Bone Wires by Michael Shean

Bone Wires: Chapter 1

Bone Wires by Michael Shean: Chapter 1.

Published by Curiosity Quills Press

(www.curiosityquills.com)

All rights reserved.

To rise above street duty in Civil Protection, you had to be an economist as much as a cop. You had to know the value of the market, and understand its dynamics as clearly as you did the workings of the criminal mind. It wasn’t enough to do the job – you had to do the job with the company in mind. Civil Protection was a corporation, after all. Profits margins were holy.

Daniel Gray sat in the driver’s seat of his duty car, a massive whale of a ’74 Daimler-Mercedes Vectra, watching the stock ticker that ran underneath his car’s information console. It had been a good quarter for the company; the tricentennial had kicked off a month or so ago, and an inexplicable current of madness had surfaced in its wake. There were anti-corporate protests going on downtown, an uptake in violent crime, in theft – all very much manageable between the street officers and the riot brigades, and lots of billable hours. He imagined that Matic over in Pacification Services must be stuffing his portfolio with reward shares, the old bastard.

Yes, it was a good old time for everyone, except here in Homicide. A hundred years ago the art of finding killlers was the crown jewel for detectives wanting to make their name in any police organization. Here in the age of privatized police, however, Homicide was very often something of a proverbial dead end. After all, the kinds of people who normally got killed off were Blanks, folks who didn’t have police coverage at all, or everyday citizens who were covered under the standard civilian safety contract brokered between the Company and the city government. Even if a victim had a personal contract, it meant you were looking at a loss of profit. For Civil Protection, Homicide was mostly a janitorial department and Gray didn’t like pushing a fucking broom.

The Vectra was parked out front of a Lucky Swan convenience store in the wilds of Service Sector 227, the east half of White Center. It was a little after ten at night, and he was letting the final hours elapse from what had proven a very boring and uncomplicated day. Two shootings, obviously gang-related, had taken place over toward the industrial fields near Alki point. One suicide by cop in Belltown. Very cut and dried, which was good for paperwork, but nothing to make Homicide Solutions stand out. More janitorial service.

Gray tore his eyes from the ticker and fixed them on the store’s facade, plastered with the over-saturated glare of holographic advertisements over plain paper handbills. Lucky Swan’s cartoon mascot stared at him from every angle, its ridiculous beak open and its eyes lolling about. OH GOD I AM SO HAPPY TO BE BUYING TOILET PAPER, it seemed to say, awash in a paroxysm of shit-paper glee. It was absolutely ridiculous. Then again, Civil Protection had much slicker marketing, which was why he was in police services and not agog over the low low prices of a six-pack of Fontainelle Cloud-Soft.

Beyond the lurid cartoon legion, however, a large man in a black overcoat stood chatting with a pretty girl behind the counter. Tall and lean, her hair was dyed red alternating streaks of red, white and blue – patriotism was in fashion this year, the country being three hundred years old and all. The Spirit of ‘76 was extremely marketable. The girl was secondary, of course – the man was who he had his eye on. The vast fellow was Brutus Carter, a veteran of Homicide Solutions who’d served with the Seattle PD before it was dissolved in favor of CivPro. Lots of SPD vets were employees now, though they sometimes found themselves running under the heels of people with much less experience but with company seniority.

Carter had been such a man. A thirty-year veteran of the Department, he had been employed by the company as a Tier II, a junior Detective. He’d jumped the ranks pretty quickly and was already a Tier IV, and had been Gray’s mentor when Gray himself reached Tier II. Now Gray was Tier III, and the two often worked together. As he watched the big man’s broad back heave with laughter, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy stick in his chest – Carter had a stock package, company car, and retirement options. He also had an Amber Shield, the holographic stamp set in the middle of his company ID that CivPro cops used as a badge. Unlike Gray’s own Blue Shield, which merely spoke of competence, the Amber spoke of success as well as the recognition that came with it. Carter might have been an older man but that didn’t keep the girl from flirting with him as she keyed his purchases through the store’s system.  It didn’t keep her from sliding a piece of paper with what was almost certainly her number on it into Carter’s grocery bag as he produced his cashcard from his wallet, either. It was true; Carter had worked to earn every dollar he made, and he deserved the prestige with which he was showered. It didn’t keep that flame of envy from kindling in Gray’s heart.