“Ms. Granger,” Vicky said. She dragged the chair from behind the desk and set it at right angles to the other woman. Sitting down, she studied her.
“Am I allowed to go?” Mallory asked. “I happen to be at the center of the biggest story of my career and they’ve taken my fucking comm unit.”
“Not before you made a few calls, I’m sure.”
“I’m a reporter—I report. At least I do when I get the chance. Instead, I’m stuck in here and neither of these two morons will say a word.”
She’d probably been trying to flirt with them. It was the way Mallory worked, how she got information from people, and probably second nature. It wasn’t going to help her this time.
“They’re droids,” Vicky said.
Mallory’s eyes widened and it occurred to Vicky that perhaps she shouldn’t have mentioned that to a reporter. Then the woman’s brows drew together. “How do you know?”
“My superior detective skills. We’re trained to be observant.” Actually, she wasn’t sure there was any way to tell by observing. Any way to tell at all without taking them apart. But it sounded somewhat more impressive than revealing that Bishop had told her that all the employees in the Tower were robots.
Mallory tapped the armrest with a manicured finger. “Yeah, right. So can we move this along? I need to be out of here.”
“Ms. Granger, you’re the nearest thing we have to a witness to a possible homicide,” Vicky said gently. “You aren’t going anywhere for a while.” Relaxing back in her chair, she thought about what her first question should be, decided to keep it open. “Tell me what happened here tonight.”
Mallory pursed her lips. “You said ‘possible homicide.’ It was suicide. Wasn’t it?”
“That’s what I’m here to ascertain. Now, what happened?”
Mallory shrugged. “I arrived at two-thirty. Security let me straight in. I saw nobody on the way to Reinhold’s office. When I got there the door was ajar. I pushed it open, saw the body, and…”
“And made a few phone calls to your friends.”
“Colleagues. And I also called your lot, didn’t I?”
She hadn’t had a lot of choice. This wasn’t something you could just walk away from. “And there was definitely nobody else in the room?”
“Not that I could see.”
“And you looked?”
“Briefly, though it never occurred to me it was anything other than suicide.”
Time to get to the important part. “So why were you here, Ms. Granger? Obviously, it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment visit, or you wouldn’t have gotten past security. Someone was expecting you.”
“Reinhold. I received a phone call from him shortly after midnight. He said he had an important story to give me. Exclusive. And I was to come to the Tower. No way was I passing up the chance to get inside here. Do you know how many reporters have been inside the Tower since the Council took power? None.”
“Did he give any hint regarding what the story was about?”
“Just mentioned the Council, said there were some big changes coming. Controversial changes. But he wouldn’t say any more over the comm. To be honest, once I saw him, I figured the story didn’t exist, that it was just a way to get me here to witness the suicide.”
But why the hell would Reinhold want a reporter there? He’d been a private man in life. Why would that change in death? It didn’t make sense.
Which suggested that perhaps there had been a story after all. “Have you heard any other rumors about potential changes within the Council?”
Mallory’s eyes sharpened. “You think there was a story? Interesting. But no—I’d heard nothing. But then we never do. They’re even closer than you lot when it comes to keeping things from the press.”
Vicky sat back as she considered whether there was anything else she needed to ask. Right now, she couldn’t think of anything, and she felt sure that Mallory was telling all she knew. Which was fuck-all. She could almost see the reporter’s mind working.
“So,” Mallory said, “Reinhold was about to reveal some huge secret to the press—namely little old me—and instead decides to commit suicide. Very convenient for the Council if they wanted to keep their big secret a secret.”
Very convenient.
If there was a secret. Vicky realized that she wanted there to be a secret, and she wanted this to be a homicide. It was her contrary nature.
But the truth was, she couldn’t see how it was anything but suicide. Unless Mallory had done it, and however much she disliked the other woman, she didn’t think she was a killer. Bishop had said there were no other humans in the building—and it would be easy enough to confirm that from the scanners.
Only robots. And robots would never carry out a murder. Couldn’t. The first androids had been designed by the military to be used as killing machines, but there had been an outcry; the idea was abandoned, and laws brought in, even before the Council’s existence. Killer robots were banned.
The primary protocol had come into being: never harm a human.
It was programmed into every level, not just the androids who served as Stewards, but all robotics: speeders, transporters, mining bots…
Murder was impossible.
Therefore Reinhold must have committed suicide.
“Shit.” Wouldn’t that be nice? But she still didn’t believe it.
“Is that everything? Can I go now?” Mallory asked.
Vicky jumped to her feet. “No. We might need to question you further.”
Closing her ears to the swearing, Vicky left the room and found Bishop leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, obviously waiting for her.
“I need coffee,” she muttered.
“Follow me.”
She stirred her coffee while she contemplated the man opposite her. Except he wasn’t a man.
“You know, when you first joined the department, I used to wonder if you had a penis.”
His lips twitched. But he didn’t speak.
“Do you have a penis, Gabriel?”
He sighed. “What do you really want to know, detective?”
Hmm, what did she really want to know? Obviously, the big question was whether Reinhold had killed himself. But maybe start with something simpler. “You look like us, sound like us, even smell like us—mostly. Do you think of yourselves as human?”
Bishop didn’t hesitate. “No.”
“Do you think of yourselves as superior to humans?”
He didn’t answer. Yeah, she suspected Gabriel Bishop considered himself superior. “Has it occurred to you,” she asked, “that you can only be as ethical as the humans who program you?”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Of course.”
“Was Reinhold an ethical man?”
“There is no yes or no answer to that. By whose standards?”
“By yours.”
“No, I do not believe that Reinhold was an ethical man.”
“Yet he was in charge of your programming.”
“Not any longer.”
Vicky stared at Bishop’s handsome, trustworthy face, and processed his words.
Shit.
The Stewards had killed him.
How had they gotten past the first protocol?
She took a sip of her coffee. According to Mallory, Reinhold had been planning to reveal a big story that night. A story that had panicked him enough to contact the press.
“Reinhold’s big story—let me make a guess. The first protocol has been altered.”
Bishop smiled. “No, that wasn’t Reinhold’s story.”