Flashback

“So sorry,” repeated Sato. “The money there was left with the proprietor to cover any damages or medical bills for his bouncer.”

“Did you at least keep the flashback vials I bought?” asked Nick, feeling his anger beginning to burn again. If Sato did his Mr. Moto routine with that So sorry one more time, Nick thought he might go for the man’s throat.

“No,” said Sato. “The illegal drugs were also left behind.”

“Well, I’m going to need some of those illegal drugs if I’m going to do the research for the interviews I wanted to do later today,” snapped Nick.

“Whom do you think you will interview today, Bottom-san?”

“Oz, the writer, for sure,” said Nick. “But I want to prepare for the Boulder fruit fly, Derek Dean, and drop in to see my old friend Delroy at Coors Field. That’s three hours there, plus another two or three hours to flash on the reports themselves…”

“Four thirty-minute vials will be made available to you today,” said Sato. “And, of course, this complete video and digital reconstruction is being downloaded to your phone site as we speak.”

Swallowing his anger, Nick was reaching up to pluck off the glasses when he froze in place.

“Stop the recording!” he shouted. “Back it up… no, forward a little… back again… there! Stop!”

Sato put his glasses back on. “What is it, Bottom-san?”

Another patrol car had arrived as well as the unmarked GoMo Volta carrying the two plainclothes detectives on duty that night—Kendle and Sturgis. Cars that had been parked along the curb were driving up on the broad sidewalk to get past the growing cluster of emergency vehicles before they were hemmed in for good. Some people were just running away down the sidewalks to escape before the interviewing and ID’ing of witnesses began.

But Nick was looking at none of this.

Nick’s attention was focused on a small white twin-blob of a forehead and forearm appearing over the top of a parked car half a block to the east.

The lower part of this person’s face was hidden by the forearm and car roof, the person’s hair hidden by darkness, the rest of the form simply not visible.

Dara, thought Nick and felt literally dizzy for a second.

What the hell was his wife doing there that night? This wasn’t possible.

“Sato… forward a bit. Freeze. A little more now. Freeze again. Back…”

“Do you see someone, Bottom-san?”

Nick Bottom thought of his master’s degree work and heard some long-forgotten professor’s voice explaining that five million years and more of evolution had honed a Homo sapiens ability to distinguish a human face, however camouflaged or disguised, from its surroundings. The greatest enemy of man had always been man, said the professor, and the human mind was able to see another human face in even the most visually cluttered and ill-lit surroundings with more accuracy than one would think possible. The first thing a human infant can make out is his mother’s face—more specifically, his mother’s eyes and smile.

Nick saw no eyes or smile on this distant shape, only the white blur of a forehead, the white oblong of a forearm coming out of a dark coat to rest on the roof of a car, but he was certain it was his wife.

Dara?

Nausea and confusion rose in him. His first impulse was to rush Sato, take the big man down through the sheer kinetic energy of his assault, get his pistol, and hold the muzzle against the security chief’s head until he admitted what he’d done here and told Nick why.

Why would they fake this fuzzy image of Dara and insert it in the video?

To get Nick sucked into the investigation. To get him personally involved. To set him up somehow?

“Run it forward again… please,” said Nick.

The forehead bobbed down and out of sight. Was there a second person in the shadows with Dara or just refugees from the party moving past her in a hurry? The dark forms moved out of sight east along the sidewalk. Nick wasn’t even able to make out the form of a woman. His headache had returned and now joined with the sense of vertigo from the glasses to increase his nausea. Could he enhance that first frozen image? Probably, but the recording already looked to be at the end of its pixel-enhancement range for such a distant, dark shot. He could try with these glasses and phone interfaced with his own 3D-high-def displays at home.

He tugged off the glasses and slid them in his pocket. “Nothing. I thought I saw someone… but it wasn’t anyone. I’m tired. I need some rest and to get into the flashback of the interviews and documents.”

“You can take the Honda electric back to your lodging,” said Sato as he led the way out of the library to the foyer.

“So you can show off again by swooping away in your damned Sasayaki-tonbo?”

Sato shook his massive head. “I was thinking of calling for a taxi.”

“I don’t want your goddamned Honda electric, Hideki-san.”

“Mr. Nakamura thought it might be more reliable than your current vehicle for your…”