The Last Case

Chapter 4

An hour later I was looking through the files sent over by Mako Robotics. There were only three people at the company that knew Manish’s identity. Tom Scanlon was the VP of Personnel and Human Resources. It was his job to know everything about the staff and he was one of the few people privy to the information. Shisa Inigami was a lead development engineer who had worked with Manish for twenty years in the robotics field. They came up together and were very close. The third person, the head of Mako’s private security force, was named Udo Vanick. He was based on Earth. It was possible to coordinate something like this from Earth, but communications were so heavily monitored that it was less likely.

There was a list of potential personal enemies as well, too numerous to go over in detail. My idea was to start making calls and checking alibis. I wasn’t overly concerned that it wasn’t part of my assignment. What I was responsible for was getting done with little input from me thanks to Lucy’s assistance.

“We’re missing a file,” I said. “They didn’t send over that lawyer, Cal Overhan. Or the new guy, Ferguson.”

Lucy was seated beside me in front of the terminal for the autonav system. It was strange to work alongside her. Not only did she have the monitor off, but she has plugged a data cable from the terminal into the back of her neck. She was completely silent for a long while and I thought that she might have gone into sleep mode. When I leaned over and waved my hand in front of her face, she turned her head to look at me.

“I hear you detective,” she said. “I will put in the request for you with personnel.”

“I am almost finished with this analysis,” she said in a simple, flat voice. While she was engaged with the autonav system, much of her humanity drained away. It had something to do with the allocation of resources moving from interpersonal relations to full analytical mode. It had the dual effect of making her seem a lot less human, and a lot more cold and intimidating.

“Finished with what exactly?” I asked.

“I have located all black Sauri IOs and I am currently tracking their movements for the last twenty-four hours. I have eliminated three thousand, nine hundred and seventy one of them from the field of four thousand and thirty two potential suspect vehicles.”

“You were able to do that based on the autonav data?” I asked, amazed.

“No,” she said. “I have illegally accessed vehicle registry points across the city. The autonav system is not the only system which captures VIN data. The Hale Registry of Vehicles maintains a low band system to monitor vehicles for demographic information only. It is a reliable source of locational data.”

“Did you say illegally?” I asked.

“Yes. It is a public contract with the HRV that the information is not used for tracking purposes.”

“Well there’s that honesty thing,” I said. “Let’s try not to mention you accessing that to anyone else, okay?”

“Certainly,” she said.

“Did you have any luck locating the van that took Rahul?”

“No,” she said. There was a long pause after, then she turned to face the equipment. “Despite witness accounts, there does not to be any record of a Sauri IO leaving the area of the crime for at least thirty five minutes after the abduction.”

“So either the vehicle never left and the witnesses were mistaken,” I said. Something dawned on me. “Or it was invisible.”

“I know of no technology that can simultaneously mask a vehicle’s VIN and allow that same vehicle to enter the autonav.” She went blank again for a few moments. “It might be possible to trick the autonav into believing that a vehicle has the specifications of a similarly sized vehicle. I will cross reference the dimensions of a Sauri IO with other similarly sized vehicles in the area.”