Laughton raised his eyebrows. “That’s amazing,” he said, nodding.
Dunrich grinned, all his orbital muscles crinkling, looking almost like he wanted to laugh, he was so proud.
“See if you can get him to respond,” Laughton said.
“I sent a message and a friend request,” Dunrich said. “I said I was looking into the murder. I figure he was willing to talk to the press about it, he might just like the attention.”
That’s not how Laughton would have played it, but they’d have to wait and see now. “Good work.”
“Right.” Dunrich started for his desk, then turned back. “Oh, call came for you, Chief.”
Laughton waited.
Dunrich went back to his desk, and checked the tablet there. “Uh, Cindy Smythe.”
“Goddamn it!” Laughton said, his goodwill evaporating. “Why the hell didn’t you call me?”
Dunrich blinked at him, unprepared for such a quick change of mood.
Laughton could feel his anger was out of proportion but, like with Erica, wasn’t able to curb it. “Or forward me the message!”
Dunrich was still stunned to silence, confused how praise a moment before had shifted to yelling. He probably didn’t even know why Laughton was so angry. And the thought made Laughton realize that he was angry at Dunrich, yes, but angry at himself too, because he’d forgotten about tracking Smythe’s sister, and it was just another mistake piled on all the others he’d made in this investigation, and with help like Dunrich—one good thing out of how many dumb ones?—he couldn’t afford to make mistakes. “Did you at least talk to her? Get a statement?”
“She wanted—”
“Forward me the fucking message,” Laughton said. “Always forward me all my messages.”
“But you’ve said to not forward anything that wasn’t an emergency.”
“And now I’m saying forward me everything.” Laughton went into his office. There was too much blocking the door to slam it, so he left it opened. Kir leaned against the doorjamb. Laughton’s phone buzzed, and Cindy Smythe’s contact info popped up. He yelled from his desk, “Did she say anything about when it was a good time to call her?”
There was a delay, and Laughton was getting ready to get up and scream some more when Dunrich’s answer came back, “No.”
Kir said, “He did just do some real detective work.”
“Kir, you don’t know. You just don’t.”
Laughton looked at the time on the top of his phone screen: almost a quarter to four, or one on the West Coast. He tapped on the message, and then hit the icon for a video call. He hated doing interviews over the phone. It was so hard to read people, not being able to see their body language, and even in high definition, a face on a screen just wasn’t the same as a face in person, especially since their eyes were always downturned, looking at the screen and not the camera. He saw himself doing that now, his own face filling the screen as the phone rang. He was looking to see if he looked as terrible as he felt, but only someone who knew him well would notice.
At last, a ring stopped midtrill, the sound of a mic going live came through as his face was relegated to a small box in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. After a delay, a young woman’s face appeared. The little of her shoulders that were visible filled her shirt with the unnatural bulkiness of an exoskeleton. He could only imagine what her full body looked like. No wonder she chose to live off-preserve. Even on the phone, he could see that she’d been crying, the bags under her eyes puffy, her nose red. “Hello,” she said as she registered the chief’s face.
“Miss Smythe. My name is Jesse Laughton. I’m chief of police in Liberty on the SoCar Preserve.”
“Hello,” she said again.
“I’m calling about your brother.”
She nodded.
corners of lips turned down, eyes narrowed to slits—anguish
She was going to cry again, Laughton thought, but she managed to hold off. “Can you talk now?” he said. “Do you think you can talk?”
She nodded, but didn’t risk an attempt to actually speak.
“When was the last time you spoke to your brother?”
She closed her eyes, collecting herself, and when she opened them again, she looked tired instead of crushed. She took a deep breath before speaking. “Last Saturday, not this one just four days ago, the one before that. I try to call Carl every weekend, but he doesn’t always pick up and he never calls back.”
“So, did you call this past weekend and he didn’t pick up?”
“No, I was organizing a CBHC demonstration.”
The Cyborg-Human Coalition was a fringe human rights group that put an emphasis on equal cyborg rights within the context of human rights. They had been one of the lobbying organizations instrumental in the creation of the preserve system, but most members were dissatisfied with the inequality they still saw on the preserves that were established. They tried to ally themselves with the groups that represented peoples of color, but those minorities were just as prejudiced against cyborgs who they saw as voluntarily choosing to be part of an outcast minority, as opposed to the challenge of being born that way. They had little sympathy for people like Cindy Smythe, for whom becoming a cyborg had not been a choice. The most militant orgo groups, of course, would maintain that she should have accepted being paralyzed. The CBHC’s focus had turned to the creation of a separate preserve on the West Coast that they hoped would be more open-minded, given the much larger cyborg population.
“Was your brother involved in the CBHC?” Laughton asked.
Cindy Smythe shook her head. “Carl did everything he could to hide the fact that he was a cyborg. He wanted nothing to do with the CBHC. He felt he could get back at society other ways.”
“Get back at society?” Laughton resisted the urge to look at Kir. He didn’t want to let Smythe know he wasn’t alone. “What did he mean?”
“You know we were hit by robots when we were younger?”
“We were told there was a car malfunction.”
“No malfunction, and we weren’t in a car. Some robots purposely ran us down when we were crossing the street. They’d taken the car off auto, and had been looking for humans to hit, because why not? It’s not like they got in trouble for it or anything.”
There was bitterness there, edged with anger. It seemed more directed at the fact that robots could do that kind of thing with impunity than over the result of the attack: the death of her mother, the loss of her ability to walk, and what Laughton was starting to really understand, the poisonous rage that consumed her brother. It seemed most likely it was the last that got him killed. His artificial arm and leg was the lesser of the two outcomes.
He adopted the use of Smythe’s first name to keep it personal for her. “You said that Carl had ways other than joining protest groups to get back at robots?”
She tilted her head. “You know what he did, right?”
“Yes,” Laughton said, but he wanted to hear her say it.
“He liked sims because it meant he was controlling them, you know, everything they were experiencing, how they were able to act. He was playing them like puppets, it was that power that he liked. And taking money off of them, not that he used it for anything. I was proud that he was working at least, when most humans just sit around letting the government take care of them. I guess that’s taking their money too, you could say, but I think it’s more like being kept as pets.”