“Yeah. It was possible Mellon ordered the hit, but if he did, surely Myki would know that. And if he didn’t order the hit, then maybe she’s back with Mellon because she thinks he can protect her from whoever did this.”
“Possibly,” Ford said. “If this is a turf war, then I guess we need to wait and see if someone guns for Mellon. That’ll let us know which side he’s on, Floor to Ceiling or Bounce.”
“It could be a turf war, but I’m starting to think it’s just someone cleaning house.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I went for a walk today in the Transmission. I paid a visit to Randy’s Retrotech.” She heard a noise and looked up to see Bronte emerging from his room with a concentrated look on his face as he stared at her.
“Why’d you go there? That’s Hernandez and Bronte’s case,” Ford said.
“I know, but we think these cases might be linked, right? I just wanted to take a look myself.”
“So? You found something?”
“I spoke to the victim’s daughter, Lennie. She was edgy.”
“Tell me you didn’t tell her you were a cop.”
“No. She asked if I was one, but I think I deflected enough that she wasn’t sure who I was. Hopefully she just took me for a nosy journalist. Either way, she was scared. I had Riverton do a soundbite after I left the store. She spoke to her brother. He must’ve been in the back of the store. They talked about a friend of theirs, Dancer, who is apparently the best neural tech game designer they know, and who’s fallen off the grid. Apparently, he disappeared around the same time their father was killed.”
“So you think he put the tech on the streets, and they sold it from the store?”
“I’m not sure yet. The brother said that Dancer wouldn’t have the ability to mass produce anything, so if he was behind the design, then someone else financed him.”
“So why’d the father get killed then?” Bronte asked, moving to stand in front of her.
Salvi switched her call to hologram, projecting Ford’s image to make it accessible to Bronte. “I’m not sure, but I know the goods in the store had changed from what you and Hernandez saw when you hit the crime scene. I checked Riverton’s list. I saw a whole cabinet of DIY headwear that was not on Riverton’s logs. They got rid of it before you came and put it back out after you left.”
“So they were selling it in the store,” Ford reiterated.
“Maybe,” Salvi said, “but if they were, they wouldn’t have put it out in the cabinets like that. It would be sold through the back door. I think they just moved the other headwear to avoid us thinking they sold any at all.”
“They might’ve just sold the original,” Bronte said, thinking aloud. “Dancer made the original, probably did a few more to order before word spread and someone put him in their employ.”
“And killing the owner of Randy’s Retrotech was a way of erasing evidence and giving his kids a warning to keep their mouths shut,” Salvi said.
“Alright,” Ford said, “did Riverton upload the soundbite to the files?”
“Yeah.”
“Ok, then leave it with me. I’ll work on it. You focus on getting Lance Chaney’s attention. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
“And Brentt?”
“Yeah?”
“What you found out today was good stuff, but if you risk blowing your cover again, I’m gonna pull you out so goddamn fast you’ll be dizzy for a month. Do you understand me?”
“I’m sorry, I was just trying to work all the angles.”
“Your job right now is to get close to Chaney and into the Ceiling, Brentt,” Ford said firmly, “because right now, you’re not a cop, remember? You’re a young, rich, artist looking for fun. I catch you working the street again, I’m going to be pissed! Get off the street and leave that to the rest of us. Got it? That’s an order.”
“I’m sorry. I got it. I’m just not good at sitting around doing nothing. We gotta find Caine’s killer and the Chief’s daughter. I want to narrow down our suspects and find the spider who’s running this web.”
“And we’re doing that, but you know as well as I do that cases don’t build themselves overnight. They can take months, years, and if you blow this it’s not just me that’ll come down hard on you, it’s Sorensen and Noble. Their divisions have been working on this longer than we have. And I don’t even need to mention the Chief in all of this, do I? So, one more time, cease and desist!”
Ford ended the call and Salvi sighed and stared at Bronte.
“You were checking up on my case?” he asked her, brow furrowed.
“This is Taskforce Trident, Bronte. It’s everyone’s case.”
Salvi went to The Dream Bar again, but Lance Chaney was nowhere to be seen. She’d chatted for a while to the barman, Dante, again, but decided to call it a night when he started suggesting she was coming to the bar to see him and not Chaney. He offered to show her the back room, and as tempted as Salvi was to poke around Chaney’s business, fending off the amorous barman wasn’t on her list of things to do. So, she cut her losses and came back to her apartment to see if Riverton had updated the Trident case files with any new information.
It had. A profile had been lodged on this guy known as Dancer, a.k.a. Dancell Marks. From the photo he looked young, maybe early 20s, with pale skin, short dark hair that was shaved at the sides, and a tattoo on the side of his face that Riverton had identified as a gamer symbol: a circle with a compass dissecting it. The north point was a triangle, the south a square, the west a hexagon and the east another circle. Dancer was on the shorter side, around 5’8, and weighed about 120lbs. His rap sheet was small, covering minor
