Head On (Lock In, #2)

by John Scalzi

I recognized the smile as the one Mom used as an alternative to murdering someone.

“Do they not know who you are?” I asked. “They know I’m Marcus’ wife.” Mom did a hand movement that was her rather more elegant version of a shrug. “If they missed out on what else I am, that’s their problem.”

“We both have questions about it,” Mom said. “The league just doesn’t appear to realize your father and I talk to each other.” “That’s going to end well.”

Vann nodded. “A firehose would solve the problem.” “In the short run,” I agreed. “In the long run it would just make more trouble. Reporters don’t forgive being firehosed.”

Vann smiled at Hurwitz. “Did you just throw your boss under the bus, Ms. Hurwitz?” There was the smallest of mechanical noises as Hurwitz’s threep made a smile. “He threatened to fire me today, Agent Vann. I think it’s okay to make him sweat a bit.”

So, we go visit Kaufmann, he admits he overreacted and is an idiot, which is sad for him but not actually a crime.

“What did you say?” I asked. “I didn’t say anything. I punched the crap out of him, though.” I smiled inwardly at this. “That seems fair,” I said.

“It’s ugly,” Vann said. “It’s meant to pop.” “Ugly does pop,” Vann agreed.

“And by ‘let’s get that done’ you mean ‘you do it,’ don’t you.” “Yes,” Vann said. “Yes I do.”

“JESUS,” VANN SAID, as we drove to Alton Ortiz’s town house. “You’ve had that cat for fifteen minutes and you’re already spoiling it.” “I’m not spoiling it,” I said, petting it as it sat contentedly in my lap, purring. The name on the tag said “Donut.” I assumed it was the cat’s name. “You just fed it tuna. You made me stop so you could get tuna, and you fed it to the cat.” “That’s not spoiling the cat. It’s feeding it.” “Feeding it tuna. As opposed to cat food.” “It’s had a rough day,” I said, petting Donut. “You don’t understand,” Vann said. “Once you feed a cat tuna, it doesn’t go back to regular cat food. You try to feed that cat regular food now, it will just stare at you accusingly. And if you don’t produce the tuna, the cat will go and shit in your shoes.” “Are we speaking from experience, here?” “I might be.” “I’m in a threep. Threeps don’t generally wear shoes.”

“Is this because of past trauma involving tuna?”

I looked up at Vann. “Do we want to arrest him?” “Well, he is technically a fugitive,” Vann said. “He ran from us when we tried to question him.” “I don’t think what he did counts as running,” I said. “More ‘jumping and falling.’”

“It’s a federal witness,” Tayla told them. “We have a witness protection cat?!?” The twins looked at Donut with obvious excitement. Donut gazed up at them.

“What’s going on?” Tony yelled from his room. “We have a fugitive cat!” the twins yelled back. “What?” “It’s not a fugitive,” I yelled. “It’s just a witness,” Tayla said. “It sounds ridiculous when you say it,” I said to Tayla. “Yes, well.” Tayla reached down and scritched Donut.

“They didn’t mean any harm in it. But of course not meaning harm isn’t the same as not doing harm.

“And to be clear,” I said, “did you, accidentally or on purpose, set the apartment on fire?” “No, of course not,” Silva said. “It was on fire when I got there. As you know, you were already there.”

“Why?” “Because the client was curious and because back in the day I liked cocaine. So when the client offered me an extra grand because she was curious, I took it.” “And then you went and bought some coke.” “Well, no. I just went to my stash. You think I was going to score some off the street? That shit’s mostly baby powder and fentanyl. It’ll kill you.” “I like that I’m still learning things about you, Vann,” I said, after a minute.

“Did you leak that to the press?” the twins asked. “Of course I didn’t,” I said. “Because all the discussion forums say it was you.” “I’ve seen your discussion groups. They also say NASA found the face of Jesus on the moon.” “Only some of them say that,” the twins protested. “Not the ones that say you leaked.”

“Two things about that. First, I hate you for putting that idea in my brain, because for the last couple of days all my downtime has been spent going down the rabbit hole of Haden-specific pharmaceutical therapies. It’s like you activated a nexus of my obsessive-compulsive disorder, my professional interests, and my love of weird trivia.”

“Or what?” Ramsey said. Vann rolled her eyes at Ramsey. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. What do you want me to say, Ramsey, that I’ll shoot you?” “She might in fact shoot you,” I said, to Ramsey. “But I’m not going to because I don’t have time for the paperwork,” Vann said. “I don’t have time for any of this shit. I don’t have time for you. I don’t give a shit about you, Ramsey. We’ve spent an entire day working up a chain of people we don’t give a shit about so we can get to the ones we do. You’re just the next link. But as I told another one of you earlier today, if you want to make it about you, I’ll be happy to give you my undivided attention.” “You might prefer being shot,” I said to Ramsey. “You might,” agreed Vann.

You wouldn’t be able to tell it from my threep, but I was gawking at Vann in open admiration. It’s one thing to bad cop an electrician or a medical assistant or even an FBI agent. But playing bad cop to an actual director of the Bureau took some chutzpah. And here Vann was doing it. Without blinking.

I don’t need you to talk. I don’t need you to do anything. We already have you. And what we already have you for is enough to keep you locked up until you are roughly older than the fucking moon. I didn’t bring you here to talk, Sanborn. I brought you here just so I could have the pleasure of telling you how much I’m looking forward to having you rot away the rest of your goddamned life.”

“It’s nice to know I’m not the only person you’ve strong-armed today,” Burgess said to Vann, outside the conference room. Vann shrugged. “It’s my gift,” she said. “Interesting way of putting it,”

“I did not destroy another threep,” I said. “A car did.” “You got hit by a car.” “Twice.” “So, once for the experience and twice to be sure?” Tony asked. “Hey, weren’t you hit by a car when you were a kid?” “It was a truck.” “Same concept. Three times is a fetish, Chris,” Tony said. “Which is your business. But it gets pretty pricey. You might want to take up a less expensive hobby, like cocaine.” “I’ll keep it in mind,”

“Yeah, no. There’s that old saying: Fast, cheap, and good, you get to pick two. The two you just picked are fast and good. Cheap has just left the building.”

“I don’t know why we don’t just hire him at the Bureau,” Vann said. “I asked him about it once. He said he makes more as a consultant and besides he’s already got the security clearance so he’s got the only cool thing about the gig.” “It’s not the only cool thing,” Vann said. “You also get to shoot people.” “That’s not actually all that cool, though, is it,” I said. “Blood. Death. Paperwork.” Vann looked over to me. “I’m having a long day, Chris. Indulge me.”

Fowler was dead, to begin with.

This novel took me rather longer than usual to write, for a number of reasons but one big one being simply that 2017 was a raging trash fire of a year, filled with horrible people trying to do horrible things and often succeeding. It’s harder to bear down creatively when the world is burning.