The Immorality Clause (20 page)

“
You
might have been drugged? You drugged me with that tea.”

“I know. I remember doing it, but I don’t know why I did it. Zach, I’m so sorry. I really like you…” she trailed off. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me, Paxton,” I replied, my voice edged with steel. “You’ve complicated things for me, but I’d never let the actions of a droid get to me.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You’re a robot, Paxton. Yeah, remember the CS01 you told me would be the next model, the so-called companion droid…? Well, surprise, you’re it. You’re the prototype, assembled in some factory somewhere and then implanted with a real person’s memories. Then you were sent out to roam the streets, pretending to be a human. All you are is just an upgraded version of a sex bot.”

“No. You’re mistaken. I have memories of my childhood. I graduated cum laude from Xavier—I’m taking classes there now. I have parents… I eat real food, the droids don’t require that. I bleed if I get cut.”

“Everything you said is probably a prewritten string of excuses if you’re ever questioned about your existence. Paxton, I watched the video feed of your memory with the investor in the CS01 program. You are the first of your kind; you’re in the operational test phase right now. The programmers want you to experience living as a human for a year to go back in and tweak the software before the company will approve a full materiel release and begin marketing your model to the world. You’re a fucking robot.”

She was silent for several seconds. I could almost hear the chips in her head processing the information, sending it back and forth between the AI learning center and the main processor. She needed to know the truth about what she was.

“I— I need to think about what you’ve said to me.”

“Don’t think too long. It’s the truth.”

“Zach… I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Her voice was small, distant.

“Dammit, Paxton. I know you didn’t know. It’s still fucked things up for me at work. I had sex with a
robot
, that’s strictly forbidden under the department’s regulations. Not to mention, you’re a witness. Whatever it was that you drugged me with clouded my judgement beyond belief. I would never have done anything like that before.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I don’t know why I drugged you. I mean, I have zero clues as to why I would have done it.”

“I don’t think you’re entirely in control of yourself. I think the killer is monitoring your actions and adjusting them every once in a while to make you do his bidding.”

“Huh?”

“The sex bots are the ones doing the killing, Paxton. I have evidence that there’s missing time blocks between when a droid finishes the business transaction and when the victim dies. They’re in the room when it happens and— Holy shit. I just figured it out.”

“What?”

“Kelly is a CS98, she has that self-cleaning feature,” I stated, thinking out loud. “After she killed Wolfe, she absorbed all the blood and then walked out of the room as if nothing happened. I thought it was a little odd that she walked down the hallway naked to the environmental services room, but didn’t question it. And
that’s
why the stuff that came out of her during the cleaning process was so thick; it was a mixture of the victim’s blood and other fluids from her body. She disguised the contents by mixing them and then discarded it in the shower.”

“Hmm. That sounds plausible,” Paxton agreed.

“Do you know if Bobby, the missing droid from The Stud Farm, is a CS98?”

“I believe so. But, I don’t know a lot about the other clubs, Zach. I’ve told you that before.”

“If you’d search your database, you could give me all sorts of data,” I muttered. “What about the older droids, you said there were CS90s and 86s, did those have the self-cleaning feature?”

“The CS86 model doesn’t. We had them at the Diva before the upgrade. I’m—”

She stopped, likely realizing for the first time that all those years of work that she thought she’d put at The Digital Diva as she worked her way up were just memory implants. She’d never worked as an environmental services tech or worked on the pleasure droids’ programming; it was all fake.

“I’m not sure about the CS90. Zach,” she finally answered. “If the robots are being programmed to kill, will the city shut them down?”

“Maybe. I know the mayor and the city council don’t want that cash cow interrupted, so they may order a temporary shut down while the robots’ software is upgraded to defend against hackers, but I doubt it would be a long-term thing.”

“What about Kelly, would they turn her off permanently?”

“I don’t know. She may be confiscated as evidence, but if that will be forever or short term, I couldn’t tell you.”

“I don’t want her turned off. She’s my friend…” Her voice trailed off.

“I’m sorry to be the one who broke the news to you about what you are.”

“Thank you, Zach. I’m glad it was you and not somebody else.”

“I—
Hmpf
. Not the response I was expecting.”

“What I mean is that I’m happy that I’ve gotten to know such a wonderful man like you.”

“So you believe me that you’re a robot?”

“I think so. I need to do some deep soul searching, but I’ve always felt an absence of…something. Maybe an artificial intelligence platform will never be able to understand—to feel—the human experience and programmers can’t simulate it.”

“That’s a good thing,” I replied. “Remember our discussion about humans playing God? That part that you feel is missing is the soul. Programmers will never be able to replicate that.”
Amir, with all of his knowledge of the church, should be the one having this discussion with her, not me
.

“Oh! Zach, my other line is ringing. It’s Thomas Ladeaux. I have to take it, he probably wants to know why the Diva isn’t open yet.”

“I— Take care of yourself, Paxton”

She said something unintelligible and hung up.

“I’m fucking done with these goddamned droids,” I told the BMW. At least talking to her gave me the theory about the sex bots.

I put away my phone and walked across the parking lot to the hobby shop. When I went inside, the place was as deserted as it was before, so I followed the same tight pathway through the shelves and display cases to the counter.

No one was at the register. I tapped the bell.
Ping!
Déjà vu.

While I waited for Mrs. Wolfe or her mother to come up front I wondered how they prevented theft.
They’re awful trusting around here
.

I glanced around. The only thing that I noticed that had changed inside was a picture of Charles Wolfe that now hung on the wall behind the register. A black, see through veil was draped over it, indicating that Mrs. Wolfe was in mourning.

I tapped the bell again. “Hello? Mrs. Wolfe?” I called loudly through the beaded curtain covering the doorway to the stockroom.

I heard a door slam in the back somewhere and I pulled my gun as I rushed around the counter. I peeked quickly through the doorway and returned to the cover of the wall while my mind processed what I’d seen. The back was even more jumbled than the front. Boxes of product were piled haphazardly everywhere and a table with several chairs was off to the right.

There didn’t appear to be anyone back there. “New Orleans PD,” I shouted.

No answer. Someone had been back there.

I came around the corner and ducked behind a box. It wasn’t enough to stop a bullet—especially not if the person in the back had an Aegis or its equivalent—but it would hide my movements.

The room remained quiet. I focused on any type of sound, but I didn’t hear anything. I yelled out, “
Police!
” once more to the empty room.

I took a chance and looked up over the top of the boxes. The place was deserted, but I could see the pale outline of streetlights around the back door. Somebody had run out, which was the banging noise I heard.

I stood up from behind the cover of the boxes and walked deeper into the back. The first body I saw belonged to Jacqueline Wolfe’s mother. A long section of model train track protruded from her eye socket. “Goddammit,” I mumbled and kept moving toward the back.

Mrs. Wolfe’s body lay on the floor with her lower half exposed, one leg twitching slightly.

I rushed over and knelt beside her. Heavy bruising around her neck indicated that she’d been strangled. I placed my finger against her carotid. There wasn’t a pulse. If her nerves were still firing, she hadn’t been dead long. I pulled out my phone and dialed emergency services then began administering CPR.

In between breaths, I yelled to the emergency service operator who’d answered the phone to tell him where I was.

I pumped the woman’s chest, counting to thirty each time, repositioned her head and then gave two breaths. Repeat. Time stretched away as the cycle continued.

The paramedics arrived within ten minutes and I collapsed onto the floor in exhaustion when they took over the CPR. They used shock paddles and even performed an emergency tracheotomy to bypass her crushed larynx, but nothing they were able to do in the field worked.

They finally loaded her into their ambulance, still trying to revive her and left me to talk to the uniformed police officers who’d arrived.

I explained why I was there and what my actions on the scene had been. It was a long night of paperwork, which caused me to lose the time I could have used to work on the case. I was exhausted by the time we were done and had the BMW take me home.

THIRTEEN: WEDNESDAY

“Open up, Forrest. This is the New Orleans Police Department.”

I slapped blearily at my alarm clock, but it wasn’t going off. “Andi, what’s happening?”

“There are three uniformed police officers and a man in a suit outside of your apartment door,” she reported. “They say they are from the New Orleans Police Department and their facial features match the department’s officer database.”

“What do they want?”

“To talk to you, Zach.”

“Fuck. Open the intercom.”

I went to take a piss while Andi explained that she was my assistant. Over the speakers, I heard the man in the hallway say, “I don’t give a shit if he’s indisposed. Open the door.”

“Hold on, I’m putting on some pants,” I yelled at the microphone in the closet.

“Don’t try anything, Forrest. We know you’re armed, open the door and come along peacefully.”

“What? Jesus, hold on.”

I buttoned my pants while I walked from the bedroom to the living room. The toilet computer droned on about my urine in the background.

“Okay, open the door, Andi.”

The locks disengaged and the door swung open. I’d seen the guy in the suit before, some detective from somewhere here in New Orleans, but I didn’t know his name. The uniformed cops had their weapons out and pointed at me.

“Get on the floor!” one of them shouted, advancing toward me.

“Whoa, what the fuck?”

“Get on the floor!” he repeated.

“What the fuck is going on?” I said with my hands up.

The uniforms rushed over and one of them started to punch me in the gut. I reacted, smacking his hand away and shoving him, allowing his momentum to carry him past me.

“Quit resisting and get on the floor!” the detective ordered.

“I’m not resisting. That fucker tried to punch me. What am I being charged with?”

He put his hands on his hips and motioned with his head for the others to back off. “Zachary Forrest, you’re under arrest for the rape and murder of Jacqueline Wolfe and the murder of Ericka Martinez.”

My hands slowly lowered. “What are you talking about? They were dead when I got there.”

“Let’s go downtown and talk about it down there.”

“There’s a mistake. I administered CPR to Mrs. Wolfe.”

“Put your hands behind your back,” the uniformed cop who’d yelled earlier directed. I complied and the one I’d deflected came up behind me, locking my wrists in cuffs.

“Forrest, there was DNA evidence linking you to the murder.”

“Yeah, I gave her CPR for fifteen minutes,” I countered. “Of course my saliva was on her mouth and my skin cells were all over her upper body.”

“Is that how your semen ended up inside of her vagina, you stupid fuck?” the detective sneered. “For a homicide dick, that’s got to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen.”

“What?” I asked in shock

“Save it,” he answered. “You have the right to remain silent…”

I heard his voice, but I couldn’t quite make out the words. Instead, a deep buzzing sound permeated everything, confusing my thoughts. I didn’t know what the detective was talking about, but I was in deep shit, that’s for sure.

“For the tenth time, Doug, I don’t know what happened prior to my arrival at the hobby shop. I was in Read Boulevard East at my friend’s house that was shot up in a drive-by shooting earlier in the day while I was out at the Easytown Dockyards. Check the rental car’s logs for Christ’s sake.”

“We’ve already done that, Forrest,” Doug Sanders, the detective who’d arrested me this morning, stated. “The travel records for the car indicate that you arrived at the scene of the incident sixteen minutes before you called the emergency services line.”

“I— The phone call! Paxton Himura, a witness in an ongoing murder investigation, called me and we talked for about ten minutes while I sat in the parking lot.”

“Seems like a convenient attempt at creating an alibi,” Detective Sanders retorted. “We’ll check into it.”

“Why are you being such a dick?” I asked. “I haven’t done anything. I’ve been a cop in New Orleans for twelve years…”

“And how many of those have you been a rapist?”

“Once I’m released, we’re gonna have some words, Sanders,” I threatened.

“Forrest, calm down,” Chief Brubaker said as he entered the holding room. “I got here as fast as I could. Tell me it isn’t true.”

“It’s not true, Chief. I swear. I went out to Wolfe’s World of Gaming in Leonidas last night to ask Jacqueline Wolfe about the fifty thousand dollar deposit to her bank account. It came within forty-eight hours of her husband’s death and wasn’t from an insurance company. I took a phone call from Paxton Himura—”

“The droid?” he interrupted.

“Yeah, same one. When I went inside, the customer area of the store was empty, so I used the bell on the counter, that’s when I heard activity in the back, like a door slamming. I went back there and found the two bodies. The mom was clearly dead, but the daughter’s leg was still moving, so I began administering CPR.
That’s
how my DNA got on her. I don’t know what these guys are talking about my semen inside of her.”

“I believe you, son. But that’s pretty damning evidence against you.” Brubaker glanced down at a piece of paper he held. “Mainframe’s analysis is ninety-nine point three percent positive that the semen taken from inside the corpse’s vagina is yours.”

“I don’t know how, Chief. I swear to God, I didn’t have sex—or rape,” I amended as I shot Sanders a venomous look, “that woman. She’d already been violated when I got there.”

“Then how do you explain the semen, Forrest? Your little swimmers don’t simply jump out of your body while you’re performing CPR and then find their way into the corpse of a woman who’s been raped and violently murdered.”

“I— Chief, I’ve got no answer for you.” I laughed bitterly. “Fuck, the last person I had sex with was Pax— No…”

“What is it?” Chief Brubaker asked.

“That fucking robot.”

“The one that drugged you?”

“Yes, sir.” I searched my hazy memories. We’d had sex several times that night and once in the morning; plenty of time for the droid to collect as much semen as she needed.

“It’s the murderer, Chief. He used Paxton to collect my semen to frame me and get me out of the picture.”

“Explain,” he ordered.

“The killer is using the droids. That’s why there’s no evidence on the scenes, the robots use their self-cleaning feature to absorb the blood and then walk out of the room, no big deal. That’s why there’s the missing time in the videos. The robots do the killing, clean themselves up and leave.

“Paxton and I had sex, she collected the semen up inside of her, then—”

“Did you just admit that you had
sex
with a droid?” Sanders asked.

“It’s under investigation,” Brubaker stated. “Continue.”

“Paxton collected my semen and either killed Jacqueline Wolfe herself or transferred it to that missing male robot from The Stud Farm—the one Simmons told us about on Monday—and he raped and murdered Jacqueline. Somebody was definitely there…” Another thought hit me.

“Son of a bitch,” I mumbled.

“What else?”

I looked up into the chief’s eyes. “Paxton Himura called me as I sat in the parking lot at the hobby shop. We talked for about ten or fifteen minutes. She was a distraction so the other robot could kill the two of them once I was on site.”

“Why not just kill you? The female robot could have easily done it in your sleep, or the male could jump you at any time.”

I shook my head, trying to puzzle through it. He’d tried to kill me in the Jeep already, so he wasn’t above the outright murder of a cop. Why would he go through all the hassle and effort to frame me? Then it hit me.

“Chief, look at all the resources that are pulled away from regular police work right now. If I’d simply been killed, maybe people would have shed a tear, but ultimately, they would have gone back to doing their jobs. You would have assigned Cruz or Drake the case and business would have proceeded as normal. This way, everyone is distracted, wondering if they’d somehow missed the signs of my risky behavior. Look at you, Chief; you’re downtown, not in the Easytown station.”

“I’ll have to think this through. Talk to the commissioner about what he wants to do,” Brubaker replied. “Everything you’re saying makes sense, Forrest. The problem is I
want
this to be a mistake. I want you to be innocent. But, the investigation isn’t in my hands, so that’s a good thing. Regular, solid police work will see us through this. If you’re innocent, then you’ll be free to go. If not, well, you know the deal.”

“Yeah, I know. So, what’s next, Sabatier?”

Chief Brubaker nodded. “That’s the next stop for anyone held more than twelve hours.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”