The Last Case

Chapter 10

It turned out that the patrol team got there a lot sooner than I expected. Lucy, who had saved my life at least three times in two days, had used her internal phone to call the emergency services the second she saw Folstenbach and his three gunmen. Even torn to pieces and operating at maybe ten percent capacity, she had allocated enough energy to keep the signal open so they were able to locate us. I only had to cover the two criminals for about ten minutes before they were taken off of my hands.

Lucy was completely shut down by the time the scene was fully cleared. I asked the paramedics to treat her like any injured person, and to bring her back to headquarters as carefully as possible. She was the property of Mako Robotics, after all. I found her charred arm lying against the front of the apartment. It felt odd to add that to the pile of her that was on the gurney in the back of the ambulance.

The first responders were hesitant to move Tamerlane Rhodes. They spent a long time performing some diagnostic tests on her in the bed she was confined to. Based on what they could tell, she’d been placed in a drug induced coma and left that way for weeks. There were signs that they woke her up occasionally. She was severely malnourished from extended starvation and there was danger of her going through withdrawal after they took her out of the coma. It was going to be a slow recovery. They didn’t expect her to be able to talk for several weeks. Given the mental ordeal she’d been through, she might never talk about what happened that night.

When Nouvelle eventually arrived at the scene, I have to admit I was a little worried. But she hugged me. It was strange for her to do that in such a public forum, but she didn’t seem to care so neither did I.

“You can’t stay out of trouble for a minute can you?” she asked.

“I guess not,” I said. “I swear I was getting ready to call you when these guys showed up.”

“I believe you,” she said. “I heard the android isn’t looking so hot.”

I shook my head. I was actually upset about Lucy getting so damaged. “She saved my life you know,” I said.

“I’m sure that Mako Robotics can fix her.”

“I know,” I said. I would likely never have a chance to thank Lucy for what she did.

Back at Central Police HQ, Folstenbach wasn’t talking. The remaining merc on the other hand, was singing like a bird. She opened up to the investigators that were questioning her and I enjoyed watching them break her down.

Klarky Reno was set up to be a patsy from the moment they decided to kidnap the kid. They kidnapped Klark’s wife and son and used that as leverage to get him to take point on the job. They thought his involvement would inevitably steer the investigation toward his gambling buddies which is precisely what happened. They even went so far as to make sure his mask wasn’t large enough to cover his tattoo to make sure suspicion was immediate. Folstenbach led the intel side of things and filled the mercenaries in on the status of the operation. This particular merc, her name was Venice, was on guard duty for Folstenbach and never actually went on the run to pick up the kid.

Where it went wrong was that once they had the kid, Klark went nuts and demanded that they bring him his son immediately. He threatened to kill Rahul if they didn’t comply. The merc that I shot with Robyn’s pistol took matters into his own hands and threatened to kill Odlue if Klark didn’t knock it off. It was a standoff, and unfortunately, Klark, being a gambling man, was a little too good at bluffing. When the mercs killed Odlue, Klark started to strangle Rahul. They tried to stop him, but he locked himself into the van. That was when he set off the bomb that burned him and Rahul’s corpse to death.

From there, it was a scramble to cover their tracks. Altogether, they charged Folstenbach with a laundry list of crimes that I won’t even bother mentioning. He was going to jail for a long time. Venice was going to jail too, but she didn’t seem to care too much. For people like her, Jail is just another place to call home.