open enough to slip through, and entered the apartment. I stood up.

A matte-black threep was there, standing in the dining nook, twenty feet away, an envelope in its hand.

We both stared at each other for a good five seconds. Then I closed the patio door behind me and locked it. I turned back to the threep.

“FBI,” I said. “Freeze.”

The other threep bolted for the front door.

I went after it, leaping over a couch to do it, and collided with the threep about three feet short of the entrance, ramming it into the wall. The drywall cracked but held.

The threep tried to hit me in the head but had no leverage. I grabbed it and heaved it, sending it stumbling back between the living room and dining nook. The envelope it had in its hand fell to the ground.

“You’re under arrest for breaking and entering,” I said, walking toward the threep in an arc to keep it from thinking about trying for the patio door. “You’re also under arrest for assaulting a federal officer. Give up now. Don’t make this more awkward than it already is.”

The threep feinted toward the door and then headed into the kitchen, which was dumb, because it was walled in on three sides. I came around to the open side. The threep looked around, saw a set of knives in a butcher-block holder, grabbed one, and held it at me.

I looked at it and then looked at the threep. “Are you
kidding
me?” I said. My threep’s body was carbon fiber and graphene. A knife was gonna do dick to it.

The threep flung the knife at me, and I flinched involuntarily. It pinged off my head and back onto the kitchen floor. When I came back up, the threep had pulled a large pot out of the pile of dirty dishes in the sink and aimed it directly for my head. There was a gonging sound as it connected, twisting my head aside and caving in a portion of it.

It was then I realized that my rental threep’s pain receptors were dialed up really high. Some part of my brain recognized this made sense, since the rental place wanted to keep its customers from doing anything stupid with the threep, and dialing up the sensation of pain would certainly do that.

The rest of my brain was going
ow jesus fuck ow ow
.

The threep raised its arm back for another swing and brought it down again. I made a fist and punched the pot as it came down and then shoved myself into the threep, driving my elbow into the threep’s neck as I did so.

That’s what I wanted to do, anyway. What I ended up doing was a lot less kung fu and a lot more drunken scuffle. But on the other hand I managed to push the threep backward and make it stumble. Which was the point.

On the stove was a skillet with the remains of some scrambled eggs in it. I grabbed it and looked back at the threep, who was back up, pot in hand.

“Come on,” I said. “Are we really going to do this?”

The other threep spun the handle of the pot in its hand, waiting.

“Look,” I said. “The police have already been called. They’re on their way. You might as well—”

The threep went high with its pot and swung down heavy. I backed up and stepped to the side, avoiding the pot. The threep’s arms came down, leaving its head exposed. I smacked my skillet into it like I was a tennis player returning a volley. The threep fell back flat on its ass.

I took advantage and kicked it in the side as it tried to scramble back up, sliding it farther back and to the right, into the kitchen. Its right arm, the one holding the pot, was splayed out. I drove my legs into it, immobilizing it, pushed the body into the stove, driving the other arm under the threep body. I raised my skillet.

The threep looked at it, and then at me.

“Yeah, I know, a goddamn skillet,” I said.

Then I drove it into the threep’s neck, edgewise, seven or eight times, until the carbon fiber casing cracked. Then I reached over and picked up the knife from the floor and slid it under the cracked casing, until I could feel the tip resting against the bundle of control fibers that went from the threep’s processor to its body systems.

“See,
this
is how you use a knife in a threep fight,” I said, and then hammered the knife on its handle with the skillet.

The knife severed the bundle fibers. The threep stopped fighting me.

I wedged the knife in and cracked open the neck a little more, looking in until I could see the cord that carried power from the battery back to the processor in the head. I reached into the neck and wrapped a finger around it. Then I looked at the threep.

“I know you’re still there and I know you can hear me,” I said. “And I know this threep can still talk. So why don’t we do this the easy way.” I looked around at the mess. “Well, the
easier
way, anyway. Tell me who you are and why you were here. I have your threep. I have its onboard memory. I’m going to find out all of it sooner or later.”

The threep said nothing. But whoever had been controlling it was still there, still looking at me.

“Have it your way,” I said, and yanked at the power cord, feeling it rip away at one of its terminals. The threep was now officially dead.

I stood up and looked around the apartment. It looked like a couple of idiots had trashed the place. I went to the door and opened it and saw Rachel Stern, on the phone, gawking at me.

“I heard noises,” she said. “I called the police.”

“Excellent idea,” I said. “Call the FBI’s L.A. office while you’re at it. Tell them I need an entire crime scene team and whoever they’ve got handling technology forensics. Tell them the sooner they’re here, the better.”

“Are you okay?” Stern asked, looking at my threep’s head.

“Well, let me put it this way,” I said. “I don’t think I’m getting the deposit back on this threep.” I turned away from her and wandered back into the apartment.

On the floor was the envelope the threep had dropped.

I picked it up. It was a plain white envelope on which the words “For grandma and Janis” had been written in very large, not-terribly-adult writing. The envelope was sealed. I debated for a moment and then opened it. On the inside was a data card.

“Hello,” I said.

A call pinged into my field of view. It was Klah Redhouse.

“Agent Shane,” I said.

“So, uh, Chris, this is Officer Redhouse,” Redhouse said.

“I know,” I said.

“You know that thing you’re investigating.”

“I do,” I said.

“Well, I have some people here who want to talk to you about it.”

“Important people, I would guess.”

“That would be a good guess,” Redhouse said.

“They wouldn’t happen to be at your desk with you at the moment, would they?” I asked.

“Actually, yeah,” Redhouse said. “How could you tell?”

“The nervous stammer, mostly,” I said.

There was a little laugh on the other end. “You got me,” he said. “Anyway, these people were hoping they might get to talk to you today.”

I held up the data card to get a closer look at it. “I think that can be arranged,” I said. “I have people there I want to talk to, too.”

Chapter Sixteen

“T
ELL ME YOU
have video of your fight,” Vann said to me, when I got back into the office.

“I’m fine,” I said, coming around to her desk. “Thanks for asking.”

“I didn’t ask because I knew you were fine,” Vann said. “You were in a threep. The worst that could happen is you get a dent.”

“That’s not the worst that could happen,” I said. My last moments in the Los Angeles area consisted of handing my insurance information over to a very annoyed manager at the Pasadena Avis, so they’d deal with the threep I had brought back with a cracked and dented head.

“You survived,” Vann said.

“The other threep got it worse,” I allowed.

“And do we know who the other threep was yet?” Vann asked.

“No,” I said. “The L.A. forensics team is looking at it now. But when I was looking at it I didn’t find any make or model information on it.”

“Which is weird,” Vann said.

“It’s
very
weird,” I said. “Every commercial threep carries that information by law, along with a vehicle identification number.” I raised my arm to show where my threep’s number was etched, just below the armpit. “There was none of that.”

“Theories?” Vann asked.

“One, it’s a prototype model,” I said. “Something that’s not on the market yet. Two, it’s a market model with aftermarket modifications, including stripping off make and model numbers and the VIN. Three, it’s a ninja.”

“Ninja threep,” Vann said. “That’s funny.”

“It wasn’t so funny when it was trying to bash my head in with a pot,” I said. “The L.A. team said they will let me know when they find something. I told them to pay special attention to the processor and memory. They looked at me like I was an asshole.”