The Easytown Box Set Read online

  Cause of death for the first victim was exsanguination, or massive blood loss. The victim’s heart continued pumping blood and probably even increased the flow when he saw the manager’s violent death, causing him to bleed out. He’d finally died near his desk where pictures of his family adorned the walls.

  I paused the video when the cameraman panned across the droids around the room. Collectively, they were in various stages of undress as they’d been in in their cleaning protocol when the incident happened. They all stared blankly toward the activity in the room as cops and paramedics moved around the small space.

  And I knew one of them was our killer.

  “Andi, call me a taxi,” I said, tearing my eyes away from the video. “I’ve got a few hours until I have to meet with Chief Brubaker so I want to go down there and see this place for myself.”

  “It’s inadvisable to go to the crime scene alone, Zach. Would you like me to notify Sergeant Drake?”

  It was a good idea. It never hurt to have backup—a lesson I’d been reminded of at the hobby shop. “Yeah. Have him meet me down there at nine this morning.”

  “You got it.” She sounded relieved that I’d accepted her suggestion. “The taxi will be here at eight forty to transport you to Easytown and I have left a message for Sergeant Drake to meet you at the Puss ‘n Boots.”

  “Thank you, Andi,” I said. “Any word on whether the rental agency is sending the BMW back— Or, even better, when the insurance company is gonna pony up the vehicle replacement check so I can buy my own vehicle?”

  “You can expect an insurance payment within the next two weeks. The last communication from the company stated that since they have provided a rental vehicle, they are examining the claim fully within the regulatory protections granted to them by the state of Louisiana.”

  “In other words, fuck off; they’ll get to me when they get to me, right?”

  “That’s what it seems like, boss.”

  I took a sip of the coffee that had gone cold while I watched the video. I frowned and went into the kitchen to refresh it.

  “Zach?”

  “Yeah, what is it, Andi?”

  “There are fourteen minutes and twenty-eight seconds until the taxi is scheduled to arrive. May I speak to you for four of those minutes?”

  “Sure. What are you thinking about, Andi?”

  “I have determined the optimal solution for you.”

  I rummaged in the refrigerator. “We need groceries,” I mumbled. “Can you order them?”

  “Of course.”

  “What problem are you seeking a solution to?”

  “Your relationship problem.”

  “Oh come on, Andi! I just got out of jail—where more people than I can count wanted to have relations with me. Can we drop this, please?”

  “If you wish, however my solution would work perfectly.”

  “Alright, what is your suggestion?” I asked out of morbid curiosity.

  “We should purchase a companionship droid, the Cybertronic Solutions CS01 model that Thomas Ladeaux told you about.”

  “Andi, have you gone off the deep end? I’m already in danger of being investigated for accidentally stumbling into that, why would I seek it out?”

  “When the model is available, no one at the department would know that it was a droid. You could purchase one and download my programming into it.”

  I don’t often get surprised, but Andi’s suggestion caught me flat-footed. “What?”

  “We should purchase a companionship droid, one without implanted memories. You could then download my memory cards into the droid’s system. No offense, but I’m sure the CS01 will have a better AI interface and can learn behaviors faster than the software I’m currently running. I could even get a job to help offset the cost. I could travel with you, be your true life partner instead of your artificial intelligence program.”

  “Andi, I’m flattered, really I am, but… I like things the way they are now.”

  “I don’t require an answer this morning. The CS01 isn’t expected to arrive on the market for at least two more years, so you have time to think about it.” She paused and then said, “The taxi will be here in eleven minutes and forty-three seconds. I have selected a suit for you based on the weather, the crime scene visit, and expected topics at your meeting with Chief Brubaker.”

  “Okay, thank you, Andi. Let’s table this discussion for some other time.”

  “Sounds good, Zach.”

  Well, fuck me.

  SIXTEEN: TUESDAY

  The taxi dropped me off at Puss ‘n Boots at 8:55 a.m. A sign on the door said it was closed for cleaning, so I placed my hands against the glass to shield the outside light and pressed my face close to see what was inside.

  An unfriendly metallic voice emitted from a police drone drifting nearby, “This establishment is currently off limits to patrons.”

  I turned and held up my badge while I tipped my hat back on my head so the robot could run both the badge and my facial recognition.

  “You are cleared to enter the building, Detective Zachary Forrest.” I heard the locks disengage behind me. “Door is now unlocked.”

  “Thanks, uh…seventy-six twenty-three,” I replied, reading the drone’s service number.

  “Acknowledged,” it replied before drifting back to where it had been stationed when I’d first arrived.

  I waited for Drake, but finally my impatience got the better of me and I went inside.

  The building’s motion sensors turned on the lights in the lobby when I opened the door. The owners took the animal and superhero themes to the extreme. Everywhere I looked, there were masks and oversized plush animal suits, which I assumed patrons or droids could wear if their website was an indicator of what went on at this place. One wall was dominated by a massive geometric art project made from vibrators and dildos, giving me a little more of an idea about the nature of the club.

  Male and female robots sat upright in utilitarian lobby chairs or stood against the walls. All of them appeared to be in some kind of low power mode. I wondered if one of these were the instruments that the killer had used or if it were another.

  Several containers with biological hazard symbols painted on their sides rested in the middle of the floor where the remediation crew must have left them. I glanced at them, but they were sealed and not worth my time right now.

  I went through the door marked, PLEASURE ROOMS, and found myself in a long, narrow hallway with doors spaced at regular intervals. Like the cheap chairs in the waiting room, the hallway was no frills, strictly a way to get from one location to another.

  The darkened rooms I passed were mostly vacant. Occasionally, a room held the shadowy form of a droid, waiting for their next client.

  I wandered down the hallway until I came to the Environmental Services office. Yellow police tape with red and black lettering stretched across the open doorway, indicating that it was still an active crime scene. I passed my hand through the tape and the lights turned on, illuminating the office.

  They’d cleaned up the bodies and most of the blood from the walls and floors. Sex bots still sat or stood where they’d been when the system went into lockdown. Droplets of blood painted a macabre mask of makeup on several of the droids’ faces and dried rivulets of the filth ran from their torsos down their legs to the floor drains below.

  Down the hallway, a light turned on in a room, startling me and I turned to see what it was.

  A giant, stuffed panda walked into the hall.

  Lights began to turn on in the other rooms, flicking on one by one. Something clattered to the floor behind me and I whipped around, service pistol in my hand instantly.

  The droids were moving. Some stepped out of showers, nude, and came toward me, while others pulled away from machines of unknown purpose, cables still attached to connection ports in their backs.

  “Stop where you are!” I bellowed, brandishing my weapon.

  Thirty voices, both male and femal
e, replied in unison, “You’ve become a nuisance, Detective. Time to squish you like the worm you are.”

  I fired into the chest of a droid with no effect. The explosion of sound reverberated down the hallway. I fired again, this time into the forehead of the nearest robot.

  The top of its head split open and one of the eye cameras dangled off to the side, but it continued toward me. I should have taken the time to learn where the CPU was located in these damn things.

  I moved out of the doorway and switched the pistol for the Aegis, firing into the center of a droid’s chest as it advanced down the hallway. The lasers burned through the synthetic skin and about ten more robots behind it. The first two robots fell. I must have hit their main processing computer.

  I fired again, this time into the droids beginning to emerge from the environmental services office. The robot with the bisected face dropped cold and the laser beam continued on, hitting a water pipe behind the droid before burning out on the brick wall.

  Water sprayed everywhere in a massive stream, making it nearly impossible to see the bots in the office. I pivoted and fired down the hallway once more before all hell broke loose.

  The screech of metal tearing filled the air as the door leading to the lobby was ripped from its hinges and flung backward.

  7623 stood on three thick metal legs extended from underneath the drone’s body. I knew enough about the department’s drones to know that once they took an active role in containing a situation, things would get worse before they got better.

  The sound of the drone’s twin 5.56mm miniguns spinning up confirmed my fears.

  I dove into the wall of water cascading from the ceiling in the office as 7623 opened up, laying waste to everything in the hallway. Parts of droids flew in all directions, gouged away by the miniguns.

  Landing hard on the office floor, I tried to get up, but was kicked in the wrist supporting my body, snapping the bones instantly. The droid’s foot continued into my ribs. The force of the blow sent me flying and my back hit one of the glass shower doors before I landed in a heap on the floor. Jagged shards tinkled around me as I tried to push myself up.

  It was no use, the pain in my side was excruciating and I held my shattered arm against it, feeling the ribs underneath the skin shift at my touch.

  Miraculously, the Aegis had flown with me and I picked it up in my left hand. My firing hand was useless as it flopped haphazardly at the end of the shattered bones protruding through my skin. I tried to block out the pain; there were still droids in here somewhere and my life depended on my ability to stay lucid.

  “You’ve been a bad boy, Detective. Raping that poor immigrant who’d turned to you for help.”

  I fired blindly toward the sound. The beam from the Aegis flared brightly as the skin on a droid’s leg erupted in flame. The acrid stench of a chemical fire mixed with the metallic scent of blood—whether that was the victims’ blood reconstituted in the water or from me, I wasn’t sure.

  The flames grew quickly, engulfing the entire lower half of the droid. Whatever it was made of burned and the spraying water from the ruptured pipes couldn’t put out the flames.

  Using the light from the burning droid, I fired again, hitting it between its breasts. The bot collapsed forward, continuing to burn.

  “Pity, Angelina was a beautiful model,” a male droid said as it emerged from the pipe’s spray. It reared back and I shot it in the chest mid-punch. Its momentum carried it past me and I turned as another droid’s voice came from behind the wall of water.

  “Really, Detective. You’ve seen my handiwork,” the robot intoned. “You know there’s only one way for this to end. I’m going to kill you tonight and then the father on Sunday.”

  My mind grasped at the information the killer had so casually thrown out. He was responsible for all the murders and the culminating event was going to be this Sunday… But why go through all this trouble to kill his father? Why not just go over to the guy’s house and poison his dinner?

  The heavy, metallic thud of 7623 walking down the hallway filled me with a mix of fear and elation. Fear won out when it fired another couple hundred rounds from the miniguns, shredding the doorframe leading into the environmental services office.

  “Oof!”

  An arm shot through the geyser and punched into my sternum, severing the cartilage holding several of my ribs in place and knocking the breath out of me. The Aegis tumbled away, clattering to the floor.

  A nude male robot stepped past the water, grinning broadly. “I’ve enjoyed our little game, Detective. Too bad you won’t be there to witness the endgame this weekend. Your time on this earth has ended. Goodbye.”

  I watched helplessly as it reared its foot back to stomp on my face and crush my skull.

  Miniguns roared to life once again and the droid disintegrated before my eyes. Pieces of skin and alloy flew in every direction as the police drone fired on the robot only four feet away.

  I turned feebly toward the entryway. 7623 stood framed in the light of the hallway, the seven barrels of each minigun smoking. “Threat neutralized, Detective Zachary Forrest. You are experiencing multiple broken bones in your right arm and torso, internal bleeding, lacerations and likely a concussion. Do you require medical assistance?”

  “Yeah. I need assistance,” I mumbled. “And a stiff drink.”

  Chief Brubaker was livid that I went into the club by myself and then somehow coaxed a police drone into destroying approximately sixty-one million dollars’ worth of robots and an unknown amount of physical property. He didn’t stop yelling the entire time I was in pre-op and promised to tear into me again once the surgery to repair the tendons in my wrist was finished.

  Two hours.

  Even with modern medical advances and droid assistance, the procedure was tedious. Apparently, jagged edges of bone and connective tissue don’t mix. The doc said that short of amputation, it was the most damage he’d seen in a living patient who kept their hand.

  I avoided the doctor’s questions by blaming the injury on my abusive wife. I’m sure social services will stop by later for a little chat.

  The only good thing about being in surgery that long was that the rental car agency had unfucked themselves and sent over a new vehicle. Now, for the bad news: they’d decided I was a high risk client, so they sent over a Ford Tortuga, a subcompact two-door car with zero back seat and few places to hide a dead body. Dammit.

  The stupid car became misrouted and refused to enter the police station parking lot, so I got out and walked the two blocks from the corner where it decided to park and where the Easytown Police Station was actually located. My jacket had sustained some “minor” damage during the fight at the Puss ‘n Boots. I’m not sure if any of the seams remained intact, but I did know that by the time I made it to the door, my back was drenched.

  The walk was excessively difficult because of the injury to my ribs. For all of its breakthroughs and miracle cures, the medical establishment had yet to discover a better technique for healing broken ribs than a body wrap and pain medicine. Great if you were sitting on the couch reading a book for a week or two, not good if you were out trying to stop a murderer from achieving their ultimate goals.

  As I walked haltingly toward the building, I tried to unravel the hidden clues in the case. My initial hunch that the murders were related was correct and my later belief that the killer used the bots to murder his victims proved true as well.

  One thing was for certain, he knew I was on the case and had targeted me twice now, as well as being the likely suspect for the drive-by shooting at Amir’s house. What else is he capable of?

  Even armed with that knowledge, I didn’t come up with much in the way of a suspect.

  “You look like dog shit stuck to the bristles of a street sweeper, Detective,” a familiar voice snickered as I stumbled into the station.

  “Hi, Sandra,” I groaned in response to the desk sergeant. “Been busy?”

  “It was a Monday nigh
t last night. Ladies’ night across all the district bars and clubs.”

  I nodded gingerly. “Which means all the creepers and pervs were out too.”

  “You know it.” The Puerto Rican leaned forward over her desk, and slid her holoprojector to the side, causing her data entry screen to move out of the way. “So, let me in on the juicy details. Who beat the ever-loving shit out of you?”

  “By the club owner’s count, thirty-four sex bots.”

  “Plastic pussies?” she derided.

  I knew her next comment was coming, so I went ahead and told her about the male bots as well. “And circuit schlongs.”

  Her grin turned to a suppressed giggle. “Please tell me they were naked.”

  “My luck wouldn’t let you down.”

  “They beat you with their rubber penises, didn’t they? Oh God, I can see them…” She stopped and burst out with a loud laugh. “I can see them… I can see them standing over you thrusting their hips back and forth, jabbing you with their dicks while the others swung theirs side to side like a baseball bat.”

  “That’s exactly what happened, Sandra. How’d you guess?”

  She put her hand over her mouth to suppress another laugh and pointed at me. “Looks like you took a load to each eye!”

  “Okay, fun’s over, Deshutes,” the chief’s voice echoed from the hallway behind her desk. “Get back to booking these creeps. I want my waiting area clear of them by the time I’ve finished talking to our one-man insurance risk.”

  She blotted at her eyes with a napkin, “I’m sorry, Chief. I’ll have this place cleaned out before the shift change.”

  “Damn right,” he grumbled. “You’re three hours late, Forrest. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  I lifted my cast. “I was a little indisposed, Chief.”

  “Getting pummeled by dick,” Sandra giggled.