Android: Golem (The Identity Trilogy) (28 page)

I started running a search on him using the new name, but quickly discovered there was very little in the way of information on him. His past was largely unknown, except for his military experience at the early stages of his career. I didn’t know anything he’d been doing for the last nine years.

Except for that picture of him with Brock Thurman.

“Okay, so you know some stuff. Not bad, tin man.”

“I need to know what Taylor is involved with now.”

“On the books, he’s a bouncer here. Been here three years, according to one of the pleasure bioroids I know.” Rooney nodded over toward the table next to us where two female pleasure bioroids sat talking and being looked at. A lot of men stopped by their table, but evidently the price was high.

“But off the books?”

Rooney shook his head and smiled. “Off the books, that man is a stone cold killer for hire. Pricey, but he can be bought.”

That explained why Taylor had left his Special Forces experience on his record. That kind of background encouraged job hirings as a merc.

“Does he hang out with anyone?”

Rooney sighed. “For your cred, for the time you gave me, I don’t have the whole story. I got what I got. You want more, you gotta give me more time. Gimme a week, let me shadow him, and I’ll let you know what he eats for breakfast.”

I didn’t have that kind of time. For the moment, I was a step ahead of whatever was going on, and I wanted to keep it that way.

“There are rumors about Dwight Taylor.” Rooney took out a cigarette and slid it through his fingers like a magician warming up to do a trick. “Some people say he didn’t use to work alone, that there’s a small group of mercenaries who do headhunting jobs within the corps.”

“Headhunting jobs?”

Rooney smiled. “They cull from within the corps. You want somebody whacked in a big corp as a career builder, or to slow down someone else’s R&D? You call these guys. They’re expensive, but they get the job done.”

“If that’s true, what’s Dwight Taylor doing in a place like this?”

“Heard he got busted out of the ranks and had to go private.”

That was interesting. It meant that Dwight Taylor wasn’t connected to any of the organized crime groups, or to the corps, which some days was pretty much the same thing.

“How does this guy tie into what happened to Detective Nolan?” Rooney leaned across the table and spoke quietly.

“I don’t know. I’m going to have to ask.”

Rooney grinned. “I don’t think he’s gonna like being asked. That guy? He’s not the kind of guy that likes questions.”

“Thank you for your time.” I got up to go.

“Just be careful, tin man. I liked Detective Nolan more than I like you, but I don’t have that many people I trust.”

I nodded and focused my attention on Dwight Taylor as he stood by the bar and flirted with a couple of young women. As I neared him, I tried to figure out what I could do if he chose not to talk to me. There weren’t any outstanding charges. Dwight Taylor had managed to keep a low profile.

I had no leverage.

Then, he saw me coming. Evidently my direct approach to him set off a preternatural warning system. Shelly had always insisted that people who lived on the wrong side of the law long enough often developed senses like that. It was like an animal sensing a predator’s attention.

I wasn’t a predator.

But Dwight Taylor pulled out a pistol and pointed it at me.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The women Dwight Taylor had been flirting with fled as soon as the pistol put in its appearance. Their panic initiated a wave of swift departures that sent out ripples through the club crowd. In only a few seconds, the entire bar was in an excitable state.

I stopped where I was and slowly raised my hands. “Dwight Taylor, I am—”

Before I could finish my introduction, as well as my intention to arrest him for pointing a weapon at a New Angeles police officer, he squeezed the trigger. The heavy caliber bullet smashed into my chest and rocked me back.

“You’re dead!” Dwight Taylor snarled an oath at me and fired twice more.

Both bullets struck me and my self-repair subroutine kicked in. My diagnostic showed no threatening damage, so I let the nanobots do their work. I reached for my Synap.

“Hey, Pace!” One of the other club bouncers took a defensive position at the end of the bar a short distance from Dwight Taylor. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”

Unnerved by the shouts, Taylor turned and fired two rounds at the man, a quick double-tap that spoke volumes about the training he’d had. At least one of the bullets caught the other bouncer in the head. Blood and brain matter exited his skull in a violent rush. The corpse dropped to the floor amid screaming patrons.

“New Angeles Police Department.” I used my public address voice and my words cut through the throbbing music that filled the club. “Put down your weapon and step back.”

“Liar!” Taylor turned back toward me and pointed his weapon again. This time, he aimed at my head. “You’re dead!”

I fired the Synap, but Taylor dodged the blue bolt as it cut across the distance. His reflexes must have been cybernetically augmented. He was too fast, too smooth when he moved.

Taylor turned and ran through the panic-stricken crowd. Vicious and merciless, he used his hands, elbows, and forearms to clear a path. Men, women, and pleasure bioroids went down before him, and many of them were bloody. None of them had life-threatening injuries, though, or I wouldn’t have been able to pursue.

I sprinted after Dwight Taylor, dodging through the crowd rather than forcing my way through them. Dwight Taylor was no longer a person of interest in a murder investigation. He was now a full-fledged fugitive in a homicide. I hurdled a man and a woman cowering on the floor, leaped onto a table that creaked threateningly beneath me, and vaulted from there to the top of a blond pleasure bioroid’s head because she wasn’t human and I didn’t have to concern myself with injuring her.

As I threw myself forward again, the pleasure bioroid reached up to her platinum locks and gave them a quick shake to recover her style. She howled curses at me just like a real woman would do.

I landed on the floor and raced after Dwight Taylor as he ran—literally—through a door. The door ripped from its hinges and fell inside, going down instantly under Taylor’s feet.

Inside the room, nine people involved in a private party in various stages of undress broke apart and gave way before Taylor. One of the women pulled a pistol from her purse and tried to take aim.

Taylor shot her through the left eye and she sagged back into the arms of the man standing beside her. I reached her in a second and put a hand on her shoulder to take her biometrics. Her EKG had already flatlined and I knew from the visible extensive damage that she was already dead. I couldn’t help her.

I pushed back up and gave chase again. During my distraction, Taylor had gained another half-dozen paces on his head start. He waved his hand over the sec panel on a door marked PRIVATE: CLUB PERSONNEL ONLY at the back of the room, reloaded his weapon as he waited for the door to cycle open, then dashed through.

The door started to close as I arrived. I shot out my hand and managed to catch the door before it shut. For a moment, I thought the door was going to amputate my fingers. It cut deeply into the synthskin and blue fluid sprayed the surfaces for a moment before the nanobots could constrict the damage.

I braced myself and yanked hard. The door shuddered and squealed as the servos fought me, but they weren’t strong enough. With a shrill scream, the servos buckled and the door shot back into its housing. An emergency alarm stuttered to life and a red light above the door whirled madly.

I forced myself into the hallway outside the room in time to watch Dwight Taylor step into a small elevator. The doors closed and he was gone.

“Detective Drake, this is Dispatch.” The man’s voice was flat and practiced.

“I read you, Dispatch.” I crossed the hallway and surveyed the elevator’s control panel. There was no exterior fire alarm or emergency stop control, and there was no indicator that marked what floor Dwight Taylor was currently at.

I pulled up the building blueprints and discovered a network of tunnels beneath the building. Many structures in that part of the New Angeles megapolis had them for vendors and for VIP patrons who wanted privacy.

“We have a report of multiple gunshots at Kilgore’s Venus. I show that you are at that twenty.”

“I am.” I shoved my damaged fingers into the gap between the doors. The blue fluid I’d leaked lubricated them and made entry a little easier. The feat still required considerable effort. “I’m currently in pursuit of the perpetrator. Send emergency medical teams and the medical examiner. You’ve got two dead at the scene and some people that are lightly wounded.”

“Copy that. I’m also sending assistance.”

“Acknowledged. Do you have an ETA on the assistance?” I shoved the doors open slightly, managing to get a shoulder through. I pushed again and got my chest through as well.

The elevator cage was five floors below me and accelerating. The unit was designed for high-speed usage, probably to ferry important guests in and out of the club or casino via the tunnel entrances so they wouldn’t be interrupted. Or perhaps so they wouldn’t be seen.

“ETA on assistance is plus two minutes.”

“Understood. Be advised there is only one shooter. He is armed and dangerous and has shown no hesitation to kill.”

“Copy that, Detective Drake.”

Two men came through the door on the other side of the hallway. They had guns pointed at me.

“I’m Detective Drake, New Angeles Police Department. Stand down.”

The men hesitated but they didn’t lower their weapons. They also didn’t open fire, so I was ahead.

I didn’t hesitate. I stepped through the doors and into the elevator shaft, launching myself into free fall after the descending cage. For a moment, I thought the cage was plummeting at the same speed I was, but that was an inconsistency caused by switching over to my infrared vision. I used my internal gyros to right myself and landed on both feet on top of the cage. I weighed 113.4 kilos. I didn’t land like a butterfly. The loud thump of contact echoed in the shaft, and the cage jostled beneath me.

Immediately, Dwight Taylor fired up through the roof of the cage. Bullets struck sparks off the elevator shaft’s infrastructure. One of them caught me in the right ankle and knocked me off-balance. I stagger-stepped for a moment, then my quarry fired another salvo of rounds.

I ducked backward from the center and managed to stand only centimeters away from the carbosteel support struts that framed the shaft. My damaged hand banged off one of them as it hurtled by and my arm jumped suddenly over my head. Carbosteel hissed only centimeters from my head and I knew that if I made contact at this speed, I would suffer serious damage.

Abruptly, the cage shrilled to a halt. I staggered on my damaged ankle, but the nanobots were already remodeling the joint. The elevator doors dinged open beneath me.

The chatter over the NAPD frequency continued unabated and I knew that at least three patrol hoppers were en route.

I took a step forward and reached for the cage’s emergency escape hatch. As soon as I did, Dwight Taylor fired a half-dozen bullets through the roof again. Four of them hit me with glancing blows and knocked me off-balance.

Taylor’s footsteps ran from the cage and echoed in a narrow passageway. A brief inspection of the blueprints informed me that we were in the underground service tunnels.

I drew my damaged foot back and slammed it through the top of the elevator cage instead of trying for the hatch. A section of the cage top broke and collapsed inward at an angle as I’d intended. I slid through the opening into the lighted cage, dropping to one knee and raising the Synap before me.

Twenty meters down the passageway ahead of me, Dwight Taylor turned the corner to the left. I launched myself in pursuit. “Dispatch, this is Drake.”

“Copy, Detective.”

“The perp is in the underground service tunnels.” I checked my internal compass and sent the dispatch officer a copy of the blueprints. “The perp took the eastern tunnel from the four-way in front of the elevator.”

“Copy, Detective.”

I propelled myself down the tunnel, listing slightly to the right because of the damaged ankle. As I moved, though, the nanobots firmed up the joint and my strides grew longer and more balanced. Even damaged, I was now running faster than anything human.

Dwight Taylor was too, and I knew he’d had his body enhanced at some point. It was expensive, and usually only corps paid for those kinds of upgrades. Only mercs or sec men traded out perfectly good body parts for those abilities.

I ran, threw a hand against the opposite wall and bounced off, pushing my body harder. Taylor’s footsteps rang ahead of me in the dimly lighted tunnel. We were quickly closing on one of the entry points into the building and I knew catching him was going to be a near thing.

Two more turns and I was locked into the final approach. Taylor remained ahead of me, still out of range of the Synap. He wasn’t focused on me, though. He was looking out into the parking area for service and cargo hoppers. Vehicles there were in motion, but not many. Most of them were exec or corp luxury hoppers picking up or dropping off board members or other VIPs who preferred anonymity over arriving in style on the rooftop.