“Like when you looked over to me today in Davidson’s office,” I said.

“When you were going to contradict Davidson about threeps and Integrators being more or less the same thing,” Vann said. “Yes, that’s an example. I’m glad you caught it. You don’t need to be helping Schwartz.”

“He was right, though. Schwartz, I mean.”

Vann shrugged at this.

“Are you saying I should just shut up every time someone says something stupid or factually wrong about Hadens?” I asked. “I just want to be clear what you’re asking.”

“I’m saying pay attention to when it makes sense to say something,” Vann said. “And pay attention to when it makes sense to hold it in for the moment. I get that you’re used to saying what you think to anyone, anytime. That comes from being an entitled rich kid.”

“Come on,” I said.

Vann held up a hand. “Not a criticism, an observation. But that’s not the job, Shane. The job is to watch and learn and solve.” She popped the final piece of carnitas into her mouth, then reached into her suit jacket for her electronic cigarette.

“I’ll try,” I said. “I’m not always good at shutting up.”

“That’s why you have a partner,” Vann said. “So you can vent at me. Afterward. Now, come on. Let’s get back to work.”

“Where to now?”

“I want to get a better look at that hotel room,” Vann said, and sucked on her cigarette. “Trinh hustled us through it pretty quickly. I’m ready for a slow dance.”

Chapter Four

“THIS DOESN’T LOOK like the Watergate,” I said, as we entered the third subbasement of the FBI building.

“We’re not going to the Watergate,” Vann said, heading down a corridor. I followed.

“I thought you wanted to take another look at the room,” I said.

“I do,” Vann said. “But there’s no point going back there now. Metro police have been all over it. Trinh and her people have inevitably messed it up looking at things. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Trinh released it to the hotel for cleanup.” She stopped at a door. “So we’re here to look at the room instead.”

I read the placard next to the door. “Imaging Suite,” I said.

“Come on,” Vann said, and opened the door.

Inside was a room roughly six meters to a side, white walls, bare except for projectors in each corner and a space where a technician stood behind a bank of monitors. He looked over at us and smiled. “Agent Vann,” he said. “You’re back.”

“I’m back,” Vann agreed, and motioned to me. “Agent Shane, my new partner.”

The technician waved. “Ramon Diaz,” he said.

“Hi,” I said.

“Are we ready?” Vann asked.

“Just finishing diagnostics on the projectors,” Diaz said. “One of them’s been wonky for the past couple of days. But I have all the data that came over from Metro.”

Vann nodded and looked at me. “Did you upload your scan of the room to the server?”

“I did that before we left the room,” I said.

Vann turned to Diaz. “We’re going to use Shane’s scan as the base,” she said.

“Got it,” Diaz said. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“Fire it up,” Vann said.

The hotel room popped into being. The scan wasn’t a live video feed of the room but instead a mass of still photos knitted together to create a static, information-dense re-creation of the room.

I took a look at it and smiled. The whole room was there. I had done a good job of panning and scanning.

“Shane.” Vann pointed at a curving object on the carpet, not too far from the corpse.

“Headset,” I said. “Over-the-head scanner and transmitter for neural information. It suggests that this guy, whoever he is, was a tourist.” I figured Vann knew this but was checking to see if I did.

“Looking to borrow Bell’s body,” Vann said.

“Yeah,” I said. I knelt and got a better look at the headset. Like all these sorts of headsets, it was a one-of-a-kind affair. Technically speaking, the only people cleared to use Integrators were Hadens. But wherever there’s a less-than-legal demand, there’s a black market.

The headset was jammed-together medical equipment designed for early-stage Haden’s diagnosis and communication. It was a kludge, but a clever one. It wouldn’t give the tourist anything close to the actual, full Integrator experience—you needed a network implanted inside your head for that sort of thing—but it would offer something like high-definition 3-D with additional faint but real sensory perception. It was more real than the movies, anyway.

“This one looks pretty high-end,” I said to Vann. “The scanner’s a Phaeton and the transmitter looks like General Dynamics.”

“Serial numbers?”

“I don’t see any,” I said. “Do we have the real thing in evidence?”

Vann glanced over at Diaz, who looked up and nodded. “I can take a closer look at it if you want,” Diaz said.

“If you don’t find anything on the exterior, see if you can scan the inside of it,” I said. “The processing chips probably have serial numbers on them. We can see when the batches were sent off, and from there piece together who’s supposed to be owning the scanner and transmitter.”

“Worth a shot,” Vann said.

I stood up and looked over to the corpse, facedown in the carpet. “What about him?” I asked.

Vann looked back to Diaz. “Nothing yet,” he said.

“How does that happen?” I asked Diaz. “You have to get fingerprinted to get a driver’s license.”

“Our examiners only just got him,” Diaz said. “Metro took fingerprints and did a face scan. But sometimes they take their time sharing information, if you know what I mean. So we’re doing our own and running those through our databases now. We’ll be doing DNA too. We’ll probably find him by the time you’re done here.”

“Let me see the face scan,” Vann said.

“You want just the face, or the wide-angle shot when they turned him over?”

“Wide-angle shot,” Vann said.

The man on the floor instantly flipped. He was olive-skinned and looked mid- to late thirties. From this angle the severity of the cut throat was a whole lot more dramatic. The wound slashed from the left side of the neck, near the jawline, and continued downward, terminating on the right side of the hollow of the throat.

“What do you think?” Vann asked me.

“I think we’ve got an explanation for the arterial spurts,” I said. “That’s a hell of a cut.”

Vann nodded but was silent.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m thinking,” Vann said. “Give me a minute.”

While she was thinking I looked at the corpse’s face. “Is he Hispanic?” I asked. Vann ignored me, still thinking. I looked over to Diaz, who pulled up the face by itself to examine it.

“Maybe,” he said, after a minute. “Maybe Mexican or Central American, not Puerto Rican or Cuban, I’d guess. He looks like he might have a lot of Mestizo in him. Or he might be Native American.”

“What tribe?”

“No clue,” Diaz said. “Ethnic typing’s not actually my gig.”

By this time Vann had gone over to the image of the corpse and was looking at the hands. “Diaz,” Vann said. “Do we have a broken glass in evidence?”

“Yes,” Diaz said, after checking.

“Shane got an image of it from under the bed. Pull it up for me, please.”

The image of the room spun wildly as Diaz yanked it around, pulling us all under the bed and looming the image of the shattered, bloody glass over us.

“Fingerprints,” Vann said, pointing. “Do we have any idea whose they are?”

“Nothing yet,” Diaz said.

“What are you thinking?” I asked Vann.

She ignored me again. “You have the feed from Officer Timmons?” she asked Diaz.

“Yeah, but it’s pretty crappy and low res,” Diaz said.

“Goddamn it, I told Trinh I wanted everything,” Vann said.

“She might not be holding out on you,” Diaz said. “Metro cops these days let their feeds run their whole shift sometimes. If they do that they use a low-res setting because it lets them record longer.”