Lacey touched his tongue to his lips. “Who were the cars checked to at times of malfunction?” he asked.
“Alvin Hormadz, Director for Security, Atlanta Subregion; Willa Perhabis, Director for Security, Richmond Subregion; Sig Hanse, Security Coordinator, Southern Region.”
Which by that time was no surprise.
“Uh-hmm,” Lacey sighed, showing his teeth like a satisfied tomcat. He blinked, seeing Tamara for the first time since the data had begun coming in. She was as tense as he had been when he faced the guns of Hanse’s bodyguards. “Oh, hell,” he said. “Take your helmet off. We’re going to be here a while.”
She unsnapped the chin strap and slid the gear away from hair that sweat had stuck to her cheeks. It fluffed in the breeze as she freed it. Lacey’s stomach roiled but he grinned wider. If he had not been able to laugh at the irony of the situation, he would have committed suicide within days of his psychic remake.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Tamara said, her eyes on the helmet as she placed it on the seat beside her.
“Sure,” Lacey agreed unconcernedly.
“Why did you commit rape? You aren’t . . . you aren’t cool, but you seem to act as though you were. How did you come to lose control like that?”
“Oh, my,” said Lacey, kneading the back of his neck with his eyes closed. “The people I pick up talk about losing control, as if that could make me feel sorry for them. I raped the bitch because it was the only way I could punish her as much as I thought she deserved. For this—” he touched his scar—”for a lot of things. I had to find an empty, unfinished dwelling unit with doors I could wedge against the Red Team that was going to come as soon as the scanners picked up what I was doing. You aren’t going to successfully rape anybody nowadays if you just lose control, my friend.”
Tamara’s face was blank. “And you kept your job as an investigator?”
“No, that’s not quite what happened,” Lacey explained. His grin interrupted him by turning into an open chuckle. “I sold insurance before they got into my mind. The Psycomp seems to have decided that single-mindedness and an ability to plan could be useful to the State—in the right channels, that is.”
He nodded at the scanner helmet. “Trouble is, it’s not something I can turn off because somebody decided to change the rules. I think I’ve already gotten deeper in this channel than some folks are going to like, both Hanse and his bunch and the folks who are knocking them off.”
“I don’t see why the Sepos haven’t already arrested you this morning,” the girl said. She was facing Lacey, the scanner staring over the top of her head like a one-eyed crow. The sky beyond was empty: Tamara had set them on an older building, designed for elevators and individual offices. When power for the elevators became prohibitive, the upper floors were left untenanted. The view from the room was clear and had because of its stability an emotional impact unequaled by that of an air car at the same height.
“Would you rather I didn’t ask—?” the girl said awkwardly.
Lacey blinked. “Sorry, I was drifting,” he said with a nicer smile than before. He scratched his ribs where his jumpsuit clung to them. “No, I can explain it. Hanse wasn’t going to arrest me for disarming his thug, he had too much to explain on that one himself. What he was doing here in person, for instance. Given the timing and the fact his office is in Atlanta, I’d bet that he was on his way to warn Follard that somebody had gotten onto whatever game they were playing. . . .” The smile broadened, then faded. “There was a chance that he might have had me shot, of course. That would have been a little easier to clear.”
“But you searched his car, you broke his access code,” Tamara blurted. She was using both hands to gesture toward Lacey, too agitated to notice that he slid back away from them. “I saw you, the car scanner saw you, the three roof scanners saw you. Why are you still loose?”