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  “Susan seems to have developed an ability a few weeks ago. She confided in me about what was happening to her,” explained Molly as the skycar climbed to an altitude of 5,000 feet.

  “This time she saw her brother being murdered?”

  Molly answered, “That’s what I’ve been telling you. Sue still isn’t in terrific shape and she’s pretty much afraid of her father and the dreadful woman he’s got living with him. That’s why she waited awhile before getting up the nerve to go downstairs to phone her brother and check on—”

  “She doesn’t have a phone in her room?”

  “Her father doesn’t think she’s ready for one yet.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Around twenty.”

  “What you’re putting your faith in is a full-grown woman who isn’t trustworthy enough to be allowed near a vidphone or—”

  “You have to know her father to understand the setup. He’s extremely protective of her.”

  Dan said, “Okay, go back to what happened.”

  “Susan tried to phone her brother’s place, twice. But there was no answer, not even from a bot servant.”

  The car sped on across the morning, aimed for the SoCal Police Academy.

  “Did she call the law next?”

  “No, she phoned me,” replied Molly. “She knew they’d react the way you have. You know, decide this was just a Tekkie having another hallucination.”

  “Then you sent the police to Dwight Grossman’s?”

  “Actually, I only asked somebody to check and see if her brother was okay,” she said. “They went there and found he’d been killed.”

  “You know they arrested Walt Bascom, my dad’s boss, for the killing, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but Bascom didn’t have a darn thing to do with it,” she assured him. “Sue saw the killers.”

  “In this mystical vision, huh?”

  “She clearly saw two men, neither one of them Bascom, do away with Dwight Grossman.”

  “Somebody going into a trance,” mentioned Dan, “and having hallucinations doesn’t make for the sort of evidence that stands up in court, Molly.”

  Molly gave him a corrective jab in the ribs with her right fist. “Don’t be so darned narrow-minded, Daniel dear,” she advised. “The point to grasp with your peanut brain is that Susan saw these guys. We’ll be able to provide your father with identifications and holographic mug shots.”

  “Oh, so? How do we do that? More hoodoo?”

  Molly made an impatient noise. “I love you, but sometimes I really wonder about your reasoning abilities,” she admitted. “As soon as we arrive at the police academy, we’ll drop in at the Background & ID room and consult with our robot buddy, Rex/GK-30. Working with the detailed descriptions I got out of Sue, Rex’ll be able to tap police files and—”

  “We’re not supposed to use Rex that way anymore. Remember what—”

  “Hooey,” observed Molly. “If we’re going to help get Bascom out of the jug, we’ll have to take a few small risks.”

  “Getting expelled isn’t exactly a small risk,” he told her. “Besides, we have classes all—”

  “We can miss Lieutenant Cutler’s Electronic Forensics 22B lecture today,” Molly said confidently.

  “I suppose,” said Dan, slumping in his seat.

  The skycar flew on toward the Santa Monica Sector.

  5

  THE top of Bascom’s desk looked much neater than usual and all the windows of his large tower office had been unblanked, affording an unobstructed view of the metal-and-plastiglass buildings rising up all around out in the early-morning haze. Seated at the desk of the absent chief of the Cosmos Detective Agency was a husky man with feathery blond hair. He held his voxwatch to his ear as Gomez and Jake made their way up to take seats facing the desk. “This emergency meeting was scheduled for 8:15 on the nose, fellas,” he mentioned.

  “¡Caramba! And here we come dragging in at the ungodly hour of 8:22.” Gomez slumped into a tin slingchair.

  “In point of fact, it’s almost 8:30, but we’ll let that pass.” Anselmo smiled a forgiving smile. “We have considerable ground to cover, so let’s not waste any more time getting under way.”

  “In point of fact,” offered Jake from the plastiglass chair he’d settled into, “it’s my fault we’re so late, Roy. I was the one who insisted we get into a drag race with a skyvan that was done up to resemble a tofu burger and—”

  “Your flippant attitude is really out of place at a serious meeting like this, Jake,” Anselmo told him.

  Gomez leaned back and rested a booted foot on the edge of the hologram projection stage. “Get on with your sermon, por favor.”

  A slim Japanese woman sitting immediately to the rear of Gomez made an annoyed clucking sound. “Get your feet off the equipment.”

  “You need a lube job, Karin,” he said, not bothering to look over his shoulder at her. “That’s what’s causing that rusty noise you’re continually—Ah, I forgot. You’re not really a robot or an andy, you merely behave like one.”

  “Sid,” said Anselmo from behind his boss’s desk, “we’re all here this morning to help Walt Bascom out of this little jam he’s—”

  “Getting tossed in the calabozo and charged with murder ranks a shade higher than a little jam.”

  Karin Tanoshi made her noise again. “I was against Cardigan and Gomez being invited,” she said, anger in her thin voice. “They’re both behaving like—”

  “Please, Karin,” Anselmo came in. “Keep in mind, dear, that I’m following Walt Bascom’s wishes in all this.”

  There were three other Cosmos operatives at the meeting, two men and a woman. The larger of the men said now, “Why don’t you quit the bickering, Roy, and get on with it?”

  “A good suggestion, Anson.” The thickset blond detective rose to his feet, rested his palms atop the freshly polished desk. “Let me reiterate the fact that this is an extremely serious situation we find ourselves in. The seven of us will comprise the core team that will investigate the Dwight Grossman killing.” He paused to cough into his fist. “I’ll remind you, so as to make my own position crystal clear, that you were, each one of you, personally selected by Walt. Your names were given to me during the brief vidphone conversation I was allowed to have with the chief earlier this morning.”

  “He’s obviously not thinking clearly.” Karin was sitting uneasily on the edge of her chair, fingers twisting around each other.

  “Don’t fret, chiquita,” said Gomez. “My name always makes it onto any list of crackerjack private ops.”

  Anselmo continued, “I also want to assure you folks that I, as I’m completely certain you do, believe completely and totally in Walt Bascom’s innocence. We’re going to have ourselves, however, one hell of a time proving he didn’t commit this brutal murder.”

  “The SoCal Police already have considerable damning evidence against Mr. Bascom.” Karin made her way over to one of the large wall viewscreens.

  Anselmo told them, “We’ve been able to get hold of copies of all the security camera tapes that the police have acquired. Karin, hon, let’s see the stuff from the murdered man’s home first off.”

  Karin bent to touch a control panel.

  And there was Bascom on the wall, nearly life size. Hair rumpled, suit wrinkled and baggy, he was standing in the middle of a black-and-silver living room. His fists were clenched and Bascom was yelling at the lean, dark younger man facing him a few yards away.

  “That’s Grossman,” said Anselmo.

  “I deduced that,” said Gomez.

  “Pay attention, you crazy bastard,” shouted the angry Bascom. “You’re going to leave Kay Norwood totally alone. You understand me, asshole?”

  “My relationship with Kay is none of your goddamn business,” Grossman told him disdainfully.

  Moving closer, shoulders hunched in anger, Bascom said, “It is my business. I don’t give a shit whether you love her or hate her. But if you ever call
her again or threaten her in any way, I’ll fix you so you won’t be able to bother anybody. Ever.”

  Grossman shook his head pityingly. “Why don’t you face reality, Bascom,” he said quietly. “Everybody knows—and, yes, let me assure you, that includes Kay herself—everybody knows you’re too old for her.” Turning his back, he went striding for the open doorway leading out to the bright holographic garden outside. “Very much too old.”

  Bascom tugged an ebony lazgun out of a rumpled pocket of his coat.

  He ran after the departing Grossman.

  Halting on the threshold, he swung the gun up and fired.

  The sizzling beam dug into the younger man’s narrow back.

  “Terrible,” gasped Karin as the picture ended.

  “What about that gun?” asked Jake.

  “It hasn’t,” answered Anselmo, “been found.”

  “Walt,” observed Leo Anson, shifting in his chair, “would never shoot anybody in the back.”

  “This is the pertinent footage from Mr. Bascom’s home sec-tapes.” Karin touched the panel again.

  “You’re looking, if I may say so, sir, a trifle seedy,” observed the silver-plated, white-suited android who showed on the wall-screen now.

  Bascom, even more disheveled than he had been at Grossman’s, was crossing his wide yellow-and-white kitchen. “Must be because I’m in love, Ambrose,” he said, his voice raw and raspy.

  “May I fix you a nightcap, sir?”

  Bascom glanced toward the wall clock. It showed that the time was 4:06 A.M. “Too late. I’ll just turn in.”

  “Very good, sir,” said the mechanical valet. “I trust you’ll feel a bit more chipper come morning.”

  “No doubt.”

  The agency wall went blank.

  “That’s most of what the tapes show,” said Anselmo. “Detective Lieutenant Drexler is convinced the footage wasn’t faked or even tampered with.”

  “Crap,” observed Jake. “If Walt really was going to knock somebody off, he’d know how to disable a secsystem. And he’d also make damn certain his own tapes didn’t catch him pussyfooting home at the wrong time.”

  “Sure, that’s the logical conclusion,” agreed Anselmo. “The cops, however, are claiming that Walt was so emotionally distraught that he didn’t use any caution. Overcome by rage, he simply went busting into Grossman’s.”

  “Doesn’t matter what Drexler says,” put in Gomez, “footage like that can be faked.”

  “The prelim police tests show no evidence of electronic tampering,” said Anselmo. “Even though Walt denies he was ever at the guy’s house, the police are accepting the footage as real.”

  “What’s our own expert, Doc Olan, say?” asked Jake.

  “Dr. Olan was rushed copies of this material,” said Karin, returning to her seat. “His initial testing shows nothing suspicious.”

  Gomez was studying the distant ceiling. “I think I’ll talk to some hombres who are also experts at this sort of thing,” he said. “Get me copies, Roy.”

  “There’s no need,” said Karin, frowning at him, “for you to be showing potentially damaging material like this to your underworld cronies.”

  Shrugging, Gomez said, “Never mind. I can acquire them on my own.”

  Anselmo coughed again. “Jake, Bascom wants you to go talk to him at the jailhouse,” he said. “I’m obliged to go along with his wishes, although I personally think relying on an ex-con in a situation like this—”

  That was as far as the blond detective got.

  Jake had left his chair and grabbed hold of the front of his jacket. Lifting the acting head of the Cosmos Detective Agency clear off the floor, he suggested, “I think we ought to forget our personal differences for the duration of this problem, Roy. You quit calling me an ex-con and I’ll refrain from booting your fat ass from here to Tuesday.”

  “Whoa, momentito.” Gomez had lunged and caught the angered Karin before she could use her stungun on his partner.

  “Okay, all right,” said Anselmo as Jake let go of him. “I was probably out of line, Jake.”

  “Probably, yeah,” agreed Jake, taking a slow, deep breath.

  “You’re right. Walt Bascom’s fate is what’s important. We’re all part of the handpicked team that’s going to save his life.”

  “Sid and I are a team,” corrected Jake. “I’ll report to you so long as you’re in charge, Roy, but I sure as hell don’t consider you a teammate.”

  6

  THE silver-and-gray elevator dropped swiftly down and down through the underground levels of the SoCal Central Jail in the LA Sector of Greater Los Angeles.

  The chill cage hissed to a stop and an overhead voxbox announced, “This is Level 13.”

  The door whispered open.

  “LEFT TO THE VISITOR SCREENING ROOM. HAVE ALL NECESSARY IDENTIFICATION MATERIAL READY.”

  Jake left the elevator, obligingly turned left, and started along the long gray corridor.

  Every two yards, large litesigns on the gray walls reminded, WE ARE OBLIGED UNDER SOCAL STATE LAW TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU ARE UNDER CONSTANT ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE.

  “Thanks for telling me,” muttered Jake as he went striding along.

  Two large gunmetal robots stood at the doorway to the screening room. The one on the left held out his hand, palm up, as Jake approached. “ID packet with skycar license foremost and facedown.”

  As Jake complied, the other big robot began a thorough frisking. “Mandatory weapons search.”

  “Your buddies already did one up on Level 1.”

  “Part of standard procedures.” Satisfied, the bot returned to his position to the right of the door.

  “All IDs in order,” announced the other mechanical man. “You are cleared to continue.”

  “Proceed to the sign-in desk.”

  Stowing his ID packet back in his pocket, Jake crossed the threshold.

  A slim blond woman in her late twenties was coming toward the doorway as he entered the big gray room. She came hurrying forward, took hold of his arm. “So you’re one of the ops who’s working on this, huh? He wouldn’t tell me.” She looked into his face, frowning some. “Well, I suppose it could be worse.”

  “I’m surprised to see you hereabouts, Kacey.”

  Letting go, Kacey Bascom took a step backward. “Oh, sure, that’s right, isn’t it?” she said. “Coldhearted conservatives like me don’t care if their father gets tossed in the pokey.”

  Jake grinned. “You and your pop have been none too close for as long as I’ve known him.”

  “I happen to feel, Jake, that a daughter has a duty to her father, no matter how crack-brained his political views happen to be,” she informed him. “He’s in very serious trouble and, considering my background in police work and my—”

  “Those goons you work for down in the San Diego Sector aren’t my notion of cops, Kacey,” he told her. “Just about all the undercover agents in the Political Surveillance Department of the SD Local Police would have to polish up their behavior before even being considered for jobs in a lynch mob. Their ideas of civil rights are—”

  “The crime rate down there, and the rate of antigovernment activity, is impressively below that of Greater LA,” she pointed out.

  “You people give witch-hunting a bad name.”

  Kacey gave an impatient shake of her head. “The point of all this, Jake, is that I’m well schooled in investigative techniques and—”

  “Breaking and entering isn’t an accepted police procedure in these parts,” he said. “Neither is working some poor protester over with a stungun until—”

  “Listen, stop ranting,” she put in. “I’m not working in San Diego anymore.”

  “Oh, so? Did they decide you weren’t narrow-minded enough for them?”

  “I’m in the communications business now, have been for almost six months.”

  “Communications? What do you do, scrawl hate messages on the sides of churches and—”

  “I’
m executive assistant to J. J. Bracken.”

  Jake laughed. “That’s perfect, Kacey,” he said. “Bracken’s the patron saint of all narrowest right-wingers in GLA, and that vidnet show of his, Facin’ Bracken, is a fount of enough fuzzy-headed claptrap to—”

  “J. J. Bracken is a very intelligent and well-informed man,” Kacey stated. “If people like you, and my equally stubborn father, would listen to him with even a halfway open mind, you’d—”

  “I’m here to talk to your father, not get into a pointless debate.”

  “What I’m struggling to convey to your impenetrable brain, Jake, is that I’m now serving as an investigative reporter for J. J. Bracken. I have a hell of a lot of experience gathering facts.”

  “Facts? What would Bracken want facts for?”

  Kacey clenched her fists at her sides, remaining silent for several seconds. “My father was framed,” she said slowly. “He was obviously set up for this murder.”

  “We agree on that.”

  She hesitated, then said, “You’re probably one of the Cosmos Agency’s best operatives, despite your muddled outlook on life. I just now tried to offer my services to my father directly.” She sighed. “I’m a damn good cop myself and I know I can dig out the truth. He turned me down.” Her hand touched Jake’s sleeve. “But if you let—”

  “Wait now, Kacey,” he said firmly. “I already have a partner—if that’s what you’re working up to.”

  “All I want, Jake, is to be able to check in with you regularly,” she said hopefully. “And maybe, you know, I could tag along once in a while on the more routine sort of—”

  “We can talk occasionally.”

  “Well, that’s a—”

  “At a distance and not all that frequently. I’ll accept the fact that you’re honestly concerned about your dad, but I can’t promise a partnership.”

  “All right, okay. I’ll settle for that,” Kacey said. “Although I really could be a great help to him and to—”

  “I have to see him.” He turned away from her and walked over to the sign-in desk.

  “Friends of the prisoner consoling each other, was it?” inquired the copper-plated bot behind the desk.