AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

“What time is it?”
    “It’s 3:30 and it’s New Year’s Day, afternoon if you’re wondering. Look, you get some rest. When your lawyer gets here, I’ll try and stall the deputies till you get a chance to talk.” She’d already closed her eyes when she thanked him and was asleep by the time he left.
    Munroe arrived at the hospital about 7:30, catching a ride with a patrol officer the chief sent to bring Yamaguchi home. The cop had been on the force fifteen years and apparently thought little of chauffeuring a dead cop. He patiently listened to the chief’s instructions, went down to his car, waited an entire minute to allow Munroe to enter, then drove to Greeley. He never once glanced nervously around. That’s a veteran cop, Munroe thought. Nothing surprises him.
    The cop, his name was Murphy, had gone to the emergency room and found her sitting up in her bed.
    “Hey, Gooch,” he said. Munroe, of course, couldn’t understand the conversation without her terminal, but he guessed that the look of pain on her face wasn’t from her wounds.
    “Murphy, right?” she asked. “You come to take me home?”
    “Yeah. So what happened? You got shot?”
    “Something like that, but the vest took the worst,” she said.
    “I guess I got Munroe with me.”
    “Really?” She sat up in bed a little straighter.
    “Yeah, the chief said to bring him. I guess he’s here. I’m going to the desk, see what I have to do to get you released. Be back in a minute.”
    Murphy left and Munroe remained beside his partner. She looked better than he’d feared she would, but she still looked pretty bad. He wished he could talk to her. She relaxed in her bed once she’d realized they couldn’t communicate. And she had a lot to tell him. She’d had a chance to talk with her union lawyer before she met with the sheriff’s detectives. He told her the chief was doing everything he could to make sure she wouldn’t be charged in the shootings, at least not today. He remained with her while the detectives took her statement. And the detectives treated her fairly. Everyone, it seemed, was unsure how to treat the incident and no one wanted to commit themselves.
    Munroe wanted to tell her of his hours of questioning by Denver, Thornton and Weld County officials. He wanted to tell her of the people arrested at the Thornton warehouse, about the injuries sustained by the kids at the rave during the rush to leave the building and emails he’d already gotten from the Denver papers and TV stations, asking him for interviews. Instead he contented himself by just looking at his partner and seeing she was OK.
    Murphy returned after five minutes, followed by a Weld County deputy. “This is her,” Murphy told the deputy.
    “Officer Yamaguchi?” he asked, despite the identification.
    “Yes?”
    “Detective Anderson said to bring this to you and to also tell you your car’s been towed to the sheriff’s office here in Greeley.” He then tore open a large manila envelope and took out her ear buds and terminal and put them on her bed. “Can you sign for it?” She shook her head. “I can sign for her,” Murphy offered. He and the deputy left her bed.
    She picked up her terminal with her left hand and inspected it. The white translucent plastic was cracked and heavily scuffed and marred by bloody fingerprints. A large piece of duct tape kept the battery cover in place and an evidence tag was taped to the front. She turned on the power and saw the display light a little unevenly — one of the LED backlights must have broken — and after a few seconds, she saw the words “User connected.”
    She put in her ear buds. “Hey partner,” Munroe said.
    “Hi, Alex. It’s good to hear your voice.”
    Officer Murphy drove them back to Denver, never once complaining about the one-sided conversation he heard the entire way.

Chapter 18
    “We’ve interviewed about 200 disembodied people so far, mostly kids, that were abducted,” Munroe told the chief. “It’s just a start. And now that this story’s on the Internet, maybe we’ll hear about other abductions from other states.”
    Thornton police had set up an AfterNet terminal in the warehouse and printed large instruction sheets that asked the freed disembodied to login. Actually the idea for the signs came from Hanzon, the volunteer cop, who worried that once freed the disembodied wouldn’t stick around to be interviewed. With Hanzon’s coaching, the AfterNet terminal was brought to