The 88th Floor (2 page)

“
So,” Vandum said, “I
guess you’re the one who found it?”

“
Found what?”

“
Come on, Detective. You
know what I mean.”

Rees nodded.

“
Yeah, I was first on the
scene after it was reported.”

“
Quite a mess, wasn’t it?
I never thought there could be so much blood.”

“
So you’re not denying
anything, then?”

“
Why would I? I’m the one
who reported it.”

Rees chuckled.

“
You’re kidding,
right?”

Vandum shook his head.

“
Now why the hell would
you do that?”

No answer.

“
Look, if there’s more to
this story, you need to help me out here, because all I’ve got to
go on is a dead body and bullets that identify you as the shooter.
This is an open and close case as far as I’m concerned unless
you’ve got a damned good explanation for why things aren’t as they
appear.”

“
You said I’m being
charged with murder, correct?” Vandum asked.

“
Yes. In the first degree,
I might add.”

“
Humor me, then,
Detective. What is your definition of murder?”

“
The killing of another
human being.”

“
Exactly,” Vandum said.
“Knowing that, how can you possibly hope to convict me of
murder?”

“
Look, we have the data
proving that you fired eight bullets into… ”

Rees recalled the particulars of Morgan’s
analysis of the victim’s body.

“
Ah,” Vandum said, “so you
saw the DNA scan, didn’t you?”

“
It was inconclusive,”
Rees said. “Toxins in the bloodstream probably distorted the scan.
I’m sure it’s been sorted out by now.”

“
Come on, Detective, you
don’t buy that, do you?”

“
Don’t change the
subject,” Rees said. “Why did you feel the need to put eight
bullets into this guy?”

“
Because I didn’t think
one would be enough,” Vandum said, chuckling.

“
Cute. Just answer the
damn question.”

“
I’m being serious, I
didn’t know what would happen when I shot that thing.”

“
Who was this guy to you,
anyway?” Rees asked.

“
You want to know who it
really is or who it claimed to be?”

“
This is your story,” Rees
said, “tell me what you think I need to know.”

Vandum leaned back in his chair.

“
I first met it a year ago
when we were planning to put up the new building downtown. We
called in a bunch of architects, looking for designs we liked.
There was this guy nobody had ever heard of, we don’t even know how
his name got on the list of candidates. He was weird; the sort that
made you feel like he was never telling the whole truth when he
told you something, you know?”

“
Sure, I guess I know the
type,” Rees said. “He have a name, this guy?”

Vandum nibbled on his lip briefly before he
answered.

“
Kurush,” he said. “Name
was Aran Kurush.”

“
Go on.”

“
Well, strange as he was,
he seemed to have a way with people. His proposal blew everybody
away; it was like nothing we’d seen before, really cutting edge
stuff. Nobody was surprised when he got the contract. We broke
ground a few months later.

“
Everything went along
fine until they started construction of the top floor a few months
ago. For some reason, it kept lagging behind schedule. Kurush was
having a hard time with the contractor, said they couldn’t follow
his plans properly. That’s when they called me in to
help.”

“
Wait a minute,” Rees
said, “what the hell do you know about architectural design? You’re
the VP of optics research, not a construction foreman.”

Vandum smiled.

“
You’re a good listener,
Detective. I like that. Yes, I handle most of Sircotin’s optics
research, development, and marketing. Believe me, I was as
surprised as anyone to be called in to help.”

“
So what does optics have
to do with this?”

“
Kurush insisted that the
workers needed to have their vision corrected, said his plans
required such precision that their eyes weren’t up to the task.
We’d gone through three or four contractors by that point and the
board of directors was getting tired of the delays, so they were
willing to let him try anything. Kurush even offered to pay for the
procedures himself; had every worker outfitted with our latest
DeepSight cyberoptic implants.

“
After that, construction
started moving along again. I went up there one day to follow up
with Kurush and make sure none of workers were having problems.
Everything seemed okay at first, but the more I watched what the
workers were doing, the more something seemed… off.”

Rees leaned back in his chair and crossed
his arms. He needed a cigarette.

“
What do you mean by
‘off’?”

Vandum shook his head.

“
I didn’t quite know,” he
said. “Just a hunch more than anything. It was almost like the
workers were seeing things that I couldn’t see, if that makes
sense.”

Rees shrugged, remembering the odd angles
and poorly finished surfaces of the building’s top floor.

Vandum leaned over the table and stared at
him.

“
What?” Rees
asked.

“
Your eyes. You don’t have
implants, do you?”

Rees shook his head.

“
Tell me, Detective, what
did you see up there?”

“
Shitty workmanship,” he
said. “Looked like nobody on the work crew owned a damn
level.”

Vandum smiled.

“
Strange, don’t you
think?”

It
was
strange; Rees couldn’t deny
that. He had a hard time squaring how a multi-billion dollar
corporation would settle for anything less than perfection from its
contractors.

“
Sure, I guess so. What
does that have to do with you pumping eight bullets into the guy on
a slab downstairs?”

Vandum’s smile vanished and his eyes
widened.

“
Downstairs? You mean
you’re keeping it here?”

“
Morgue’s here at the
precinct, Mr. Vandum. No secret there. You think they’re going to
do an autopsy at the crime scene?”

“
Detective, listen to me,”
Vandum said, his voice trembling. “You have to destroy it. Burn it,
shred it, recycle it, I don’t know what will work, but you’ve got
to get rid of it as soon as you can.”

Rees was ready to laugh, to hit Vandum with
some snide remark about the half-melted corpse strolling upstairs
to greet him, but something in the perp’s eyes made him stop.

There was a spark there, a glimmer of
knowledge that still weighed heavily upon him.

“
You saw something up
there, didn’t you?” Rees asked.

Vandum nodded.

“
Did you go to church when
you were a kid, Detective?

“
Sure, a few times, I
guess.”

“
My parents were Catholic.
Every so often they’d take me to a service at this old church in
our town. Place must have been two hundred years old; it had a
stained glass window depicting the book of Genesis that stretched
across the back wall. It was beautiful. I’d keep turning around
during the service to look at it, always thinking that it was like
a snapshot of who we are, where we came from, why we’re
here.”

Vandum smiled again, but there was no trace
of humor in his expression.

“
It was wrong.”

Rees waited a moment for him to elaborate,
but Vandum fell silent. His eyes scanned the room furtively,
lingering overlong in the shadowed corners.

“
Listen,” Rees said,
“let’s start over. Why don’t you go back to earlier this evening
and tell me what you were doing in that building?”

Vandum shook his head.

“
You’re persistent,
Detective, I’ll give you that. You really think anything I’ve got
to tell you is going to make sense of what you found up
there?”

“
I’ve been told I’m a
sensible type,” Rees said. “Try me.”

Before Vandum could respond, the door opened
and a tall man in an expensive suit walked into the room. Standing
in the doorway behind him was the chief of police, who usually only
left the comfort of his office to accommodate very influential
visitors.

“
Detective Rees,” the man
said, “my name is Brian Nallick. I’m Mr. Vandum’s legal
representative.”

“
What’s going on here,
sir?” Rees asked. “I was under the impression that the suspect had
waived his right to counsel.”

The chief just shrugged. He clearly wasn’t
there to get involved.

“
Yes, so it would seem,”
Nallick said, “but, as you are obviously unaware, as an employee of
the Sircotin Technologies Corporation, Mr. Vandum’s person is under
the legal jurisdiction of his employer.”

“
Fine,” Rees said. “Take a
seat, Mr. Nallick, we’re just getting started.”

“
I’m afraid that won’t be
necessary, Detective Rees,” the chief said. “Mr. Vandum is being
released into corporate custody until his hearing.”

That wasn’t the sort of involvement Rees was
hoping for.

“
What?”

“
Surely, Detective Rees,”
Nallick said, “you must remember the provisions of the Corporate
Crime Law of 2064, which was reaffirmed by the Supreme
Court’s
Altron Technologies v.
Illinois
ruling in 2087?”

Rees was quite familiar with the law that
protected employees of Class 1 corporations from much of the
criminal justice system and he hated it.

“
Yeah,” he said, “I
remember.”

“
Then I expect you also
remember that any statements you’ve taken from Mr. Vandum at this
point will be inadmissible as evidence in any pending
trial?”

Rees nodded.

“
Excellent. Mr. Vandum, if
you’ll please accompany me?”

Vandum’s face was pale and his eyes
unfocused. His eyebrows, cheeks, and lips twitched occasionally,
but otherwise his face was expressionless. Nallick stepped forward
to help him up and then led him to the door.

Before Vandum stepped out of the room, he
glanced at Rees.

“
Trust those eyes of
yours, Detective.”

Nallick pushed Vandum through the door
before Rees could reply.

“
That’s quite enough, Mr.
Vandum,” he said. Once his client was out of the room, Nallick
smiled and nodded at the officers. “I trust I don’t need to remind
you to forget that last remark, Detective.”

“
Course not,” Rees said,
mustering his most sardonic tone.

“
Good,” Nallick said.
“Thank you for your cooperation, gentlemen.”

Rees thought about complaining to the chief
as the lawyer walked his client down the hallway, but he suspected
it would be waste of his time. Sircatin would keep Vandum close
now. Even for a Class I corporation, having an executive arrested
for murder made for bad publicity, the type that didn’t just go
away with a few well-placed bribes or a prolonged media
silence.

He doubted he would ever see George Vandum
again.

***

Dr. Morgan never met with an officer in
person. Like many other heavily-cybered city personnel, his
multitasking brain couldn’t bother being tied down to the hassle of
a face-to-face conversation. The only time Rees actually saw Morgan
anymore was when they happened to be at the same crime scene so it
was quite a surprise when he received a message from Morgan asking
to see him.

“
Thank you for coming,
Detective Rees. I have something here you should see.”

Morgan led Rees through his lab into the
main examining room. A single corpse covered by a bloody sheet lay
on one of the tables. Morgan pulled the sheet back, revealing a
familiar lump of melted flesh. Heavy polymer bands were strapped
across the body.

“
I have conducted a full
examination of the body and confirmed the results of my preliminary
analysis.”

“
So it really isn’t human,
then?”

“
Correct. Apart from the
DNA scan, the unidentified toxins in the victim’s bloodstream are a
natural aspect of its biochemical makeup. As of yet, I am unsure of
their purpose.”

“
I talked to Vandum a few
minutes ago,” Rees said. “He seemed to know that what he shot
wasn’t human. Is there any way he could know that from a
glance?”

Morgan shook his head.

“
A thorough DNA scan would
come back negative, though the victim’s DNA would likely pass as
human when subjected to a consumer grade scanner. There are no
physical differences that would indicate it was anything other than
human. Perhaps he had some association with the victim that would
expose its true nature?

“
Maybe,” Rees said. “What
about the melted flesh?”

“
It appears to be a result
of trauma. When the victim received the final bullet to the skull,
its body became unstable at a molecular level.”

“
So why didn’t the whole
thing melt?”

“
The deterioration was
halted when cellular activity ceased.”