Next of Kin

Chapter Five: 36%

“That sounds lovely,” I said, and sat down.

She hit a few buttons on her drink dispenser and it started gurgling. “Did you know my brother?” I asked.

“The boy next door? Let me think... I saw him once, when I was getting my mail. We didn't talk, but he acknowledged me,” she said. “That's about it.”

“Were you here, last night?”

“All night.”

“He was shot.”

“Poor man,” she said, and looked gravely at me.

“Did you hear a gunshot last night? Or notice anything suspicious?”

Her dispenser chimed, and a light came on. She held a cup beneath its spout and it poured out tea. “How do you take yours?” she asked.

“Sweetener,” I said.

She hit a button, and filled a second cup, which she handed to me. “There you are,” she said, and sat at a stool across the corner from my own. “Last night,” she said. “Your brother had a lot of visitors, lot of them late at night,” she said, and frowned. “Not usually my business, you'd understand, but at night, the car lights cut right through my windows, and shine bright into my bedroom, very disruptive.” She shook her head. “There was someone here, last night.”

“Did you see them, see a car, anything identifying?”

“No,” she said sadly. “I didn't think it was any of my business; I didn't want to be a busybody...” The question upset her, because now she felt she should have noticed someone coming.

“It's okay,” I told her. “You're already doing better than me; I couldn't tell you if anybody visited my neighbor yesterday, and we share a wall.”

She nodded. “But I did hear something. Right around the end of my game shows. They went to commercial, and I thought the noise came from my surround sound, except it was a catfood commercial, so that didn't make any sense. Let me have a moment.” She looked off, concentrating on something on her lenses. She was looking through her archived timeline from her lenses. She smiled, and turned back to me. “The commercial was on at 11:25, and over by 11:26.”

“That will be very helpful,” I told her. I finished my tea. “It was delicious,” I told her, and handed her the cup. “My name is Conrad Reynolds,” I said. It was old-fashioned to introduce yourself like that, since everybody had gotten used to interfaces making the introductions for us- and more reliably, to boot. “I'm sharing my contact information with you. Let me know if you think of anything else.”

She nodded. “I'm sorry,” she said, as I started towards her door, “about your brother.”

“Thanks,” I told her. I let myself out, and heard the door lock behind me.

I eyeballed the bike next door. I had a cousin who rode with a bike 'club.' It gave him the wrong kinds of outlets; he probably needed therapy, but instead he took out his anger on people who screwed with his club. Right before they were essentially run out of town. Everyone associated with the club became a persona non grata; their social capital dropped to a point where no one would employ them, or rent a room to them.

From there, they got worse. I stopped talking to my cousin when he bragged about nearly almost killing somebody. I just couldn't let him feel like I condoned it.

But I needed to talk to whoever lived on the other side of John's.

I turned towards the house, and my stomach gargled. Before I could even think about it, another message popped up. “Investigator Tip: A growling stomach has the potential to unnerve and alienate witnesses. It is appropriate for advocates to take time to eat meals; audience members particularly appreciate meals that can double as a portion of the investigation.”

I glanced back at the bike. I told myself I wasn't just stalling. I looked across the street. I was pretty sure I'd seen a hot dog cart operating in it on the walk up.

I found it, near the playground. The operator was a man in his late middle ages, with a beard and thinning, curly black hair. From his skin color he probably had Latin or possibly Italian ancestry.

“I'll take a hot dog,” I said. “With a drink.” He tapped a few buttons on the side of the cart.

“To drink?”

“Tea, with a little lemon.” He hit a few more keys. “How late do you usually stay here?”

“Uh...” I realized that sounded like the kind of question somebody who wanted to rob, rape or murder him would ask.

“I'm a citizen advocate, investigating a murder,” I clarified. “You probably weren't around by 11:30 last night?”

“I'm gone before the sun goes down,” he said.

“You live around here?” He shook his head. “Anything you might be able to tell me about the neighborhood, that could maybe help?”

“I got mugged in this park, last year. Had a really good evening, a line of people that kept me serving until way past dark. And this last guy orders like five dogs, just enough that I'm only finishing his order when I realize everybody else has gone, so it's just the two of us. And he pulls a knife. He attached a mod onto my cart- my cart's linked to my interface, and with that he could hack in. And he had me empty the cart's funds for the day, and my account, and transfer it into a blank account.

“I called the cops, and gave them the blank account number; it was a dummy, used to deposit the funds but immediately emptied and erased. As far as the bank was concerned it had never even existed. None of my customers remembered him; he was good, apparently, at keeping himself inconspicuous. But then one of the cops told me to check the local cameras. Pulling footage from people's doors and whatnot. Since I knew exactly when he robbed me, it was pretty easy to get footage of him entering the park, and exiting, and even a few grainy shots of him in line or threatening me.

“System pulled an ID off the footage in about an hour, and the cops picked him up. I was out of commission less than a day. Having security cameras on every doorstep makes this more like a police state, but now that you, me and everybody else are the cops, that doesn't seem so bad.”

The hot dog finished cooking, and he slid it into a bun, then a wrapper, and handed it to me. “Condiments are on your side of the cart,” he said. Then he poured my tea into a recyclable cup, and handed it to me.

“Thanks,” I said, and transferred the cost of the meal along with a tip to him.

“Thank you. And be careful. Much as people hated the cops by the end- with fucking reason- they don't much care for deputized advocates, either. Especially if you get up to anything like what got the cops run out- corruption, racist bullcrap, excessive force- mine was a comparatively tame case of patching together some footage. But good luck.”

I started to walk away, idly selecting camera controls from the DCA menu. I knew a short window of when the gunshot occurred. I requested camera access within a mile radius for an hour before and after. A message told me that processing the request would take several hours.

That was fine. I still had more potential witnesses to interview.