The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue

The Mysterious Case of Betty
Blue

Louis Shalako

Copyright 2014 Long Cool One
Books

Design: J. Thornton

ISBN 978-1-927957-25-7

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The following is a work of speculation.
Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places
or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings,
characters and incidents are the product of the author’s
imagination. The author’s moral right has been asserted.

The Mysterious Case of Betty
Blue

Louis Shalako

Chapter One

Constables Darnell Wood and Randall
Zonaras sat in the squad car, holding at a south central location.
They were monitoring radio traffic and updates on the onboard,
centered on the dashboard between them. It had already been a long
shift.

“
Huh.” The huskier of the
pair, Randy Zonaras was in the passenger side.

He pointed at the screen.

“
Unit Twelve is on the
scene of that missing robot.”

They had laughed on hearing it on the
radio.

“
Hmn.” Darnell,
thirty-four years old and the archetypical buzz-cut blonde jock,
glanced over.

It was a slow night so far, yet it just
wasn’t worth committing to some small-time play when sure as
shooting something more interesting would break three minutes
later.

“
They’re asking for
assistance. She says the thing just walked off. Ah, not too long, a
few minutes ago.” Randall read further. “It’s in the three-hundred
block of Jefferson.”

Randall turned and tilted the screen
back on its adjustable column so his senior partner could get a
better look at the details.

“
All right, we’re near
there. Tell them we’ll keep a lookout.” Darnell barely glanced out
the window, giving a disgusted snort.

It was pretty good policy, one where
they didn’t have to do anything in particular. Saunders, senior cop
in Unit Twelve, along with Young Miss Bradley as everyone called
her, might be kind enough to put them in their report. It helped to
account for their time on shift. The fact that it was a slow night
didn’t help. Slow nights were all too rare and ought to be
savored.

Darnell’s eyes slid down and he took
another look.

“
That’s a robot?” His
eyebrows rose. “Holy. She’s not bad looking.”

“
I don’t know if you saw
that thing on TV the other night, but they make these robots
nowadays…” Randall was going on but Darnell waved it off and the
other trailed into silence.

The fact was that he had seen it, and
it was still kind of disturbing to the slightly jaundiced eye of a
cop. He knew himself that well.

Darnell reached for the
ignition.

“
Might as well have a look
around. Hey?”

Randall grinned.

“
Yup.”

Spinning the computer, he typed in a
quick text message to Constable Bradley that they were mobile and
in the area.

He could have just called them—most
cops had personal phones, but this way it was logged.

They’d never apprehended a robot
before, but there was a first time for everything.

In the event, they circled and circled
in an ever-increasing radius, block after block after block, along
with one other stray unit. It was a bunch of rather bored cops.
With all of their combined efforts, they found exactly
nothing.

“
She’ll turn up somewhere,
and we are killing some pretty good time.” The taxpayers hated
seeing the police sitting around in their vehicles, doing nothing,
when in fact that was when they should have been the most
grateful—surely it was a sign that things were going well, i.e. no
crime and folks really ought to try and be a little more happy
about it.

Half of their time in the car involved
writing, and reading, endless notes, memos, bulletins, and reports.
It was the sort of work that you couldn’t jam in a briefcase and
take home with you. It all had to be done right now.

Randall nodded sagely at this
observation. He typed a few notes in, made a mention of the other
units, and eyed up the calls list without much hope of action. The
thieves and the pimps and the pushers were staying in
tonight.

An oddly cheerful lot they were too,
but the folks about at this hour on a cold and rainy night in
mid-spring hadn’t seen too many lady robots around. They probably
would have remembered that sort of thing if they had. That was the
big consensus so far. Pretty much everybody had seen one on TV, or
knew some little thing about them. They all knew what they cost, or
had some idea of the moral dilemmas.

It was a deadly slow night, and Darnell
realized that you couldn’t possibly have seen it all because it all
hadn’t been invented yet.

You couldn’t possibly have seen it
all.

Life was just too damned short to ever
have to worry about that happening.

***

“
I must thank you young
lady. You really are most kind.” The gentle voice, rusty and unused
to much company, was slightly apologetic.

Scott had been blind for over ten
years, legally blind that is, although he had ten percent vision,
maybe a little less in the right eye. He’d lived alone since long
before that, up three floors above an old laundromat on the east
side of Onion City. He had the white cane and everything, as he was
wont to say.

When a pleasant young woman had offered
to help him home with his groceries, he was initially nervous but
then thought why not.

Why not?

What have I got to lose.

It had happened before, more than once,
not that he expected such help. Scott had become hardened, used to
shifting along all right for himself. This one seemed so young and
pleasant.

He never knew what to say, perhaps that
was his problem. What did he have to offer in the way of
conversation? He had nothing but pride and deprivation to talk
about, nothing witty, or smart, or positive to say to anyone these
days.

A conversation composed entirely of
social pleasantries got pretty boring after a while and then you
were in for it. He was afraid of saying something really
off.

It was usually older people, although
there was this one really big dude who turned out to be a preacher.
It was a certain sort of person, and you recognized that after a
while—some big dude with something to atone for, in other words. He
was making amends for something nameless, and long, long ago. Scott
didn’t give a shit, really.

Eager to please, that was it. She put
his groceries away and bustled around. She grabbed a broom and
swept the floor, which probably did need doing. She washed up his
one plate, a cup and a fork or something. He hoped she was putting
everything back exactly where she found it, but he didn’t want to
say anything. All of this house cleaning, now this had never
happened before. It was like he’d just been adopted or something.
He couldn’t quite account for how that had happened. She had said
nothing about herself, and social workers didn’t do that sort of
thing.

It was a feeling he wasn’t used to. No
one had ever cared what Scott thought, or what Scott
wanted.

No one had ever worried about what
Scott needed.

But he was having a hell of a hard time
getting rid of her. Rudeness was beyond him, apparently, and she
didn’t seem to be able to take a hint. At some point he just gave
up and wondered when she might wander off on her own. He would
simply wait her out. He felt bad inside for thinking that, he
really did, but…but.

She seemed kind of vulnerable herself.
How he knew that was a question for some other time.

He just felt it. It was somehow
self-evident. They sat at the kitchen table, having a cup of
tea.

Betty was terribly quiet, with long
gaps in the conversation when neither one of them knew what to say,
although she did ask quite a few of the more obvious questions at
first.

With his limited vision, he had the
impression she was rather tense, preoccupied. Her voice was dead
neutral, though. That was a little different, but then he didn’t
get out much. There was nothing artificial or insincere about
it.

It was like she was listening, for
something, a knock at the door or something, and she had absolutely
no idea that this was someone’s private home and you couldn’t just
come walking in and take over like that.

He had this crazy idea that she was
drop-dead beautiful. Somehow he just knew it.

“
A blind man would be glad
to see it.” The bleak tone shocked him, but it was out there and
there was nothing else but to own up to it.

“
Pardon me,
Scott?”

“
Never mind. Just an old
saying.”

She smelled lovely, that almost went
without saying.

Betty Blue, or whatever she said her
name was, sure sounded nice, and the dim silhouette up against the
kitchen window certainly bore that out.

She must have some kind of a
story.

Sooner or later, she was bound to spill
her guts.

Chapter Two

“
You’re tired. You’ve had
a long day. Perhaps I could draw you a bath?”

It completely went over his
head.

Draw me a bath?

Never mind the obscene mental picture;
someone sketching a tub full of suds and water for the perusal of a
blind man—what, was she blind too? What? What?

And why wouldn’t she leave.

He could accept someone helping him
home with the groceries, maybe even coming upstairs for a moment,
but this. This.

It was like she was never
going.

“
Miss. I—”

She was in the other room. The taps
were turned on, with a squeak and a thud from just inside the wall,
just as it always did, and then came the sound of running
water.

Scott suddenly became very
fearful.

She was obviously nuts, or bucking for
sainthood…? Or what? What?

He heard footsteps, and craned his head
to try and get some sort of a clue. Her shoes scraped on the old
boards, tapped across the intervening linoleum, and then she was
right beside him. Her aroma enveloped him.

“
Ah, listen.
Ah—Miss.”

“
It’s all right, Scott. I
don’t mind.” Her hands were on his shoulders. “Everything will be
fine, Scott. I’m a friend. And please call me Betty. A little bath
isn’t going to hurt you.”

His guts withered. She was serious, and
he didn’t know how to stop her.

She could drown him in the bathtub.
Something cracked inside of Scott and he was inclined to let
her.

For fuck’s sakes, why not, eh? Not
after all these years.

It’s not like he hadn’t prayed for
death, or at least release, a time or two.

He shoved the chair back a little,
putting his hands on the edge of the table, preparing to
rise.

“
No.” Her voice was gentle
and soft, up beside his right ear.

She must be slightly bent at the waist
to do it, a simple deduction, one based on old memories. For some
reason his eyes watered but he blinked it back and watched his
breathing for a moment.

Nary a hint of the longing inside
escaped, he was almost sure.