Part of me kind of hoped she'd come down in whatever neglige she was wearing to seduce my poor partner and really make tonight more interesting. But, I thought better of it and tried very hard not to throw those thoughts out into the karmic void, lest they come true and come back to bite me in the ass later. I'd had enough bad karma for the week already, thank you.
Ratty nodded. “Yes, anything I can do to help you, just ask.”
Jackson grabbed a pad of paper and a pen from Trixie's desk and balanced himself expertly next to me on the edge of the desk. He scribbled a spiral on the top corner of the paper, making sure the pen he'd procured worked. It was a funny little ritual I'd seen him do every time he intended to write anything.
I leaned back against my free hand, sipping my tepid coffee and watching Ratty intensely over the rim of my coffee mug. Something about this whole set up reeked of subterfuge and I sure as hell didn't wanna get caught up in the middle of an inside job intent on crippling Wayside Firms. Being on their payroll was bad enough. Being their first choice in private investigators probably had its perks, but I really wasn't all that keen on finding out what they were.
I really hoped Jacks could crack this wide open with a few well-placed questions.
“How did you know the deceased?” Jackson asked. He was off to a rollicking start.
“Doctor Jones was a former employee of Wayside Firms. Back when it was Wayside Robotics,” Ratty answered, setting his coffee down on the small table in front of him. “I didn't know the man personally, but his reputation preceded him in the offices.”
“What did Doctor Jones do for Wayside?”
Ratty shrugged. “He was in charge of research into our transplants and implants. He was responsible for performing surgeries originally, then moved into research and design when the mortality rate got too high for his personal comforts. He was the one who had updated many of our methods,” he looked pointedly at Jackson's clockwork eye. “He was likely responsible for that optical implant of yours.”
Jackson stiffened next to me at the mention of it. I knew that the procedure hadn't been a clean ordeal. The injury he'd sustained had made for quite a few complications when it came to replacing his eye with the clockwork one. They'd done a pretty good job though, and the scars around Jackson's eye were less noticeable than they could have been.
“Did Doctor Jones hold any proprietary secrets that would have made him a target for murder?” Jackson asked, tactfully changing the subject.
“Nothing that would have been useful if he was dead,” Ratty replied.
“Why did Doctor Jones leave Wayside?”
“Ethical differences,” Ratty intoned, sounding more like a groomed speaker by the moment.
“Ethical differences over what, exactly?” Jackson pressed.
Ratty frowned. I assumed that this was a line of questioning that he hadn't been prepared for and he was busily trying to find a way to word his answer that wouldn't result in him getting fired.
“The late Doctor had been growing increasingly unhappy with the general distaste and subsequent mentality of 'ignore it and it will go away' in regards to the subculture of clockwork body modifications. He knew that the risks and complications in surgeries were incredibly high, especially without proper medical training,” Ratty began slowly, building momentum as he spoke. It was like this had been a huge secret and it was finally some small measure of relief to get this information off of his chest. Poor guy. “The general consensus at Wayside was that these are kids from troubled homes and they are just acting out, trying to get attention or whatever. Wayside refused to be held accountable for their clockwork being misused.”
“Does Wayside have a way to track their pieces?” I interrupted. “Serial numbers on parts or anything like that?”
Jackson shot me a look but nodded, accepting the question. “That you know of?”
“I don't see how that's relevant to your investigation,” Ratty replied, more aloof towards this than he should have been.
“At this point, everything is relevant,” Jackson replied simply, shrugging. “The more that we know about the people Doctor Jones worked with, and his relationship with Wayside, the better the chances are that we'll be able to wrap this case up quickly and effectively.”
Ratty eyed Jackson for a long moment. It was evident that he didn't like the explanation Jacks had given him. Not many people do, but it was true. If we could figure out a way to track down who had the implants done and track them down, we could get them for murder so much faster and easier than if we were going at it blind and questioning every single person in the greater New York area who has at least one clockwork hand. It also meant that I had a reason to go back and visit Kali before our date on Friday.
“Yes,” Ratty said slowly. “There is a database in the Wayside offices that has serial numbers and names of the patients who received the implants. It's a relatively recent thing, though. It was only implemented after Doctor Jones quit.”
“Aside from the serial numbers, is there any way to tell if an implant comes from Wayside at a glance?” Jackson continued on. Sometimes I wondered if his brain wasn't part machine.
“No,” Ratty replied with a shake of his head. “Implants are pretty standard across the board. Unless you're looking at something that has been either extremely modified in an after market way or has been customized for our richer clients,” he shrugged.
“You seem to know a lot about everything,” Jackson mused. “Pardon my bluntness, but exactly what position do you hold at Wayside Firms?” I tried very hard not to show my interest as Jackson asked. I was curious about Ratty's official title.
“Officially?” Ratty replied, his lips turning up into a smile that was one part prideful and one part serial killer scary. “Public Relations Liaison to the CEO.”
“And unofficially?”
I grinned at Jackson's audacity to ask and call into question Ratty's integrity.
“Unofficially I don't have to answer,” Ratty replied bluntly, standing from his spot and straightening his jacket. “If we're done here, I do have to get back to the offices before my employer begins to worry.”
I stood as well, setting my coffee mug down on the desk next to Jackson. Jackson looked at me, his eyes wide, like he was afraid that I was going to do something that I would regret, or that would end up with us losing the contract.
“Five thousand dollars will be deposited into each of your accounts tomorrow,” Ratty explained as he headed for the door. “Or would you prefer the ten thousand directly deposited into the firm's account?”
I shrugged. “Doesn't matter, it'll all end up in the same place anyway.”
Ratty nodded and donned his bowler. He reached for the door and I held out my hand, placing the palm against the smooth glass panel in the door.
“Is something wrong?” Ratty asked me, the subtlest hint of danger in his voice.
I knew that this guy could break me in half if I so much as breathed on him funny, and he could probably kick Jackson's ass from here to Hell's Kitchen, but those kind of odds never stopped me from being obnoxious before.
“I do have one, pressing question,” I said with my most innocent smile.
Ratty sighed and took his hand away from the doorknob. “Yes?”
“May I see your robotic hands?” I asked.
The look Ratty gave me would have had a lesser man pissing his drawers in fright. It was a good thing that I wasn't afraid of much of anything. Slowly, Ratty pulled off his leather gloves, revealing that yes, both of his hands were clockwork and that no, he didn't have the synthetic skin covering the apparatuses. Definitely an intimidation measure.
I let out a low whistle of appreciation. His hands clicked quietly with his heartbeat. The robotics were amazing. Thin copper coloured pipes rebuilt his skeleton, creating the basic hand shape. Cogs and gears filled the spaces in between and tendon-thin covered wires created the illusion of muscle. Several clear tubes ran throughout, and different coloured li
quids filled them as the gears clicked with every heartbeat, pumping the liquids through the tubes. Blood, I assumed. Oil, maybe? Coolant? I wasn't sure. I'd never really asked what the science behind the implants was. I stared at Ratty's fingers. They had smooth metal caps on the ends, over the first knuckle and down to the second. Then, thin plates that resembled armour ran from his second knuckle to the large, brass protrusions that were his main knuckles on the back of his hand. This guy was definitely an enforcer.
“Is there a reason for this intrusion?” Ratty asked me with a scowl, turning his hands over so that I could truly admire how scary they were. His palms were completely plated with thin metal. I definitely wouldn't want to get slapped by this man.
“Just curious, mostly,” I replied, grinning like a skeleton. “Those are pretty cool,” I admitted. “State-of-the-art, I assume, right? You work for Wayside, they probably keep you at the top of the line whenever there's a new upgrade or whatever, right?”
“I don't see how this is relevant,” Ratty said again, pulling his gloves back on.
I motioned towards Jackson. “Jacks doesn't even have anything as cool as this,” I explained. “I've never really had a chance to look at someone's full on clockwork hands up close,” I paused thoughtfully. “Well, not when they were living, anyway,” I corrected myself. I dealt with a lot of dead bodies at work, after all.
“If you're done examining me, I would like to take my leave,” Ratty growled.
I took my hand away from the door. “Of course! Thank you for your cooperation,” I said with a smile. “We'll be in touch as soon as we know anything,” I promised.
Ratty wrinkled his nose at me and narrowed his beady little eyes in distaste before pulling open the door and heading out into the cool night air.
I immediately locked the door and pulled the blinds down. I definitely didn't want any late-night visitors. This case was already threatening to take up all of our resources. Even the payday at the end of it didn't thrill me as much as it should have.
I turned to look back at Jackson.
“Why did you want him to take off his gloves?” Jackson asked me immediately. “It's not like you haven't seen clockwork hands before,” he waggled his robotic fingers at me.
“I'm gonna go back and see Kali tomorrow,” I explained. “She said that there's gears in the sub-dermal imaging or whatever dead body mumbo jumbo she was talking about,” I shrugged. “I didn't actually see the scans but I figure that if she has the images, we can compare them to Ratty's hands after!”
“You're already blaming Edward?” Jackson asked, incredulously. He set the pad of paper down on the desk and folded his arms over his chest. He gave me a look of disbelief and shook his head.
“And you're calling him Edward,” I pointed out sarcastically. “Maybe you two should have a little robot love affair or something,” I scowled at myself. My clever comebacks weren't working anymore. I needed to sleep.
“That doesn't even make sense, Blaze,” Jackson warned.
“The love affair comment?” I asked hopefully, perfectly willing to accept the stupidity over that one.
“Accusing Edward,” Jackson corrected.
I ran my hands over my face, tiredly. “He had plenty of time to go commit the murder!” I exclaimed, more petulant than I intended. “And we don't entirely know for certain that he actually works for Wayside. He never mentioned anyone by name.”
“Blaze,” Jackson said quietly, “why would Wayside hire you to go make a delivery if they intended to go and kill the recipient within hours of hiring you? What's the point? They could have just killed him and saved the trouble of paying you ten grand to make the delivery.”
I narrowed my eyes and thought about that for a moment.
“Ratty would have had an alibi,” I decided. “And they could easily have pinned the murder on me. I was there, Jacks! Had I been a few minutes later, they probably would have gotten away with it and I would have been arrested holding proprietary information on the doorstep and there would have been a dead guy inside the house. The investigation would've been over a lot faster. They'd find ten grand in my safe, in cash, with no record of anyone at Wayside paying me. Problem solved and whatever Doctor Jones knew is gone to the grave with him forever.”
Jackson stroked his chin in thought, his metal fingers clicking together as he did. His hand was much different than Ratty's. Jackson hadn't gotten the plastic, synthetic skin on top of his clockwork, but he had the inner workings covered with thin metal plates that made pleasant clinking noises when he moved. It was unique, and necessary because of all the after market modifications he had done to his robotic appendage.
“There was a safe deposit box, wasn't there?” Jackson asked after a long moment.
“Yeah,” I replied with a tired nod. “Why?”
“Unless they paid off the bank to keep your presence there a secret, then you've got a reason for having those proprietary secrets on your person. All you would have had to do is tell the cops,” Jackson pointed out, completely debunking my theory.
I screwed up my face, scowling at Jackson. “Fine, be smart,” I said sarcastically. “You can go and pick up the envelope in the morning then, since I've hired you to clear my name.”
Jackson grinned at me. “All right, boss,” he agreed. “Are you sure that you don't wanna come with me?”
I shrugged. “Wake me in the morning, Jacks,” I told him with a tired nod. “We'll see how hungover I am.”
I didn't wait around to hear what Jackson's clever comeback was. I slipped through the back door behind Trixie's desk and up the stairwell to our apartments. I lived on the third floor. Trixie lived below me. It was nice, we didn't have to travel to get to the office, we had everything we needed in the building, and Jackson had a place to stay when we were working long hours. It worked.
I needed a date with my liquor cabinet, and a gallon of white sounded pretty appealing to me. I let myself into my apartment and closed the door on the small hallway behind me, forgetting the day and hoping to get a few hours of sleep.