AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

I mean what kind of a name is “the Browns?”
    Of course, being disembodied means you’re at the whim of whoever wants to change the channel. About an hour into the game the TV switched to CNN, and he watched one of the more intriguing things he’d seen since dying. Apparently Honda, the car manufacturer, had created a robot that could act as an avatar for a disembodied person. From what he could tell, you stuffed a disembodied person into the helmet of the robot and then you control the robot. Great, I can be RoboCop, Munroe thought, until he realized the robot was about four feet high and school bus yellow. Perhaps not the image I want to project.
    After the brewpub, Munroe went back to the department. His chair had been returned and he checked his email. Nothing from AfterNet security yet, but he was notified that there was a response to his query in the Denver entertainment forum.
From: (Marco Peloske) [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: December 20, 2004 9:11 p.m. MST
Subject: Re: Deleted December event
On Dec. 19th, 2004, 4:14pm, Alex Munroe wrote: Does anyone know if an event, scheduled between Dec. 5 and 11, has since been removed from this forum…
Hey, jollycopper, I think I know what you’re looking for. There was some kind of Christian rave next to the Wazee Supper Club that was advertised. I can’t remember if it was for the 11th or the 4th, however. The only reason I remember is that I read the announcement and I had pizza that night at the Wazee. I believe the message said the disembodied were invited as well.
HTH, Marco
    OK, this sounds like something young, disembodied and spiritually confused people might attend, Munroe decided. Munroe checked and noticed that Marco Peloske was online, so he requested a private chat. Unfortunately, Peloske couldn’t remember who had posted the message, or whether the poster was living or dead.
    He thought of checking the place out, but he thought it would make more sense to catch up on the disembodied witness reports. Besides, without Yamaguchi, he couldn’t accomplish much on his own. He sent an email asking whether she’d be well enough to come in Tuesday, then he tackled the first report: A disembodied woman saw a man peeing on the street at 10th and Grant. Time to bust some crime.
    After reading and routing two hundred reports, Munroe had potentially solved two cases, including the annoying tool shed burglar who had been plaguing district three for six months. He’d noticed that one of the disembodied witnesses had used the word “schlemiel” to describe a suspicious person. For no particular reason, it reminded him of the story that had gone around the station of the man who had been held for menacing and had managed to run into the same door twice while being chased by officers. He remembered from his smattering of Yiddish that a “schlemiel” was basically a clumsy oaf. The suspect had a history of burglary, and the disembodied witness picked him out of some mug shots Munroe had sent. So now Munroe was rewarding himself by watching the online play-by-play of the Denver Nuggets-Phoenix Suns game and reading another Edgar Rice Burroughs book when he realized a man was standing behind him. It was 9:15 and the CID room was empty.
    The man reached forward and through Munroe to tap on the screen. He made a sock puppet gesture with his hand.
    “Go ahead,” Munroe said through the terminal’s speakers. The young man, who apparently was a Denver firefighter, jumped. The man’s uniform nametag said “Morris.”
    “Munroe? Glad I found you. FD needs to borrow you. Dispatch says it’s your day off but …”
    “No, it’s OK, but my partner’s off.”
    “I know. Look, I have the FD’s portable terminal and I was trained how to use it. We’ve got a HazMat spill and we’d like your help.” Munroe noticed that the man didn’t know where to look, his eyes kept darting back and forth. Morris was still young enough to be unsure of himself in new situations, and talking to a dead man through a terminal was high on the list of new situations.
    “OK, let’s go.”
    “Great, OK, let me switch on the terminal. I have it … it’s right … no, here it is,” he said triumphantly after finding the terminal and ear buds stuffed into his trouser pocket.
    “Do you have an armband?”
    “What? What armband?”
    “So you can wear it on your arm.”
    “Oh, I didn’t see one. Can’t I just keep it in my