Steel Whispers

Chapter 1

I deal in death every day. That’s my job. I’ve learned not to let it touch me. You can’t function as a cop if you do. Even twenty years behind a desk, where you’re twice removed from death itself, can’t change that.

The call came, as these calls always do, at 3 a.m. 3:14 a.m. to be exact. Wednesday, March 16th, 2044.

I answered the phone on the second ring.

Superintendent Steele? The voice on the other end of the line sounded young. These days they all sounded young.

You got him, I said.

I hope I didn’t wake you, said the cop.

Naw, I had to get up to answer the phone anyway. An old joke but it still got a laugh. Truth was I’d been up for over an hour. I checked the caller I.D. What can I do for you, Constable Phalen?

You left orders to be called if we had another Borg murder. Same M.O. as the last four.

Where are you? Phalen gave me an address in the industrial Southeast. I’m on my way.

Superintendents aren’t supposed to get involved in crime scene

investigations. We’re supposed to sit in our offices and read reports and send younger, brighter minds to do the dirty work. But as other senior officers around the Calgary Police Force will tell you, Frank Steele is a special case. A headcase according to most.

I sat back in my chair and drank the last of my hot milk, thankful I’d resisted the call of my old friend, Jack Daniels, from where he rested in the cupboard above the kitchen sink. I’d been rereading Illegal

Alien by Robert J. Sawyer and I slipped a bookmark into place and put it back on the shelf. I don’t read a lot of science fiction—mysteries are more my forte—but this one was a great courtroom drama. Maybe I was hoping his exploration of alien motivations would help me figure out what was happening with the Borg. These days I needed all the inspiration I could get.

I’d asked Phalen to call for a cruiser and by the time I’d gotten on a tie and a suit jacket and rounded up my badge and gun, they were buzzing for me from downstairs.

At this time of night, traffic on the Deerfoot freeway was almost manageable and we made it from my northwest apartment to the crime scene in under twenty minutes. I had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

The Borg, as they were known in the popular press, had been a growing subculture in most of the Western world for the last ten years, ever since the cost of mechanical and cybernetic upgrades had fallen from astronomical to merely exorbitant. What they call themselves, I couldn’t tell you; you need a high-end vocoder to make the sound. Some of the Borg didn’t look much different than regular humans with all of the modifications and augmentation hidden under their skin. Most liked to flaunt their changes: artificial eyes and ears, new limbs ending in claws or tentacles or both, metal skull caps of gleaming chrome.

People overestimate the number of Borg—in part because people tend to do that with minorities, but also because Borg culture had spawned a whole crowd of wannabes—kids with nonfunctional copies of Borg modifications pasted on their skin or fitted over their real arms or legs.

But the four dead bodies that had turned up in Calgary dumpsters over the last few weeks had been the real thing, though what they were after all their modifications had been carved out of their flesh was difficult to say. We’d been able to identify three of the victims through DNA records in the national identity bank but the fourth was still listed as a Jane Doe and seemed likely to remain so unless we caught the perps. Based on the microscopic residue found in the wounds, she’d had her face largely rebuilt out of metal and ceramic and both arms replaced, probably turned into multi-use tools, so what was left after her killers were done was pretty difficult to I.D.

The dumpster where the fifth victim was housed was under a spotlight and I had the cruiser pull right up to the scene. The ambulance was waiting to make its delivery to the crime lab but the body was still in situ. Detective Lily Chin was talking to our new forensics guru, Dr. Vanessa Pham. I walked past them before they noticed me and climbed up on the stepstool that had been placed beside the metal bin.

This Borg had barely started the modification process so his body was mostly intact. His right hand had been severed and the vocoder had been cut out of his throat. An artificial ear had been torn away along with the top of his skull but the face was intact, staring up at me with wide-open eyes. All expression had leached out in the hours since death but I had no real problem recognizing him.

I deal in death every day. But it’s different when it’s your own son.

I was still standing there, feeling stupid like I was half-asleep, trying to wake up from a bad dream, when Lily Chin came up to me and put her hand on my arm.

Sorry, Frank, I didn’t see you until it was too late. The identification came in after Phalen called you. I would have warned you but…

But my cell was turned off, I said, surprised at how calm my voice was. My cell was sitting on the bedside table, I thought, as if that somehow mattered. As if anything mattered right now other than the fact I was standing in front of a dumpster looking into the face of my dead son and wondering how the hell he could afford modifications and when did he get them anyway.

Josh and I had never been close and the distance between us had grown into a gulf since his mother and I divorced seven years ago. He’d been seventeen then, just starting his fine arts degree at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, and now he was lying in a dumpster like a stranger.

I reached out to touch his face.

Frank, Chin’s voice came from far away. Superintendent Steele!

The hard edge in her voice brought me back to the here and now.

Forensics hasn’t cleared the scene yet, sir. You can’t touch the body.

It’s not a body, it’s my goddamn son! But I jerked my hand back. I’m sorry, Lily, I’m sorry. Getting old, I guess.

I took a couple of steps away from the dumpster and fumbled for a cigarette, forgetting for a moment that I’d quit on the day my divorce from Dorothy, Josh’s mother, had become final.

Maybe you should head home, Frank, I can wrap up here, Chin said, her voice surprisingly gentle. I didn’t think she had that in her but I guess you never stop learning about people. I looked over at the dumpster. Yeah, right.

No, I said. I’ll head downtown and get an early start on the day. I should call…the victim’s mother.

It’s the first thing they teach you in detective school. Don’t let it get personal. Keep your distance from death or it will swallow you whole. I wondered what chapter of the manual told you how to tell your ex-wife her baby boy was dead.

| | |

I sat at my desk, staring at the phone, trying to remember the last time I had seen Josh. Was it two years ago, or three? I thought of calling Amber, the daughter I’d had during my brief, tumultuous first marriage. But I hadn’t seen her since her mother’s funeral five years ago. I didn’t expect she’d want to hear from me now.

At 5:30, I dialed Dorothy’s number. It was an hour later in Chicago where she’d been living for the last year. She had always been an early riser. I didn’t suppose the habits of twenty years had changed simply because she no longer had to escape my morning breath.

I debated about whether to turn the video pick-up on but figured Dorothy deserved that much at least. The news would be hard enough without getting it from a blank screen. I could have had the local cops go by her house. That’s what the book probably suggested in these cases.

She answered on the third ring, a little out of breath and slightly flushed. I’d interrupted her morning aerobics routine. Her endorphins would be elevated which might help with the trauma of the next few minutes. Dorothy hadn’t changed much over the years, still tall, willowy and blonde, with the kind of face designed to carry the years well, even without the benefits of modern medical science. She looked a lot more than five years younger than me.

I didn’t say anything, not even hello, sat there staring at her and past her at the usual clutter of her trendy apartment. In the background a wall screen was showing coverage of the American Mars mission launch from the Endeavour space platform. It had been moved ahead two weeks to keep pace with the Chinese and European programs. I stared stupidly at the video image of the video and said nothing.

Frank? To what do I owe… She stopped then.

Dot, I’ve got…

Oh, Jesus…It’s Joshua.

I guess I need to go back to basic training, relearn that sympathetic but neutral cop expression we’re supposed to use when we break

the news.

Is he…alright? She finished the question though she already knew the answer.

He’s dead.

She took it better than I thought she would. No hysterics, no screaming. Her face sort of collapsed into its years. She turned away for a moment and rubbed a tissue across her eyes. I heard a couple of soft sobs but when she turned back she was calm.

How did it happen? Some kind of accident?

I didn’t answer, somehow couldn’t make my throat form the words and let them go.

Not suicide? Dorothy’s grandfather had killed himself. It had almost destroyed her family and she lived in terror it might be genetic. She’d talked to a lot of doctors and even made Josh take screening but she never really believed their reassurances. Maybe that made it easier to tell her; maybe I thought murder would be a relief.

Josh was killed. Someone murdered our son.

Her face hardened then and her eyes turned cold. Joshua stopped being your son a long time ago.

I wondered when exactly that had happened. A long time ago I guess, just like Dorothy said. I remembered him when he was little, how much I loved to hold him and play with him, watch him discover all the things the world had to offer. Then I accidentally shot my partner during a botched operation, blew half his head off. After that, I spent eight years up my own asshole, going from work to counselling to bars. I finally kicked the counselling habit but by then Jack Daniels was my best friend and my little boy had grown into an angry teenager. And a few years after that, we decided to call the whole thing off.

And now, when I’d finally gotten well enough to want to have a family again, it was way too late for any of us. It was time for me to do what I do best and be a cop.

I have a few questions. It may help with our investigation.

I’m sorry I said that, Frank. Really, I…

She probably was. But words are like bullets. Once fired, they can’t be put back in the gun.

Do you have someone you can call? Someone who can come over after we’re done talking? By the book.

I guess, sure, I can… She was starting to look a little confused.

Put me on hold and make that call.

She stared at me, maybe wondering who the hell I was, then the screen went blank. A minute later she came back, under control again. She’d been a cop’s wife for twenty years. She knew a little about this stuff too.

Did Josh…Joshua have any enemies? I asked.

No. Everybody loved Joshua.

Obviously not everyone did but I let it go.

When did you see him last?

Must be six months, no seven, he came down here for a long weekend. But I talked to him about two weeks ago. He had started a new job. Something to do with…oh, I forget. I have his work number. I’ll flash it to you. She tapped a couple of numbers on the console and my phone pinged to indicate the number was now logged in memory.

How did he seem?

Happy, excited, optimistic, the way he always was.

It wasn’t how I remembered him but I took her word for it.

How long had Joshua been a Borg?

My son wasn’t a Borg.

I blinked. Had Chin been wrong about the nature of the crime, fooled by the mutilation and the body in the dumpster? Was it a copycat, or just a simple homicide that looked like one of ours? I felt a rush of relief. I could ship the case over to the newly minted Superintendent of Homicide, Willa O’Reilly, and get it off the books of the Special Detection Unit.

I mean, Dorothy continued, He was like all kids—enamoured with what was new and different. He hung with that dress-up crowd at college.

A wannabe, maybe, I thought. So he hadn’t had any…surgery?

Well, yes, he’d had one of those voice things done…

An augment or an actual vocoder? I asked.

The second, I think. And he was talking a couple of months ago about having something done to his hand. I’m not sure if he did it; I didn’t pay much attention. I thought it was a fad, like when he spent all his money on those old comic books or wanted to try out for the space program because everyone else in his class wanted to, remember?

I didn’t but I nodded anyway.

That doesn’t make him a Borg, does it? The door chimed behind her and Dorothy waved it open. I was oddly gratified when a woman came through it. We’d been divorced for seven years and we’d both moved on but you never actually want to see your replacement.

I’ll have a detective call you if we have any more questions, I said. If you need anything, well, you have my number.

She nodded absently and turned toward her friend, cutting the connection as she did.

I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the water stain patterns on the ceiling of my office. My ex might be in denial but I had no doubt that sometime in the last year my son had found enough cash to begin his transformation into something new and different. And that had made someone think he was a prime candidate for murder.

| | |

I went down to the cafeteria for a cup of the sludge they call coffee. When I got back, the message icon on my phone was practically dancing. It was 6:02 so I didn’t need three guesses to know who wanted my attention so badly. Chief Arsenault always started his day at six sharp. He wouldn’t have needed a minute to decide I should be his first order of business.

The Chief and I were getting along better these days. Hard earned mutual respect will do that for you. We weren’t exactly buddies but at least I didn’t think of him as Chief Arsehole. Not often anyway.

Still, this wasn’t going to be easy. I readied my arguments as to why I shouldn’t be hauled off the Borg case now that I had a personal interest in the outcome.

I hit reply and the Chief’s cherubic face popped into view as if he knew I was already at my desk and had been waiting for my response. Which was probably the case; the Chief kept a pretty close watch on his senior officers.

Frank, he said, I’m sorry for your loss. I always liked Joshua.

His usual warm smile had been replaced with a look of concern that might even have been real. I decided I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he seemed to know no one called my son Josh anymore, which put him a leg up on me.

Thanks, I appreciate that.

I’ve been thinking of assigning this case to Superintendent O’Reilly, Arsenault said. She does have extensive experience with the Borg.

I bristled at that, even though I had expected it. I had a lot of respect for Willa. More than that, our friendship had survived several years of butting heads at work and one night, six months ago, of bumping uglies at her condo when need overcame common sense. But the Borg murders were exactly the kind of cases the Special Detection Unit had been set up to handle.

You’re worried I’ll lose my perspective, I said.

Always, said Arsenault, still not smiling, Besides I’d like you to focus on other parts of your caseload.

Okay, now I was thinking of him as Chief Arsehole. It always went this way. The Chief would assign cases to the SDU that no one else wanted. The Borg murders qualified in spades. Most cops are dedicated public servants who do their best in difficult circumstances but no one ever accuses them of having a deep tolerance for difference. Maybe different sounds too much like deviant.

I don’t have much use for what passes these days as journalism but I’m not stupid. You don’t survive very long as a Superintendent in the SDU if you don’t read the newsfeeds and tap into the webcasts. The press was having a field day with the idea of a Borg serial killer, alternating between a sick fascination with the grisly details and vicious speculation on whether the culprit should be hunted down or given a medal.

Even the politicians had gotten into the act. The last election had left the governing Liberals in a minority. The New Unity Party had jumped from a single member to second place and while their leader, James Becker, always sounded reasonable, some of the members who had joined him on the opposition benches made the third place Conservatives look like communists. They were full of ruminations about ‘‘holy retribution’ for those who had defiled ‘God’s sacred work.’ Body modification had become the new evil in their eyes, though it didn’t seem to stop any of them from participating in the other wonders of modern science to improve and lengthen their lives.

Arsenault didn’t just listen to the news—he bathed in it. When the winds of political change blew, he bent like a willow rather than fell like an oak. Which, I guess, is why he’s the longest serving Chief the Calgary Police Force ever had.

It’s also why he wanted to move the Borg killings onto the back burner. But, damn it, this was the SDU’s case. I’d turn the investigation over to Sanchez if I had to but I wanted it here, where I could keep my eyes on things.

I must have had a blank look on my face. At least I hope it was blank and not a reflection of my thoughts.

All you alright, Frank? Arsenault sounded worried now, not

concerned about my dead son but apprehensive his most senior Superintendent was heading for the psych ward up at Ponoka.

Never been better, Chief, I said. Probably not the best response given the circumstances. Arsenault looked like he was going to personally sign the committal papers.

If I can be frank with you, I said, falling back on one of my oldest jokes, Joshua and I weren’t that close. Just close enough that his death was like a fist in my belly. I can keep this in perspective. I have to, it’s my job. We’re not dealing with a single random murder. There’s a pattern. The details aren’t clear but they’re getting there. And I have closer ties to the Borg than Willa ever will.

You’re staying connected to Wannamaker. A statement of fact, not a question. Chief Arsenault does like to stay informed.

Yeah, I said. We’re like brothers.

Not exactly true but I wasn’t going to tell the Chief that. He resented the fact that Buzz Wannamaker, Calgary’s first Borg detective, had quit the very moment the going was at its toughest. Never mind he did so right before Arsenault could first fire and then arrest him. None of us were thinking clearly at the time—the Chief wanted to fire and arrest me—and the rest of the SDU, too. But only Wannamaker refused to come back when it was all over and done with. Forgive and forget wasn’t a big part of his personality.

Do you think he can or will help you?

Sure, I said, we’re in regular touch. Another white lie. I hadn’t talked to Buzz in a month but I was in touch with Darwahl Singh, Buzz’s partner in the detective agency they had recently set up, using Dar’s money and Buzz’s street creds. I was heading out to see him when you called.

The Chief looked doubtful but he finally nodded. Keep me apprised of developments. I don’t need to tell you how sensitive this is. It was almost too easy.

The screen went blank. The absence of niceties to end the conversation was a little more typical of the Chief’s approach and it gave me a sense of normalcy.

To the extent that having your world come unglued is ever normal.

There wasn’t much point in going to Singh’s office before business hours and we weren’t so close that I wanted to drop by his apartment unannounced, so I lay on the couch to catch up on my report reading. Amazingly, I didn’t fall asleep though I didn’t get through many reports either. At 7:45 I gave up and checked Singh’s agency address on my palmtop.

I pinged the other members of the unit to gather in the conference room at two that afternoon for a case review. I forwarded my phone to my cell, which, for once, I remembered to put in my pocket. As an afterthought, I took my service revolver out of my desk drawer.

I couldn’t find my shoulder holster so I shoved the gun in the right pocket of my suit and headed out the door to see what Singh and Wannamaker had to offer.

I doubted it would bring me any joy.

Chapter 2

Buzz Wannamaker blinked on his internal clock. 05:32:21.

The girl wasn’t coming. From the sounds of it, the party in the old warehouse across the road was beginning to wind down. He turned down the volume a notch on his enhanced left ear and sat staring out the windshield of his new car, or rather the Singh-Wannamaker Detective Agency’s new car, contemplating his next move. The claws at the end of his right arm clicked absent-mindedly.

Cerise Kavanah had been missing from her home for nearly four weeks though she hadn’t exactly disappeared. Not in the capital D sense at least. There were still traces of her here and there on Calgary streets, enough that the police had ruled out foul play. The girl was sixteen; she could legally do what she wanted with her life. As far as the cops were concerned, that took it out of their bailiwick and put it in the hands of social services. With the recent round of budget cuts, another black girl walking the streets of Calgary wasn’t going to generate much action in that quarter.

Another runaway. Another casualty of modern times.

Cerise’s family didn’t buy it. So they had come to the small but stylish offices of Singh-Wannamaker to make their case. Only in business a few months, the agency had already developed a reputation for getting things done when the system couldn’t or wouldn’t act.

The Kavanah family wasn’t middle-class though they had aspirations for their kids. The fact they came with the deposit in hand and in cash had impressed Darwhal Singh enough to take the case, even though Wannamaker doubted he really wanted to—it wasn’t high profile enough for a guy who, until recently, had moved in the top echelons of the Calgary business community.

What had impressed Wannamaker was that they had all come together, mother, father and both brothers, a younger one in braces and an older one, wearing the surly expression young men use as armour against the world. People who stick together when it was all too easy and acceptable to fly apart had always impressed him.

Cerise wouldn’t have run away, they claimed. She was a straight-A student at school, well-liked by both her teachers and her classmates. She had lots of friends but no boyfriends. She was active in the school drama club and on the basketball team. And, they said, she got along well at home, as well as a sixteen-year old girl with two brothers and a strict father could be expected to, at least.

A discreet background check had confirmed most of what the Kavanahs said, though a few of the girl’s friends said she didn’t get on with her father at all and that she often talked about how she couldn’t wait to leave home when she went to university.

But the verdict was far from unanimous. And leaving home to go to school is a lot different than disappearing in the middle of Grade Eleven.

Wannamaker pushed the power button and listened to the faint click and fainter hum as the electric engine started up. He twisted his left earlobe to drop the volume further on his augment and put the car into gear. Time to follow up on his second—and last—lead.

Take me to the Red Pomegranate in Kensington, he told the car and once the on-board had locked into the local traffic grid, he let go of the wheel and leaned back in his seat.

Cerise had left the house at about six in the evening to go to a friend’s for an all-girl Valentine’s dinner and pajama party. She never arrived. Cerise’s family heard from the party’s hostess at about seven and her father, Cris, had walked the eight blocks between the two apartments, looking for her. They called the police but were told they had to wait the usual twenty-four hours before the case would be treated as a missing person by the authorities.

Cris Kavanah spent the night and much of the next day covering the ground in ever increasing circles. He visited as many of her friends as he could and went to all her usual out-of-school haunts. The next day, the police covered all the same ground.

For a couple of weeks, the cops pursued the matter, which meant that a detective spent an hour every other day, following up leads. The beat cops in the area kept an eye out for a tall, pretty black girl dressed in a conservative sweater and dress outfit.

Then two of Cerise’s best friends reported seeing her at a high-end mall, arm and arm with an older—meaning thirty-something—white man and dressed in a bright green dress that was anything but conservative. They had waved and called to her and she had smiled and waved back and said something to the man. He laughed and waved at Cerise’s friends, too. But by the time they got to where Cerise had been standing, she and the man were both gone. Mall surveillance tapes were too fuzzy to even give a positive ID of the girl let alone her companion.

She was seen on the street the next day, again in the company of the same man or one who looked similar. The boy who spotted her, a classmate who didn’t know her well, had even spoken to her, while she waited for the man to return from a public washroom. He said she was happy and laughed when he asked her if she was being held against her will.

The case went from active to dead faster than you could say ‘teenage love affair.’ The detective was reassigned to more urgent cases and even the local beat cop stopped answering the Kavanahs’ calls after a couple of days. She was happy and unrestrained—that was enough for Calgary’s finest. But Wannamaker knew as well as they did that there were at least a dozen drugs and several highly illegal neural implants that could have mimicked that condition, especially to a relative stranger.

After a week of getting the runaround from various social service agencies, they brought the case to the agency. For the last three days, Buzz Wannamaker had combed the streets of Calgary and trolled every social network site and virtual club for further clues to Cerise’s fate. He’d even hacked into government and corporate surveillance sites and run image scans through hundreds of data archives looking for matches to the holo-photo her parents provided. So far, there had been no further sightings and only a few rumours about where she was, or in the case of last night’s warehouse party, where she might be going. A couple of reports had put her outside the Red Pomegranate in Kensington. Wannamaker had his doubts but it was the only lead he had.

Cerise wasn’t one of the Disappeared yet; her images and records still did exist in school and public databases. As long as they were there, there was a chance some cop or social worker would spot her and get her back to the loving arms of her family. Once they vanished, she would be like hundreds or thousands of other kids who had had their identities stolen away in the years since The Troubles ended and the new world disorder arose.

| | |

The Red Pomegranate had started its life more than fifty years ago as a family restaurant, sitting on a busy corner where Memorial met 10th Street. The corner was still busy but not many families went to that neighborhood anymore, at least not the kind of families you wanted moving in next door. And the Red Pomegranate was usually the final stop before people crossed the line from ‘in trouble’ to ‘beyond help.’

Wannamaker resumed control of the car and let it glide past the wide brass doors at the front of the club. There were half a dozen kids hanging around the entrance. One of the girls lifted her shirt as Wannamaker drove by, showing a pair of small heavily tattooed breasts.

He pulled the car into the alley behind the building. A few of the sleeping bundles stirred but nobody looked in his direction as he