“Fuck you,” he said. “You better.”
They were at the car. As they got back underway, Laughton said, “Who’s Titanium? You said someone named Titanium has robots like the ones at Sam and Smythe’s.”
“Sims distributor.”
“Sam and Smythe used someone called the Sisters.”
“Titanium is new to the preserve. I’d hoped your case would end up being part of that turf war, but when you said Smythe wrote a burning program… Now if they’re here, I don’t know. Any luck in there?”
“Director of the clinic wants a subpoena before she’ll reveal anything.” He took out his phone. “I’ll email the district attorney now. Maybe we’ll still get lucky.”
“Maybe.”
As it was the first murder on the preserve, and the first suspicious death in his jurisdiction, Chief Laughton had no idea where the coroner’s office was. The Medical University of South Carolina was the only major hospital on the preserve, but it was a confusion of buildings spread over several blocks, some linked by walkways that bridged the city streets, others isolated, cut off from the rest of the medical campus by houses and food establishments and phone stores. The sheer number of people was disorienting. Laughton had become used to Liberty’s sparse population. Here there were nurses in scrubs carrying takeout, doctors in white coats chatting on benches, wheelchair-bound patients with their bags piled on their laps waiting for rides.
The car navigated to the front entrance, bringing them to a triangular drop-off loop with painted yellow curbs. He shut off the car.
“This is a No Parking zone,” Kir said.
Laughton opened his door. “We’re the police,” he said, and got out, just as his phone started buzzing. He stopped to check it, feeling the air-conditioned air wash over him as the hospital’s automatic glass doors slid open for someone else. A photo of Betty and Erica, cheek to cheek, showed on his phone. Erica was laughing, not looking at the camera; Betty had clearly tickled her to get her to smile. He answered it. “Hey.”
“My mom fell,” Betty said. Betty’s mother was in her midseventies. She lived in a house around the corner from the Laughtons.
“Is she okay?”
“She hit her face on something. She has some broken teeth, and I don’t know what else. Mom, no, don’t try to talk.”
“She’s with you?”
“We’re on our way to Charleston. About half an hour out.”
“I’m just getting to the hospital now,” Laughton said.
“Well, you’re going to have to get back to Liberty and pick up Erica at aftercare.”
“Okay.”
“She can be there until six.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know how long we’ll be once we get to the hospital, so you need to get back there.”
“Get Erica by six. Got it.” Uncle Kir could surprise her with Laughton.
“How’s your day going?” she asked, but Laughton knew she didn’t really want to know. Her mind was in emergency mode.
“Fine,” he said. “Let me know if you need me.”
“Okay.” Her tone changed to frustration. “Damn.”
“It’ll be okay,” he said.
“Mom, it’s fine,” Betty said to her mother. “Don’t talk!”
“You go,” Laughton said. “I’m busy here. Keep me posted.”
“I love you,” she said, and hung up.
The chief felt so far away that that didn’t even land on him.
“What now?” Kir said.
“Betty’s mom fell and needs to come here, so we need to get back to Liberty to pick up Erica by six.”
“When it rains…”
Laughton pocketed his phone. “Let’s find this guy.”
There was a security guard just inside the door. The chief asked him for directions, and he smiled and nodded, pointing out the front desk. “Don’t forget your masks,” the guard said.
Laughton rolled his eyes. Wearing surgical face masks was his least favorite part of being in a hospital. He hated the warm, damp feeling of his own breath coating his cheeks and nose, but it was the law. He took one from the dispenser, and fit the elastics over his ears. “You better take one too,” Laughton said to Kir. “You’ll call attention to yourself if you’re not wearing one.”
Kir smiled, amused by the novelty of wearing the mask. “Human?” he said when his was in place.
“Sure,” Laughton said. “Come on.”
A heavyset, middle-aged woman with an extravagant glass necklace and matching earrings stood as they approached the desk. The wrinkles around her eyes gave away the smile hidden beneath her own mask. Everyone was very cheerful here, it seemed.
He showed her his badge. “I’m looking for the medical examiner.”
Her face scrunched up. “I don’t know who that is,” she said, reaching for a phone on her desk. “Give me one moment.” She dialed, waited a few seconds, and then asked someone named Terry if she knew who the medical examiner was. Terry must have asked some people on her end, because it was at least a minute before the woman in front of him hung up, and said, “Let me just try someone else.” She dialed and put the phone to her ear again, waiting.
Great, Laughton thought. Maybe he should have just waited for the ME’s report. It’d be sent to him in the morning. For all he knew, he’d missed the autopsy.
The woman hung up, and said, “I’m so sorry. No one seems to know who that is. Is there anyone you could ask on your end?”
Laughton looked at Kir.
Kir shrugged. “Can you tell us where the morgue is?”
She looked at the screen in front of her, typed something on a keyboard, swiped the screen, and then pointed toward a bank of elevators. “Take those elevators there down to the basement,” she said, and gave intricate directions that Laughton didn’t bother to remember, knowing Kir recorded them automatically.
A pair of doctors in long white coats exited the elevator when it came. It wasn’t until the doors closed and he’d pushed the button for the basement that Laughton registered that one of them had not been wearing a mask—a Dr. Check model, the ubiquitous medical robot he’d seen all his life. Perhaps he was naive, but he’d really thought there were actually no robots on the preserve. He guessed some medical procedures must be best left to a robot, which explained why one would be in the hospital. Still, if he’d thought it was jarring to see so many people, it was even more shocking to see a robot. He’d never have believed there’d ever be such a time in his life, but it had actually been months since he had seen a robot. With his record broken, he realized how much he had liked it.
He started to say something about it to Kir, and then it struck him that Kir was a robot. His streak had already been broken that morning, he just didn’t think of Kir in those terms.
The basement was like a tunnel, with bundles of pipes and wires hanging overhead. The lighting was naked bulbs, and there were painted metal doors along the way with scuffs and dents. They reached another elevator, and Kir stopped, pushing the call button.
“We have to go back upstairs?” Laughton said.