Retiree 2.0 Page 5

  Alana nodded in the direction of Veedock’s body asked, “What do you think of this?”

  Comerford stepped over to the disabled cyborg, looked it up and down, bending at the knees as he did so, “I’d say he’s dead.”

  Alana said, “Well spotted. Now tell me exactly what happened to him. As far as I know, the room was empty. One witness entered and left, but no other people followed.”

  Comerford pointed toward a row of lockers, “Why? Do you think the culprit might be hiding inside one of those?”

  Alana said, deflecting the sarcasm, “It doesn’t have to be a human, now, does, it? It could have been a robot. Be aware, and do a thorough search. Check all of the HVAC vents as well. If anyone snuck in or out of here off-camera, I want to know.”

  Comerford and his assistants deployed their scanners and evidence kits and began scouring the locker room.

  Alana led Wen Jing to a spot where neither of them would be in the way of the forensics team. She pointed to the Veedock’s notepad, “Supposedly, the victim left a suicide note on that pad. Please include it in your exam when they give you access to the body. I and one of the policemen touched it, so ignore our prints.”

  Alana had not spoken with Wen Jing since she had helped exonerate Detective Rhys from a felony accusation over a month ago. The Chinese immigrant’s Asian accent was still present, despite her perfect English, but her inflection seemed to have changed since she had begun dating Alana’s assistant, Brett Crabtree. Alana’s first impression was that ‘Wendy’ was under greater stress, “What do you need to know, Chief Inspector?”

  “Everything. Who does it belong to, is there any data stored on it, are there any physical traces, digital ghosts that can be retrieved, et cet—” Just then, Alana heard her communicator beep. She said, “Hold on, Wendy, I have a call. Vira, who is calling?”

  Alana’s Vira replied, “Edward Jenkins.”

  “Answer.”

  A suave, perfectly smooth male voice issued from the other end, “Hello? I received a call from an Inspector Graves—”

  “Chief Inspector. And I’m speaking. I need to ask you some questions about Greg Veedock.”

  The voice wavered, “I suspected as much. When—”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “Can you come down to the studio? We’re local to Hollywood. I can give you the address if you need it.”

  Alana said, matter-of-factly, “I’ll find it.”

  Jenkins sighed, but his voice sounded tired rather than evasive, “Have security page me when you get to reception.”

  “Please remain there until I arrive,” Alana said as she used an eye movement to terminate the call.

  Wen Jing asked, “Done?”

  Alana nodded, “Yes. I have to go interview the person who found the body. Send me an email when you’ve finished examining it and the notepad and I’ll drop by the lab.”

  Wen Jing said, “It’ll be a few hours, probably after midnight. Is that okay?”

  Alana said, “Works fine—”

  “Good, because I wanted to talk with you about something unrelated. We can do it then.”

  Alana had begun moving toward the exit, but she stopped in her tracks, “Is it related to Brett?”

  Wen Jing nodded silently.

  “Good,” Alana said, “I’ve got some things to discuss with you about him as well. See you then.”

  Alana walked to where Comerford and his two assistants were prodding the room with gloved hands and sensor probes whose design even she did not recognize. She said, “I’m putting you in charge of the crime scene, Brian. Treat it as a homicide.”

  Brian turned his head away from his work and looked at Alana, “Seriously? Why?”

  Alana raised both eyebrows, “Detective’s intuition,” before exiting the locker room.

  Saturday, 8 July, 22:00

  Alana made a mistake driving to the Hollywood office of Edward Jenkins, located inside the modern GBN tower. The traffic was so heavy that the automated controllers had to slow everything down to thirty kilometers an hour, much less around intersections. Ultimately, it took nearly an hour to travel the twenty kilometers from East Los Angeles Stadium, and it was already after ten o’clock at night when the Inspector reached the reception desk. It took another ten minutes before she was able to contact Jenkins, who approved Alana’s admission to the building.

  One of the news network’s security androids, dressed in a form-fitting, blue uniform and armed with the same Tesla stun pistol as Alana’s, escorted her to the elevator and up to the sports division’s broadcast studio. From some work she did on a previous case, she recognized the robot as a Mark I-C Joebot, the only model approved for civilian security work.

  The elevator ride was extremely quiet and smooth, and Alana guessed that it was probably a newer maglev unit. If not for the floor indicator changing as they ascended, she might not have even noticed their movement. Alana had once ridden in a first-generation maglev elevator, and a flaw in the Faraday cage design interfered with her first-generation visual circuitry, causing her to see the world as if through a 1950s-era television set on a stormy night.

  The security android escorted Alana past a sleek reception area, which was unmanned at this hour. The overhead lights were dimmed, with indirect light from wall sconces still providing enough to see clearly. They had not passed any other people since leaving the ground-floor lobby, and Alana was tempted to assume that she and Jenkins might be the only living beings on the floor. She looked at the squared features of the Joebot’s head, and for a brief moment, she questioned her existence, correcting herself, ‘the only sentient beings.’ Only about a kilogram of her was living, that being the synthetically grown organic brain that resided inside her armored brain case. Many parts of her body superficially resembled living humans, from her textured skin to her nanotube ‘muscles,’ but in terms of sheer organic matter, she was far closer to a robot than to a biological human.

  Edward Jenkins had his own office, which was unusual outside of professions where security was a concern, as it had been since the invention of the cubicle. When they reached the door, the robot stopped and paused momentarily. Alana assumed that it was electronically signaling to the occupant that she had arrived. It was an accurate assumption, as the door slid open. Alana stepped inside, finding a thirty-something man in a sports coat seated behind the desk, typing something on the desktop’s integrated keyboard. She made a furtive eye movement to activate her infrared sensor. From his thermographic signature, the man was either alive or a very sophisticated spybot.

  Alana spoke first, “Edward Jenkins, I presume?”

  Jenkins was focused on his typing, but he smiled and nodded to an empty chair. He then nodded to the Joebot. The office door slid shut after Alana stepped inside, leaving her alone with the sports reporter.

  The view from his plate-glass window was breathtaking. They were about fifteen stories up. The vista overlooked most of the older buildings in Hollywood, which were constructed under older earthquake codes and restricted to five stories. Most of the old structures were preserved for historical significance, and merely upgraded and reinforced over the past decades. The city lights were especially vibrant on a Saturday night, with vehicular traffic forming an almost unbroken conga line down Sunset Boulevard, as it had undoubtedly done for well over a hundred years. At ten-thirty, it was still as thick as it was when Alana was stuck in it in transit.

  Alana sat down in the black, faux-leather chair and examined the room as Jenkins worked toward a stopping point. The office wall was plastered with ancient autographed photos of athletes from many different sports, although the only name Alana recognized was Hank Aaron, and she could not remember why she knew who he was.

  Jenkins stopped typing, and touched a few control icons on the desktop. He leaned back in his black, authentic-leather chair, placing his elbows on the armrests and interweaving his fingers, shifting them back and forth, as if massaging them after a long bout of fighting his
keypad. Alana noticed that he wasn’t wearing anything on his ring finger. He asked, “Inspector Graves, I presume?”

  She asked, “Chief Inspector,” pointing around at the framed photographs, “Do athletes still sign things in the age of digital photography?”

  Jenkins nodded, “Of course. Artifacts are as important to sports as amphorae are to classicists. They are the tangible relics of events that otherwise exist only in digital media or in the memories of the fans.”

  Alana zoomed in on the Rutgers University diploma hanging from the wall. It declared that Jenkins had a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Media Studies. “I do have to admit that I wasn’t expecting someone who would use the Greek plural of amphora, or even know what an amphora is.”

  Jenkins glanced over his shoulder at his framed, academic accolade, “I’m just glad that I didn’t follow my mother’s advice and settle for bagging groceries for a living.”

  Alana asked, “Did you even play sports in college?”

  Jenkins laughed, “Sort of. I was a varsity cheerleader.”

  “How did you end up doing this as a career?”

  Jenkins leaned forward, folding his arms as he placed them on his desk, “Let’s drill down to the business, and then we can talk all about everything else. You’re asking me all these personal questions up front because you’re trying to develop a mental profile of me. Am I right?”

  Alana asked, curious as to how Jenkins arrived at the correct conclusion, “What makes you say that?”

  Jenkins said, “Because I’ll bet we think very much alike. Criminology, journalism. It’s the same thing, really, isn’t it? We're both paid to arrive at the truth. We both carry notepads and cameras. The only objective difference is that you also carry a gun.”

  “There is one great difference in our jobs, and that is accountability. Which brings me around to the point of my visit. You are the last person known to have been in contact with Greg Veedock, and you fled the scene of his murder—”

  Jenkins practically leapt backwards in his chair, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Murder?”

  “Until I’m convinced otherwise, circumstances dictate that I consider you a suspect.”

  Jenkins was silent for several seconds. He lowered his head, staring at the floor. He then looked up and said, “Inspector, he was dead when I got there. I went straight to the security booth and reported it to the police.”

  Alana said, “And then you went straight to your news van and reported it to the world. It was a crime scene, Mister Jenkins, and you fled it.”

  Jenkins mumbled, ostensibly confused, “Murder?”

  “Do you want to make a statement here, or do you want to come down to the station to do so?”

  Jenkins looked up, “Are you recording this?”

  Alana nodded, “Yes. I may as well make this official and inform you of your rights. From this point onward, anything within the record of our conversation will be admissible. Do you want a lawyer before you continue?”

  Jenkins quickly regained his composure. Alana reasoned that it might have been from his experiences as a reporter, which would at times be as confrontational as police work. Jenkins said, “Do you really think I snuck into the locker room, beat Veedock to death, left a suicide note, and then ran away, knowing I’d be caught on security cameras?”

  “Of course not. If I did, I’d have come here with a warrant.” Alana fixed her gaze, and by extension, her camera, on Jenkins, “But everything I have so far places you at the scene of the crime. Tell me exactly what happened, from the point when Phil Robertson was killed.”

  Jenkins recounted in detail how he was able to take advantage of the events to follow Veedock into the dugout, and then into the locker room. It was consistent with the security camera footage she had seen while she was at the stadium. There was a delay of about four minutes from the moment Veedock disappeared from camera until Jenkins followed him. There was probably time for Veedock to have quickly composed his suicide note and then kill himself before Jenkins arrived on the scene. However, that would have probably meant that Veedock went into the locker room planning to hard-kill himself, and that further reinforced Alana’s opinion that Veedock committing suicide was incredible.

  Alana asked, “Why did you follow Veedock into the clubhouse?”

  Jenkins replied, “I wanted to interview him. Scoops equal bonuses in the age of instantaneous media.”

  “Have you ever met Veedock before?”

  Jenkins looked away momentarily, pursing his lips, before saying, “I’ve interviewed him at least once in the past, but I don’t think it was this season. I might have seen him on other occasions. But I don’t know him personally, if that’s what you mean.”

  Alana continued, “When you found Veedock, what made you think it was suicide?”

  Jenkins readily replied, “I saw the notepad sitting on the bench next to him, and I read his note—”

  Alana said, “Wait. It was an electronic notepad. You read the note?”

  Jenkins said, “Yes. It was right there, plain as day. The screen was on.”

  Alana asked, “Did you touch the notepad?”

  Jenkins shook his head, “No, I did not. I only read it. When I saw Veedock’s body, it occurred to me to not disturb anything else.”

  “Why did you go all the way out to the security desk instead of back to the dugout? There was a security officer there.”

  “Frankly, Inspector—”

  “Chief Inspector.”

  “Frankly, I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, and I didn’t want to be detained until after I was able to get the story reported. Yes, I know that was not the most ideal thing I could have done in that situation, but I’m human—” Jenkins caught himself.

  Alana noticed the awkward pause more than she noticed Jenkins’ unintentional faux pas. She said, “Please, continue.”

  “Then I ran off to file my story.” He sighed, “That’s everything.”

  Alana fixed her gaze on a police drone that hovered slowly by, close enough that its ducted fans caused the window to vibrate.

  Jenkins seemed to attribute Alana’s distraction to his faux pas, and he said, “I apologize. I really did not mean to imply that you weren’t human. You actually seem rather nice, for a policeman—woman.”

  Alana smiled, looking at him again once the drone had passed beyond her view, “Quit while you’re ahead. It’s not a problem. As you say, you’re human. Just remember this conversation in the event that one day you may become a retiree yourself.”

  Jenkins smiled slightly, relieved, “I will. Have I answered all of your questions about Greg Veedock? If so, you can finish asking me those personal questions we put on hold earlier.”

  Alana was thinking that the interview was concluded. “Is there something else I need to know? Or want to know?”

  Jenkins said, “I never told you how I came to be a sports reporter, and you asked earlier. I’m hoping that lies among the type of things you’d want to know.”

  Alana nodded, wondering where Jenkins was going to steer the conversation, “All right.”

  “I was Pipped into it.”

  Alana could sense her eyebrows involuntarily changing direction, “Pimped?”

  Jenkins chuckled, apparently having shed any of the previous apprehension he displayed when it crossed his mind that he might be apprehended, “No, Pipped. As in Wally Pipp.”

  Alana shook her head, “I’m drawing a blank on that one.”

  “How about Lou Gehrig? Heard of him?”

  After thinking about it for a few awkward moments, during which she scanned the framed photos adorning the wall for clues, she still didn’t recognize the name.

  Jenkins continued, “Lou Gehrig was a classic player from around the nineteen-thirties. He got his break when another player named Wally Pipp was benched by his manager, Miller Huggins, and Gehrig got the chance to play. 2,130 games later, Lou retired, and then it was only because he had a chronic illness that prevented him from co
ntinuing.”

  Alana asked, “I’m deducing from that anecdote that you got your break in show business when someone above you was—”

  “Killed.”

  That wasn’t the response Alana was expecting. Nevertheless, her detective’s mind immediately drew the worst conclusion, “Did you arrange it—”

  Jenkins’ eyes again widened, “No! No. He was killed in a blimp crash.”

  Alana guffawed, “Seriously? I mean, I know that’s not funny, but... I mean... What are the odds of that? And how is that being ‘Pipped?’ It sounds more like you were ‘Hindenburged.’”

  Jenkins re-donned his happy face, having been exonerated of two murders in the same conversation, “I can’t tell the story with a straight face, but it’s true. I wasn’t even on the sports team. I was just a junior copy editor in the news department, nosing my way into the game as a spectator by hiding inside the main broadcast booth. But I ended up being the ‘man-on-the-field’ covering the event. I suppose that’s not exactly being ‘Pipped,’ but that angle always makes the story seem less of a complete tragedy.”

  Alana found her demeanor softening immediately. Jenkins clearly had the ability to charm an audience, and it was just then that she noticed he was reasonably attractive, with a chiseled jaw and a near-perfect arrangement of his eyes and cheekbones. His auburn hair was neatly trimmed, and despite being in need of a little teasing, she found herself wondering whether its strands were as fine as they looked. She said, “That’s an unusual story.”

  “At the age of twenty-four, I was seen by over that many millions of people on live television. Gehrig gave a speech when he retired, declaring himself to be the luckiest man alive. I can relate.”

  Alana said, “Except for the chronic illness, I presume?”

  “Of course. So, how did you come to be a policeperson?”

  Alana was usually resistant to discussing her past with strangers, and she was somewhat guarded when she replied with a question, “How do you feel about the Reformation War?”