“Damn it, Jesse, what did I say about professional courtesy?”
“Look, if you know, the metals are going to try to pull it out of you. It’s better that you can answer truthfully you don’t know.”
“Or you could tell me and I can send out some cars.”
“Can’t risk scaring him off,” Laughton said, not trusting anyone else to make the approach. “This guy knows me.” And would be just as likely to run at the sight of Laughton, if he had anything to hide, but this was the chief’s case and he didn’t want other people working it.
There was a pause while the commissioner thought. “Okay,” he said at last, resolve bolstering his voice. “Go get him and I’ll cover here as long as I can.”
“Right,” Laughton said.
“Good break,” the commissioner said.
“About fucking time,” Laughton said.
“You said it, not me.” And he hung up.
Laughton didn’t envy Ontero his job. He looked at the arrival time estimate on the GPS. Fifteen minutes. Come on, Barry. Be there.
Barry lived about a mile west of the Ashley River. Laughton didn’t know the name of the neighborhood. The roads were narrow, just wide enough to maybe allow two cars to get past one another. The weedy lawns gave way to sandy dirt at the edge of the street where cars had driven onto people’s yards to avoid collisions. The houses were glorified shacks, probably called cottages by real estate agents when they were built—one story, maybe twenty feet wide with a door and a single window in the front. They were only a driveway’s width apart. Some indeterminate green growth coated the lower half of most of the houses, making them look rundown and shabby. They passed a single well-tended lawn being cared for by a gardening bot, a low-order robot classed as a machine with no artificial intelligence, and therefore legal on the preserve. Barry’s house was two away from where the gardener was working. The awning over the front door was tilted, pulling away from the house on one side.
The chief pulled into the empty driveway, hoping the driveway was empty because Barry didn’t have a car, not that he had already taken off.
“Anyone in there?” the chief said to Kir.
The robot, using his infrared vision, nodded. “Someone is.”
“Just one?”
Kir shook his head. “Two.”
“Okay,” he said, and he got out of the truck.
The front door opened, revealing Barry in red basketball shorts that fell below his knees and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Before he could say anything, the slap of a screen door slamming out back shot through the quiet. Barry turned and yelled into the house, “Sam!” Kir had already vaulted onto the roof in a rare display of his engineered prowess, running across the top of the house toward the back.
Laughton, pulling out his gun, pushed past Barry into the house, rushed through the living room without even registering his surroundings, into the kitchen, then plunged into a weed-tangled backyard. Kir, jumping from the roof, landed in the alley in front of him and started running after a motorbike that disappeared between two of the other houses, its motor grinding like a buzz saw.
Kir followed, but Laughton stayed behind, lowering his weapon, knowing he couldn’t hope to make any progress on foot. He could hold on to Barry at least, prevent the young man from following his friend’s lead. But the genial vegetable deliveryman was standing just inside the screen door at the back of the house, watching. “Who was that?” Laughton said, opening the door.
Barry stepped back as Laughton let himself in. “Nobody.”
eyes avoiding the chief’s face, lips thin, lower eyelids barely visible—lying and afraid
Laughton stepped toward the man, and Barry stepped back, pressed against the kitchen wall. Laughton was in his face. “I don’t have time for you to lie to me. And don’t think you’ll get away with it this time.”
“This time! Ah, man, what are you talking—”
“Who was that who just flew out of here?”
“He’d just come in late last night, like middle of the night.”
“Who!”
“Man, I don’t want any part of this,” Barry said, turning his head down and away, holding his hands up in front of him.
“It’s too late for that.”
They both turned to look as the screen door opened, and Kir appeared. The robot shook his head, one short movement.
Laughton put his face uncomfortably close to the deliveryman’s. “Who was that?”
“I swear, I didn’t know that was who you were after, or I would have called.”
Laughton put both his hands flat against the wall to either side of Barry’s head, boxing the man in.
“It was Sam,” Barry said. “Sam McCardy.”
Laughton dropped his hands and took a step back. McCardy? He’d hoped maybe it was Jones, who had clearly ditched his original car, since GPS showed it sitting in place out in Santee, still at the drug club.
“He say where he was going?” Kir said.
Barry’s shoulders dropped in relief. He must have figured if they were going to arrest him, they’d have done it already. He shook his head. “I really don’t know.”
no micro-expressions—he’s telling the truth
“Could you make a guess?” Laughton said.
Eyes widening for a moment, shaking his head, he said, “I don’t know. The Sisters?”
“But he came to you first,” Kir said.
“Could you give me a little more space,” Barry said to Laughton. “You’re making me nervous here.”
“Maybe we should sit down,” Kir said as Laughton stepped back. “We’re not here to arrest you. We just need your help.”
Laughton wasn’t so sure they weren’t going to arrest the guy—being at the scene of the crime made him a suspect—but he knew Kir was trying to make him comfortable. The last thing they needed was for Barry to suddenly decide he wouldn’t talk until he saw a lawyer.
“Yeah,” Barry said, nodding. “Yeah, sure, okay.” He stepped past Laughton. “Can I get either of you anything? A drink?”
“No, thank you,” Kir said.
Laughton tapped his wrist at his partner. They were short on time.
“Maybe in here?” Kir said.
Barry nodded like he just remembered that he had another room in the house. He led the way into the living room. There were two puffy, leather couches facing one another, worn tan where people had sat on them over the years. A projector sat on the metal-and-glass coffee table between the couches, pointed at the blank space above a defunct fireplace.
“You live here alone?” Laughton said as he and Kir sat down on the couch opposite the one Barry had selected.
“This was actually my grandma’s house, way back,” Barry said.
“You grew up in Charleston?”
“Only in summers,” Barry said.
Laughton nodded. The memory had relaxed Barry further. Laughton didn’t want to risk losing that. “It’s a nice city,” he said. “We lucked out when the government decided to locate the preserve here.”
“That we did.”
“Did you know,” Laughton said, “that robots from various branches of the government are on the preserve right now, arguing that this murder…”