Loyalty In Death Part 7

Since a part of her would have enjoyed watching him do just that, she scowled as she stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

It smelled -- not quite foul but close, she decided. Sweat, grease, bad coffee, old p.i.s.s. "Lights, full," she ordered, then narrowed her eyes at the sudden brightness.

The interior of the shop was no more cheerful than the exterior. Not a single chair invited a customer to sit and relax. The floor, the sickly green of baby vomit, carried the grime and scars of decades of wear. The way her boots stuck and made sucking noises as she walked told her that mopping up hadn't been a major occupation of the deceased.

Gray metal shelves rose up one wall and were jammed full in a system that defied all logic.

Miniscreens, security cams, porta-links, desk logs, communication and entertainment systems crowded together in varying stages of repair or harvesting. Jumbled on the other side of the room were more units she took to be complete as the hand-lettered sign above warned that pickup must be made within thirty days or the customer defaulted the merchandise.

She counted five No Credit Given postings in a room no larger than fifteen feet wide.

Fixer's sense of humor -- for lack of a better term -- was evidenced by the dangling human skull over the cashier's counter. The sign under the sagging jaw read The Last Shoplifter.

"Yeah, that's a laugh riot," Eve murmured and huffed out a breath.

d.a.m.n if the place didn't give her the creeps, she realized. The only window was behind her and barred. The only outside door mired with locks. She glanced up, studied the security monitor. It had been left running and gave her a full view of the street. On another, securing the interior, she could study herself on the crystal-clear screen.

n.o.body got in, she decided, unless Fixer wanted them in.

She made a note to ask Sally at NJPSD for copies of the security discs, exterior and interior.

She crossed to the counter, noted that the computer stationed there was an ugly hybrid of scavenged parts. And in all probability, she mused, ran with more speed, efficiency, and reliability than the one in her office at Cop Central.

"Engage, computer."

When nothing happened, she frowned and attempted to boot it manually. The screen shimmered.

Warning: This unit protected by fail safe. Code proper pa.s.sword or voice print within thirty seconds of this message or disengage. Eve disengaged. She'd see if Feeney, top dog in the Electronic Detective Division, had the time and inclination to play with it.

There was nothing else on the counter but some greasy fingerprints, the dull sheen left by the sweepers, and a scatter of parts she couldn't identify. She uncoded the door leading to the back area and stepped into Fixer's workshop.

The guy could've used a few elves, she thought. The place was an unholy mess with the bones and sinews of dozens of electronic devices scattered around. Tools were hung on pegs or tossed wherever they landed.

Minilasers, delicate tweezers, and screwdrivers with bits hardly wider than a single hair.

If he'd been attacked here, how the h.e.l.l would you tell? she wondered, nudging the sh.e.l.l of a monitor with her boot. But she didn't think he had been. She'd only dealt with Fixer a handful of times and hadn't seen him in a couple of years, but she remembered he kept his place and his person in constant disarray.

"And they wouldn't have gotten into this dungeon unless he'd wanted them to," she murmured. The man had been seriously paranoid, she mused, checking out yet more monitors overhead. Every inch of his s.p.a.ce and several feet outside the shop were all under surveillance twenty-four/seven.

No, they didn't take him from inside, she decided. If he was panicked, as Ratso had said, he'd have been all the more careful. Still, he hadn't felt safe enough to simply barricade himself inside and wait it out. So he'd called a friend.

She moved into the tiny room beyond, scanned the mess of Fixer's living s.p.a.ce. A cot with yellowed sheets, a table with a jury-rigged communications center, a pile of unwashed clothes, and a narrow bathroom with hardly enough room for the skinny shower stall and toilet.

The kitchenette was a turnaround s.p.a.ce packed with a fully loaded AutoChef and a minifridge stocked to bursting. Canned and dry goods were stacked in a wall as high as her waist.

"Jesus, he could have waited out an alien attack in here. Why go out to go under?" Shaking her head, she tucked her thumbs in her pockets and turned a slow circle. No windows, no outside doors, she noted. He'd lived in a f.u.c.king box. She studied the monitor across from the bed, watched the traffic move along Ninth. No, she corrected. Those were his windows.

She closed her eyes and tried to picture him there, using the image of him she remembered. Skinny, grizzled, old. Mean.

He's scared, so he moves fast, she thought. Takes only what he needs. He's former military. He knows how to decamp fast. Some clothes, some money.

Not enough money on him for a man going under, she realized. Not nearly.

Greed, she thought. That was another facet of the man. He'd been greedy, h.o.a.rding his money, overcharging his clients who paid because of his magic hands.

He'd have taken cash, credits, bank and brokerage pa.s.skeys.

And where was his bag? He'd have packed a bag. Could be in the river, too, she decided, hooking her thumbs in her front pockets. Or whoever killed him took it. "He'd've had money," she thought aloud. "He sure as h.e.l.l wasn't spending it on home decorating or personal hygiene and enhancements."

She'd check into his finances.

He packs a bag. Going under, she thought again. What does he put into it?

He'd have taken a palm-link, a PPC. He'd have wanted his logs, his connections. And weapons.

She moved back out, poked under the counter. She found an empty rack with a quick-release bar. Hunkering down, she narrowed her eyes as she studied it. Had the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d really had an illegal blaster? Was this some kind of weapon holder? She'd check the sweepers' report, see if they'd confiscated a weapon.

She hissed out a breath, picked up the rack to examine it. She didn't have a clue what an army-issue blaster circa the Urban Wars looked like. Then she sighed, pushed the rack into her evidence bag. She knew where to find one.

CHAPTER FOUR

Because she wanted to speak to Feeney in person, Eve swung back to Cop Central. She took the glide up to EDD, hopping off long enough to hit up a vending machine for a nutra-bar.

The Electronic Detective Division was a hive of activity. Cops were working on computers, tearing them apart, rebuilding them. Others sat in privacy booths playing and copying discs from confiscated 'links and logs.

Nevertheless, the beeps and buzzes and whines of electronics crowded the air and made her wonder how anyone could manage to squeeze in a stray thought.

Despite the noise level, the door of Captain Ryan Feeney's office was open.

He sat at his desk, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows, his wiry, rust- colored hair standing up on end, his droopy eyes enormous behind the lenses of microgoggles. While Eve watched from the doorway, he plucked a tiny translucent chip from the guts of the computer upended on his desk.

"Gotcha, you little b.a.s.t.a.r.d." And with the delicacy of a surgeon, he slid the chip into an evidence bag. "What is it?"

"Hah?" Behind the goggles, his hound dog eyes blinked, then he shoved the goggles up to his forehead and focused on her. "Hey, Dallas. This little darling? It's basically a counter." He tapped the bag and smiled a little.

"Bank teller with a talent for e-work installed it in her unit at work. Every twenty transfers, a deposit got zipped into an account she'd set up for herself in Stockholm. Pretty slick."

"You're slicker."

"d.a.m.n right. What are you doing over here?" He continued to work as he spoke, methodically tagging evidence. "Want to hang out with real cops?"

"Maybe I missed your pretty face." She eased a hip onto the corner of his desk, grinning when he snorted. "Or maybe I wondered if you had any spare time."

"For what?"

"You remember The Fixer?"

"Sure. Bad att.i.tude, magic hands. The son of a b.i.t.c.h's nearly as good as I am. He can take a unit like this XK-6000 here, strip her down, harvest her, and spread her into six other units before she cools down. He's G.o.dd.a.m.n good."

"Now he's G.o.dd.a.m.n dead."

"Fixer?" Genuine regret showed in his eyes. "What happened?"

"He took a last swim." She filled him in quickly, moving from her meeting with Ratso through her quick tour of the shop.

"Had to be something big and something bad to scare an old warhorse like Fixer," Feeney mused. "You say they didn't take him from inside?"

"I'd say that would've been next to impossible. He had full security scan.

Interior and exterior. A hive of locks. One exit -- reinforced -- and one window, one-way luminex, barred. Oh, and I checked his supplies. He had enough unperishables and bottled water to last a man used to rations a good month."