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Afterimage

Written by J. Kathleen Cheney

Illustration by Garrett W.Vance

Losing a math coprocessor implant might be an annoyance, but losing a heart regulator was a different thing altogether. Detective William Greene gazed down at the body lying on the polished marble of the landing, trying to decide whether he felt sorry for the guy or not.

The suit had to be hand-tailored. The gray wool shone, a recent Italian style touted in the newest fashion videos. The victim's dark hair had gray at the temples; an affectation, most likely to lend him an air of dignity. His body looked too fit to be natural, the kind of fitness only the wealthy could afford—metabolism regulator chips, continual isometric toning programs, possibly even a few DNA alterations. A man like that didn't have gray in his hair unless he wanted to.

Greene decided he should feel sorry for the victim anyway. They had too much in common, despite all the things they didn't. If an EM blast hit him, he'd be in a bad way too.

He checked the cards handed over to him by a weeping secretary in a yellow blouse—perhaps it was orange. He couldn't quite tell. The young woman now stood in a spot where the light didn't hit her directly, so he couldn't see her clearly any longer. He could still hear her sobbing. He held the top card squarely in front of his eyes, its black text easy to read on a white background.

DeVane Michaelson, it said. International Travel Litigation. A lawyer who specialized in suing travel agencies, the secretary had told him.

"What kind of name is DeVane?" Sergeant Ellison asked. She leaned over and took the card, her dark hand passing into and then out of the range of his cameras.

"One that sounds impressive," Greene said. "Looks like there's a lot of money in travel lawsuits."

"Huh. I wonder why the Purists would come after him. He's not one of their usual targets." Her voice sounded only mildly curious.

No, Greene thought, the Purists usually went after the purveyors of Intelligent Medical Implants—not the IMI users. Any manner of chip implanted in the human body to improve performance or appearance, the Purists called a "pollution" of Nature's Creation. With an implanted heart regulator, Michaelson certainly violated their standards of human purity.

It concerned Greene that the Purists might have gone after a user. So far they had managed to vandalize several implantation facilities in the Greater Los Angeles area. They concentrated on taking out the companies' computers using EM blast guns, mostly homemade. Kits for the things were available all over the Internet, marketed for "legitimate uses" such as the destruction of old data. So far, any humans hit with blasts in the Purist's "raids" had only suffered inconveniences. DeVane Michaelson was the first to die.

"Who knows? There might be some link," Greene said. "Why don't you start running down everything you can on him?" Ellison would spend the rest of the day with her computer, he reckoned. His own forte was listening, not reading screens—the images that the cameras embedded in his contact lenses fed to his retinal implants were grainy at best. "If it was the Purists, do you think they intended to kill him," he asked, "or just burn him out?"

"Normally, regulators are pretty heavily shielded," Ellison said. "The EM blast would have had to come from close range to cause one to fail."

A strong blast could have come from a distance, but still inside. The building's Faraday system kept outside electrical intrusions at bay, and nothing near the body had shut down, suggesting a very localized blast. Two large screens on the wall nearby merrily cycled some irritating, colorful art that changed just about the time Greene had them figured out. He thought they might be Van Goghs.

Greene turned his eyes in Ellison's direction. His retinal implant ran a facial recognition program and supplied her name—an annoyance as it scrolled slowly through the bottom of his vision. He'd put Ellison into the program when she first started working with him about a year ago and had never gotten around to taking her out.

"My dad has a heart regulator," Ellison added in a quiet voice. "He got a letter."

The Purists had gotten their hands on some of the implant firms' client lists and sent threatening letters to the users in an attempt to dry up demand for implants. Greene had gotten a letter or two himself, but hadn't taken them too seriously. "You report it?"

Ellison shook her head. "Just a form threat. I'll ask him if he's still got a hard copy, though. Those people start going after users, Dad might want to invest in a shield vest."

Greene turned back to the body lying on the landing. "Yeah. A vest might be a good buy."

He wouldn't have said that a day ago, but this murder had him worried. Unfortunately, a vest wouldn't offer any protection for him.

****

The widow had a nice figure. As she stood silhouetted in the light of a large bay window, it was easy for Greene to see that much. Her face remained elusive, even though his program informed him it had pinned down her features to a seventy-two percent probability of recognizing her later. Dark hair, worn long, medium skin, moderately tall. She wore a white blouse and dark skirt, high heels—details that would change.

She came back from the window and sat down across from him on a wide pale-colored couch. With the window behind her, she was little more than an outline to him. She crossed her legs, and said, "They told me that DeVane was leaving his office. That he didn't tell his secretary where he was going."

"No, Mrs. Michaelson. We don't know where yet." Greene shifted in his chair, feeling uneasy. "Did you talk to him at any time today?"

"I went into the office this morning to get him to sign some papers for the bank. And before you ask," she added, "I went to the bank and handed them over. I was there from eleven till almost noon."

Which gave her an alibi at the time of the crime. "What sort of relationship did you and your husband have?"

She sighed and laid something down on the table next to her. "If you talk to his lawyer, you'll find out we were in the process of a very civil divorce."

"Over the secretary?" he guessed.

"No, not her. She wasn't the first, Detective; I just got tired of it. I decided it was time to call DeVane a mistake and move on. He was tired of being tied down, so he was perfectly agreeable."

That explanation covered her lack of emotion on hearing of her husband's death. "So you get—What? Half?—and he goes off with the secretary?"

"I sincerely doubt that," she said. "DeVane isn't... wasn't the sort to settle for one woman. I doubt little Veronica would have held his attention for more than a few months. I'm getting most of the money, by the way. You can check with his lawyer on that, too. I had far more money coming into the relationship than he did and at least had the sense to require a clear prenuptial agreement. DeVane is getting this monstrosity of a house and his car."

"You don't want the house?" he asked.

"Good Lord, no. Would you?" Her horrified tone almost made Greene laugh. She sighed and added, "It's a showcase, Detective, to display all of DeVane's nice things, myself included. My tastes are far simpler."

"It must be worth a fortune," he said.

She moved her head. "There are two mortgages on it. Unfortunately, I was cosigner on them, so now I believe I'm stuck with the thing. I'm meeting with my business planner tomorrow to find out how bad it is."

"I see."

She tilted her head to one side. "Do you?"

"Meaning?"

"Hmm. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"We're going through his office files to determine if he's received any threats there. I need to know if he's received anything discretely on the house link."

She shook her head. "He was a lawyer, Detective. Of course people threatened him. He kept files. If you'll excuse me for a minute, I'll make a copy for you."

She rose gracefully, passing close to him as she swayed toward the hallway. She smelled of lilacs. Her heels clicked intermittently, moving from floor to rug to floor.

Once she'd gone, he crossed to the bay window and looked back at the room, trying to see details from this angle. His cameras supplied information to his implants, but lighting was always their critical weakness. He needed light on the subject—not behind—to be able to get a good idea of how it looked.

His eyes started to go out on him in his twenties, falling quickly through the stages of Retinitis Pigmentosa—night blindness and then an escalating loss of peripheral vision. But while the disease ravaged his retinas, it left his optic nerve unharmed. His implants fooled his brain into thinking his own eyes were doing the seeing, not a pair of cameras. They weren't perfect, but were far better than nothing.

The officer who'd driven him to the house still waited in the foyer, a dark spot in Greene's vision. The house was vast, this living room big enough to hold his entire apartment. The furniture seemed to be of the sparse, Scandinavian variety—clean lines and neutral colors, like the widow. A grand piano rested in one corner of the room, its top propped open, black and white, easy to see. Pale rugs took up floor space, covering dark tile. It felt hard and slick enough to be marble, so Greene made a mental note to walk carefully. Everything smelled expensive—like a museum.

A newspaper lay on the table next to the window, folded in half. He picked it up and held it so the light hit the page. "Purists Protest at Walker Implants," the headline read. There was a picture below it, but he couldn't refine his camera focus enough to see it clearly.

The sharp click of her heels warned him that the widow was returning. He dropped the paper back on the table. She came toward him with something small and dark in her hand. When she held it out to him, he took it. His fingers told him it was a drive chip, so he slid it into his pocket and thanked her.

She turned to face the window and gazed outward, in profile now. This close, with the light from the window on her features, he decided she was lovely. He couldn't make a guess as to her ethnic background, but her facial features had very elegant lines. The implant claimed a ninety-seven percent probability of recognition if he saw her later.

"Is there anything else, Detective?" she asked without turning to look at him.

"Not at this time. I'll probably need to get back in contact with you later, though, when we've had more time to refine our lines of inquiry. If you think of anything, you have my card."

"Thank you." Her voice sounded absent, as if her mind had turned away along with her face.

Greene showed himself out, walking slowly on the hard floor.

****

The geek squad had already taken apart Michaelson's computer, checked every nook and cranny for hidden data, and come up with tons of personal information, all of which the computers at the precinct determined had no relationship to the Purists. "Well, run it again," Greene suggested when Jackson came back with that result.

"If I run it again, Greene, I'll tell you the same thing in five minutes." Jackson's voice made his opinion clear, even if Greene didn't look up at his face. Jackson stood nearly seven feet tall and towered over all of them, making him the easiest person in the precinct to identify, except when he was sitting. Not quite six feet himself, Greene always felt short when he stood next to the man. "You may not know how to use a computer," the geek added, "but you want me to do it for you, then don't question my results."

"Sorry, Jackson," Greene said. "Didn't mean it that way."

"Right." Jackson tossed something small onto the desk. "What we've got. Maybe Ellison'll take pity on you and re-run it, but there's no reason to." He took himself away, his elongated shape sliding out through the doorway.

"Hey, Stretch," Ellison said as she walked into the room, evidently addressing the departing Jackson, not Greene. "Twelve security cameras," she said in a plaintive voice. "Not a single one caught the murder."

"What are the odds of that?" Greene asked.

"Nil." She leaned over his desk and typed something up on his computer. "Except this one. See the blonde walking up the steps?"

"Can you enlarge it?"

"Nah, just goes all grainy." She pointed a dark finger against the muddled grays on the screen. "I'd guess about five-foot-eight, nine, maybe."

He shrugged. "What makes you think this is the killer?"

She chuckled. "Because this camera feed dies about a millisecond after this frame. She took out the camera. There's not enough data for facial recognition, pulls up about ten thousand possible matches. She had her face turned away."

"If this is the only camera that caught her, then she must have been extremely lucky."

"You know I don't believe in luck," Ellison said. "She knew the camera's sweep pattern."

"Staked out the building?"

"Or had access on a regular basis," she pointed out. "With that low of a match probability, DA probably won't take the record into evidence."

"If we can get a decent copy off this, one of the guys can run it down to Michaelson's office tomorrow and see if anyone recognizes her."

"Not likely, but maybe someone will remember the clothing." She leaned on the edge of his desk. "So, what did you make of the widow? He had a picture in his office. Trophy wife?"

"Well, she wasn't grief-stricken," Greene admitted.

Ellison sighed. "The secretary cried all over me when I took her statement. No one said it, but I'll bet she was his bit of fluff on the side."

"Yeah, the widow confirmed that. They are 'in the process of a very civil divorce,' she said." He handed Ellison the drive chip and the name of the divorce lawyer's firm. "Jackson says no joy on the computer files."

Ellison tapped something against his desk. A pen, or pencil, he decided. "Yep, already told me. Probably no tie to the Purists then. Maybe someone taking lessons from their play book?"

"A possibility, so, we run the wife..." Greene suggested.

"And the secretary," she added. "I'll get right on it. Don't you have to go give evidence in the Vargas case?"

"What time is it?" he asked.

His implant supplied the time just as Ellison said, "Three twenty-five."

Greene pushed himself to his feet. "Just a deposition, but I'm supposed to be there at four. Thanks for reminding me."

"That's why I exist, boss," she said.

****

"Heading out to the gym?" Ellison asked.

Greene had stopped back by the office to pick up his bag and plowed right into her in the hallway. "Is the gym bag a giveaway?

"Yep, run a mile for me, okay?" She headed back toward the office with a wave.

The Americans with Disabilities Act might keep the police department from firing a half-blind detective, but if he failed a fitness test, that would have the same result. Heading toward forty, Greene couldn't rely on his natural leanness to keep in shape any longer, so he took a bus to his gym. It was annoyingly crowded at that hour, but he found a treadmill, spent an hour running, then showered up and headed for home.

His apartment was small enough that he could negotiate it in the dark but he kept the lights on full anyway. An extravagance, one for which he paid dearly, but the high power bills were worth being able to see.

His kitchen smelled like Thai food, the natural consequence of bringing it home almost every night. Greene sat in his favorite chair in the living area, put his feet up on the ottoman and worked his way through the garlic chicken, mentally reviewing his statement for the Vargas case. He set the container on the table and closed his eyes. The cameras imbedded in his lenses cycled off, leaving him with just the implant's feed. He'd learned early on that daily maintenance of his optical files was far better than leaving it for later.

The implant dutifully showed him the faces it had recorded since last night, those on which it had gotten enough data to make a positive match. Most were easy calls—people he'd seen on the street, the regular patrons of the Thai restaurant. Those he trashed. The implant recalled the face of the secretary then, displaying her image for him. She had blond hair, and dark smudges under her eyes that must be smeared make-up. "Record," he said, "Michaelson secretary. Cancel. 'Veronica.' "

The implant recorded the data points for the face, creating a file for her. Greene trashed several more before coming to the widow. The implant had a good side view and extrapolated a frontal view.

"Record. Manisone Michaelson."

He worked through the remaining records. Then he pulled up Ellison's image and deleted that file, to keep the program from running letters through his brain every time she came near. He didn't need the help to recognize her any longer.

That done, he got up, turned on the radio, and relaxed back into his chair to the soothing sound of the news.

****

"Well, will you look at that," Ellison said.

Greene pushed his chair away from his desk and rolled toward hers. Her screens showed line after line of data, all too small for him to read. She tapped the upper left corner of the screen a few times, enlarging the image for him. His cameras focused on the words.

"Look where she worked before they met." Ellison pointed. "IMI-AG"

Intelligent Medical Implants, he read. "AG? Wouldn't that be their German division, then?"

"Yep. Graduated from Yale, Masters in Prosthetics Engineering."

"So, not a trophy wife, after all." Somehow that didn't surprise him. "How long did she work there?"

"Pretty sparse info on-line. It doesn't specify what division, but I doubt she was a secretary with that degree."

"Can we get that information?"

Ellison shrugged, the motion clear enough for him to register. "I'll contact the firm. They're probably not going to give it to us, though. It's actually a German company. The Americans are the branch, not the other way around. She hasn't worked since she married Michaelson. Five years now. Doing charity work, mostly through the Lions Club. I'm still hunting."

Greene sat back. "Did Michaelson get the heart regulator through IMI?"

She shuffled some printouts. "Yep, that's where he met her, looks like. Had to have it implanted while in Germany on a litigation case. They dated for a couple of months, got married, came back to the states. Beautiful story."

"You're a cynic," he told her.

"No, I'm really weeping inside," she said. "Truly."

"Right. Anything else?"

"Not so far."

"So what about the secretary?"

"Twenty-seven. Local high school. Associates Degree in Paralegal Studies through Kaplan. This is her only job so far. Seven years with the firm, Michaelson specifically requested her transfer to a position as his secretary about five months ago. Good evaluations, no reprimands. One arrest for involvement in the PETA sit-down protest at Armour-Tyson Foods here in town."

"Really? Think she's gone from PETA to Purist?" He raised a single eyebrow.

"Don't do that. It looks weird. Haven't found a link yet." Ellison sighed.

"Hey, can you pull up the paper from a few days ago. Had a headline on Walker Implants." His implant showed him the headline from the paper he'd seen.

Ellison typed for a second and then touched one of the spots on her left screen. "This one?" She'd found the one he'd seen the day before, grayscale picture and all.

"That was only, what, three days ago?"

"Nope, last week," she said.

That meant someone at the Michaelson household had hung onto that paper for a few days. Greene frowned, peering at the picture. He tapped the corner to enlarge it. A crowd of blurry protesters sat on the steps of the Walker building, arms linked. A handful of police dragged one of them loose from the pack as the passersby cheered.

"Amazing," Ellison said. She tapped the screen a few times, getting it to refocus on the protestors, and then one in particular. "Well, I'd say my money is on her."

The name "Veronica" scrolled across Greene's vision, his implant supplying the recognition prompt. "Can you run a printout on that?"

"Yep." Ellison tapped the screen, and across the room the printer began to whir.

"Greene," a voice called, "Jackson wants you right now."

He pushed his chair back and followed the junior geek down the hallway to the bullpen where the herd of geeks had their screen heaven. Jackson sat in his usual pod, no less than a dozen screens pulled down to surround him.

"Hey, Greeney," Jackson said, "you almost missed it."

"What are we looking at?" Ellison asked from behind Greene, saving him from asking.

Jackson pointed at three of the screens in succession. "Whoever is doing it has all his codes. Liquidated the stocks in the last ten minutes... and..." Jackson drummed on the desk with a couple of fingers, a mock drum roll. "There it goes."

"Very cool," Ellison said. "Where is it going?"

Greene focused on the screen, his cameras enlarging the view internally. "Mutual Manhattan Bank," the screen said. He could make out a short list of account numbers running down the page, balances next to them, each one resetting to zero in turn.

"This guy's good," Jackson said. "If it does what the stock portfolio did, everything is going to re-route to an account in Dubai... and we will never see it again. Banker's paradise, Dubai." He began touching screens with one hand, typing with the other. "And it's away. Probably be transferred out of that account soon, but their government will never give up that information. All told, looks to be about a million dollars, no, maybe eight-hundred thousand."

Not as much as he would have expected, Greene reflected, given the huge house and expensive implants the man had carried about inside himself. And a car—private vehicles cost their owners a fortune in annual fees and taxes.

"Did they clear out all of Michaelson's assets?" Ellison asked. She leaned past Greene and touched something over Jackson's head.

"Nope, we've got a couple of life insurance policies untouched. Compared to what they've got, not worth the bother. Pretty small, in fact."

"You want the secretary or the widow?" Ellison asked.

"Five bucks on the widow," Jackson answered without turning around.

"Let's bring 'em both in," Greene said. "Without doubt, one of them knows the access codes or can point us to someone who does. I think we know our motive now, at least."

****

Ellison rapped on the door. "Veronica Sweet?"

"Is that really her name?" Greene asked.

Ellison laughed. "Didn't I tell you before? Her real name. I checked."

Greene rolled his eyes and then endured a second of blurred vision as his lenses rotated with the movement. The secretary had a house in the suburbs, far larger than Greene would have expected. He wondered if the title might have Michaelson's name on it—something else to check out.

Ellison banged on the door this time. A second later, the door opened a crack and Veronica Sweet peeked out past the chain holding it shut. To Greene's eyes, it looked like she'd been crying again. "Who is it?" she asked in a timid voice.

"Sergeant Ellison and Detective Greene," Ellison said. "We'd like to ask you a few more questions."

"Can I get dressed real quick?" the secretary asked.

Greene saw a great deal of leg exposed in the door's narrow opening and nothing else.

"Sure," Ellison said. "We just need to talk to you."

The door clicked shut. Ellison shrugged and asked, "Who answers the door naked?"

Greene almost laughed at her scandalized tone. "Never done so yourself?"

Her face turned in his direction. Greene couldn't quite decide what her expression meant. She opened her mouth but then stopped and pressed her ear against the door. "Damn," she said a second later. "Door slamming. I'll go around the back, boss."

She drew her gun and headed off the porch. Greene drew his own weapon and thumbed off the safety. He gave Ellison a second longer and then tried the door again. When no answer came, he kicked it in. The door banged against the wall of the house with a hollow crunching sound, giving him some idea about the quality of the construction.

He took a careful look inside and didn't process any movement. "Veronica Sweet?" he called.

He didn't get an answer, so he edged inside the doorway, moving to one side. His cameras took in the small living room. Trinkets covered every horizontal surface, a mysterious jumble in his limited vision. The place smelled like cheap air-fresheners. He advanced toward the next room, the kitchen. Linoleum tiles on the floor in a black and white checkerboard dominated his vision until he could see the form of the secretary standing near the sink. He couldn't make out what she held before her, but her posture told him it was some sort of gun—illegal in civilian hands.

He trained his in her direction. A useless gesture, since he had trouble hitting the side of a barn. "Put it down, Ms. Sweet. We just want to talk to you."

His shoulder burned and his mind filled with white light. He staggered and hit his knees, so disoriented that he nearly didn't hear the sound of bare feet pattering past him.

****

"Greene?" Ellison's voice entered the blackness. "You hear me, Greene?"

"Crap," he said. "She got away, didn't she?"

"Yep. We'll get her. The guys are going to take you on in, okay?"

He was lying flat on his back, covered with blankets and strapped down. Ambulance, he decided. "I'm fine. They don't need to take me in."

"You're not fine. Stop