It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter

He didn't really feel anything when the pronged dart hit the senator's chest. As the warmth of the heat blast hit his face and Rigsby's body was engulfed instantly in flame, he watched dispassionately. The aide, Shelworth, was still writhing on the floor, trying to crawl towards him with his torso severed just above the hips by a fragmentation grenade he'd tossed into the room ahead of himself only 13 seconds ago. Rigsby collapsed like a house of cards, curling at the edges. The stench of burning flesh and hair clogged the spaces between the atoms in the room.

He walked over to Shelworth, and slit his throat with a flick knife he'd taken from his boot. Shelworth's heavy head slumped into the thick cream carpet and a crimson pool blossomed from his neck wound.

Time was of the essence now. The senator's vital signs would be monitored every minute and an alert would soon be flagged on his staff's arm pieces, flashing red screens and incessant buzzers until they flocked to his side. All they would find, thanks to the advanced incineration technology used by the PID, would be a charred mass in a congealing pool of fat - some of which no doubt would be dripping from the ceiling in the room below. The senator's arm piece would be utterly destroyed, but the data would not - being stored in real time on a remote server for his security. While it would most definitely identify his attacker, he would be long gone by the time the building security started looking for him.

He took one last look around the opulent hotel suite, saw a table of food and took a bite out of a tuna sandwich. It was good, so he took another, and still masticating walked to the door. Checking the corridor was clear he walked out closing the door behind him.

Walking towards the stairs, he passed a maid hurrying by with fresh linen. She barely looked at him. He pushed open the door to the stairwell and started down the ten flights to the parking garage in the basement. By the time he was at the fifth floor he could hear alarms and commotion from each floor he passed.

Reaching the basement, he strolled across the parking lot to where his vehicle was parked. He opened the drivers door manually, and slipped inside.

"Where is he now?" asked Stilson. They were still driving and had been for hours. The seats of the vehicle had moulded themselves to fit their bodies perfectly, but somehow still managed to be uncomfortable.

"Uhhh... Still heading east, just left Shawnee. I wonder where he's planning to get to."

"He knows we're going to find him, he's smart enough to realise that as soon as the Senator's biometrics stopped, his people would scan who was in the room and the chase would be on."

"You think he's going to disappear again?"

"It's possible. He did it before."

"I still don't get it - he went to see Kruke, then vanished. Then he shows up hundreds of miles away, is that possible?"

"Yeah. He could have taken a private copter, and gotten to Oklahoma City overnight from Tulsa. If he had a powerful enough Grid blocker to pull off the Wichita job in plain sight, fuzzing out while in the air, in transit, overnight is no big deal. The Grid still doesn't cope too well with high speed transport."

"So that's why we're not going to see Kruke right now?" Doherty's tone was cautious.

"It's not a priority, we can interrogate him later if needs be. He was only really useful to us when we didn't know where Griffen was - now we do, so we have to reprioritise."

Doherty couldn't tell if Stilson was getting annoyed with him, but he decided to change topic to be on the safe side.

"Any news on that promotion, Stilson?" A few months ago, Stilson had applied for the head of Grid tactics role, working closely with the techs and developing new algorithms to track individuals and fill in the gaps where the Grid was still letting people slip through the net.

"No, not yet."

"You think you got it?"

"Ah... I don't know Doherty. I think I would have heard by now."

"I still don't understand why you'd want to go and work in a lab with those fucking geeks all day. Wouldn't you miss the field work?"

Stilson looked out of the side window, Doherty couldn't read his expression. "I don't think so. I don't really enjoy the face to face, human contact stuff."

"You can tell." Doherty's tone was chiding, but it was obvious to everyone that Stilson struggled to connect with people, innocent or guilty.

"Go to hell, Doherty," snapped Stilson, testily. Then he mellowed. "You're good at all that touch-feely stuff, I'm not - never have been. I don't understand what makes people tick, I don't understand why they do such terrible, unthinkable things to each other. The first time I interviewed a murderer, I remember it to this day. Old guy, in his fifties. Had enough of his old lady so he beat her skull in with a hammer. I asked him why he did it, and he told me she always burned his steak. I said 'is that any reason to kill her?' and you know what he said to me?"

Doherty shook his head.

"'It was good steak'. So this guy, he'd been married to this woman for thirty years, she'd put up with his shit, his drinking and womanising and all the rest of it, and he just decided to snuff her out and that was that. That day, I just sort of lost any respect I had for the human race. Now nothing they do surprises me, and when I'm talking to people out there I just feel sad. Because I know, sooner or later, every single one of them is going to do something deplorable, and most of them won't care."

"That's a bit of a generalisation, Stilson," said Doherty. "There's a whole lot of good, decent folk out there, but in our line of work we don't get to interact with them. We get to spend quality time with the murderers, and the murdered, the robbers and the victims, that's it. Maybe you should get more out of your time outside work. What do you do for fun? We've been partners for years and you never talk about what you do when you're not on shift?"

Stilson shifted uncomfortably and squinted through the grimy windshield. "Not much. Read a lot."

"Any girlfriends? Boyfriends?" Doherty's tone wasn't mocking - he was genuinely interested.

"That's private."

"Come on! We're partners!"

"That's private - partner."

Doherty looked deflated. "Well, if that lab job is what you want, I hope you get it. You do realise the other lab guys are people too, right, and you'll have to spend time with them every day, and there are plenty of them?"

"Yes, Doherty - it will be fine. OraCorp doesn't employ murderers, last time I checked."

Doherty laughed out loud. "Mike McKenzie, last month? Came at you with a crow bar and you shot him? Ring any bells?"

Stilson looked offended. "You know what I mean. That was self-defense, perfectly within protocol."

"I'm just yanking your chain, partner."

Doherty checked his arm piece to see where their prey's flashing avatar was on the map. "He must be in some kind of vehicle, estimated 90mph currently. He's in a rush to get somewhere, I'll tell you that."

"I'm not surprised. Any visuals?"

Doherty waved, gestured and scrolled. "Nothing matching his description at all, I've scanned his entire route. It looks like he stopped at a grocery store in Henryetta, didn't buy anything, not even a recharge. Just peeled out and carried on."

"No recharge?"

"Nope."

Stilson furrowed his brow. "Keep an eye on him. If he's in a car, he's going to need to recharge before too long. We might be able to head him off."

"And why would a man on the run stop at a grocery store, and risk being visualed, and not buy anything?"

"Any number of reasons. Could have been meeting someone - how long was he there for?"

"Ninety one minutes thirty two seconds."

Stilson pulled a face. "Let's keep moving south, if he carries on east we should be able to cut him off, or get on a proper pursuit vector before too long."

"Two hours, it's saying here."

"That's fine. I can put up with two more hours of your conversation."

Doherty looked offended, then grinned.

The Five and Zero truck stop and grocery store in Henryetta was a new development, built on the site of a very similar business five years ago. It had one gas pump left, an antique just for show, and a bank of ten recharging stations. They were the new type that could recharge a medium sized saloon car in about five minutes flat.

The proprietor, when he took the lease on, was assured a steady stream of traffic from the Oklahoma road a few miles away but it turned out this was a lie. He was struggling to keep his head above water, and the lease tied him in for a minimum three years.

Sometimes a whole day could go by without him seeing a single vehicle pull onto his lot. Sadly, today was one of those days.