The 88th Floor by Benjamin Sperduto Page B

#4563367-6638 Dr. L. S. Morgan.
    “ Good night,
Detective.”
    As the doctor left, his assistants entered
the room, each one snatching up something Morgan had indicated was
worth taking back to the lab, including the body. They were
finished in less than five minutes.
    When the elevator door closed behind them,
Rees slipped the chip into his coat pocket and lit another
cigarette.
    “ Right to the point,
aren’t they, sir?”
    Rees glanced at the patrolman and thought he
seemed a little too eager for his own good.
    “ Yeah,” he said. “Have to
beat them to the scene to get a decent look at anything these
days.”
    “ So what do we do
now?”
    “ It’s out of your hands.
Go get some sleep and try to forget about it.”
    “ What about you,
sir?”
    “ Me?” Rees took a deep
drag from his cigarette and then shrugged his shoulders.
    The patrolman made his way to the elevator
and Rees’s gaze drifted back to the jagged corners and uneven walls
of the eighty-eighth floor.
    “ Hey, let me ask you
something,” he said.
    “ Yes, sir?”
    “ This floor look strange
to you? Like they didn’t put it together right or
something?”
    The patrolman looked around a moment and
shook his head.
    “ No, sir; looks pretty
solid to me. Maybe you should think about getting some
sleep.”
    The patrolman’s eyes shimmered as the light
struck them. Artificial, Rees thought. Maybe it was time to trade
up, after all.
    “ Yeah, maybe you’re
right.”
    ***
    It was nearly dawn by the time George Vandum
was taken into custody and brought back to the station for
questioning. Rees had tried to get some sleep at his desk after
getting back from the crime scene, but the constant activity around
him made it difficult. He felt horrible. It was getting harder for
him to keep up with the department’s eighteen-hour work shifts,
especially since he stubbornly refused to get a neural regulator
nanochip implanted when the workday was officially increased. He
still found the notion of putting different parts of the brain to
sleep throughout the day a little too unnatural to be of any
good.
    The arresting officer explained to him that
the suspect was found cowering in the closet of his uptown
apartment, but Rees was so tired that he didn’t hear most of the
details. He allowed himself to be led through the corridors of the
station to the interrogation room where Vandum was being held.
    For a man who was supposed to be one of
Sircotin’s big shots, George Vandum didn’t inspire much confidence
in the corporation’s brain trust. He looked more strung out than
Rees felt.
    “ No lawyer, Mr.
Vandum?”
    He said nothing as Rees sat down.
    “ You are aware that you’ve
been charged with murder, right?”
    No response.
    “ Mister Vandum, I’m
Detective Rees, I conducted–”
    “ Rees?” Vandum asked,
looking at him for the first time. “Detective Nicholas
Rees?”
    Rees reminded himself again that he wasn’t
going to be surprised by anything.
    “ Yeah, do we know each
other?”
    “ No. I’ve heard your name
once or twice.”
    Rees wasn’t sure how that was possible,
seeing as how he’d been lucky enough to keep his name out of the
media spotlight.
    “ So,” Vandum said, “I
guess you’re the one who found it?”
    “ Found what?”
    “ Come on, Detective. You
know what I mean.”
    Rees nodded.
    “ Yeah, I was first on the
scene after it was reported.”
    “ Quite a mess, wasn’t it?
I never thought there could be so much blood.”
    “ So you’re not denying
anything, then?”
    “ Why would I? I’m the one
who reported it.”
    Rees chuckled.
    “ You’re kidding,
right?”
    Vandum shook his head.
    “ Now why the hell would
you do that?”
    No answer.
    “ Look, if there’s more to
this story, you need to help me out here, because all I’ve got to
go on is a dead body and bullets that identify you as the shooter.
This is an open and close case as far as I’m concerned unless
you’ve got a damned good explanation for why