Part 1
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15
The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue, Part 16.
Louis Shalako
SimTech security chief Letitia Bennett was working in her office when the call came through from Edwin, supervising Plan Nine activities down in the classrooms.
Louis Shalako
SimTech security chief Letitia Bennett was working in her office when the call came through from Edwin, supervising Plan Nine activities down in the classrooms.
“What’s up, Edwin?” Informality with junior
employees was one of her strengths.
They loved her for it.
“Bingo. I think we’ve nailed it.”
“Oh, really.”
“Yes. We have confirmed they are creating new IDs
and credit cards. So far they have not been reported for fraud.”
“How is that possible?”
“Because they’ve been paying them off just as
quickly—electronically.”
Letitia sat up, and had to stop herself from reaching
for the icon showing Boyd’s desk.
She hesitated.
“Go on—please.”
“She’s got a shit-load of bank accounts. We’ve only
been able to crack a small number of them. She’s got a few hundred here, a
grand there, ten thousand somewhere else. It’s a good trick if you want to
travel incognito. If an account gets shut down, she just tries another. All the
retailers want to get paid, and the bank of course wants to see the transaction
go through so they can get the fee. No crimes have been reported. Ergo, no
crimes have been investigated. They’re off the radar insofar as that goes.”
“What about the IDs?”
He shook his head in awe.
“Making them up as they go along, adding in back
history and entire family trees. And, as we well know, her internal capacity is
vast—and very, very quick.”
It was a jolt, all right, but SimTech had built
her—and their own resources were considerable. Now that they had something to
go on…
“Interesting!” She had questions, and Edwin, with
his short, thick black hair and bland face, every inch the professional
educator, looked at her with alert blue eyes of the darkest shade from behind
his vanity faux spectacles/Googgs.
She thought for a
second. Taken along with the fact that Betty Blue had been stealing her
employer blind, it made sense. She hadn’t shared that with the Plan Nine team
or their supervisor as there was no real reason to do so. The source of that data was highly-confidential; but
with a secure and private window inside of Mister Carlson’s head it was simple
enough.
“What about the cars?”
“The cars were stolen, used as briefly as possible,
and then abandoned where they wouldn’t be found too quickly.” He glanced at his
notes and then over his shoulder, giving someone, presumably their team, a
smile and a nod. “The one where they tumbled it down an overgrown ravine was
classic. She knew exactly where she was going on that one. When they stole a car, it was from one of several
sources. Our team has some good imaginations…they stole from high-theft areas,
information freely available from any number of sources. Betty could access
that, under a false ID. They stole cars from folks who were not using them or
out of contact. One was camping, one family was on a canoe trip, one was from
someone sleeping in the very motel-room it was stolen from…er, outside of.”
“Okay.”
He went on.
“One car was taken from a used car lot. It was a
Saturday night, it was a small town, and the vehicle was taken from a back
row—not the shiny, big-ticket items lined up along the street. It was just a
beater no one was interested in.”
“Hmn.”
“One of them was an old car, a valuable antique.
That was in a storage unit. The owner didn’t know it was gone until the police
contacted them…”
“So. It can be done then—”
“Yes. If you had access to reams of personal data of
the most obscure and trivial kind. And if you had time and resources to sift
through it.”
She had more questions.
“But going from one jurisdiction to another, using
public roads—how are they doing that?”
“Ah. Yes.” Edwin took a breath, again consulting his
notes. “Surprisingly, there are long stretches of secondary roads with no
cameras. Some are dirt, some clay, some are not maintained in winter, some are
not maintained even in summer. Not even product and delivery trackers. Those
are all satellite, right? The real trick is to link the sections up and stay on
them for any distance. But this explains the remarkably eccentric track they’re
leaving.”
The amount of data gathered at this level was so vast, it had to have local filters--a car moving down a road in Seattle was irrelevant in Oswego, as Edwin put it.
The amount of data gathered at this level was so vast, it had to have local filters--a car moving down a road in Seattle was irrelevant in Oswego, as Edwin put it.
It was only over the course of many hours, several
days in fact, that they had been able to get a general trend. There was no
telling when they might zip off on another tangent. Since the team were still
looking backwards, it was hard to guess forwards, although fuzzy logic would dictate
to some extent…Edwin faded in her attention as the ramifications whirled around
and around in her head.
The trail, so far as they had been able to
reconstruct it—once they had the GPS data from recovered vehicles, (another
neat trick, and only slightly illegal) showed an incredible zigzagging, back
and forth, left and right and left and right again.
“When they came to a bottleneck, they simply
abandoned the vehicle.”
“…and then they went across country?”
“Yes, Missus Bennett. Or, they were using phony IDs,
including a high-powered chip. Betty could simply hold it in her hand and
maybe…all they have to do is to interfere with the signal from her own chip. Just
jam it, even though an alarm might sound somewhere. Once you’re over the
wire—slum folks call it ‘going outlaw,’ they could just walk down the street
until they were past the choke-point and then steal another car.”
While the penalties were high, so were the stakes.
Some folks took the risk. Those were either the really dangerous ones,
psychopaths on a mission, or folks with a lot to lose. Too many offences were
capital offenses these days, but no one was interested in Edwin’s opinion on
that.
In his opinion, it simply drove up violent crime
statistics because there was nothing to be gained by surrender or cooperation.
It was almost as if someone had a vested interest in promoting crime, and
especially violent crime. It was strange, but the new capital-theft category
the Justice System was now using had really been a mistake in Edwin’s
opinion.
He cleared his throat.
“Mad as it seems, if you’re nervy enough, you can
beat the chip-scanners. One case involved a person wearing a soft lead wrapper
around their foot. That’s where they’re implanted in Eire. They’re not uniform
around the world, which causes a few headaches when traveling. They had a fake
chip in their hand and approached the reader with their arm extended. The
reading device was presented with one warm body and one strong signal. In that
case, they only needed to get through the one checkpoint. How long Betty Blue
and this Nettles character can keep it up, is a very good question.”
They were also heading out into far more open
country.
Letitia could hear their young team members chatting
excitedly in the background, still following up leads and by the sounds of it
enjoying the challenge immensely.
She chose her words.
“Well. Our criminals…the subjects must have some
very good skills and equipment.”
“Absolutely, Missus Bennett. It’s not easy to fake
IDs, chips and vehicle transponders. The cars are the easy part, I’m told, but
it really is a tough job—the usual method is to grab the car and chop-shop it
within the minimum time-frame. Ten minutes and off, is their motto, no matter
how many desirable bits and pieces are left behind.”
And if the police didn’t find it within their own
minimum time-frame, too much information was constantly being poured into the
stream. They had to move on. They wrote a report and forgot about it.
There was another crime always being committed, and
cops spent the bulk of their resources in areas where they thought it would do
the most good. Or at least some good.
Unless a vehicle tripped a sensor with its
transponder, it was as good as invisible—no one would be looking for it in the
good, old-fashioned way, via radio calls, shift bulletins and vehicle
descriptions. No one used their eyes anymore. It was a wonder they put license
plates on them at all these days, but of course the department of motor
vehicles had to sell the taxpayers something tangible and the license plate was
a personal trophy of sorts, what with the cost of operating a vehicle and
everything. The real tag was a string of data loaded into the car’s transponder.
***
Mister Scruffles, looking devastating in his jacket and ruff, scampered around everyone’s ankles and sniffed with particular interest at Betty’s feet before giving her a grudging okay..
It was too bad Mister Nettles was blind, thought
Rose Downie, her little doggy was a prime attraction, one that set this establishment
off over a hundred others on this street alone.
“Yap! Yap!”
“Shush.”
The animal came over and fell on its side beside her piano bench. It lay there with its tongue hanging out, knowing the routine very well, only looking up from time to time as if to check on how things were going.
“Shush.”
The animal came over and fell on its side beside her piano bench. It lay there with its tongue hanging out, knowing the routine very well, only looking up from time to time as if to check on how things were going.
The chapel was larger, and emptier than expected. They
should have brought their own audience. Yet the tone and the atmosphere, the
sounds and the smells, were loaded, like long wet branches bearing some heavy
fruit.
Scott was beginning to catch on, having to fight for
calm and for air. Scott forced himself not to breathe for a while…he was
hyperventilating. He swallowed convulsively, trying to stand up straight and
look right, and at the same time wishing he could see this for himself.
It was the moment of a lifetime, and Betty’s
hurriedly-whispered instructions didn’t give the full flavour of the thing.
Clad in glowing white chiffon, Betty stood in stark contrast to Scott in his
rented dark grey tuxedo. She searched his face. No sign of fear and that was
good.
Both heavily disguised, they were still the same people inside.
Both heavily disguised, they were still the same people inside.
The Reverend Fallon Downie was brutally handsome,
with a dimple on the chin, long, thin black hair slicked back with some kind of
pomade, and a pencil-thin mustache. The other half of the dynamic duo that ran the
place was gently playing the wedding march, looking over, head back, wearing an
inane grin that Scott couldn’t benefit from and Betty ignored. Rose was a
slender blonde lady of indeterminate age, with a breathy, whispery voice, wide
cheekbones and a pointed chin. She had big, velvet-painting-children blue eyes.
She gave the impression of hanging on to every word, with not a thought of her
own to contribute.
Her
questions had all been asked a million times. Someone had once said Rose had no
unexpressed thoughts.
Everything in the world was all new to Scott and
Betty.
They faced each other, holding hands. She had eyes
only for him, and Scott was listening for all it was worth in case he made some
bone-headed response.
“…blah-blah-blah…blah-blah-blah…blah-blah…richer,
poorer…sickness and health…blah-blah…”
Tall, and wearing a Colonel Sanders white suit and
black shoestring tie, the only thing missing was the monocle. It took but a
moment for each party to place a ring on the other’s finger; a good sale and
one the Reverend would have liked to have seen every day. Every so often it
happened, and he was wise to stock a few rings.
"Do you, Betty Blue, take this man, Scott Nettles,
to be your lawfully-wedded husband?”
“I do.”
“And do you, Scott Nettles, take this woman, Betty
Blue, to be your lawfully-wedded wife?”
“I do—I do.”
The lone spectator, apparently waiting for their
partner to show up going by the black tuxedo and creamy white ruff, coughed
quietly and wiped a tear from his craggy, eighty year-old face, a lived-in
face, a face that could hold a three-day rain. He reached for his big yellow
handkerchief.
“You, sir, may now kiss the bride.” He turned to
Betty with a big smile and threw his arms up and out. “And you, my dear, you
may now kiss the groom.”
Scott and Betty proceeded to do just that.
“God Bless you, my children. For you, Mister and
Missus Scott Nettles, this is the beginning of a whole new life.”
The organ music swelled, the lady playing it swayed
from side to side and the Reverend beamed at the happy couple in unfeigned
approval.
“Yap! Yap!”
They ignored Mister Scruffles, who uttered a
profound sigh, wagged his tail and looked on in hope and wonder.
***
Not unnaturally, Gene MacBride wanted to be in on
the kill.
While the Vegas cops were pretty good about such
things, nailing enough credit for his own department was a valid consideration
these days, and when had it ever been any different?
Armed with state and federal warrants for the arrest
of Scott Nettles and the robot known as Betty Blue—that one was like pulling
teeth from the judge. They had eventually agreed she was either a suspect or she was material evidence...
Gene, Francine, and Parsons hovered above Las Vegas in a courtesy LVPD helicopter..
Gene, Francine, and Parsons hovered above Las Vegas in a courtesy LVPD helicopter..
The helicopter had a characteristic vibration, the
noise was insane, even with the headgear and hearing protection. They were
strapped in and the pilot was throwing the thing around like a fighter jock as
they tried to pinpoint the location.
Francine peered out the side window with her
high-powered Googgs and Parsons was in behind the pilot and copilot, talking a
mile a minute.
Gene wasn’t nearly as excited as he should have
been. First, the odds of them getting out of the desert city without being
spotted were nil, secondly, it was almost like it was too easy. A bird in the
hand is better than two in the bushes, he thought. It was like he wasn’t quite
ready for them yet.
Gene had developed a sneaking affection for Betty
Blue, and Mister Nettles too, for that matter.
They had made his life interesting, if only for a
little while.
“Ah, we’ve got some kind of action…”
Gene’s pulse picked up on Dave’s words.
“Oh…?”
He sat up as straight as he could in his seat, and
taking his scope, took a look out the window at the wedding chapel.
“What kind of action?”
Vegas police were having a busy night, or they would
have vectored them in on the chapel already. Even their drones were busy with a food riot in the ugly end of town, however the pilot informed them that one was in the vicinity and that it would keep a lens on the chapel's front door. They needed people on the ground to make an arrest..
There were no good landing places nearby, and Gene
wanted to make this arrest personally.
“We have three parties getting out of a vehicle—no,
wait, there’s more over there…this doesn’t look good, boss.”
Gene spotted them.
“Fuck.”
He grabbed his com device, already tuned to dispatch
downtown where they awaited his word.
“Emergency! I repeat, emergency! Roll all available
units, destination, Made In Heaven Wedding Chapel…”
He blurted out the address
as well as he remembered it.
Gene shouted at the pilot, drawing a startled look.
“Put this damned thing down on the ground. Now,
Mister. Or I’ll have you on guard duty at a homeless people’s recreation camp
for the rest of your life.”
“But sir!”
“Do it!”
The pilots engaged each other in a look and then
turned away, looking for the biggest parking lot they could find. A rooftop
would do, if that’s the way the man wanted it.
Let that son of a bitch drop the last ten or twelve
feet on his own, for all they cared.
***
After their kiss, Betty unglued herself from Scott.
“Honey, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell
you…”
“You’re pregnant.” He turned to where the Reverend
was. “I’ll bet you didn’t see that one coming, eh, Bud?”
A quick sob ripped from deep in her gizzard and then
she was clinging to Scott, almost knocking him over backwards in her need.
“Oh, my children.” Reverend Downie stepped in for a
quick group hug, and even his wife, the tip of her nose quivering and hastily
throwing back her piano-bench, came over to get in on all the free emotions
going around.
“Oh, dear.” Missus Downie took Betty by the
shoulders and led her over to a pew as the Reverend pumped Scott’s hand in
delight.
“You hear that? She’s pregnant!” With their deep and
abiding love of the unborn, Mister and Missus Downie were right in love with
their latest blessed couple. “Well, don’t that beat all.”
“I—I’m going to be a dad.” Scott choked up for a
moment.
Reverend Downie stepped back, still holding Scott’s
hand and looking for his reaction—it occurred to him that Betty’s pronouncement
was a bit unconventional.
Scott’s face lit, even as the first tears sprung
from the ducts.
“I’m going to be a dad! I’m going to be a dad!”
Yanking his hand free, Scott, barging around like a drunken cow in a ladies’
shoe store, began dancing a jib, an imbalanced rendition still reminiscent of a
Highland Fling, but dangerous enough to onlookers for all of that and the
Reverend stepped back.
Betty and Missus Downie were having girlie hugs and lots of whispering on the front pew, and he beamed at them, quickly grabbing Scott when he hit the top step of the low stage that was their marriage platform.
“Whoa, young fellow. You’re no good to anyone if you
break your neck—”
It was right about then, as the lone spectator in
the back row applauded with an exaggerated golf clap, that the door burst open
and men in long black coats, dark glasses and carrying some of the finest
assault shotguns that money could buy came in, and then one of them fired a shot into the ceiling.
Everything came screeching to a halt and there was a
shocked silence.
***
Boyd and his apprentice hatchet-people Amity Sloan
and Bengt Armitage had Betty Blue and Scott Nettles in custody. The pair were
slumped side-by-side on the front pew, and the other three were face-down on
the highly-polished tiles in front of the marriage platform.
The dog, one Mister Scruffles according to their
sources, came racing out from under the pews where he had initially hidden in
panic and with a quick lunge, bit Amity on the ankle. With an angry kick, she flung the little fellow off, but it came at her again.
“Wa, yew danged sun of a beatch!” With a quick
squeeze of the trigger on her S.P.A.Z. 12 automatic assault shotgun, she blew
the indignant dog’s head off.
What had been intended to solve the problem, left
the headless dog zinging around the room, bouncing off of things and leaving a
big red squelchy mark everywhere it hit…she fired again, and this time the
thing was flung sideways and slammed into a wall.
Rosie was crying unashamedly, and Fallon and the
other gentlemen were cussing and swearing and declaring undying vengeance.
Again, the doors burst open.
Again, someone fired a shot into the ceiling. (And again, a puff of dust came down from the ceiling.)
With the back-up perps outside in custody, Gene
MacBride strode masterfully into the room as the trio froze. With the room
flooding with bulky people in scuffed blue armor, resistance was clearly
futile.
Gene looked over at the dead dog. He looked at
Amity.
“Right. You’ll pay for that.” Proffering a hand, he
accepted her weapon.
The other two didn’t put up a fight.
Gene turned, and Francine took a quick step to avoid
being bowled over. Parsons merely looked vindicated—but a promotion looked very
promising right about then.
Dave Parsons looked at the unhappy couple on the font pew,
holding hands and with Mister Nettles clearly in shock and wondering if the end
of the world had come.
Her eyes met his.
“Betty Blue, I presume.”
Her eyes fell and it was all he could not to crow.
END
