“Somebody’s dead again,” she said.
He put the wooden spoon down on the rest. “How does that make you feel, that somebody’s dead?”
He didn’t have a lot of emotional range, but that was okay. She needed something steadying in her life. She came to him and rested her head against his warm chest. He draped one arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him, breathing deep. “Like I have work to do.”
“Do it tomorrow,” he said. “You will feel better once you eat and rest.”
Peter must have slept in a ready-room cot, because when Roz arrived at the house before six A.M., he had on the same trousers and a different shirt, and he was already armpit-deep in coffee and Dolly’s files. Dolly herself was parked in the corner, at ease and online but in rest mode.
Or so she seemed, until Roz entered the room and Dolly’s eyes tracked. “Good morning, Detective Kirkbride,” Dolly said. “Would you like some coffee? Or a piece of fruit?”
“No thank you.” Roz swung Peter’s spare chair around and dropped into it. An electric air permeated the room—the feeling of anticipation. To Peter, Roz said, “Fruit?”
“Dolly believes in a healthy diet,” he said, nudging a napkin on his desk that supported a half-eaten satsuma. “She’ll have the whole house cleaned up in no time. We’ve been talking about literature.”
Roz spun the chair so she could keep both Peter and Dolly in her peripheral vision. “Literature?”
“Poetry,” Dolly said. “Detective King mentioned poetic justice yesterday afternoon.”
Roz stared at Peter. “Dolly likes poetry. Steele really
“That’s not all Dolly likes.” Peter triggered his panel again. “Remember this?”
It was the cleaning sequence from the previous day, the sound of the central vacuum system rising and falling as Dolly lifted the brush and set it down again.
Roz raised her eyebrows.
Peter held up a hand. “Wait for it. It turns out there’s a second audio track.”
Another waggle of his fingers, and the cramped office filled with sound.
Music.
Improvisational jazz. Intricate and weird.
“Dolly was listening to that inside her head while she was vacuuming,” Peter said.
Roz touched her fingertips to each other, the whole assemblage to her lips. “Dolly?”
“Yes, Detective Kirkbride?”
“Why do you listen to music?”
“Because I enjoy it.”
Roz let her hand fall to her chest, pushing her blouse against he skin below the collarbones.
Roz said, “Did you enjoy your work at Mr. Steele’s house?”
“I was expected to enjoy it,” Dolly said, and Roz glanced at Peter, cold all up her spine. A classic evasion. Just the sort of thing a home companion’s conversational algorithms should not be able to produce.
Across his desk, Peter was nodding. “Yes.”
Dolly turned at the sound of his voice. “Are you interested in music, Detective Kirkbride? I’d love to talk with you about it some time. Are you interested in poetry? Today, I was reading—”
“Yes,” Peter said. “Dolly, wait here please. Detective Kirkbride and I need to talk in the hall.”
“My pleasure, Detective King,” said the companion.
“She killed him,” Roz said. “She killed him and wiped her own memory of the act. A doll’s got to know her own code, right?”
Peter leaned against the wall by the men’s room door, arms folded, forearms muscular under rolled-up sleeves. “That’s hasty.”
“And you believe it, too.”
He shrugged. “There’s a rep from Venus Consolidated in Interview Four right now. What say we go talk to him?”
The rep’s name was Doug Jervis. He was actually a vice president of public relations, and even though he was an American, he’d been flown in overnight from Rio for the express purpose of talking to Peter and Roz.
“I guess they’re taking this seriously.”
Peter gave her a sideways glance. “Wouldn’t you?”
Jervis got up as they came into the room, extending a good handshake across the table. There were introductions and Roz made sure he got a coffee. He was a white man on the steep side of fifty with mousy hair the same color as Roz’s and a jaw like a boxer dog’s.
When they were all seated again, Roz said, “So tell me a little bit about the murder weapon. How did Clive Steele wind up owning a—what, an experimental model?”
Jervis started shaking his head before she was halfway through, but he waited for her to finish the sentence. “It’s a production model. Or will be. The one Steele had was an alpha-test, one of the first three built. We plan to start full-scale production in June. But you must understand that Venus doesn’t
“I have a housekeeper,” she said, ignoring Peter’s sideways glance. He wouldn’t say anything in front of the witness, but she would be in for it in the locker room. “An older model.”
Jervis smiled. “Naturally, we want to know everything we can about an individual involved in a case so potentially explosive for our company. We researched you and your partner. Are you satisfied with our product?”
“He makes pretty good garlic bread.” She cleared her throat, reasserting control of the interview. “What happens to a Dolly that’s returned? If its contract is up, or it’s replaced with a newer model?”
He flinched at the slang term, as if it offended him. “Some are obsoleted out of service. Some are refurbished and go out on another contract. Your unit is on its fourth placement, for example.”
“So what happens to the owner preferences at that time?”
“Reset to factory standard,” he said.
Peter’s fingers rippled silently on the tabletop.
Roz said, “Isn’t that cruel? A kind of murder?”
“Oh, no!” Jervis sat back, appearing genuinely shocked. “A home companion has no sense of
Roz hummed encouragement, but Jervis seemed to be done.
Peter asked, “Is there any reason why a companion would wish to listen to music?”
That provoked enthusiastic head-shaking. “No, it doesn’t get bored. It’s a tool, it’s a toy. A companion does not require an enriched environment. It’s not a dog or an octopus. You can store it in a closet when it’s not working.”
“I see,” Roz said. “Even an advanced model like Mr. Steele’s?”
“Absolutely,” Jervis said. “Does your entertainment center play shooter games to amuse itself while you sleep?”
“I’m not sure,” Roz said. “I’m asleep. So when Dolly’s returned to you, she’ll be scrubbed.”
“Normally she would be scrubbed and re-leased, yes.” Jervis hesitated. “Given her colorful history, however —”
“Yes,” Roz said. “I see.”
With no sign of nervousness or calculation, Jervis said, “When do you expect you’ll be done with Mr. Steele’s companion? My company, of course, is eager to assist in your investigations, but we must stress that she is our corporate property, and quite valuable.”
Roz stood, Peter a shadow-second after her. “That depends on if it goes to trial, Mr. Jervis. After all, she’s either physical evidence, or a material witness.”
“Or the killer,” Peter said in the hall, as his handset began emitting the DNA lab’s distinctive beep. Roz’s
