Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

Carmen sat back. “Wait. If she drowned, why did the first responders call homicide?”

“Her hands,” Quinn said levelly, “were wired together behind her back.”

Carmen breathed the worst swear she could think of. Quinn observed with interest, and nodded.

“I won’t be able to help you,” Carmen said, forcing a smile.

The samples reeked. Carmen could only assume the funk was from decomposing lung tissue. Cadaverine, putrescine. She left the vials to settle overnight, eyedroppered the dregs, centrifuged them, and separated the layers onto slides. She reclosed the vials and got the cover slips in place as fast as possible before bending over the microscope. That done, she searched databases and squinted at enlarged pollutant concentration maps until her head felt as if it were being squeezed in a vise.

At eight p.m., she drank two cups of terrible coffee with cocoa mix stirred in, instead of eating dinner. Then she started searching through the saved feeds of site monitoring stations north and west of the city. Past the soft edge, outside the current spread of the mesh. There was too much pollution in the water for the victim to have been dumped—to have been drowned —in the reclaimed area. But the mesh was growing. And where the mesh was going to be, Carmen’s colleagues had placed weather stations, and pollution stations, and all kinds of equipment to produce a picture of environmental conditions before and after remediation.

Carmen ran algorithm after algorithm, until she matched the unreclaimed plastics and pollutants in the victim’s lungs with the plastics and pollutants along a particular stretch of waterfront. There were observation stations dotted along the coast there. Some of them recorded video.

Two hours and thirteen minutes into her search, she found the footage.

She knew where the victim had gone into the water. She knew the license plate of the car that had brought the killer and the victim to that fateful place. She had some not-very-clear footage of the killer who had thrown the bound victim down an embankment into the river that must then have carried her into the sea.

A balloon drone had captured the whole thing, and saved the images into its relentless optical memory.

I can’t, she thought.

But there was that image, of the bound woman—alive, struggling—being hurled off the bank to die in the cold, muddy water below.

It wasn’t proving who the murderer might be that bothered her. It was what might happen afterward. What certainly would happen, if they were charged.

That stink from the vials still came through the scent of artificial honeysuckle after three hand-washings.

“No perfumes of Araby,” Carmen muttered, and went to scrub again, telling herself that the clinging stench was not a metaphor.

In the morning, she was still trying to decide whether to call Quinn and what to tell her when Quinn, again, appeared at her door. Carmen jumped in her seat when the other woman leaned around the frame.

Quinn looked at her curiously. “Maybe you are the killer after all.”

“Maybe you’re a ghost who keeps materializing.”

Quinn shrugged, lower lip stuck out, her head bobbing to one side. “I know I haven’t given you enough time—”

“You have,” Carmen said.

Quinn looked at her. Looked again, frowning. Held out a hand. “Let’s get a cup of coffee,” she said.

Carmen led the way to the small kitchen where Quinn sniffed the coffeepot, said, “I’m buying,” and brought Carmen back through the corridors and the lobby to a small café across the street. When they were settled with cappuccinos and biscotti, Quinn leaned her elbows on the red-check tablecloth and said, “You don’t like cops.”

Carmen swizzled her cookie in the coffee to give herself an excuse to look down. “I like you just fine. It’s your job I have problems with.”

“To be frank with you,” Quinn admitted, “most days I agree. But somebody has to do it, and if I’m doing it I know who’s making the choice about whether or not to be an asshole, and I have some influence over them.”

Carmen laughed in spite of herself. “I’m having a moral crisis, Quinn. I think I know who did it.”

“All by yourself? Fantastic. We’re going to put you on retainer.”

“Well, not exactly who did it. I know how to find out who did it.”

Quinn sipped her coffee. “So what’s the crisis about?”

“What I told you,” Carmen said. “Prisons are evil.”

“Necessary evil.”

“No.”

Quinn tapped her cookie on the rim of her cup. “You just want to let murderers and rapists go ?”

“I want to change society so that people are supported and connected. So that murderers and rapists don’t… just don’t occur.”

Quinn guffawed. “That’s not human nature. How many rich assholes ought to go to jail? They have plenty of support and they still do crimes.”

Carmen’s laugh was much more bitter than the coffee. “How many rich assholes actually do go to jail? When was the last time you perp-walked a banker, Quinn?”

Quinn looked down. “I’m a murder cop.”

“So if murders didn’t happen you’d be out of a job.”

“Happily so,” Quinn admitted. “That dog won’t hunt, Pollyanna.”

Carmen stared at her. Maybe she could try a different approach. “Have you ever murdered anybody?”

“Of course not.”

“Aren’t you human?”

Quinn snorted. “My ex-wife might disagree, but… I’m human. Okay, then: committing violent crimes is damaged human nature. Selfish human nature. Predatory human nature. You just want to turn the predators loose to harm anybody they choose? What are you going to do with all of the murderers we have already? You can’t prevent those people from growing up awful. What about all of their victims and their trauma response? What about protecting society?”

“Punishment isn’t a deterrent. A punitive justice system doesn’t cut down on crime, because it doesn’t address the root causes of crime. It just creates more criminals down the line. If you don’t want recidivists and more damaged generations, you have to change your whole philosophy.”

“It’s not my philosophy.” Quinn bit a chunk out of her cookie and crunched in evident frustration. She slurped the last of her coffee. Fortified, she went on. “My first priority is keeping innocent people safe and protecting the fabric of society.”

“So is mine. I think one day, prisons as we understand them will be considered as barbaric as the iron maiden, as roasting people on a spit.”

“That sounds great.” Quinn picked her teeth with a thumbnail. “What’s the action plan?”

Carmen said, “Change the world.”

Quinn tossed her cup at the recycler without looking. As if guided by an angel’s hand, it went in. The detective lifted her eyes and appealed to some invisible authority. “The last anarchist here needs to lay off the weed and fellow feeling.”

“I am not an anarchist!” Carmen protested. “I just believe in a collaborative government rather than a punitive one. If you want people to feel invested in the system you have to give them access to it and power over it.”

“There will always be assholes,” Quinn said. “Please tell me what you have on this asshole so I can stop him from immediately being an asshole again.”

Carmen picked up a sugar packet and began fiddling with it.

Quinn said, “I could mention that not telling me, now, is withholding evidence.”

Really? “Conscientious objectors have gone to jail for their principles before.”

“It’s obstruction of justice.”

“You gonna arrest me?” Carmen wondered if she could get a martyr thing going. BRAVE SCIENTIST DEFIES COPS, RISKS JAIL ON PRINCIPLE. SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE.