Chapter Twenty-Four
Dex rode the local train from the station to his apartment building, shivering from a newfound aversion to the cold. He was amazed at how just a couple of days in a warm climate could change his comfort level at home. He tucked his arms in to his sides as he clung to the vertical rail on the train, trying to conserve as much warmth as possible. He went online and had his system instruct his apartment to turn on the heat and double up the water quota. He figured that he had a couple of days worth of water rations saved and he could use an extra long shower.
At his stop, he stepped off the train and a cool breeze hit him, making his body shiver. He hurried toward his building, hands tucked deep into his pockets. He opened the door and stepped onto the up lift. When he got into his apartment, he immediately shucked off his clothes and dumped the contents of his bag out. He stuffed all his dirty clothes into the autoclave and stepped into the lav, turning on the water. He stood under the weak spray and when the blower came on, he stayed under the warm air longer than he needed to. Eventually, he stepped out of the small room and put on some clean clothes.
It was late, getting close to the middle of the night, but Dex just wasn’t tired. His usually well ordered routine had been broken in the last few days and now time was becoming even less relevant that it had been before. He knew he could just grab the SleepingJuice and let it work its magic, but it wasn’t just that he wasn’t tired. He didn’t want to sleep. He pulled out the bottle of Jamaica’s Best, now getting dangerously close to empty and poured a generous shot into a tumbler. He topped it off with a splash of ginger ale and sat in his comfortable chair.
The apartment had warmed nicely up by then and Dex set the controls back to normal. He dimmed the lights a little, creating a softer atmosphere that he hoped would be conducive to thinking. He logged in to the Cubicle Men’s system and pulled up the case file he’d been keeping. He scanned through his notes, thinking that there must be something he had missed. He had that feeling, like a tiny itch at the base of his neck, that made him think he was missing something important. He read over his notes from the beginning of the case and noticed that Annabelle had started adding her observations as well. She really was great — Dex was sure he would never have even gotten this far without her help. It would be strange not talking to her all the time once the case was over.
When he got to the end of the file, Dex noticed that Annabelle had added some information just recently, while he was on the train from Guadalajara, in fact. Her note was somewhat cryptic, stating that her search for subjects SL and SB over the previous week was inconclusive and that online trails for both parties appeared to be unavailable. Dex had no idea what this meant, so pinged Annabelle. Of course, since it was the middle of the night, there was no response.
Dex sighed and took a slug of his drink. He was relying on Annabelle too much, wanting to talk to her about the case, wanting to talk to her period. He’d always worked alone — most of the Cubicle Men did — and that was the way he wanted it. No discussions, no meetings, no disagreements. So why did he feel completely and utterly lost because he couldn’t talk to her?
He leaned back in the chair and started paging through the Cubicle Men’s system, checking out the other cases. It was all just the usual stuff and none of it was taking Dex’s mind off his own work. Instead, he found a message from Jay Shiraishi asking if Dex had any new information. It seemed the multi community were hoping for a conclusion to the case as well.
Dex sent his old pal a quick note saying little that the other man couldn’t have read in the case file. Then, Dex paged out of the organization’s system and over to the boards where Reuben had spent time. He ran a search for any recent mentions of Reuben Cobalt and was surprised to find a number of long and well populated threads. They all began with the announcement of Reuben’s death and were full of nice thoughts about him from people who had and had not interacted with him.
It was interesting, Dex thought, how people said the nicest things about someone only once they were gone. It was as if people were usually too afraid to tell each other how they feel, but once someone is no longer there, everyone feels the need to say those things, the things they usually never even articulate to themselves, but that eat away at you when the opportunity is gone.
He read the tributes, the memories of Reuben and the words of people who wished they had known him or known him better. He wondered if Ivy had seen these threads, if she read them and what it meant to her. He finished his drink and even though he still wasn’t tired, he didn’t have the energy to stay awake either. He took a shot of SleepingJuice and decided to defer his problems for a few hours.
• • •
His system alarm went off in the morning and Dex awoke with a queasy feeling. It wasn’t just the result of a couple of days of strong coffee, a strange bed and not enough food or sleep. It was the sick feeling of defeat, that he was never going to solve this case. Dex wasn’t really an optimist, but he was ordinarily a confident man. However, this morning the sense that he was missing the key to this problem was overwhelming. He took a drink of Flying Fish and it sorted out the physical symptoms, but his mind was still unable to focus.
He was dejectedly drinking his coffee — now weak and tasteless in comparison to the brew he’d had at Free Robots — when Annabelle pinged him. Dex felt his heart rate increase and he silently chided himself for the reaction. He swallowed, cleared his throat and answered Annabelle’s call.
“Hey, what’s up?” he said.
“You called me, right?” she said, her voice light. “That should be my question.”
“Oh, yeah,” Dex said, now remembering his research from the night before. “I was reading the case notes and you added something yesterday. What was that all about?”
“Oh, that,” Annabelle’s voice turned serious and she sounded less than thrilled. “I have news. Or more accurately, no news.”
“No news isn’t good news, is it?” Dex asked.
“Not for us, it isn’t,” Annabelle said. “It turns out that both Sterling Ljundberg and Stella Bish were off on their little offline retreats when Reuben got killed.”
“Shit.”
“Shit, indeed,” Annabelle said. “It doesn’t prove anything — the nasty payload that killed Reuben could have been delivered by a bot, just like what happened to you. Hell, it probably was, considering that it was a bot that tried to attack you. But there’s nothing in the logs that ties either of them to the event.”
“Fuck,” Dex said, his hand involuntarily clenched into fists. “This case is killing me. I can tell there’s something I’m missing; I can just feel it. It’s like I’m looking at the world around me and I can see that there’s a file open on my viewer, but I just can’t focus on it. It’s maddening.”
“I know it feels like we aren’t getting anywhere,” Annabelle said, her voice softening, “but I believe you’ll get it. It’s just a matter of time. You’ve got the knack, Dex. You just have to let it come.”
“Thanks,” Dex said, unconvinced. “I hope you’re right.”
“Me, too,” Annabelle said and laughed. “I’m going to go and let your do your thing. I’ll let you know if I find anything, okay?”
“Yeah,” Dex said. “Talk to you later.” He broke the connection and poured another cup of coffee. That nauseous feeling had passed into the tingly, itchy feeling again. Dex was convinced that he had seen, read or heard something that just wasn’t sinking in.
He pulled up the case file and started poking through his notes again. He was hoping that he could see the information with a fresh view, but instead it was like the words were swimming before his eyes. He decided to try a different approach and put together a cross reference script. Because Dex kept recordings of every meeting or conversation, his case file was naturally divided into discrete sections of information based on when he’d recorded it. He’d made some manual links already, but there might be something else that went toget
her. He knew that even with the script he’d have to go through the results carefully. But at least it was a different way of looking at it all.
He knew he’d have at least half an hour to kill while the script was running. Dex glared at his half full coffee cup, wondering if it would be a waste of perfectly good rum to top off the foul brown sludge with the last of the liquor. He decided it would be and dumped the coffee down the drain. There wasn’t enough room in his small apartment to properly pace and he couldn’t face a video, or even music now. Without even realizing what he was doing, Dex paged over to Uri Farone’s storefront. He found himself looking at the options available, although he had already come close to memorizing Farone’s price sheet. He wished he’d never heard of Farone’s service; knowing that he could do something about his memories was, in many ways, worse than the memories themselves. As it was, he’d known for some time that he was unhealthily obsessed with his past, but he could live with that. Knowing that there was something he could do about it, that he could choose to remove the memories and therefore change his life, that meant he had to decide. He had to choose what to do.
If he removed the memories, Dex felt that it would be like he was denying his past, that part of his life that he felt was more important than anything else he’d experienced. Yet, if he chose to leave things the way they were, that meant choosing to live with the pain, choosing to be a slave to his memories. There seemed to be no way to win.
A chime sounded and Dex was saved from this debate as he saw that his script was finished. He paged over to the report that it had generated and he began to read. Mostly, the script had found connections that Dex already knew about — Ljundberg and Bish, Jay Shiraishi and Reuben, Marta and Ljundberg’s day job. There were others, though, and Dex spent some time checking up on each of the items.
Even though he was specifically looking for items that had previously fallen through the cracks of his logic, he almost missed it. A name that was only ever at the periphery of the case, a person he’d only ever spoken to once and even then it was as an aside. A name that popped up so unexpectedly that he hadn’t even recognized it. A name so unfamiliar that even when his script pointed it out to him he nearly let it pass by.
Renna Bellinger. Ivy’s friend, who never knew about Reuben and who had nothing to do with the case. Renna Bellinger, who was also on Stella Bish’s staff list. Renna Bellinger, who was a top rated programmer with the same firm as Ivy and who worked as a contractor for Stella Bish.
Dex found his contact information for Bellinger and sent her a vague yet forceful invitation to meet with him online later that day. He pinged Annabelle and briefly told her what he’d found.
“I’m coming,” Annabelle said, her voice brooking no argument.
“Not in person, you aren’t,” Dex said, equally forcefully.
“She doesn’t need to see me,” Annabelle said, “but I want to be there. You owe me that much, Dex.”
Dex knew it was true. He did owe Annabelle, a lot. She had become as much a part of this investigation as he was and it was only fair that she be part of this conversation. But he didn’t think he could do his job with Annabelle’s voice in his ear. After much wheedling, Annabelle agreed to keep her voice connection off and to just patch into Dex’s recording feed of the meeting. They spoke briefly about the plan, then Dex prepared to meet Bellinger over drinks in Marionette City.