Simulation: A Pop Travel Novel Read online

  Geri nodded. “Nice that it was a finger with a print on file.” Fingerprint identification was hit or miss. Since everyone’s DNA records were input into the system at birth, metro police departments didn’t bother printing most criminals for lesser crimes anymore. Then again, many smaller stations didn’t have the funds for DNA identification, and so stuck with the old process, sending bigger cases downtown. This was common knowledge she hoped her newbie understood.

  Frowning, Geri realized she was going to have to explain a lot of things to this rookie experienced agents took for granted.

  “The APD doesn’t have the best equipment, so it doesn’t surprise me they had trouble getting an accurate DNA match. But I don’t think that warrants federal intrusion. How’d we get involved? Who’s the guy?”

  In the garage, Geri put her palm on a reader for the droid in the key booth. It dropped a fob for one of the cars into a vending machine-like receptacle for her.

  Geri briskly walked away and pushed a button on the fob. A small, blue Ford’s lights blinked for her.

  Aimee babbled on as she followed Geri to the car, “You’re right, it wouldn’t. But when they finally figured out whose finger it was, our department tagged it. The guy was a narc for the Negrini case.” Aimee’s eyes widened with every sentence.

  First impression assessment of Agent Boscowicz: irritatingly dramatic and naïve. Everything the girl said was bright and cheery, even though she was talking about a murder victim’s finger. Not to mention drawn out for suspense. The cartoonish girl acted as if she was competing for Miss USA with every utterance. Exhausting.

  “So again I ask: why are we on this case? Why didn’t they give it to the Negrini people?”

  When they got in the car and buckled up, Aimee locked her eyes on Geri. She couldn’t wait to tell her the rest. Oh, goodie.

  “It did go to them. But our assignment is much more important. We are to investigate the DNA tampering that caused the finger to be difficult to identify.”

  Geri had her eyebrows up, letting Aimee’s eagerness build up her own expectations. She was waiting for a big finish, like mangled bodies caught in the machine, or more pieces found in other states across the country. DNA tampering? What a letdown. She tilted her head at Aimee.

  “That’s it? That’s our big case? Faulty equipment or botched APD lab work?”

  Aimee’s face drooped. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

  Geri shook her head. “Hey, car, start up.” The engine purred to life.

  As she pulled out, Geri felt bad for bursting the bubble of Aimee’s first case. “Sorry, kid. Maybe there’s more to it. Can’t hurt to ask. Why don’t you plug in the address to the recycling plant? Then you can tell me a little about your background.”

  Aimee brightened at the attention, though Geri asked about her purely as a courtesy. She really didn’t care about the girl’s personal history. What she cared more about were her Academy scores, like electrogun accuracy and hand-to-hand combat. Aimee rambled on about fulfilling her mother’s MIT legacy with her super-intelligent genetics. At least the part about her growing up in Silicon Valley with a surfer-techie father was a nice surprise. Tuning out the rest, Geri wondered why Mr. Taylor had given her this sciencey case.

  Everyone’s DNA stamp was recorded at birth. Even the homeless could be ID’d that way, as they reported their population via DNA swabs during the annual inventory of the Unknown City, to account for their existence. Geri knew nothing about how DNA tests worked. She was terrible at science and technology. That’s what the geeks in the lab were for. It seemed this case was right up Aimee’s alley, but nowhere near Geri’s neighborhood.

  There had to be something about tampering with DNA that made it worth a federal investigation. If used by the wrong people, like the Negrini clan, it must be dangerous. That godfather was extremely unstable and was always looking for a new way to manipulate the innocent. Rumor said he liked to experiment with new drugs on his own lowlife lackeys, but his handiwork could never be traced back to him. Being able to alter someone’s DNA could nullify the most current, widely used means of identifying criminals. Geri was suddenly intrigued by the possibilities of this investigation.

  As Aimee wrapped up her life story, Geri pulled into the recycling plant through a high, chain-link fence. The parking lot was clean with organized stacks of recycled rods and other reformed materials on display around it. A quaint office fronted the plant, and a three-story metal-sided building rose up behind it with windows wrapped around the top.

  When Geri got out of the car, she heard the loud banging, crunching, and whirring of the powerful machines they used for recycling inside. Geri remembered touring a plant similar to this on a school field trip as a kid. Those giant machines had been impressive. Especially the shredder.

  Inside, a receptionist greeted them. She was an older woman with medium complexion and black hair pulled into a tight bun.

  “Hello. How may I help you?” She gave them a glimpse of a smile as she worked on her compucenter imager.

  Geri opened her QV to show the woman her ID. Aimee quickly copied her.

  “Hello, ma’am. I’m Agent Harper and this is Agent Boscowicz. We’re federal agents investigating the discovery of a finger here a few days ago.”

  “Ah, yes. Let me see if Jorge is available.” She pushed a circle on her imager and explained to Jorge, then turned back to Geri and Aimee.

  “He’ll be right in. You can have a seat while you wait.”

  “Thank you.” Geri sat on one of the firmly padded chairs and Aimee followed her lead.

  The girl seemed content to be in the backseat, observing and scanning like a data vacuum.

  The receptionist watched them sit down and stared at them for a few moments with her chin raised. She was suspicious of them.

  When she returned to working on her imager, Aimee whispered to Geri, “She looks like she’s jealous.”

  “Probably Jorge’s wife,” Geri surmised.

  An older, five-foot-nine man in a short-sleeved shirt and tie removed his hard hat as he entered the office. The hair he had left was dark gray and his skin was a shade darker than his receptionist’s. He wore a smile and held a tablet, sporting a stylus pen behind his ear.

  Putting the tablet under his arm, he extended his hand to Geri and Aimee. “Hello, ladies. I’m Jorge de Soto.”

  Geri rose to shake his hand and repeated her introductions, then got right to the point.

  “Mr. De Soto, can you please tell us how and where you found the appendage?”

  “Of course. Follow me.” He put his hard hat back on and opened the door he just came through.

  Before they left, Geri caught the receptionist giving Mr. De Soto a squinty glare. He squinted back but nodded and smiled, letting her know everything was okay.

  Mr. De Soto pointed to the white hard hats with attached air-and-noise-filtering masks and fluorescent orange lab coats hanging on the wall just inside the large recycling center.

  “If you would please put these on.” He had to shout to be heard above the roaring din of machines and vehicles.

  Geri gladly put on the mask after being punched in the nose by the horrid stench. The whole room smelled like a skunk’s wedding, lilac sanitizer battling with the pungent garbage. As she donned the rest of the safety gear, she surveyed the structured madness of the enormous facility. A maze of conveyor belts lined with workers sorting debris angled up to dump the good trash into machines that led to more conveyor belts.

  The headgear had an intercom system so Mr. De Soto didn’t have to shout anymore as he explained the business around them. “In this section, we clean and separate out the metals. As you can see, the sorted metals travel into the next room for smelting and refining.” Holding out his hand, Mr. De Soto indicated a wheeled bin near them that had just been topped off. It drove itself through a door flap into the room beyond. Some other filled bins went to squares on the floor where they were lifted, suspended by wires, to the section
ed-off cubicles along the wall. Green metal stairs led all the way up to the ceiling for workers to check on the sorted garbage and ready it for repurposing.

  The crusher and washing units were in the back, where the process began. Extra-large garage door openings let trucks back in to dump their shipments. Also adding to the ruckus, small bulldozers and loaders shoved and lifted the smelly piles around. Glancing to her right, Geri noticed a two-story-high enclosed area.

  “What’s in there?”

  Mr. De Soto smiled. “That’s our development lab. Always improving the process, you know.”

  Aimee opened her QV to record the scene. “May I?”

  “Of course. Be my guest.”

  As he showed them around, Mr. De Soto explained each section and bragged about the efficiency of his recycling center. Aimee filmed it all, while Geri took mental inventory of anything or anyone that looked conspicuous. The workers ignored them, paying close attention to their sorting. Mr. De Soto probably gave tours regularly, so visitors were familiar to them.

  Geri noted the web cams dispersed high and low, focused on different parts of the handling procedures. When they reached the rear of the facility, one truck pulled out of the center bay and another took its place to deposit its haul. The dozer waited for another truck to unload as well, then pushed the two piles together and the loader distributed the recycling materials to the crusher. From the crusher, other machines went to work sorting, sifting, and sending pellets where they needed to go.

  Turning to the agents, Mr. De Soto pointed at a large vat standing ten feet tall. “Here we are. We found the finger just before the cleaning process began. It set off our sensitive element scanner, shutting off the machine. Jelico, there, almost fell off his stool.”

  A tall fellow at the controls of the cleaning vat raised his head, hearing his name, then looked back at the imager, showing him charts and numbers and a view of the inside of the chemical bath tub.

  “Were you able to determine who delivered the shipment?” Geri asked.

  “Yes. We narrowed it down to two companies: Buzz’s Wreckage, or Fayco Salvage and Demolition.” Mr. De Soto led them to the back doors. “One of Buzz’s trucks is scheduled to be here in about thirty minutes, and that’s one of Fayco’s trucks right there.” He pointed to the truck in the center bay.

  Two guys stood at an imager just inside the building. It looked like they were finishing up the login of their delivery. The smaller man had a dark complexion, a caterpillar mustache, sunglasses, and a purple do-rag on his head. As he shut the imager, he saw Geri and stared at her, but not in the leering way the bigger guy was staring at Aimee. The little mustached guy twirled a toothpick in his mouth from one side to the other and patted his big buddy on the shoulder, then pointed to the cab. As they hopped into their truck to leave, Geri thought the little guy looked familiar, but couldn’t place him.

  “Can you stop them? I’d like to speak to them.”

  “Of course.” But as Mr. De Soto called out to them, a loader dropped a heavy chunk of debris, making a huge clang.

  Aimee jumped, and the guys drove away.

  Geri frowned at her. If she was startled by a loud noise, what would she do if she ever heard a metal gun blast?

  Mr. De Soto shrugged. “Sorry, ladies.”

  “That’s okay. You can give me their information while we wait for the second truck.”

  “Certainly. Why don’t we go back into my office?”

  It bugged Geri she couldn’t place the face of the little guy. There was something so familiar about him.

  Lake Lanier, GA

  Wednesday, June 10, 2082

  o sorry to bother you, Colonel.”

  “Get on with it, boy. What is it?” The Colonel sounded impatient, but was thankful for the diversion. Listening to McFarland suffer through his etiquette lesson made his head ache. One would think the lad had been born in a field and raised by goats.

  On the imager, Rajul’s face twisted in worry, and he wrung his hands. “Well, after I did some experimenting, something might have fallen into the wrong truck. The police questioned us and let it go, but now the feds are getting involved. Mr. Negrini is furious with me.”

  The Colonel shook his head and rubbed his eyes. When the Colonel found Rajul at a droid plant eight months ago, he’d been so pleased with the boy’s work building him a slew of guard droids, he gave the little engineer custom assignments, like Echo. What a diamond in the rough Rajul had seemed. But the boy had poor judgment. Greed and ambition consumed him and he took on a few too many loans from the wrong people, hoping to start his own business. He failed miserably and ended up owing Mr. Negrini a large debt. A truly distasteful man, Negrini had family everywhere, reminiscent of the legendary mafia. Not someone to cross.

  “Was the something identified, then?” Rajul’s experiments often involved human remains, often resulting as part of his latest distasteful job.

  “Yes. But it took them a while.” Rajul let a smirk slip. His experiment must have been successful. At least there was that.

  “That is a problem. And wipe that grin off your face.”

  After Rajul was fired from the droid plant, Mr. Negrini put him to work at a demolition center. The Colonel kept in close contact with Rajul, who latched onto him like an abandoned orphan. He told the Colonel all about his new responsibilities and about his experiments. Crews admired the boy’s innovative mind and often encouraged him.

  To keep up the front of his demolition center, Rajul sent clean crushed cars to the recycling plant and tainted crushed cars, with unfortunate passengers, to the underground melter. The boy must have let a trifle from his DNA testing slip into the wrong batch of crushed cars. Such a shame. Rajul was so smart intellectually, yet had the common sense of a cornstalk. And careless. Much too careless. With these sloppy mistakes, he was going to get himself killed. But he was too valuable to the Colonel. Crews had big plans for Rajul’s adroit skills and couldn’t let anything happen to his little genius. He would have to step in.

  “Do you have any of the sample left?”

  Rajul raised his eyes and thought. “Um, I think so.”

  “A clean sample?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then I believe it’s time for you to try your other ambitious venture on it.”

  Rajul tilted his head like a dumb hound dog. No sense at all.

  “Rajul. Take your sample and make a simulation.”

  The boy’s eyes grew two sizes. “But sir, I don’t have equipment or a lab or the proper supplies.”

  “Calm down. Make a list or everything you need and I will provide it in the lab I’ve been preparing for you. It’s time for you to move on. I will settle your debt with Mr. Negrini. We will need to act quickly to throw investigators off the scent of your DNA tinkering. Can you have it done within twenty-four hours?”

  “A new lab? Settle my debt? Oh, bless you! Thank you, Colonel. You are so generous to me. Yes, yes. I will get you a list right away and work all night to make the simulation.”

  “See that you do.” He shut his QV.

  The Colonel would know soon enough if the hefty investment he was about to make would be worth it.

  Atlanta, GA

  Wednesday, June 10, 2082

  “So did you get any good footage?” Geri teased Aimee as she drove them to the police station. Her young sidekick had filmed and whispered notes to her QV the whole time they were in the recycling plant. If little Aimee didn’t show some useful skills soon, she’d be headed for a desk job. Or better yet, a position in the tech lab.

  “Well, I got a good shot of the two guys who drove off in such a hurry. I also have images of their truck and license plate.”

  Geri raised her eyebrows. “Nice. Why don’t you run a check on them and that plate?” She’d been ticked she couldn’t talk to the pipsqueak that dumped his load and ran.

  Aimee’s fingers danced around on the 3D image hovering above her QV.

  “The truck belongs to
Fayco Salvage and Demolition, but the two guys didn’t work at the main facility. They leased the truck from them.”

  “That figures.”

  “I face-matched them and several aliases came up. The latest known name for the shorter guy is Rage. And the taller one is Brawn Tewel.”

  “Rage? No last name?” Geri had no use for the bigger guy. She could tell he was just for muscle.

  “No. Just Rage. And neither of them have valid addresses or any other information.”

  “They might as well live in the Unknown City then, eh?”

  “I suppose. But even they have a sector address and DNA identification. A number, if not a name.”

  Geri tilted her head at Aimee.

  “Oh, that was a joke, wasn’t it? Sorry.”

  This girl needed to loosen her headband. Geri sighed as she pulled into a spot behind the police station.

  “Let me do the talking,” Geri said when they reached the door. As if Aimee would open her mouth for anything except to ask permission to use the bathroom.

  The reception area roared with activity. Every time someone stepped up to the officer in charge, he barked at them to sit down and wait their turn, or go away. The benches and chairs overflowed with a multitude of faces. Some lawyers and clients, some disgruntled citizens, and other sad-looking characters who just wanted an air-conditioned break from the heat outside. The atmosphere was almost as depressing as the DMV.

  Geri doubted she had a shot with the harried officer, but stepped confidently up to the window with her badge displayed and ready anyway. Aimee followed, hiding behind her like a six-year-old kid.

  The reception officer shifted his eyes from his imager just long enough to give her a death glare.

  “I’ve got time, sweetie.” Geri grinned and put her free hand on her cocked hip. She let him know she wasn’t about to have a seat and wait with the rest of the masses.

  The officer sniffed at her. He was determined to test Geri’s patience. He went to great lengths to ignore her while he fiddled with files on his imager, took a call, spoke to a runner, and typed another message.