Year's Best Scifi 6 Part 13

And how much real difference is there between a headless body and a few hearts beating in a tank?" He shook his head. "I used to tell Jason he was wasting his life, but there's no point arguing with an enthusiast, and it's not as though he needs to worry about money."

"How many subjects does he have?"

"We prefer to call then 'clients,'" Sobieski said, chuckling.

"How many?"

He hesitated. "At present, none he sees regularly, at least not here. Tina's the only one who's a student here; I guess the others don't have time."

"How much time does he spend with her?"

"A couple of hours, every other day."

"And she hasn't been here in two or three weeks?"

A brief pause. "No. I thought she might have gone away on holidays."

"Can I see his office?"

"No." No hesitation, but no unusual emphasis either. "That's out of the question."

"Okay." There didn't seem any point in arguing with him. "Do you know of any of Tina's other friends?"

"No. As I told you, she wasn't my student."

"Can you give me Jason's number?"

"I've already told you, he isn't there. Look, Mr. Horne, I have some idea how Tina's parents feel, I have kids of my own, but I think they're worrying unnecessarily. I'm sure he-sure she's okay."

It was just a tiny slip, and it might not have meant anything. I nodded, then walked out through the cl.u.s.ter of high-tech torture machines and back to my car.

Mrs. Hill seemed surprised to see me back so soon. "Have you found her?"

"No, but I may have found a clue. Has she ever mentioned a Jason Davy, or Davies?"

She blinked, obviously startled. "No, I don't think so..."

d.a.m.n. "May I have another look at her computer?" I booted it again, waited for it to ask for a pa.s.sword. 'Jason' was too short, the system demanded a 6-character minimum, so I tried different combinations of Jason and Davy, variously spelt. The correct word, which I should have thought of earlier, was "Jason!" A menu and another window appeared on the screen; the window showed the view through the camera mounted in the frame at the top: me from hairline to bottom rib. Tina sitting in the same chair must have been a few centimeters shorter; anyone using the computer as a videophone would have seen her face and chest and, if she hid the wheelchair, nothing to indicate that she had a missing leg.

I glanced at the yearbook photo again: not quite beautiful, but more than conventionally pretty. I asked Mrs. Hill to bring me a cup of tea, and ran a quick search for files containing the words "Jason" or "Davy" in their heading or text. I also glanced at her address book, diary, web sites most often and most recently visited, and her email. I found the photos in under three minutes. Mrs. Hill was still out of theroom, so I opened one, t.i.tled only "Jason, Dec 2009." It showed a young man, mid twenties, naked but for a wet towel around his waist. He was handsome in an unremarkable way, clean-shaven and square-chinned, with dark wavy collar-length hair. He wasn't bulked up like Sobieski, but he was obviously an athlete, with powerful-looking wrists and shoulders. The photo looked as though it had been taken without warning, or much skill on the part of the photographer, with a flash, at low resolution, and from a low angle. The setting looked like standard motel decor. I stared at this for a moment, then brought up another photo, t.i.tled simply "Me, by Jason, Dec 09." This was a high-res picture, larger than the screen could display and I had to scroll down from the top to see it all. Her expression was quietly winsome with a slight hint of nervousness in her eyes, though maybe that was my imagination. Her smile, at least, was more sincere than in her yearbook photo. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were bare, very large, and very lovely. She was lying on a bed, naked, her long left leg stretched out before her, the stump of her right, no longer than my hand, pointed to the camera.

The setting, again, looked like a typical motel room, possibly the same one, but this time the shot was posed and some care had been taken with the lighting and focus- though I don't know enough about digital photography to pick how much of that might've been done later, with the software equivalent of a darkroom trick. I do know that digital cameras, like Polaroids before them, have always owed a lot of their popularity to the fact that the photos don't require developing; if you'd taken a photo like this to a commercial developer, he would have- I had to stop and think about that. Most would simply have refused to develop it. The "Confidential"

developers who used to work through adult bookshops frequently sold copies of hardcore photos given to them to develop to the sleazier p.o.r.nsites. But what would they have done with a shot like this? Was there a market for it?

I heard Mrs. Hill returning, and closed both photo files just before she walked in. She had a willow pattern cup and saucer in one hand, a magazine- Woman's Day -in the other. She handed me the cup of tea, then opened the magazine. "You mentioned Jason Davy."

"Yes," I said, staring at the address book. There were two phone numbers-one a mobile, the other a UWA extension-and an e-mail address for Jason Davy, but nothing to say where he lived.

"I knew I'd seen the name before, but I couldn't remember where," said Mrs. Hill. "I don't think Tina ever mentioned him, but it says here he's studying at the University, so maybe they've met." She handed me the magazine. I saw a young man who looked very like the Jason of the photo-graph-though dressed in an expensive suit and with not a hair out of place-before I read the caption or recognized the man standing next to him. Davy isn't an uncommon name, and it hadn't occurred to me to look for a connection to Charles Davy, the local beer baron. Owning a successful brewery in Australia is like having a licence to print money, and Davy was reputed to have billions in a.s.sets, including a few famous paintings, some high-priced real estate, a successful FM station, some prize-winning racehorses, and several state and federal politicians. It was rumoured that much of his income came from shares in a company that produced wireheading hardware, stunsticks and missile guidance systems, but this was unproven. His wife had been a celebrated beauty, and his youngest and middle sons- Roman and Jason-favoured her, though the heir apparent, Gavin, had already inherited some of his father's gut and a few of his chins. It only took me a few seconds to read the text; Gavin, it seemed, was no longer one of Australia's most eligible bachelors, having married a young woman alleged to be a journalist. Roman and Jason were still available, however, at least according to the text. I didn't see Tina in any of the photos, though I noticed someone who might have been Sobieski in a crowd of athletes and sports commentators, all of them holding stubbies. The wedding, the magazine gushed, had cost nearly half a million dollars, which made it a very expensive beer commercial.

I nodded, for Mrs. Hill's benefit. "He's doing his graduate degree in human movement, and he's helped her work out a training program."

"Do you think she has a crush on him?"

I stared at the magazine, not wanting to look at her. "I think she might," I said. I took out my compad, and began pulling data from the Canon.I've known Teri Lovell for half of my life, or half of her life if you prefer; either way, it's a little under seventeen years. We met in a film cla.s.s in our first year at uni, and helped each other out when I was in vice and she was doing research for her dissertation. That dissertation, on masturbation and technology in the AIDS years, became a best-seller-particularly after she admitted to doing a short stint in a peepshow and a much longer one as a phone s.e.x operator as part of her research. She makes a good living as a consultant, writer and guest lecturer, but still lives in Perth because her ex-husband has custody of their child. I showed her the photos of Tina I'd downloaded from the desk-panel, giving her as little background as I could get away with. "What do you think?"

"Interesting. I could be wrong-this is her collection, not his-but if you look at the earliest photos, he started off with portraits. Then, a few months later, semi-nudes. Look at this one, from August; it's not set up as well as the others, but if I'm any judge, that's afterglow. Look at the flush, and her eyes. So they'd probably been lovers for several months before she let him photograph her taboo zone, which for her is her stump, not her crotch." She scrolled through the photos. "Even in the early shots when she's fully dressed, she hasn't kept any that show her below the waist, as though she'd rather not be reminded of it. And here's a much later one; see, just a hint of pubic hair at the bottom there? It looks to me as though he's proceeded at a rate that she's comfortable with, letting her adjust to the idea that he finds her amputation arousing rather than distressing. She obviously likes and trusts him, at the very least; you can see it in her eyes. You say he chose to specialise in care for amputees?"

The bad taste had returned to my mouth, stronger than ever before. "Yes, that's right. Do you think he did this because he's attracted to them? To indulge a fetish?"

"They prefer to call themselves 'devotees,'" she said, nodding. "In this case, that may be appropriate. While it was probably her amputation that made her attractive to him in the beginning, he hasn't objectified her in any of these photos. All of them show her face, which suggests that he thinks of her as a person. I wish I could say that of more so-called erotica." She looked at me for the first time in minutes. "You have a problem with this, don't you?"

"Yes," I admitted. "I can't understand how someone could be attracted to...well, to a deformity. A mutilation."

"I don't either, and I've spoken to quite a few devotees, mostly over the net. Most amputees don't understand them either; some love them, some find them unbearably creepy. I guess most of us would rather be loved for who we are than what we look like, but how often do you think that happens?" She glanced over her shoulder at the shelves full of videos and magazines. "I've heard Freudians try to explain the attraction in terms of childhood experience, but most of the devotees themselves don't seem to bear out any of their theories. But there have been entire cultures which considered footbinding or female genital mutilation aesthetically pleasing, and look how many men are fascinated by super-sized b.r.e.a.s.t.s, some larger than any that ever existed in nature. You think that cutting a woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s open to insert blobs of silicon isn't a form of mutilation? Yet that's considered sane-obviously if big is good, then enormous must be better, right?-while finding pregnant women attractive is considered a perversion.

"There are a lot of amputee websites, if you're interested, or I have some videos." Teri's townhouse is a museum of reputed erotica that the Addams family would think twice before visiting. "Most of them are done by amateurs, enthusiasts, and they're very softcore-women dressing or undressing, bathing or showering, doing exercises or even household ch.o.r.es, with maybe a little talking dirty or masturbation.

The more unusual or specialised the fetish, the more men'll pay for softcore," she explained. "Though there's some professionally made hardcore on the market as well-mostly landmine victims, if I had to guess."

I shuddered. Sometimes I wonder if Teri isn't trying to shock me; she's almost forgotten what it's like to be shocked herself by anything less than paedophilia or rape or torture, and maybe she needs someone like me as a barometer. A horrible thought occurred to me. "Enough of a market that they'd bother mutilating women just for the trade?"

She stared, then shook her head violently. "No, that'd be insane."

"How many p.o.r.n stars had plastic surgery?"

"That's different." "And what about snuff movies? There's a market for those."

She sighed. "Most snuff and torture movies are either fake, or made by secret police and sold to make a little extra cash for their pension funds. Disposing of a body is easy if you're in that sort of business, but caring for an amputee is expensive. Even if you could re-attach the limb, it just wouldn't be worth it."

"What if money wasn't a problem?"

"Designer p.o.r.n?" She hesitated. "It's possible, certainly, but I've never heard of it being done, and it'd be a lot cheaper to use computer animation."

I nodded, and looked at the photo of Tina on the screen. The trust in her eyes was beautiful, and almost palpable, and I felt I had to know she was okay. Another horrible thought occurred to me. "If more is better...would a devotee find a double-amputee more attractive than-" I couldn't finish the sentence, but Teri obviously understood; she closed her eyes, bit her lip, then shook her head slowly.

"Not everyone believes more is better, Nick," she said. "I don't think that whoever took those photographs would do something like that. It's possible, but I don't think it's likely."

"How sure are you of that?"

She looked at the screen for a long time, her expression sour. "Not sure enough to sleep easily tonight, d.a.m.n you."

It was dark by the time I drove home from Teri's, and I was glad I'd recharged the fuel cells; the solar panel can barely run the air-conditioner. There was a long black Mercedes parked across the road from my flat, looking as out of place in my low-rent neighborhood as my Suzuki had in Dalkeith, and I wondered if someone had died. I walked wearily up the stairs; if I'd been looking up, I might have seen the guy standing outside my door before he saw me, but I was too d.a.m.n tired. We stared at each other down the corridor; he was black-African-American, not Indigine-and bald and about two metres tall.

He wore a bomber jacket, black jeans, and black Reebok basketball boots. "Mr. Horne?"

"Yes," I said, wearily. "And you are?"

"Harry Keyes," he replied, a hint of injured pride in his voice. It took me a second to place the name, but he'd been suspended for a season, and I was never a big basketball fan anyway. "Somebody wants to meet you."

I nodded. "In the limo?"

"No. I have to take you to him. Shall we go?" He was polite, I'll give him that; he opened the back door of the limo for me, and encouraged me to help myself to a drink from the bar and watch the Wildcats game on the TV. I declined both, graciously, and he turned the radio on softly. Davy's station, of course. "Do you mind if I use the phone?"

"Go for it."

I called Tina; her system was screening calls, as always, but it put me through to her. I told her where I was and as much as I knew of what was happening. I'd expected to be driven back to Dalkeith-it was common knowledge that the Davys lived on Millionaire Row, in a house that realised his more-is-better dreams-but instead Keyes took me to Perth's ugliest skysc.r.a.per, an aluminium monstrosity propped up by flying b.u.t.tresses. I read somewhere that the tallest buildings in a town reflect that society's values; if so, this one screamed that money mattered and beauty didn't. Keyes patted me down while we rode the elevator. "I'm not armed," I a.s.sured him.

"I know. They don't want this conversation recorded." He took my compad, phone and camera, then led me through a grandiose foyer into a book-lined office with a view of the river and King's Park.

The man behind the enormous antique desk was in his early forties, and his designer shark-skin jacket and yellow silk tie indicated that he lived in an entirely air-conditioned world. Either that, or he was as cold-blooded as a reptile. Cla.s.sical music played softly in the background; it sounded like a waltz, but not one I recognized. His voice was crisp and cold, like Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes.

"Mr. Horne, I understand you're looking for information on Jason Davy. I thought we might save you some time." He glanced at his gold watch, while Keyes leaned on the door behind me. Sobieski must have told Davy that I'd been asking questions; I wondered how much the family had given the Universityover the years. "And, of course, prevent any inaccurate information being disseminated. Jason Davy is a young man of excellent character and great compa.s.sion who, as well as sharing his father's interest in sports, has devoted himself to improving the lives of the differently abled." He paused for breath, and I interjected, "Are you going to talk non-stop until seven am, or can I ask the occasional question?"

Keyes turned a laugh into a cough, and Sharkskin stared at me. "Why seven am?"

"At seven am, Tina Hill will have been missing for forty-eight hours. At that point, it becomes a police matter."

The temperature in the room dropped by a few degrees. "Tina Hill?"

"Pretty girl. Eighteen years old, strawberry blonde hair, one leg."

He smiled thinly. "Ah, yes. Jason drew up a training schedule for her, did he not?"

"I understand that he did, yes. How long has he been missing?"

"He's not missing. We know where he is."

"And where is that?"

Another glance at the Rolex. "The USA."

"And Tina Hill?"

"Why are you concerned with Tina Hill?"

"Her parents want to know where she is, and have paid me to find out. It seems likely that Jason Davy was the last person to see her, which suggests that the police will want to speak to him in," I glanced at my own watch, "about ten hours and thirteen minutes."

Sharkskin shook his head. "The police will check with Immigration, and discover that Tina Hill left Perth for Sydney yesterday, then caught a connecting flight to LA. I'm quite sure the immigration officers and flight crew will remember her." The smile remained thin, though there was an extra hint of smugness in it.

I stood. "Thank you, that's all I needed to know. See you at the feeding frenzy."

"I'm afraid not," he replied, without raising his voice. "You may already know that as Tina Hill turned eighteen last May, she is legally a responsible adult. Yes? Do you also know that her parents are living off the compensation she receives for the accident in which she was injured? That the mortgage on the house in which they live is in her name, not in theirs? That their attempts at establis.h.i.+ng businesses left them bankrupt, or that they have not attempted to find any work in some three years? They are to put it bluntly, trash. And I think you also need to know that they will not be requiring your services after this evening; you will be paid for your time and reimbursed for any expenses you may have incurred, and the matter will rest there." He leaned back in the fancy leather chair, steepled his fingers and studied his manicure. "You may also be interested to know how much we know about you. We have researchers of our own, you see." He tapped the s.p.a.ce bar on his keyboard, and the aquarium screensaver was replaced by a page of text. I could see it reflected in the window behind him, but not well enough to read any of it. "Nicholas Arthur Horne, born in Melbourne, July 20th, 1976. Father a successful barrister and lecturer in law, mother a professor of reproductive medicine, still married and now living in Melbourne again. You attended Murdoch University, where you failed Law, then joined the police service in 1996.

You were reprimanded on seventeen occasions for excessive use of a stunstick while intervening in domestic disputes. During your time in the vice squad, you set a state record for stress leave, most of it taken after a pimp who you'd been unable to convict was shot in 2005." I didn't deign to answer that; I had a good alibi, and had never even been charged with the murder. "Your superior was heard to refer to you as a 'Coyote'-a reference, perhaps, to your running speed?"

"He said 'Quixote,'" I corrected. "As in the Don."

"Ah, I see," he said, raising his eyebrows slightly. I'd surprised him, and that obviously didn't happen often. "Tilting at windmills, and so on. Let's see, what else? You've never married, and have no known children. Since 2006, you've been working as a private investigator, specializing in surveillance video work and locating missing persons, mostly for debt collection agencies. While you've managed to avoid a criminal record and stay out of debt yourself, you clearly do not have the money or the credit rating for a protracted legal battle, or even a short one. On the other hand, you would not be eligible for legal aid."

The smile became a little wider. "If you truly believe that there is no such thing as bad publicity, then I willbe happy to disillusion you. If not, I would recommend that you not attempt to take this any further- and that, Mr. Horne, is the best free legal advice you are ever likely to receive. If there's anything else you need to know, I suggest you ask it now. My time is expensive."

I didn't doubt it. "Where in the USA?"

"I'm not obliged to tell you that."

"When will they be back?"

"In all probability, they will both return to Perth in time for the beginning of the academic year.

Maybe a few weeks later."

I nodded, and turned towards the door. Keyes opened it for me, and we walked back to the elevator. "I wonder how much his teeth cost," I muttered.

Keyes smiled. "More than you could afford to pay, though I got to admit I've thought about it myself." He handed the compad, camera and phone back. "But I don't think you need to worry about the girl," he said confidently, when we reached the car park. "Jason wouldn't hurt her. He's not that sort of guy."

"Uh-huh."

Keyes rolled his eyes. "I'm not saying that just because I work for his dad. I mean it."

"Have you met the girl?"

"No...The family's known about her for months, but Jason's never brought her home. He drives everywhere himself; I haven't even had to pick him up from a pub or a party for more'n a year."

"Do you know where Jason's gone?"

"s.h.i.+t no, and I wouldn't tell you if I did." He went to open the back door for me, and I asked, "Mind if I ride in the front? I feel like I'm at a funeral, otherwise."

"Fine by me."

We rode through the city in silence, then up Thomas Street. "What's this thing like to drive?"

He grunted. "She's a tank. Lots of armour, and it really slows her down. Security and anti-theft and safety features up the wazoo. The guns are on my side," he touched the door, and a panel slid down to reveal two pistols; one a needler, the other a .357 Magnum Mini Cop. "So don't even think about doing anything stupid."

The thought had crossed my mind, but it quickly faded. "Did Davy tell you to shoot me?"

He laughed, a single "huff," like a lion that's not irritated enough to roar. "s.h.i.+t no. The boss doesn't do things like that. Doesn't need to. He just told me to get you and take you to Norman, and Norman doesn't like violence either. Threats, sometimes, but mostly bribery. He says he's never met a man he couldn't scare or buy." He said this without any hint of irony, or any emotion at all.

"There can't be much he can't afford. Davy, I mean."

A shrug. "He wants his kids to have the best, and doesn't worry much whether they want to go into the business or what they want to do."

I nodded. He talked basketball until he realised I wasn't interested, then women, then asked what it'd been like working in Vice. "Frustrating," I replied.

"Yeah, I bet." We said nothing more until we were back outside my place, when he bade me goodnight and told me to be cool. I walked up to the flat, let myself in, fed the cats, switched the kettle on, and sat there stewing while the tea brewed. I refused to let Norman fire me when he hadn't even hired me; if the Hills wanted to stop me looking for their daughter, they were going to have to tell me themselves.

It was nine forty-five, and I wanted to call the Hills before they went to bed, but there were other things I had to do first. I really felt like beating information out of someone, but Hill probably wouldn't know where Tina was, neither would Sobieski, and Sharkskin Norman would be too well guarded.