Free Scardown-Jenny Casey-2 by Elizabeth Bear Page B

“The young ones are always hard. I finished that dictation you were waiting on. The data slices are in the box—please correct whatever horrors the voice rec has inflicted on them?”
    “Another mutilation, no doubt. Ain't technology grand?”
    Footsteps crossed the floor behind her, and Kuai rolled her shoulders back and stretched her neck side to side, easing the strain of hours of difficult and delicate work. She turned and regarded the spare, brown-headed form of her assistant.
    Sally stepped through the connecting door into Kuai's office to pick up the data slices. Balancing the box in her left hand, she peered back around the corner. “All right, Dr. Hua. I can tell from the wrappers in the garbage that you had dinner and breakfast here, and you've already finished one autopsy and three dictations. Did you actually sleep last night?”
    “There's a cot,” the Connecticut state chief coroner and civilian commissioner of the Hartford Police offered wryly. “Actually, I did go home. Twice. My dog needed to go out, and I hate leaving him alone all day.”
    Sally snorted. “How many left today?” She gestured through the observation window to the autopsy theater.
    “That was it. Twenty-three-year-old male. It'll be a DUI.”
    “Good, then you're going home. I'll start the paperwork.”
    Kuai hesitated. And then nodded. “Going home. Indeed.”
    Sally cleared her throat as she turned away.
    “Yes?”
    “No taking work home, Dr. Hua.”
    “Yes, ma'am.” Kuai hung her lab coat on the peg and freed her lustrous dark hair from the braid straining her temples. She collected her HCD, a collapsible notebook computer, and the rest of her gear and piled it into her bag, changed her shoes for sneakers, threw her coat on, and stopped with her hand on the door. The smell of coffee overrode chemical scents as Sally fussed in the break room. Voices in the hallway told her the rest of the day shift was arriving.
    Cursing herself for a fool, Kuai turned back to her desk and grabbed a data carrier marked
Case # 835613417, Case # 835613418, Case # 835613419: September 2062 triple homicide Park River Hartford South: Casey, Barbara; Kozlowski, Michael T.; Baobao, Yin.
    She stuffed it into the pocket of her scratchy black wool overcoat, first checking to see if Sally was looking through the glass.
     
    Evening

Tuesday 7 November, 2062

St. George Street

Toronto, Ontario
    Razorface leaned back in the driver's seat of Maker's battered dark blue Bradford Tempest, grateful for the tinted windows. He'd have to change vehicles soon anyway. The old pickup was unobtrusive, but it wasn't good to take chances.
    He'd parked in the shade of a yellowing pine tree, across a lawn and behind a row of shrubs through which he was watching his target: a cluster of one-story gray brick buildings with wide, semimirrored windows. Shadows of people moved inside, odd disconnected horizontal segments that told him there were venetian blinds across the inside of the glass. Keeping his gaze trained past the discreet green-and-tan sign that he couldn't read, he wondered which office belonged to Dr. Alberta Holmes.
    Her image had been easy to find: a formal head shot of a gray-haired, stern-looking woman in power red appeared several times on the Unitek corporate sites. Simon had told him where the research facility was: almost
on
the main University of Toronto campus. Now it was just a matter of getting his hands on Dr. Alberta Holmes.
    Except he hadn't seen her yet. He shifted his shoulders and stretched his legs, cramped despite the truck's spacious cab.
Good thing Maker doesn't drive a compact car.
He drank iced tea out of a disposable and waited.
    Lunchtime came and went, dragged down into twilight. He zipped his jacket another three inches, wondering how late Holmes could possibly work. He had three pricey cars in the parking lot picked out as possibly hers, but all three were gone by the time the streetlamps kicked on. A few teenagers and twenty-odd