Retiree 2.0 Read online

  “Thank you, Rhys. You might also want to tell her that I owe her an apology for lambasting her over not following proper procedure the other day. Can you tell me anything more about what happened on the raid, other than what’s in the news?”

  “Only that the perpetrators were better prepared than we were, and that Security Division has already swooped in to lock down the scene of the crime. Can you tell me anything more about why we did that raid the way we did it?”

  Bennett said, “Off-the record. It was a time factor. SD’s blocking us from things that should be in our jurisdiction. Ruiz authorized me to take decisive action. I think he wants to build a case against SD for covering up something bigger as much as he wants to catch the perps. I don’t know more than that, but someone higher up does. There may be a political angle. Remember! All that’s off-the record and on the QT.”

  Rhys said, “Copy that. Anything else?”

  “I’m going to organize a task force in the morning, under DCI Graves. Ten-hundred hours in Situation Room One. Be there. Bennett out.”

  Scant seconds after Bennett hung up, Rhys’ Vira pinged again. He answered it, again without checking to see who was calling. Brett Crabtree’s image popped up inside a video window, suspended in mid-air between Rhys and his car’s dashboard. “Rhys, got a minute for a couple baseball questions?”

  Ben instinctively nodded, even though Brett would not have been able to see him do so, “By all means, Detective Inspector Crabtree. You may fire when ready.”

  Brett eschewed any degree of prevarication, “Earlier today, you said that Phil Robertson threw a fastball to Greg Veedock instead of a knuckleball. Why is that important?”

  Rhys said, “The fastball is more accurate, but it’s also more predictable.”

  Brett asked, “Can you explain that in more detail?”

  “I can try. There’s an old saying in baseball that it’s better to let a lead-off batter get a base hit than it is to issue a base-on-balls. So, Robertson likely based his pitch on that axiom. He was probably trying to get ahead in the ball-strike count.”

  “Why is the knuckleball less predictable?”

  Rhys said, “The fastball spins. The knuckleball tumbles randomly. The aerodynamics of the seams on the baseball react more chaotically when it tumbles. Is that enough of an explanation?”

  “Yes, I think so. How would Veedock know a fastball is coming instead of a knuckleball?”

  Rhys explained, “It’s hard for a human player to see, but it’s held differently. However, if Veedock was cheating by using the targeting software, he’d be able to spot the difference from the point where Robertson’s hand became visible.”

  Brett typed some notes on his desktop before concluding, “That helps. Thanks,” and abruptly hung up. Rhys could not help but think that it was probably the same way Alana would have ended a similar call.

  Rhys glanced at the clock on his car’s dashboard and noted that it was synchronized perfectly with the one in the corner of his vision. At first, the ‘heads-up display’ distracted him, but now that he had been using it for several weeks, he was able to ignore it until he needed it, and then it was much more convenient to leave it in place than to activate it.

  It had been just over fourteen minutes since he left the Zumpco shopital when his car pulled up at the entrance to the facility that was treating DI MacGruder. He stepped out of the car and almost instructed it to park itself, but before he did, he opened the back door and lifted Alana’s khaki overcoat from the seat. There were no other vehicles behind his, so, curious as to the whys and wherefores of her constant attachment to the garment, he took a minute to satisfy that inquisitive impulse. It did not escape him that this was something he had never done in the four-odd years he had known Alana, and despite being presented with many opportunities, he had never pried anything of hers open before now. The coat was well-weathered, but tightly seamed, with nary a loose thread. The buttons were large, and had the word ‘MACKINTOSH’ engraved around the outer edge. In the voluminous right outer pocket, he found a miniature camera drone, about the size of a baseball when its fans were folded up. Alongside it was a wallet wrapped with a rubber band, the privacy of whose inner contents he respected by immediately returning it to its resting place.

  Rhys turned the coat inside out, noting that the brown, woolen inner lining would be far too hot for southern California in any season, and was further puzzled because it was removable, and Alana had not taken it out. The label simply repeated the name ‘Mackintosh,’ along with a stitched image of either a Victorian or Edwardian-era gentleman with a cane held aloft. A care instruction label was hidden behind the removable lining, and it read, ‘Queensferry. Cotton Gabardine. Clean Professionally. Made in Japan.’

  The breast pocket was missing Alana’s badge, which she must have taken with her when she debarked earlier. There was a rigid, flat object, which Rhys removed. Opening the clamshell lid, it revealed a partially used makeup kit, with the tiny reservoirs of pigment being cracked in places and partially desiccated, as if they were disused. Ben had never seen Alana use anything like that before, and knowing that she was a cyborg, he had assumed that her synthetic skin did not need cosmetic enhancement.

  Finding nothing else of interest within the jacket, Rhys concluded that there must be a story behind it to which he was not privy. He placed the coat back where he found it and told the car to auto-park, and it sped toward the parking deck.

  After navigating the Navy Hospital bureaucracy, requiring the prominent display of his badge on three occasions, Rhys found Detective Inspector MacGruder in an outpatient ward, propped up in a bed with his eyes closed. He tapped lightly on the open door. MacGruder’s eyelids flipped open, and he blinked several times, as if he was having difficulty focusing. Ben asked, “How are you doing, Inspector?”

  Groggily, MacGruder rolled his head to the side and looked in Rhys’ general direction. He was unable to make direct eye contact.

  Rhys continued, “How’s the leg?”

  MacGruder understood, but was only able to say, “Spike’s out. Fucking hurts,” being clearly still under the influence of exceptionally strong painkillers.

  “You’ll have plenty of time to recover. Bennett’s going to reassign the case to Chief Inspector Graves—”

  MacGruder’s face contorted from a different kind of pain, and he cried out, “Fuck! Not again! Fuckin’ cyborgs taking my job again!”

  Rhys remained silent. Eventually, MacGruder calmed down, closing his eyes and falling back into sedative-induced slumber. Rhys turned around and exited the hospital room. He understood that Inspector MacGruder was under the influence of pain medication when he spoke, but he also understood that the feeling was probably real, and what the still-living police officer really thought about Alana. His use of the plural form, ‘cyborgs,’ was probably not an oversight. He undoubtedly felt the same way about Rhys now that he had joined the ranks of the ‘retired.’ It didn’t hurt as badly as it might have when Ben was still alive; he couldn’t feel Maggie’s words punch him in the gut. However, it did register. He was silent during his entire trek to the hospital’s exit, not even using his Vira to call the parked police car to him. He marched into the parking deck and started at the ground level, circling up three ramps and past rows of other vehicles until he finally found his police cruiser.

  Rhys instructed his car to travel to the nearest ‘as-you-wait’ garment cleaning shop. He emptied the contents of Alana’s mackintosh into passenger-side glove box before taking the coat in to have the soot from the warehouse explosion removed. As he carefully placed the old makeup kit inside the compartment, he thought he understood why she was still carrying it. It was a portable reminder that held the same significance for her as her photo albums and scrapbook; it was another link to her lost humanity.

  Sunday, 9 July, 21:20

  During his cryptanalysis training at Security Division, Brett had done more calculus than he had at the university, but that wasn’t needed
to deliver coffee to his superiors. Brett could not remember the last time he had to do something as simple as algebra as part of his work. As he stared at the equations he had found on the Internet for calculating the theoretical velocity of a batted baseball, it dawned on him that it would be easier simply to watch the video from the All Star Game. It was easy enough to find a high-resolution recording of the event, since despite all the copyright warnings that professional baseball was infamous for, there were at least a dozen copies uploaded to file sharing sites, and as soon as one was banned, another would replace it.

  Brett watched Greg Veedock beaning Phil Robertson with the baseball, slowed it down, and had his desktop computer calculate the actual velocity of what he was certain was a murder weapon. The computer pegged the batted ball speed at 41.1 meters per second. The distance traveled had to be interpolated. The distance between home plate and the pitcher’s mound in modern baseball was 18.5 meters, but by the time Phil Robertson finished his delivery, the distance was only 17 meters. Therefore, the flight time of the ball was only a hair above point-four seconds. Reaction times for human athletes could vary greatly, but were almost never below point-two seconds. That would have given Robertson about point-two seconds to react. The video showed him starting to raise his glove and duck, but it was too late. His real reaction time was about point-three seconds. Point-one seconds was not enough to dodge the proverbial bullet in the shape of a baseball. According to Rhys’ best estimate, if Veedock was using the Texas Leaguer android application, he might have had a fifty-percent hit rate. Factoring in that Robertson might have been able to dodge perhaps ten-percent of the time, it lowered the probability to less than fifty percent. Brett concluded that his idea was only slightly improbable. However, it was improbable enough that he conceded that no one would go to that much effort to plan a murder with such a low chance of success.

  Then another idea struck him almost as forcefully as a batted baseball to the head. Even if Veedock had not succeeded on his first swing, he had three strikes, which could have counted any number of fouls and up to four balls. Then, there was the possibility of Veedock facing Robertson again before the end of the game. That would increase the probability even more. Suddenly, the chances of the historical result pushed well beyond the halfway mark. Brett stopped trying to calculate when he reached seventy-five percent, as it was giving him a headache. If all this work ever resulted in an arrest, he could finish the math long before a hearing ever took place. It was enough to convince him that his intuition was correct, and that it was worth pursuing a murder inquiry.

  All Brett would need was a motive. He spent hours searching through data files, looking for anything, which might connect the two baseball players. The only common thread was that they were both baseball players. They were never on the same team, they never had the same girlfriend, they had never so much as passed in the night, and as far as Brett could determine, neither had any connections between their extended families. There were no police records connecting either of the pair, and neither had a criminal history. However, Brett did remember from his detective training that professional baseball had an exemption from normal law enforcement concerning internal matters and non-felony crimes, and that tradition extended back as far as the Twentieth Century.

  Brett activated the phone in the desk and placed a video call to the office of the Commissioner of Baseball. He was surprised when a human answered on a Sunday afternoon, but unsurprisingly, the Commissioner himself was out of the country until at least next week. His executive assistant, a woman with a very pleasant, almost sultry voice, as smooth as her straight, blonde hair and as free of imperfections as her complexion, offered to deliver any written questions Brett would like to ask, if he would email her a compilation. He agreed, and spent the next ten minutes typing furiously before attaching a standard electronic affidavit form, double-checking the address, and sending the note into the electronic ether.

  Before Brett could begin contemplating his next move, an alert flashed on his desktop computer. When he touched the blinking yellow icon, a video began playing. It was a news segment about Phil Robertson being resurrected in his home city of Boston. Edward Jenkins was the reporter. He mentioned that Greg Veedock was still in Limbo, and had not yet been resurrected. Brett was happy that Jenkins did not say anything about the murder investigations.

  There was a knock on the office door. Brett bellowed, “Come in!” as he made a copy of the video and stored it in his case file.

  The door cracked and Wen Jing poked her head inside, “Hey, Brett! Is this a good time?”

  Brett smiled, “Of course! Come on in. I was just doing some online research on my first official cases.”

  Wen Jing nodded, “Then it was a good time. I think I have answers to a couple of your questions.”

  Brett rested his elbows on his desktop, “What’ve you got?”

  “I ran a full, low-level scan on Veedock’s subprocessor. He did have that cheating app installed, but it was erased at the same time as all of his other data. There were only fragments left, but it was enough to match several byte strings to the full copy DCI Graves gave me earlier. It’s the same software.”

  Brett asked, “Did you notice anything that might have looked like malware? A Trojan horse or virus? That kind of thing?”

  Wen Jing shook her head, “No, but if it wasn’t part of the digital ghost, I wouldn’t have seen it.”

  “Do you think that Greg Veedock’s brain could have been hacked?”

  “Well...,” Wen Jing tilted her head to the side and stared at a random spot on the floor, “it’s not impossible...”

  “However?”

  “However, to the best of my knowledge, it’s never happened before. Ever. What makes you think that?”

  Brett admitted, “I can’t find a motive, so it crossed my mind that someone might have taken control of Veedock’s body and used him as a murder weapon.”

  Wen Jing said, “Based on what I know, I’d say it wasn’t likely. But you might want to ask Srinu when you see him. He used to be in R & D with the Army. He knows a lot more than I do.”

  “Thanks for the advice. I’ll do that tomorrow. Was there anything else you wanted?”

  “Well...,” Wen Jing stared at the floor again, “Just one thing. Do you want to get married?”

  Brett shrugged, “I don’t know. I might, someday. I used to want to badly, but—”

  Wen Jing darted over and planted her palms atop Brett’s desk, “No! I mean...” She exhaled forcefully and pursed her lips. Brett was clearly not getting her point. She blurted out, “I mean will you marry me?”

  Wen Jing’s intent finally connected. Brett’s gaze met Wen Jing’s and his mouth slowly opened, but he was unable to speak, as if stunned.

  Wen Jing said, “It’s okay if you don’t want to—”

  “No!” Brett cried. “I mean... Give me a minute!”

  Wen Jing suddenly began trembling, afraid that she might have committed a strategic blunder on the battlefield of love. A chill shot down her spine and through to her toes.

  Brett said, “I know I look calm right now, but my mind is frantically looking for excuses to say no, and it can’t find any.”

  Wen Jing bit her lip before saying, “Is that a yes?”

  Brett stood up and walked over to Wen Jing. He pried her left hand free from his desk and took it in his own, clasping it tightly, “That was definitely a yes. Are you sure—”

  Wen Jing nodded several times, furiously.

  Brett said, “I’m sorry it’s not a more romantic setting.”

  Wen Jing stepped away from the desk and, with her right hand, she locked the office door with a loud click, “It is now.”

  No sooner than Brett and Wen Jing had managed to intertwine themselves on Brett’s desktop, there was an audible click that they both recognized as the lock being disengaged. Wen Jing panicked and tried to roll away, and her momentum carried both she and Brett over the edge. They ricocheted off Brett’
s office chair, sending it rolling into the wall with a thud as they hit the floor.

  The door opened, and Alana’s voice echoed, “The meeting starts at ten-hundred.”

  Rhys’ voice replied, mixing with his heels clicking on the tiled floor, “Roger that.”

  Wen Jing’s blushing carried her well into the ultra-violet spectrum. Brett placed his finger across his lips, which prompted Wen Jing to cover her mouth with her hand to avoid laughing.

  Alana’s footsteps tapped the floor as she moved around the room, stopped at her locker, opened and closed it, and then walked behind her desk. Her chair squeaked when she sat down. Some light tapping followed, which was probably her manipulating her desktop, along with some light typing.

  At least a minute passed. Wen Jing looked at Brett, her hand hiding a broad smile that seemed to inflate her cheekbones to levels that would give a hamster performance anxiety. Brett winked, but again placed his finger to his mouth to shush his girlfriend. Suddenly, the typing stopped and Alana asked, “Brett, when did you start shaving your legs and wearing flats?”

  Wen Jing laughed and rolled over, ending up sitting against the wall with her knees pulled up under her chin. She admitted, “Busted.”

  Brett climbed up off the floor and brushed away a modicum of dirt, either real or imagined, from his dress slacks and work shirt. “Good evening, ma’am,” he squeaked.

  Alana asked, “When I told Wendy she could use my office, didn’t I tell her not to use it for that? Has she finished up all of her research for the evening?”

  Wen Jing planted her hands on the floor and pushed herself up, brushing her clothes in the process, “I think so, Inspec—Chief Inspector.”

  Alana said, stone-faced, “Good. Then I need to talk to Brett before he leaves.”

  Wen Jing nodded and left the room, telling Brett, “I’m going back to the lab. I’ll just head home afterwards. See you there,” she said with a wink as she pulled the door closed behind her.