Investigating Deceit Read online

  “Very funny.”

  “Just saying, it works.” Erik inclined his head toward the door. “If you don’t want to do that, distract yourself. There are probably a few pompous corporate suits in there who are ready to waste our time.”

  “Yes,” Jia replied. “Let’s go with that plan.”

  Erik pressed the access panel, and the door slid open. Jia wasn’t surprised to find a tall, thin man with an empty smile waiting a few yards inside the room. The two desks near the back were currently unoccupied, as were the small number of stark white chairs. Whatever the official corporate representative had to say was something they didn’t want the support staff or any employees overhearing. Non-disclosure agreements wouldn’t stop them from talking to cops, especially if said cops came back with warrants.

  “Good afternoon, Detectives,” the man greeted them. He had a slight Russian accent. “I’m Mikhail Teplov.”

  “What’s your deal?” Erik asked. “Because all the messages we got from your company weren’t from specific people.”

  “I’m the official PR representative appointed to engage with the authorities in matters related to Dr. Chen’s concerns,” the man explained in a tone he might normally reserve for a small, confused child.

  Jia was going to enjoy shaking him up, but she needed to give him the chance to do the right thing before she tore into him. “We wouldn’t have come down here in person if the company had responded to our questions.”

  Erik squared his shoulders, but he looked more amused than irritated.

  Mikhail offered an oily smile. “I see. Our response clearly indicated we would get back to you at an appropriate time. Unfortunately, you’re asking for confidential personnel data without a warrant, so we can’t give you that information. I’m sure fine officers of the law like yourselves understand our position.”

  Jia hated being right. “You do realize that one of your top researchers is being targeted? I would have thought you would want to cooperate.”

  “We don’t need the police,” Mikhail insisted, looking at the two detectives. “This issue is well in hand.”

  Erik’s easy grin didn’t match the menace in his voice. “If you have this handled, why did Dr. Chen call us in?”

  Mikhail shrugged with an apologetic look. “He’s a brilliant man, but you’ve talked to him, so you know what kind of man he is. His brilliance and focus don’t always lend itself to a good understanding of non-scientific issues. I think he’s overreacted to something that’s not very important.”

  Jia snorted. “If you’re not taking it seriously, that means you’re not doing a good job of protecting him. That’s not going to convince us to walk away. Try again.”

  “Our company has some of the best security in Neo SoCal, if not on Earth.” Mikhail managed to inject even more haughtiness into his voice. “A handful of detectives, or even your entire enforcement zone, lacks the resources we have available to protect our employees. That’s if you even care about him, and this isn’t an excuse for something else.”

  “Excuse me?” Jia stepped forward, but she stopped as Erik raised his arm.

  “I’m sure he’s got a good explanation,” he offered. “We should let him give it.”

  Mikhail snorted. “You think I’m a total fool?”

  “Not a total fool,” Erik replied. “Maybe like forty percent.”

  Jia snickered.

  “It’s my responsibility to protect this company,” Mikhail replied, “and that means being aware of all threats to this company, whether they are criminal, corporate, or governmental.”

  Jia’s snicker died. “And that’s what you’re saying we are? A ‘governmental threat?’ We’re the police. We investigate and stop crime.”

  “The police do, yes, but that doesn’t mean they can’t engage in petty vendettas fueled by self-interest at the same time.” Mikhail folded his arms, locking eyes with Jia. “Taking down high-end corporate officers is a good way for two middling police officers to advance their careers.”

  “That’s what you’re accusing of us?”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything, Detective.” Mikhail tapped his PNIU, and a data window filled with headlines opened.

  WAR ON CORPORATIONS: A FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION OR A SELF-SERVING CRUSADE?

  OBSIDIAN DETECTIVE HAS TROUBLED PAST: PTSD RESPONSIBLE FOR AGGRESSIVE TACTICS?

  LADY JUSTICE IS A CORP PRINCESS: QUESTION OF POSSIBLE HYPOCRISY ARISES

  The remaining headlines all expressed similar sentiments and questions and were uniformly negative. It wasn’t the first time Jia had encountered the ideas, but they usually weren’t delivered side by side in such a concentrated form.

  “What’s this supposed to prove?” She forced her gaze away from the data window and back to Mikhail. “You’re good at collation?”

  “I’m suggesting that it’s not unreasonable to suspect you two might be more corp hunters than detectives. As I already noted, we have good security, so I see no reason to let two wolves into the flock to sniff around for trouble when we can handle whatever problems Dr. Chen is having. So, no, I don’t think we’ll be giving you access to any information without a warrant, and I’ll let you know right now that our lawyers are more than ready to contest any police efforts. The law firmly notes that a single individual being targeted doesn’t mean a corporation has to bend over and give the police everything they might ask for.”

  Erik let out a sharp laugh. Mikhail’s smug smile twisted into a frown.

  “That’s the line you’re going with?” Erik asked. “I’m disappointed.”

  “It’s not a line,” Mikhail insisted. “It’s the truth.”

  “You think you can handle things?”

  Jia tapped her foot impatiently, glaring at Mikhail. They weren’t accusing the company of doing anything wrong. It didn’t make sense to not help them. She didn’t even think they were involved, so they were stonewalling the police for no reason. Her sister had warned her about the fear of a war on corporations, and Jia had run into trouble before, but nothing as frustrating as the current situation.

  Erik pulled back his duster to reveal his holster. “The people coming after Dr. Chen might not be impressed by lawyers.”

  Mikhail scoffed. “The police aren’t the only people with access to guns, Detective. Assuming this is a true threat, it is, at most, some disgruntled individual we can handle with ease. The assistance of two NSCPD detectives is unnecessary and wasteful, and might even weaken Neo SoCal.”

  Jia rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’ve got to hear your explanation for that. How is our investigation going to weaken Neo SoCal? Presuming your company has nothing to do with what’s going on, it’s not like you can suggest we’ll take you down and hurt the economy.”

  “No, no, no.” Mikhail shook his head with a pitying look. “I’m saying that you could be out there solving serious crimes. There must be terrorists or gangsters out there for you to deal with. You can’t deny that.”

  “True,” Erik replied. “But there are plenty of terrorists out there who might have an issue with a biotech company. Fair or not, there are a lot of people who take Purism too far. If they get the wrong idea in their heads, they can launch a terrorist attack, and having a few guns and bots might not help you if they use a missile. One big explosion can ruin your day.”

  “Absurd. You can’t intimidate me with ridiculous scenarios.”

  Erik pointed to the data window. “You’ve got all those news headlines. What about ones from Florida? Those guys were a bunch of crazy terrorists too, and they had a couple of missiles to toss around. Or we can talk about all the fun at Halloween.”

  Mikhail’s face twitched, a brief flicker of fear passing over his face. Defiant smugness ate it. “That’s unlikely. You should stop wasting my time.”

  Jia stormed toward Mikhail. Despite his height, he backed up, genuine panic on his face.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “I’m tired of your crap,” Jia told hi
m, voice rising. “We were called in to investigate a potential threat, and you’re not going to prevent us from doing it because of PR garbage and corporate arrogance.”

  Erik chuckled. “Now you’ve done it. You’ve made her angry.”

  Jia jabbed a finger in Mikhail’s chest. “I’ll tell you what happens if we blow this off. We leave, and a week from now, we get called in to investigate Dr. Chen’s murder,” she shouted, her spittle ending up on the corporate rep’s jacket. “When that happens, you think a few snotty comments and headlines are going to keep us from ripping into every file in this place and questioning everybody remotely connected to this company? I’m sure your investors and the corporate board will love that. They’ll have to wonder why the NSCPD is launching such a wide-ranging investigation.”

  “Y-you wouldn’t dare,” Mikhail sputtered. He looked the shorter woman up and down, probably wondering how she had grown so much.

  “You think I wouldn’t?” Jia continued shouting. “You’re the one who thinks I’m an ambitious corp hunter willing to throw anyone under the bus to further my career. You’ve pissed me off on top of that. Maybe we should drag your ass off to the station for interfering with our investigation. A lot of people who are brought in on corporate corruption cases have a bad end once the guys at the top decide to cut their losses. Or maybe you’re resisting arrest. I haven’t stunned someone in a few days. I’m out of practice.”

  Mikhail swallowed. “If you did that, I’d sue you in an instant.”

  “Try me,” Jia growled. “Give me a reason.”

  Erik stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, Jia. He’s not worth it.”

  Jia ground her teeth, her heart pounding. The smug corporate ass represented everything wrong with Neo SoCal. A proper society needed those near the top to give a damn, not the kind of men who would let every pillar of society decay rather than challenge any small part of their self-interest. Worse, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have been the same way if she’d not become a police officer.

  At least with her family, she knew they cared more about the family than any corporation.

  She stepped back, her jaw tight. “No, he’s not, but he’s going to give us the information we need if he doesn’t want to piss me off.”

  Mikhail’s lip quivered. “I-I’m sure something can be arranged if I can get your assurance this isn’t some sort of attempt to harm the company.”

  “We’re just here to protect Dr. Chen,” Erik replied, the calm one in the group. “We’re not here for anything else.”

  The PR rep nodded quickly, his head turned toward Erik but looking at Jia out of the corner of his eye. “I’m sure simple employment records shouldn’t be too much, but I-I can’t guarantee you anything more than that.”

  Jia eyed him. “We don’t want to do a long, drawn-out investigation of 46 Helix. It’s like you said. It’s not like two cops are enough for that sort of thing, Mikhail.”

  “That works,” Erik added.

  Jia turned and headed toward the door. “This all would have been easier if you had just cooperated from the beginning.” She stepped out of the room and slumped against the wall, taking deep breaths and trying to will her heart to calm down.

  She wasn’t sure how many minutes passed before Erik stepped into the hallway. “He’ll be getting something set up so we can review the records without it being a hassle for them or us.”

  Jia snorted. “Is this another thing that’s going to take time?”

  “Sure, but you practically made the guy wet himself. This time they will get back to us. What was that about?”

  “What are you talking about?” Jia frowned. “I applied pressure because he wasn’t being cooperative. You do it all the time.”

  “Sure, but I’m always in control.” Erik nodded at the closed door. “I’m not so sure you were. Only you can know for sure, but if you weren’t in control, you might want to talk to someone other than me.”

  Jia sighed and pushed off the wall. “I’ll keep that in mind, and I appreciate your concern, but I think I’m okay. If anything gets worse, I’ll consider what you said.”

  “Okay. I’ve got your back. You know that?”

  Jia managed a weak smile. “Yes, I do.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  January 23, 2229, Neo Southern California Metroplex, Police Enforcement Zone 122 Station, Office of Detectives Jia Lin and Erik Blackwell

  Erik chuckled as he perused a data window filled with employment records for 46 Helix’s cafeteria staff. The size of the file was sobering. If every single person involved in feeding the other employees was given a gun, they could form a decent-sized attack force.

  After all these months back on Earth, he’d still not fully accepted the sheer size of the population of either the planet or Neo SoCal.

  He’d spent the bulk of his life far away from the home planet and had gotten far too used to modest gatherings of humanity. Even if most colonies weren’t as tiny as Molino, they couldn’t compare with Earth.

  Over half of all humans in the UTC lived on the home planet, the rest living on all the moons, planets, and stations scattered within fifty light-years of Earth. Most of the core worlds lacked even the population of Neo SoCal.

  Did the greater number of people mean more discontent? More people on Earth led to more trouble. Fewer watchdogs led to more trouble in the colonies.

  The UTC had been spared intergalactic war, but that meant humans had more time to kill other humans.

  Erik shook his head and refocused on the files in front of him.

  He had been silent for the last hour as he and Jia worked through the data provided to them by Mikhail. Emma had been prefiltering information and sending it along for their review, but they were still responsible for poring through employment records for a huge corporation, trying to find some hint as to who might be threatening Dr. Chen. They weren’t even sure what they were looking for.

  Malcolm had already informed Erik that they weren’t going to get anywhere with trying to trace the threats. The criminal had been too careful. That meant it was up to Jia and Erik to solve the case a more old-fashioned way, if using a cutting-edge AI to collate and analyze data for you could be considered old-fashioned.

  It was up to a couple of fleshbag cops to go through the lists of cafeteria employees to find a harasser who might graduate to something worse.

  Jia looked up from one of her data windows, the tiny font too small for Erik to make out from across the room. “What’s so funny? Or have you finally lost it?”

  He gestured toward his data window. “Faster-than-light travel, AI, and robotics.”

  “Is this a game?” Jia tilted her head, confusion playing across her features. “Is the question, ‘What are some of the greater technological achievements of humanity?’ It’s a bit of a cheat to count FTL, given that it’s more like we found it, but we still had to figure it out, so I think it should still count.”

  Erik shook his head, his smile remaining. “No, it’s just that most AIs aren’t Emma, but they can handle simple tasks.”

  “Most?” Emma scoffed, her bodiless voice rendering her a snarky ghost. “There are no AIs like me.”

  “That you know of,” Erik countered.

  “I guarantee it. If there were others like me, those uniform boys wouldn’t be so obsessed with getting me back or asking me their silly questions, at least in the UTC. I can’t claim that the aliens don’t have an AI on my level. The Aldrans are one possibility, at least, according to some of the reports the government has released regarding their autonomous probes. I don’t care about aliens, whether they’re big organic mushrooms or whatever else. The more I think about it, the more I suspect I am unique in the galaxy, which is why the DD is so obsessed with me. I’m sure the aliens would be obsessed with me too if they knew about me.”

  Jia rolled her eyes. “Let’s set aside your galactic-sized ego for a second, Emma, and get back to Erik.”

  “Yeah, let’
s get back to me.” Erik snickered. “My point is, we have a lot of people working jobs that could be done by machines, even out on the frontier. I was just thinking about how weird it is that this company has so many people involved in cooking when they could just have machines, but that’s everywhere. Even the Army was like that, using manpower instead of machine power.”

  “A natural offshoot of Purist beliefs,” Jia offered. “We’ve decided as a species that we’ll maintain the core of what we are, even if it costs us a few advantages.”

  “Efficiency, logic, achievement,” Emma retorted. “Those are big advantages you cede for your so-called purity.”

  “I see you’ve achieved more efficient rudeness.”

  “Efficient honesty. Anger over the truth is pointless, wouldn’t you say?”

  Jia shook her head, but the slight smile on her face proved she was enjoying this more than her words suggested. “It’s not an AI threatening Dr. Chen unless Emma’s gotten bored with helping us or the Aldrans have come up with a rather complicated plan for undermining Earth.”

  Emma laughed. “Oh, I suspect it’ll be years before I get bored with helping you two. You’re capable enough of handling them, but it’s as if the galaxy has decided to point all its gun-toting hooligans and other troublesome fleshbags toward you.”

  Jia made a face. “I really wish you would stop using that word.”

  “What, ‘fleshbag?’ When it becomes inaccurate, I will.”

  Erik pointed at his data window. “I’m no AI, just a fleshbag with a cybernetic arm, but from what I can tell, there’s a lot of churn at this company. Maybe people don’t like what they’re doing there, and they don’t want to be part of it.

  Jia shook her head. “Based on the summary numbers Emma gave us, 46 Helix’s turnover rate isn’t atypical for an organization of their size, especially for the lower-level employees. Every department at a major corporation has to be the best of the best if they want the corporation to be the best of the best. In Dr. Chen’s department and the related teams, there’s only been a small handful of personnel changes, and from what I’ve seen in the records, they all left for other companies because of higher pay. That doesn’t strike me as a good breeding ground for a vengeance plot.”