"The Transgenic Falcon"
Chapter Eleven

I made Belinda stop at one of the literal hole-in-the-wall coffee shops on the long hallway where O’Neil lived. It was time to rebalance my blood-caffeine levels. Belinda paid for our coffees with a thumb-print. It was a little annoying that I couldn’t buy anything here, but at least they wouldn’t have an easy record of what and where I bought things. Given the near panopticon levels of data collection in G-T, I sympathized with Cho wanting some personal privacy.

Belinda took a sip of her triple espresso, then twiddled her fingers to bring up some data I couldn’t see.

“So, this is a good time to do a quick progress review” she said brightly. As willing as I was to give her LEAN process improvement a try, I could see where the tightly controlled process would get on my tits in a big way very shortly. Still it wasn’t a bad idea at this point, so I saved the fight for later.

I sighed and said, “Okay. What have we learned so far? Cho was a bit of a secret keeper. Taylor found the body, and has a money problem big enough that he mentioned it to people investigating a death. Poor O’Neil thought she was getting her love back and now he’s dead.” Belinda twitched a bit at the callousness. “Both of them worked closely with Cho for years, but have no solid idea of who might want to off him.”

“Is that particularly rare?” she asked, taking another sip.

I shook my head, “Not really. Everyone knows the Fundigelicals have a fatwa against Cho, if someone wasn’t showing that level of hate to him, it probably wouldn’t register to most folks.”

“So we’re stuck?”

“No, we’ve still have things to look at and people to talk to. First off I want to see Cho’s handheld.”

“It’s going to be password protected and encrypted, you know,” Belinda observed.

“Of course, given Cho’s desire for privacy. But there are ways to get around that, even if it is only brut force computation.”

In the late 1990’s through about 2020 the big computer arms race had been virus versus anti-virus software. Part of this was because the United States resisted allowing encryption for personal and business use. You could get it, and use it, and for the most part it worked. But the Feds really tried to discourage it. Then in 2023 some middle-school students in Philly hacked the National Power Grid control system and used every light in the US to depict a raised middle finger out into space. It was sometime the next day that our President ordered an Apollo program style upgrade of encryption, and let slip the electronic dogs of war.

As a result the nimble fingered hackers in Russia and Bangladesh turned their twisty little minds from infecting unsuspecting PC’s to writing better encryption. The Feds spent billions on their own encryption and ways of breaking others. It spurred computer science to even higher levels. So now we have a situation where you can buy commercial encryption and programs to break it. Go Capitalism!

I dug out my G-T issued handheld and told it to call Johnny Round. After a second or two his face was staring out at me from the glass.

“Eamon, what’s up?” he asked.

“Hi, Johnny. I need to get a look at Cho’s personal handheld. Can you sign it out of evidence for me?”

Round must have taken the call on his desktop, since his shoulders moved as if he was typing. “Sure thing, give me a sec.” His dark face creased in a frown. “That’s odd,” he muttered. He typed some more then looked up at the camera. “I don’t have it in inventory. I’m looking at the inventory of his personal affects, but no handheld is listed.”

“What are the chances it’s just a mistake?” I asked, knowing the answer I’d get.

“No chance. Two of my best officers took the affects when Doc Simpson got the body. But let me dig in personally and I’ll let you know.”

Thanks Johnny.” I said and ended the call.

Belinda had been watching me in silence while I talked to the local Law. “Am I right in thinking that the handheld being missing is a big deal?”

“It could be. It’s entirely possible that what’s on Cho’s handheld had something to do with his death. More so, now that it seems to be missing.”

“Then what do we do now?”

“A couple of things. First off, let’s go look in Cho’s apartment. Round will probably head there eventually, but we can check it for him. And I think I want to interview a couple of the Eolin-I. They being in the lab when it all went down is another odd thing that needs to be explained.”

We schlepped back through the sloping halls to the faux outdoor mall and up to one of the Sequoia trunks. I’d missed that they doubled as elevator shafts. The patterning was so good on the bark and the wood surrounding the lift doors I had to ask if they were actual redwoods. I got the appropriate look questioning my sanity. Man oh man; this place was getting to me.

It was a short ride to what my brain insisted on calling the tree-top (stupid freaking brain!), then we decamped into another angled hallway. It was very similar to the O’Neil’s, but not exactly the same. Everything was an upgrade from below. The halls a little wider, the carpet even more plush, the ceilings higher, and while there were still plants and local watering holes they were all of a better quality. Most tellingly none of the doorways were personalized. They all looked like slabs of stainless steel, lightly etched with a pattern that I had to stop and look at for a second to work out. When it came into focus I couldn’t help a groan of disgust, it was, of course, a stylized version of the G-T logo.

“So, the lords of the manor live at the top?” I asked.

“Hmm?” Belinda said, having been lost in her own thoughts. “Oh, no, not really. Anyone can request one of the upper-level apartments. They do have some extra amenities, but it decreases your spendable income.”

I didn’t point out she’d just made my point for me. Sure anyone could request one of these upgraded apartments, but if you were only a lowly wastewater technician you’d have no money left over for yourself. I was sure there were also other subtle ways that the denizens of this level ‘encouraged’ any of the hoi-polloi who had the balls to move in to go back where they felt more ‘comfortable’. The new world Gen-Tech was building had a significant amount of the old about it. It was so predicable I wasn’t even surprised.

We stopped at a door distinguished from the others by a small brass plaque reading 52-52. Belinda twirled her rings for a second, then the door slid silently into the wall. “It wasn’t locked down by the police?” I asked.

“It was, and it is. But I have access to the police overrides, so I logged a request to get in, and open sesame.”

I gave her a jaundiced glare, and asked, “Does that thing do windows and dishes too?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Belinda said coolly, “All the windows in G-T are coated to repel dust and water. And I don’t cook.” She strolled past me and into Cho’s executive apartment. Yeah I lost that round, but on the plus side, I got to watch her walk in front of me. Let me tell you, on the right derriere, that holographic wire-framing was a Class A-1 distraction.

The apartment was not set up like O’Neil’s had been. When we walked in we were in an entry hall. There was a closet on the left; on the right was an open doorway to a very small kitchen. Everything was gleaming black and silver, with the perfection of a showroom. I guess Cho didn’t cook either.

On the counter was a wine rack, stocked with a selection of reds, including some Chiantis I knew cost upwards of sixty bucks a bottle. I walked in and stood before the tall thin refrigerator. I pulled the handle and was rewarded with crisp sucking sound some acoustic engineer must have slaved for days to produce, the sound implying any food stuff you deigned to entrust to this chill-chest would be kept fresher than the day it was plucked from the field. Inside there was milk, a few eggs, and a well stocked drawer of white wines, complete with a little digital thermometer to assure you they weren’t as cold as your milk.

“I don’t think you’ll replace his handheld in there,” Belinda said behind me in an amused tone.

I closed the door and looked at her. “It’s a low percentage location, true, but since I’m here, it’s worth looking around, to flesh out my understanding of Cho.”

“And what does his refrigerator tell you?” She asked, arms crossed over her chest, and slightly mocking smile on her face.

“He entertains a lot, from the wine, but doesn’t eat most of his meals here. At a guess, I’d say most of his conquests come here and are greeted with their choice of expensive wine.”

The smile wilted a little, but she didn’t say anything else, so I went and looked through into the cupboards. I say looked into because they were all fronted with slightly green tinted glass. The plates and bowls were all white stoneware. Clean-lined, heavy, classy and functional, the kind of plates you buy if you want them to look good, but don’t want to be distracted by them.

There was a coffee maker on the counter that looked like it could not only brew you the perfect cup of Joe, but do your taxes and double as a weekend-get-away starship. There were three vacuum seal canisters huddled next to the Coffee-Maker Enterprise. Each had a piece of white tape on the top and was labeled in impossibly neat copperplate handwriting. Jamaica Blue Mountain (all three words fully written out), Kona and Arona. I’d heard of it, but never had it. They grow it in New Guinea and sell it at extortionate prices. I picked up the canister and cracked the lid, with a sound like a beer opening. That acoustic engineer must make good living; she’s getting lots of work.

I put my nose up to the opening and pulled a deep breath in. Whoever had roasted the beans had cooked them dark, but not burned. There was a smoky smell, like Islay Single Malt. I’ll admit I was tempted to snag some for the old homestead, but I didn’t have anything to carry it in. Plus, I was unwilling to endure the looks from Belinda if I casually filled a pocket with it. I locked the top on back on the canister and listened as a little fan sucked out all the air, preserving the coffee from oxidation.

The counter the Temple of Coffee sat on was what designers call a breakfast bar, basically a big hole in the wall with space on the other side for tall chairs. Looking through it I saw Cho’s living room.

There were the floor-to-ceiling windows I was coming to expect inside G-T. I would have loved to be their glass guy, though thinking about it, they probably just bought a factory when they were putting the building up. Cho had chosen to put low shelves up against the glass, cutting down on the effect of looking out over a cliffs edge. There was a large sectional sofa placed in front of it, but no obvious TV.

I turned back to Belinda who was still hugging herself. “Let’s look at the rest of the place. Cho would have had one of your top of the range handhelds, yes?”

“Yes, we don’t let uncleared gear interface with our data systems, too big a chance of a data breach.”

That made sense. “Well, let’s see if we can replace it,” I told her and squeezed past to go into the living room.

The decorating style was an interesting mix. Immediately to the right of the doorway was a big dragon drum. It stood on its own little stand, of cherry-red wood. Thirty inches in diameter, the thing was gorgeous. It was inlaid with the traditional curving, swooping Asian dragon, but the materials were anything but traditional. Each piece of the inlay was anodized aluminum. The colors were reds, greens, blues, and yellows, but there must have been five or ten different shades of each. The studs holding the leather drum heads taught were brass, with different Korean ideograms stamped on each. It was a drum designed to be seen, not played.

A large folding screen showed a scene of birds and tigers, all embroidered on silk covered the stub of the wall between the glass outer wall and the doorway I assumed led to a bathroom or the bedroom. This was clearly not a new object like the drum. Here and there the threads were a little ragged and the once bright brass corners were all covered in a patina that only time can produce.

I did a fast scan of the living room, trying to spot the handheld by its shape. It might seem like this is a waste of time, but the reality is human eyes are good at pattern recognition. By having a nice clear mental image of the object you want to replace, you can scan a whole room and be reasonably sure that it is not out in the open if you come up short.

My roving eyes found a rectangular object lying casually on the clean lines of the pale maple table in front of the sectional sofa. Suppressing a grin of satisfaction, I walked over, only to replace it was a fiendishly complex remote. Even good techniques produce false results from time to time. After all a handheld is a thin rectangle about four inches wide by eight long, so was the remote.

So there.

I picked up the remote. It woke up and became more than a thin slab of black glass. There were icons for an audio system, television, holo and the media library that backed them up. I glanced around again and still did not spot the box for display. Looking up I caught sight of the projection rig clinging to the ceiling above the breakfast bar. That meant the windows must be part of the system, a place to project both two and three dimensional programs. Got it.

I punched up the menus for recorded files. A few thousand audio files, with a range of artists from recent pop to classic jazz, there was a good selection of the Rat Pack, really old school, but I couldn’t fault Cho’s taste. The video files had a lot of recordings from bio-tech conferences. I guess if you didn’t get out of the acrology much, this would be a good way to keep up with the state of the art.

Turning the remote over in my hands I saw that it had a port for inserting holo-crystals. It’s kind of an expensive option to have be able to play portable holo’s, most folks who can afford a holo rig are content to let their home servers store the large files. I guess if you have a Grand Poobah’s apartment, and media center, you buy all the bells and whistles.

“Do we have access to Cho’s personal data storage?” I asked Belinda’s back as she was looking around on the shelves of books.

She turned, “We can. What do you want to know?”

“I’m not sure. Can you have Downey and Chatham compile a list of the folders and files?”

“Sure, I’ll put it on their deliverables for today,” She said and began communing with her data rig. While she waved her hands and spoke to the air, I walked into the bedroom.

Maybe its being a genetic engineer, or maybe it was just a really strict Catholic School experience, but Cho’s level of organization extended to his bedroom, just like everything else in his life. Usually there is a certain amount of dishevel in a persons bedroom. If company isn’t expected (and sometimes even if it is), there is often a sloppily made bed, or the odd pair of pants loitering around on the floor. But in this room there was none of that.

Tan carpet with a pattern like a map of an old-style computer chip running through it in a lighter tan covered the floor. Again there were the floor-to-ceiling windows on one wall; though this time they looked out onto a largish balcony, complete with café table and wire chairs.

The bed was a king sized beast with a black leather headboard. The bedspread looked as though it have been positioned with the help of a laser level and the tensioning equipment from an America’s Cup yacht. A black blanket and black sheets peeked over the top of the bedspread up near the pillows. I ran a hand along a pillow case; it was smooth and crisp, probably made from some ridiculously high thread count Egyptian cotton.

The walls of the bedroom were a dark grey and all the furniture was black. Cho must have had some trouble with insomnia. One of the first things a sleep specialist recommends is a dark room, dark sheets and no highly reflective surfaces. Most folks don’t know that we all open our eyes from time to time while we sleep. If there is too much light in the room, it starts the wake up process, flushing out naturally occurring melatonin. If you have a dark room, this is a lot less likely to happen, so you stay asleep. Of course if you don’t want to invest in all that, a good sleep mask will pretty much do the same thing for you.

I wondered over to the tall chest of drawers against one wall. On the top was a clock, a couple of blue and gold vases, and a bowl to catch all things that a busy man in the mid-twenty first century might carry around in his pockets. It was empty now.

I tugged open the top drawer, inside, in obsessively neat order were socks and underwear. Cho was a boxer-brief guy. The next two drawers’s revealed sweaters and loose casual pants, the bottom drawer was taken up by more sheets and pillowcases. Standing up I was struck by how thick the top of the dresser was.

I pulled out the top drawer again and then gripped the top of the slot. It slid out a little. Aha! A hidden drawer. I pulled it all the way open. Oh my. Inside, in the same obsessively ordered fashion, was a few hundred dollars worth of sex toys. A wide selection of phallic-shaped molded rubber, of varying length and girth confronted me. There was a tightly organized section for oils and lubricants, as well different types of soft-sided restraints. In the dead center of the drawer of kinky sin, was a holo storage crystal. I reached in and picked it up.

I heard Belinda coming into the room and quickly palmed the data crystal.

“Did you replace anything?” she asked.

I couldn’t help grinning. It’s not that often that life gives you a perfect straight line. Turning to her and gesturing widely, I said, “Sure, did. Welcome to the toy store.”

I expected her to laugh, after all we’re all adults and even the most tightly laced person has had a walk on a wild side or two in their lives. Instead her eyes widened and she paled a little bit, before blushing bright red. I couldn’t really blame her, some of the larger, ah, items were long and thick enough to make a female elephant worry about stretching. Still Belinda is tough as nails, she took a couple of deep breathes to compose herself and came to join me.

“Why are you looking in his drawers?” She asked, as the display of toys held our gazes.

“More data points. I wasn’t looking for this, but it does give a more complete picture of old Constantine. I think it’s safe to call him an enthusiast, don’t you?”

“Clearly,” she said, then tore her gaze away and looked at me. “Can we agree we won’t replace it in there?”

“Sure,” I said and pushed the hidden drawer closed. Strange that Belinda was so prudish about this, we had a lot of fun trying new things when she took Human Sexuality back in school. Maybe she didn’t like the idea of Cho’s recreational time soiling the G-T image.

We made a quick sweep of the rest of the apartment, but no luck replaceing the handheld or anything else of use. It was a long shot anyway that Cho would have left his the computer he put his personal research journal on at home when he went to the lab. I called Chief Round.

“Johnny, looks like we’ve got a break, the handheld isn’t in Cho’s apartment. We haven’t torn the place up, but he’d have had it out in the open at home.”

“So you think the killer took it?” I nodded to him, “But the door logs don’t show anyone but Cho carding into the lab, until Taylor and O’Neil arrived in the morning.”

“Key cards can be spoofed, or maybe he knew the killer and they came into the lab with him,” I suggested.

Round shook his head, “No. Cho wouldn’t let us put cameras in the lab, but we have the halls around it covered. And the door frame has passive laser logging, everyone and every thing that breaks the plain of the door gets recorded. We have a clean record of Cho and six Eolin-I sized people entering, then nothing more.”

“Then we’re back to someone changing records.”

“No way, our systems are tightly locked down. Someone might, if they were world-class, hack the system. But we fall back on multiple redundant logging, even if they slipped in, it would show on the logs that something had been changed.”

“This is a really big company and a city, Johnny, how can you be so sure?”

“Because data safety falls under my department, both for G-T, and the acrology. I’ve a dedicated Black Hat team who spends all their time testing for weak-links.”

“If you say so, Johnny, but I am unwilling to accept that Cho was killed by magic, and that’s what your logs are suggesting. In any case, if we replace who has the handheld, that’s going to be the prime suspect.”

“Agreed. I’d be a lot happier when we know how he was killed, that’s going to point us to who as well.”

“Well, do me a favor and have your team recheck the logs, going back ten weeks or so should be enough.”

“Thanks for blowing my overtime budget, Hunt,” Round said sourly.

“Hey, you’re the one with a deadline; I was enjoying my Wednesday when you dragged me in.” I told him and cut the call short. I didn’t want Johnny seeing the wheels going around in my head. It was possible they had everything locked down like he said. But someone with administrator level passwords, say someone like the Chief of Police, could alter the records and cover their tracks. I hadn’t forgotten what Taylor told me about Cho and Round having a shouting match. I like Johnny and have known him for years, but at the start of an investigation you can’t rule people out just because you like them.

As I put my G-T issued handheld away, Belinda gave me an apprising look. “You don’t buy the idea that no one was in the lab when they all died?”

“It comes down to Occam’s beard trimmer. All things being equal the simplest explanation is likely to be the true one. As hard as it might be to get past Johnny’s security, it’s still simpler than killing remotely.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Let’s go talk to the Eolin-I,” I told her.