Lock In (Lock In, #1)(49)

“That reminds me,” I said.

“Me threatening to kill someone reminds you of something?” Vann asked, surprised. “We haven’t known each other that long, Shane.”

“I had a run-in with Detective Trinh last night,” I said.

“Really.”

“Yeah. Among other things, she implied that you drove your former partner to attempt suicide.”

“Huh,” Vann said. “What else did she tell you?”

“That you have high work standards for other people but not yourself, that you’re sloppy, a little bit dangerous when it comes to procedure, and that you have various addictions that are either the result of, or the contributing factor to you, washing out of the Integrator corps.”

“Did she tell you I set puppies on fire, too?” Vann asked.

“She did not,” I said. “It may have been implied.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think you set puppies on fire,” I said.

Vann smiled at that. “I mean the things Trinh actually said.”

“This is my third day with you,” I said. “You ride me hard—which I don’t mind, by the way—but then you do stuff like you did in there, where you let a bunch of *s with firearms slip away rather than charge them with assault. If they did lawyer up, the fact you threatened them with ‘false personage’ wouldn’t have helped your case any.”

“You caught that,” Vann said.

“I did,” I said. “So maybe that qualifies as sloppy. I do notice that you smoke a lot, and when we talk after six P.M. you always seem to be in a bar, looking for someone to screw. As far as I can see it doesn’t affect your work, and your free time is your own. So I don’t actually care, aside from thinking that basting your lungs with insect poison is a bad idea in general.”

“Do you think it has to do with my time as an Integrator?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” I said. “I don’t get the feeling you’re in a rush to tell me about those days, which tells me something really f*cked up probably happened way back when. But either you’ll tell me when you want to, or you won’t. The same with whatever the hell is going on between you and Trinh, because clearly she’s got a bug up her ass about you.”

“That’s an interesting way to put it,” Vann said.

“Here’s the only thing Trinh said that I worry about,” I said. “She thinks you’re going to fall apart on me, and that when you fall apart, you’re going to end up taking me with you.”

“And what do you think about that?”

“Ask me after the march is done,” I said. “Maybe I’ll have an answer for you then.”

Vann smiled again.

“Look, Vann,” I said. “If you promise me that you’re not going to fall apart on me, I’m going to believe you. But don’t promise me that if you’re not going to be able to follow through. If you can’t promise, that’s fine. But it’s something I want to know up front.”

Vann paused for a moment, looking at me. “Tell you what,” Vann said, finally. “When this weekend is done you and I will sit down somewhere, and I’ll have a beer and you’ll do whatever, and I’ll tell you why I stopped being an Integrator, and why my last partner shot herself in the gut, and why that * Trinh has it in for me.”

“Can’t wait,” I said.

“In the meantime: I’m not going to fall apart on you, Shane. I promise.”

“I believe you,” I said.

“Well, good,” Vann said, and took out her phone to look at the time. “That’s settled, then. Now come on. We have two more district houses to hit.”

“I thought I was going to California,” I said.

“No one’s going to be around until nine A.M. out there,” Vann said. “That’s still a couple hours away. Let’s see if we can punt a bunch more troublemakers back home before then. One of the threeps in the first district holding cell is there on a drunk and disorderly. I want to hear how that happened.”





Chapter Fifteen

I LOOKED AROUND and I was in an evidence room in the FBI offices in Los Angeles. An FBI agent was looking at me. “Agent Shane?” she asked.

“That’s me,” I said, and started to get up. Which is when I encountered a small problem. “I can’t move,” I said, after a minute.

“Yeah, about that,” the agent said. “Our actual spare threep is being used by one of our local agents. Her regular one is in for some maintenance. The only threep we had available for you was this one. It’s been in storage for a while.”

“How long is a while?” I asked. I found the diagnostic settings and started running them.

“I think maybe four years,” the agent said. “Maybe five? Could be five.”

“You’re letting me use a threep that’s evidence for a crime?” I asked. “Isn’t that, I don’t know, tainting the chain of possession?”

“Oh, that case is over,” the agent said. “The owner of that threep died in our detention center.”

“How did that happen?”

“He got shivved.”