“Something’s going on. You saw how he appeared and disappeared near the elevator. Wouldn’t that be enough to cast reasonable doubt?”
“No. Remember the State of Illinois v. Jack Kilborn?”
I nodded. Rape, but it had happened in a high-rise building that burned down. So it was impossible to get the TEV in the exact location of the event. Timecasting worked only when you occupied the same physical space where past events occurred. I was dangled from a crane for ten hours, trying to get a good image of the guy’s face. I wound up getting one, but it lasted only for a few rough frames. The judge allowed it. So there was a precedent for dodgy TEV footage.
“Sensei, if I can’t get a close friend to believe me, how will I get a jury to?”
Sata appraised me. His face was kind.
“Do you have any enemies, Talon?”
“Of course. I helped put away over a thousand guys.”
“We’ll need to see if any of them have been released. Or have escaped. You might also want to put together a list of anyone currently on the street who’d like to frame you.”
“So you’ll help me?”
“I should say no. The transmission is pretty cut-and-dried that you’re the killer, and if I assist you, I’m an accessory after the fact. But something about the recording bothers me.”
“The disappearing and reappearing?”
“That. And the color. Did it look orange to you?”
“It was orange. I had to adjust the hue to get it to appear normal.”
“There’s something definitely strange here. This is the original, unaltered recording?”
“You can check the time stamp.”
“Getting someone to look like you would be difficult. Getting them to have a duplicate ID chip would be impossible. But there’s no way they could alter a timecast.”
“Some sort of digital image?”
“Was the dead woman a digital image?”
I shook my head. “She was real.”
“I’ve seen enough of these to know that killer was real as well. You know digital imagining. The movies spend hundreds of millions of credits on special effects, and you can still tell it’s fake. That wasn’t fake. Can you play it again?”
“I have a lead to follow up on. I’ll transfer a copy to you now.” I pressed a button and saved the transmission to Sata’s projector. “You wouldn’t happen to have an Internet connection, would you?”
“Why on earth would I? Do I look like a whack job?”
No matter. They had one at the office.
“Thanks for helping me on this, Sata. And for trusting me.”
“You were one of my best students, Talon. I’ll do what I can.”
He offered his hand. I shook it, but the feeling still hadn’t returned to my fingers. If anything, the numbness had gotten more severe.
I probably should have gone to the hospital. Instead I went to work.
ELEVEN
Area 4 Peace Headquarters was located in the Loop, on Wabash. Ever since the El train was updated to carry three times as many passengers back in the fifties, Wabash had been off-limits to civilian traffic. But city officials and peace officers were exempt from the ban.
Though I had to steer around the massive support pylons for the El, Wabash was still my favorite street to drive on. No glut of biofuel bikes. No traffic signals. If pedestrian traffic was light, I could even get the Vette up to fifty mph.
But today the ride to the office was perfunctory. I had a lot on my mind, and my arm was giving me some serious trouble. Adding to my woes was the fact that Vicki refused to answer her headphone. I wondered if she had blocked me. I wondered if I could blame her if she had. So I let my DT compile a list of potential enemies, and cruised at a comfortable thirty-five until I reached A4.
I parked in the underground garage, in a reserved spot next to Teague’s vintage Porsche 911. Ours were the only two cars in a lot crammed with bikes, and his was worth more than mine. Back when we were rookies, we spent a lot of our spare time hanging out in P amp;P bars, getting wasted, discussing what kind of cars we’d buy if we could ever afford them. The Porsche was his way of thumbing his nose at my Vette, and our prior friendship. To pay for it, he lived in a shithole apartment the size of my right shoe.
I took the elevator to the forty-ninth floor. A4 was the largest area in Chicago, so it had the largest main building, home base to more than twelve thousand cops. The majority of them worked Traffic and Pedestrian Control, and the rest were vice regulators, making sure everyone played nice. No more Homicide Division. No more Violent Crimes. Fewer than a thousand cops still wore sidearm Tasers.
On one hand, living in a green utopia had a lot of perks. With the serial violent offenders all locked up, and average citizens obeying the major laws, the city was safer than it had ever been.
On the other hand, it was pretty boring. Which was why, for the first time in years, I came to work energized. I actually had a case. An important case. And even though it was my neck on the line, it was almost worth it just to feel useful again.
Even that asshole Teague couldn’t ruin my buzz.
Since the Timecaster Division was down to just two people, we shared an office. It was a big office, but we still managed to get in each other’s way. I’d rather do demos at a dozen third-grade classrooms than have to talk to Teague for more than five minutes.
He had his feet up on his desk and was watching a projection of CNP-Cable Network Pr0n. He muted the action-which from my limited observation seemed to involve bondage, midgets, and a very fat goat-when I came in.
“Well, if it ain’t the second-best Van Damme in the state.”
There were only two full-time timecasters still in Illinois, me and him, and he’d graduated Sata’s class two points ahead of me. Van Damme was a slang term, going way back to a classic 2D movie called Timecop.
I ignored him, heading to my desk. I had a terminal link there, which would allow me hook into the Internet.
“Well, don’t we look determined today?” Teague swiveled his chair in my direction. “What’s on your mind, bro? Marital problems?”
I shouldn’t have let him bait me, but I still said, “You wish.”
“How is your dee-liscious whore of a wife? She miss me? Or does she have more than enough cock to satisfy her?”
“She sends her love.”
“And she charges out the ass for it. Maybe I’ll stop by, give her a tap for old times’ sake.”
“That won’t work. She’s got a new policy. No clients with a penis under three inches.” I stared at him, hard. “But I heard your mother doesn’t have standards. Maybe you should give her a call.”
His eyebrows creased in anger, and I wondered if he was actually going to get up and make a try for me. Teague was taller, but we weighed about the same. The one time we did scuffle, years ago, it had been a draw.
But the moment passed, and he snorted and flashed his teeth. “FU, Talon. FU and your whore.”
He popped a nicotine pill, and went back to his pr0n. I checked the program compiling my enemies list-82.656 percent complete and already up over two thousand names. Then I punched in some passwords and wirelessly connected my DT to the Internet.
I hadn’t been online in a while, and in my absence the World Wide Web had gotten worse. Even though the CPD had the latest blockers and antimalware programs, I was immediately assaulted with pop-ups. For shits and grins, I kept a window open of the programs and sites my blocker assassinated while I surfed. In the eighteen
