“Do you see a lot of men at the clinic?” Laughton said.
“I’ve seen others, but not in a long time, not since Carl and I met.”
“Why Carl?” Kir said.
Laughton realized that he and Kir had fallen into their old routine, alternating questions, keeping the interviewee off balance. It felt good.
“He just had energy,” Miss Enright said, still talking to the baby instead of settling on either of the policemen; preventing Laughton from seeing her face. “Just everything about him, the fast way he talked, and the exuberance with which he moved. It was apparent before you even said hello to him. He brought that enthusiasm to bed.”
“Why didn’t you come forward when you heard he’d died?” Laughton said.
“I didn’t think I knew anything helpful, and my husband doesn’t know that I do conjugal visits at the clinic. He can get jealous.”
“Most men would.”
“I’m committed to repopulation, and part of the success of the project is a diverse genetic makeup. That means more than having babies just the two of us.”
“So, if your husband wanted to go to the clinic?” Kir said.
She bit the inside of her lower lip, and nodded. “I’d allow it.”
Laughton pointed at the children with his chin. “Any of these children Carl’s?”
“I’ve known Carl maybe seven months,” she said.
Right, stupid question, Laughton thought. “Is the one you’re carrying Carl’s?”
She shrugged as though it really didn’t matter. “Maybe.”
“Would your husband have a reason to think the baby wasn’t his? You said he could get jealous,” Kir said.
“My husband and I still have plenty of sex, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I guess that sort of is what we were asking,” Laughton said.
She looked from Laughton to Kir, but then quickly away from the robot, raising her shoulders defensively. Kir was making her nervous. “Look, Bobby doesn’t know about the conjugal visits,” she said, addressing Laughton in particular. “He certainly doesn’t know I had a regular partner, and besides, Bobby couldn’t hurt anybody.”
Of course, that’s what people always believed, Laughton thought. He looked at Kir, who was watching him, waiting for a signal. The robot knew Miss Enright was emotional, but wasn’t quite certain what the emotion was. Laughton tugged at the front of his shirt to convey that she was angry, a stylized gesture that had its origin in American Sign Language, but mutated into something that could seem natural. Kir, however, interpreted Laughton’s cue as a sign to push harder, instead of changing the subject, which is what Laughton wanted.
“Where is your husband now?” Kir said.
Her flash of anger had her near tears of sadness now. She appealed to Laughton with her eyes. “It wasn’t Bobby.”
“Okay,” Laughton said, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “Okay. We just need to check all possibilities.”
She looked back at the baby, who hit the spoon out of her hand. “Are you all finished? Are you all finished?” She picked up a cloth from the table, and wiped off the baby’s face.
“Can you tell us anything?” Laughton said. “Anything he might have said, any calls he might have made in front of you, anything could be helpful, even if it doesn’t seem like it would be.”
She shook her head as she stood to take the baby out of the high chair. “No. Nothing. I’ve been trying to think.”
Laughton didn’t say anything, and Kir knew not to either. Sometimes keeping silent was the easiest way to get someone to talk. It forced her to fill up the silence.
“He’d get texts all of the time, but he said it was some game he played online.”
Laughton wondered if they’d located Smythe’s phone yet.
She put the baby down on the floor and the child just sat. The toddler squatted so that his face was an inch away from his sister’s. She grabbed her brother’s nose. Miss Enright sat back down, and looked at Laughton. “We’d talk sometimes. Just about nothing. I think we both tried to keep our personal lives secret, but it becomes hard when you see someone once or twice a week.”
“See” them, Laughton thought.
Miss Enright’s eyes tilted to the side and went out of focus. She was trying to recall anything, making a real effort. “He talked about robots a lot. He called them M-E-T-A-L-S,” she spelled for the benefit of the children. “I think he hated them, really hated them.” She checked to see how that information was landing on Kir, but the robot’s face was impassive, impossible to read.
“What’d he say?” Laughton said to draw her attention back to him. The tag team hadn’t been working—she was too disconcerted by Kir’s presence—so the robot had let Laughton have full control.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Her eyes darted to Kir again.
Just then there was some kind of crash in the living room downstairs. “Is everything all right!” Miss Enright called.
“Yes!” a child replied.
“I’ll go check,” Kir said, heading down the stairs before Miss Enright could react.
Laughton saw the tension at her temples. She didn’t like the idea of Kir alone with any of her kids. Laughton wondered if that had been Kir’s intention, or if his partner had just thought that getting out of the room would free up the conversation. Or maybe both.
Laughton tried to draw her back in. “You were saying Carl hated robots…”
Her head was cocked, listening for any sound coming from the living room.
“Miss Enright?”
She blinked, and shook her head. “Um, stuff about how they’re not really alive, that they’re like a, I don’t know, a toaster or something, just something that’s supposed to be a tool, and who are they to push around their masters, stuff like that.” Her eyes darted to the stairs by which Kir had left the kitchen.
“Did you agree?”
“I don’t know.” She noticed that the toddler at her feet was patting the baby on the head, and the baby was not happy. She tapped the back of the toddler’s hand. “Stop that.” Then back to Laughton, “I try not to think like that, hate. We know what we did because of hate, humans. I’d just let Carl rant if he needed to. He was lonely.”
“You think he might have gotten jealous of your husband? Maybe went to talk to him?”
“No.” She shook her head, certain. “Carl saw what we were doing as a way to strike at the robots. He was committed to the cause. I knew he lived way out in the middle of nowhere, and I don’t think he was looking to change that.”
So Carl had believed in the Liberty Fertility Center’s mission. He hadn’t just been looking to get laid.
Miss Enright leaned forward. “Is he all right in there? Do I have to worry?”
Laughton followed her gaze to the doorway, then looked back at her worry. “He’s fine.”
“I just thought… How come he’s here?”
She meant, how was there a robot on the preserve? “Carl’s death is a big deal.”
She sat back, but her eyes didn’t leave the doorway, as though she could will everything to be all right from her seat.