She moved to her bedroom and lost her lenses, her iPort and comms earpiece, then changed into her gym wear and began to jog on the treadmill in her workout station in the corner of her living room. As she ran, she stared out her floor-to-ceiling windows at the Golden Gate Bridge in the near distance, alight and peeking through the surrounding mist, and as she raised her heartbeat and began to sweat, her mind cycled over the day. She kept wondering what had been on that data pane Doctor Marr had been reviewing, kept seeing Mitch hand her the coffee, kept wondering how Attis Solme had known she was back on duty so fast, kept picturing Subjugate-52 covered in Bio-Lume staring at her.
She gave up running after a while, looking to distract her mind. She ate her nutritional micro-dinner, then relaxed beneath the massaging hydro-spray of her shower, before making her way to her soft white bed and falling into it.
As she lay in the dark, staring up at the faint light upon her ceiling, partly starlight this high up but partly neon hue from the city around her, she thought once more about her last case; about the camera in the vent opposite her bed, and what it had filmed her doing.
With Mitch.
Then she thought of the disc Mitch had handed to her after their last case; the footage, of them. He thought she’d want to be the one to destroy it, for peace of mind.
Her eyes drifted to the set of drawers beneath the vent, where, buried deep within the back corner, alongside Faith’s rosary beads, now sat the disc of her and Mitch. For some reason she hadn’t been able to bring herself to be rid of it.
Salvi was sure she had just closed her eyes when her iPort began to ring on the bedside table. It was Beggs, and she’d come to realize the guy was old school and rarely opted for holo-calls. She answered it, projecting the voice call from its speaker.
“Brentt?” he said, as though he’d just awoken too.
“Yeah?” she answered, her own voice husky.
“We got a body in the Sensation. Riverton’s sending you the exact coordinates. I’ll meet you there.”
2: ABSENT MINDS
Salvi stood on the apartment’s balcony, dressed in her crime scene containment suit, gloves and sole plates, as she studied the body before her. The man, whom Riverton had identified as 34-year-old Devon Barker, the owner of the apartment, lay face down, surrounded by shattered glass. Beside him on the ground lay a metal pole of some kind; no doubt the reason for the back of his skull being smashed in.
“Jesus,” Beggs muttered as he crouched down to take a better look. His wrinkled face studied the wounds. “That’s gotta take some effort.”
Salvi nodded in agreement. “Or some anger. Wonder what he did to deserve that?”
Beggs stood up again, groaning a little and rubbing his creaky knees. “Let’s ask the girlfriend that.”
He left the balcony and stepped back inside the apartment. Salvi glanced up at the police drone hovering in the sky close by, filming the scene, then she turned and followed Beggs inside.
It was a high spec pad in a high spec neighborhood. Minimalist, with lots of white smooth surfaces and everything controlled by the house AI. At least, when the house AI was working. The system had apparently crashed and was currently offline. The tenants were young and beautiful. At least the guy had been before the pole to his head. From the looks of the moving photos on the walls, the woman was a model, and, from the equipment laying around, the victim had probably been the photographer.
They found the girlfriend in the bedroom with a beat cop, named Vincent, watching over her. She was sitting in bed with the satin sheets resting around her waist. She had a petite frame with dark bottle-blonde hair and East Asian features. Her top half was adorned in a pink slinky camisole and her hair was all messed up like she’d been sleeping. Or maybe fighting. The woman looked tired, numb. Perhaps she was still drunk. Salvi spotted an empty wine bottle on the bedside table and clothes strewn across the floor. She smelled incense and saw the remnants in a small glass container on a dresser.
“She been there the whole time?” Beggs asked Officer Vincent, who nodded.
“We came out on a domestic disturbance. Neighbors reported glass smashing and banging. When we got here another neighbor told us about the body on the balcony. No one answered our knocks, so we broke the door down. Found her in bed. Looked like she just woke up at the sound of our arrival.”
Beggs nodded and Salvi stepped closer to the woman, angling the projection of her holo-badge toward her.
“I’m Detective Brentt and this is Senior Detective Beggs,” she pointed to her partner. “We need to ask you some questions about what happened here tonight.”
The model looked at Salvi, but her eyes were distant.
“That’s you in the photos on the wall, right?” Salvi asked. “You live here?”
She nodded, still vague, and looking a little green, like maybe she wanted to throw up.
“What’s your name?” Salvi asked.
The model didn’t answer. Instead she just stared ahead at nothing, her long hair hanging forward over the sides of her face. Salvi clicked her fingers in front of the woman, until her gaze moved back to hers. Salvi was starting to question whether her state was due to some narcotic rather than the wine.
“Have you taken something?” Salvi asked. “Do you need medical attention?”
“We offered that before,” Vincent said. “She declined. Said she just wanted to sleep.”
“We’ll get you some medical attention, huh?” Salvi said, but the woman shook her head and turned back to stare at nothing.
Beggs moved over
