on Dolly’s hands had twisted in ribbons down the underside of her forearms to her elbows and from there dripped into the puddle on the floor.
The android was not wearing undergarments.
“You staring up that girl’s skirt, Detective?”
Roz was a big, plain woman, and out of shape in her forties. It took her a minute to heave herself back to her feet, careful not to touch the victim or the murder weapon yet. She’d tied her straight light brown hair back before entering the scene, the ends tucked up in a net. The severity of the style made her square jaw into a lantern. Her eyes were almost as blue as the doll’s.
“Is it a girl, Peter?” Putting her hands on her knees, she pushed fully upright. She shoved a fist into her back and turned to the door.
Peter King paused just inside, taking in the scene with a few critical sweeps of eyes so dark they didn’t catch any light from the sunlight or the chandelier. His irises seemed to bleed pigment into the whites, warming them with swirls of ivory. In his black suit, his skin tanned almost to match, he might have been a heroically sized construction-paper cutout against the white walls, white carpet, the white-and-gold marble-topped table that looked both antique and French.
His blue paper booties rustled as he crossed the floor. “Suicide, you think?”
“Maybe if it was strangulation.” Roz stepped aside so Peter could get a look at the body.
He whistled, which was pretty much what she had done.
“Somebody hated him a lot. Hey, that’s one of the new Dollies, isn’t it? Man, nice.” He shook his head. “Bet it cost more than my house.”
“Imagine spending half a mil on a sex toy,” Roz said, “only to have it rip your liver out.” She stepped back, arms folded.
“He probably didn’t spend that much on her. His company makes accessory programs for them.”
“Industry courtesy?” Roz asked.
“Tax writeoff. Test model.” Peter was the department expert on Home companions. He circled the room, taking it in from all angles. Soon the scene techs would be here with their cameras and their tweezers and their 3-D scanner, turning the crime scene into a permanent virtual reality. In his capacity of soft forensics, Peter would go over Dolly’s program, and the medical examiner would most likely confirm that Steele’s cause of death was exactly what it looked like: something had punched through his abdominal wall and clawed his innards out.
“Doors were locked?”
Roz pursed her lips. “Nobody heard the screaming.”
“How long you think you’d scream without any lungs?” He sighed. “You know, it never fails. The poor folks, nobody ever heard no screaming. And the rich folks, they’ve got no neighbors to hear ’em scream. Everybody in this modern world lives alone.”
It was a beautiful Birmingham day behind the long silk draperies, the kind of mild and bright that spring mornings in Alabama excelled at. Peter craned his head back and looked up at the chandelier glistening in the dustless light. Its ornate curls had been spotlessly clean before aerosolized blood on Steele’s last breath misted them.
“Steele lived alone,” she said. “Except for the robot. His cook found the body this morning. Last person to see him before that was his P.A., as he left the office last night.”
“Lights on seems to confirm that he was killed after dark.”
“After dinner,” Roz said.
“After the cook went home for the night.” Peter kept prowling the room, peering behind draperies and furniture, looking in corners and crouching to lift up the dust-ruffle on the couch. “Well, I guess there won’t be any question about the stomach contents.”
Roz went through the pockets of the dead man’s suit jacket, which was draped over the arm of a chair. Pocket computer and a folding knife, wallet with an RFID chip. His house was on palmprint, his car on voice rec. He carried no keys. “Assuming the M.E. can find the stomach.”
“Touche. He’s got a cook, but no housekeeper?”
“I guess he trusts the android to clean but not cook?”
“No taste buds.” Peter straightened up, shaking his head. “They can follow a recipe, but—”
“You won’t get high art,” Roz agreed, licking her lips. Outside, a car door slammed. “Scene team?”
“M.E.,” Peter said, leaning over to peer out. “Come on, let’s get back to the house and pull the codes for this model.”
“All right,” Roz said. “But I’m interrogating it. I know better than to leave you alone with a pretty girl.”
Peter rolled his eyes as he followed her towards the door. “I like ’em with a little more spunk than all that.”
“So the new dolls,” Roz said in Peter’s car, carefully casual. “What’s so special about ’em?”
“Man,” Peter answered, brow furrowing. “Gimme a sec.”
Roz’s car followed as they pulled away from the house on Balmoral Road, maintaining a careful distance from the bumper. Peter drove until they reached the parkway. Once they’d joined a caravan downtown, nose-to-bumper on the car ahead, he folded his hands in his lap and let the lead car’s autopilot take over.
He said, “What isn’t? Real-time online editing—personality and physical, appearance, ethnicity, hair—all kinds of behavior protocols, you name the kink they’ve got a hack for it.”
“So if you knew somebody’s kink,” she said thoughtfully. “Knew it in particular. You could write an app for that—”
“One that would appeal to your guy in specific.” Peter’s hands dropped to his lap, his head bobbing up and down enthusiastically. “With a—pardon the expression—back door.”
“Trojan horse. Don’t jilt a programmer for a sex machine.”
“There’s an app for that,” he said, and she snorted. “Two cases last year, worldwide. Not common, but —”
Roz looked down at her hands. “Some of these guys,” she said. “They program the dolls to scream.”
Peter had sensuous lips. When something upset him, those lips thinned and writhed like salted worms. “I guess maybe it’s a good thing they have a robot to take that out on.”
“Unless the fantasy stops being enough.” Roz’s voice was flat, without judgment. Sunlight fell warm through the windshield. “What do you know about the larval stage of serial rapists, serial killers?”
“You mean, what if pretend pain stops doing it for them? What if the
She nodded, worrying a hangnail on her thumb. The nitrile gloves dried out your hands.
“They used to cut up paper porn magazines.” His broad shoulders rose and fell, his suit catching wrinkles against the car seat when they came back down. “They’ll get their fantasies somewhere.”
“I guess so.” She put her thumb in her mouth to stop the bleeding, a thick red bead that welled up where she’d torn the cuticle.
Her own saliva stung.
Sitting in the cheap office chair Roz had docked along the short edge of her desk, Dolly slowly lifted her chin. She blinked. She smiled.
“Law enforcement override code accepted.” She had a little-girl Marilyn voice. “How may I help you, Detective Kirkbride?”
“We are investigating the murder of Clive Steele,” Roz said, with a glance up to Peter’s round face. He stood behind Dolly with a wireless scanner and an air of concentration. “Your contract-holder of record.”
“I am at your service.”
If Dolly were a real girl, the bare skin of her thighs would have been sticking to the recycled upholstery of that office chair. But her realistically engineered skin was breathable polymer. She didn’t sweat unless you told her to, and she probably didn’t stick to cheap chairs.
“Evidence suggests that you were used as the murder weapon.” Roz steepled her hands on her blotter. “We will need access to your software update records and your memory files.”
“Do you have a warrant?” Her voice was not stiff or robotic at all, but warm, human. Even in disposing of
