The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue (26 page)

Again, the doors burst open.

Again, someone fired a shot into the
ceiling. (And again, a puff of dust came down from the
ceiling.)

With the back-up perps outside in
custody, Gene MacBride strode masterfully into the room as the trio
froze. With the room flooding with bulky people in scuffed blue
armour, resistance was clearly futile.

Gene looked over at the dead dog. He
looked at Amity.

“
Right. You’ll pay for
that.” Proffering a hand, he accepted her weapon.

The other two didn’t put up a
fight.

Gene turned, and Francine took a quick
step to avoid being bowled over. Parsons merely looked
vindicated—but a promotion looked very promising right about
then.

He looked at the unhappy couple on the
font pew, holding hands and with Mister Nettles clearly in shock
and wondering if the end of the world had come.

Her eyes met his.

“
Betty Blue, I
presume.”

Her eyes fell and it was all he could
not to crow.

Chapter
Seventeen

An employee of one of the more
prominent nationwide ambulance chasers, holding a white
plastic-board placard, struggled through the cordon. Gene thought
he saw a credit note slipped into an officer’s side pouch. The man
peeled off, raced through a gap in between the two cars, with Gene
and his immediate circle standing there at Betty’s door. Theirs
would be the second vehicle, with Mister Nettles and a uniformed
officer all ready to go.

The law firm’s name and number were on
the card as Betty stared straight ahead and Gene was reaching for a
weapon in his surprise.

They stood out front in a press of
officers, armoured and unarmoured, plain-clothed and
uniformed.

The suspects, the subjects, and Betty
Blue, unclassifiable by any of the crime manuals written so far in
all of history, each had the back seat of a cruiser to themselves.
Three heavily-armed citizens detained outside the building had been
questioned and then released.

With no evidence of any criminal
wrongdoing, there wasn’t much they could charge them with. LVPD
assured Gene that they would be taking an interest in future in
these particular individuals, and with that he had to be
content.

Gene had toyed with the idea of
chaining himself to Betty Blue by the wrist—strange how it wasn’t
chain her to me.

His feet still hurt from hitting the
tarmac, and there was this knot of tension in his gut.

She was impressive up
close.

“
Betty. Do us all a favour
and just be cool, okay?”

It was the one and only time she
looked at Gene, right into his eyes, thereby acknowledging him in
some way. It was one of those moments. His body tensed in the
vicinity of the kidneys, it was that visceral. He wouldn’t give a
penny for her thoughts under the circumstances. She looked away,
and yet outwardly her emotions were neutral—completely absent in a
kind of personal shield.

It was strictly by the book with these
two. Gene had a lot invested in this case, and in his career so far
as far as that went.

You had to keep them separated,
although later in the debriefing process people might be put in a
room together just to hear them talk. The machine would pick
through it and look for code, slang, cant, argot, jive-talk, and
try and analyze tone and mood.

In the unlikely event they said
anything of significance the machine would pick up on that too.
Even just talk of home, family, friends, domestic matters, could be
a source of valuable intelligence. The wives of criminals had to
get their grocery money from somewhere. He wondered how that
applied in this case. The nuances, the subtleties—the permutations
were beginning to spin, now that he had them in the
bucket.

“
Okay, Inspector MacBride.
We’re off to the holding facility with these bozos—” The LVPD
officer was referring to the Downie’s, being held as material
witnesses.

Federal law prohibited them from being
released on their own recognizance. Trials were too expensive to
have reluctant witnesses changing their story and mucking things up
halfway through. They would be thoroughly debriefed.

“
And the
others?”

“
Let ‘em walk.” Gene
raised a hand. “Except for the dog killer.”

The LVPD sergeant nodded. She would be
charged with Canicide in the Second Degree, as it was difficult to
see how it could have been premeditated.

However, the law was clear and they
had the chapel video recordings and the Downie’s testimony. That
one looked like a goner. With cooperation and some kind of a plea
deal, Amity would be looking at ninety-nine-years-to-life. Luckily
for her, it was only the one count.

“
Yeah. That’s a bad rap,
nice of you guys to nab that one for us.” He gave Parsons and
Francine appreciative looks. “I’ve never seen such accurate
profiling and prediction—nice work, and all the way from down east
as well. We all, uh, thank you very much.”

There were nods and mumbles from the
nearest members of the LVPD.

“
Yeah.” It seemed pretty
unanimous all around.

Gene coughed into his hand, giving
Parsons and Francine a quick glance.

They had a dog killer in custody, and
these folks were from the East Coast. Simple logic.

That was really good police work, and
some of the LVPD popped the face-plate and took honest-to-goodness
looks at the prodigies.

It was best to remain humble, of
course. Such admiration never lasted long, in Gene’s
experience.

Boyd and Armitage, both with a major
employer and tasked by them with the recovery of certain stolen
goods, really hadn’t done anything illegal. Empowered to make a
citizen’s arrest, they had simply been holding Betty and the
Nettles character until they could turn him over to authorities.
Armitage looked familiar to Gene for some reason. He was one
devilishly handsome man. He might have been photographed in front
of a chic Hollywood restaurant on some TV gossip show a few years
back.

He had that kind of weightless,
worthless look about him.

When they said they were holding them
for authorities, they were referring to Mister Nettles, mostly. As
for the dog, they said it bit Amity, but the law was clear and dogs
were sacred animals. They, honestly, were just taking Betty Blue
back to the factory.

While they would be happy to cooperate
in providing evidence and testimony in a trial, they had Betty in
custody.

SimTech was a big company and Gene was
being diplomatic. He listed as much as he talked.

Inspector MacBride knew all about how
this particular robot had run amuck. Or amok, in the proper
spelling. Naturally SimTech would be pleased to dispose of her and
remit all damages. Naturally, this would be after making her
available for expert witnesses of the prosecution to implement
their own objective analysis. They agreed with everything Gene
said, and were very polite—like fuckin’ Canadians or
something.

Gene wasn’t quite buying
it.

Not by a long shot.

“
All right.” He turned to
Francine and Parsons.

They were just piling into the cars to
take Betty Blue and Scott Nettles to a secure federal holding
facility, the only place Gene would feel safe with such a volatile
cargo. They weren’t armoured, unlike most of the LVPD, and this was
one valuable pair of runaways. They were still trying to get a
flight. Parsons looked up from Gene’s phone screen and shook his
head: still no luck.

Parsons rode with Nettles. Gene and
Francine were in with Betty, whose stony face ignored
them.

Francine gave an odd look. Her device
was buzzing and rumbling in her belt pouch.

“
What? I though I told
them—” She pulled it out and looked at the screen, eyebrows
rising.

“
Shit.”

She looked over at Gene.

“
What is it?”

“
Argh. Writs.”

“
What! Oh. Writs.” His
hand flew up to his face and he rubbed his whiskered
chin.

Writs.

His own device hummed in his hip
pocket just then and he pulled it out and had a look.

“
Who in the hell?” It was
the Right-to-Life Foundation.

His jaw dropped as he opened the
document and read the first paragraphs.

“
Oh. My. God.”

Francine was slumped in the right hand
side of the car, with Betty staring straight ahead in between
them.

Francine gave a brief shake of her
head.

“
What now,
Boss?”

“
The Right-to-Life
Foundation has filed a brief on behalf of the unborn fetus of Betty
Blue and Scott Nettles.” Gene’s face lifted and he found himself
transfixed by those deadly eyes as the robot herself turned to
regard him.

He tried not to swallow and Francine
sat up a little.

“
What?”

“
I’m sorry, Miss Blue. I
didn’t mean to upset you.”

Gene snapped the thing off and stuffed
it into his pocket again.

He thought she would speak, say,
‘That’s Mizz Blue…’

To you, you son of a bitch.

One could hardly blame her.

He looked at the back of their
driver’s dummy plastic head. If nothing else, it gave you something
to talk at.

“
Driver. Can you please
step on it? We haven’t got all night.”

***

One and a half hours later, they were
aboard the Silver Bird Airlines flight. Gene contacted the chief as
it looked like they’d be on the ramp a while.

“
You got ‘em! Good work.”
The chief, porcine and expectant in a calm and self-assured manner,
sat up straight.

This would be all over the nightly
news.

“
Can you give me a
thumbnail briefing?”

“
Ah—I don’t know about
that, Chief.” Gene was appalled.

That was the trouble with electing
chiefs of police, he supposed—anyone could win, especially with the
party-political machinery backing him up.

“
There are certain issues
involved. We’re already getting writs.”

“
Writs?” The chief’s face
clouded.

One of them was from a foundation
founded about four minutes ago, noted Gene. They were all getting
in on the act. It would do wonders for fund-raising. This had all
the hallmarks of a hot-button issue. Until the next one came
along.

“
So…what are the issues
involved?” The chief went up just a tad in Gene’s
estimation.

“
Hmn, Well. Is Betty Blue
stolen property? If so, then Mister Nettles may be in a lot of
trouble. And yet I really haven’t charged the gentleman with
anything yet.”

They could keep him in custody for up
to fourteen days, in his particular citizen-class, which was a
straight D-minus all across the board. They could ding him for up
to ninety days on Mental Health Suspicion, but that seemed
premature.

The chief pursed his lips as if to
speak, but Gene soldiered on.

“
Is Betty Blue Mister and
Missus Cartier’s property? If so, is she property with a mind of
her own—otherwise the Cartiers are looking at some public
liabilities, not to mention possible charges. I’m sort of thinking
reckless endangerment or negligence. This is all pie in the sky at
the present moment. I wouldn’t mind some guidance from the Public
Prosecutor on this one. The assault victims do have rights. They
have made certain sworn statements. They can also afford some kind
of ramshackle legal assistance.”

The chief’s eyes went left…

“
Is a mind sufficient to
indicate life? Up until now, all the experts say no. But was this a
malfunction, or was it simply the irrational act of a living
individual in human terms?”

If it was a malfunction, the company
that built the machine might be looking at some serious
liabilities. They would begin by denying everything. It wasn’t all
that hard to read the future sometimes. Gene thought the chief read
the notes provided, as the man’s eyes began to glaze over.
Apparently not.

The chief’s eyes centered up and the
jaw dropped, and then his eyes slid to the right.

“
Is Betty a new form of
life? Then we must define her rights before we can try her.” Gene’s
eyes glittered.

Francine sat rigid. She couldn’t
believe her ears.

“
Does Betty have the right
to self determination? Did she cause damage, or did she steal from
her employer? So far, we have no complaint from the Cartiers—not a
signed one, anyway.”

The chief licked his lips, staring at
Gene fixedly.

“
Even when she first
walked off. What was that…desertion? Of what, and from
what?”