AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

and the state. He’s the senior warden of the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice — the man in charge of the death house.
John Blue has overseen hundreds of executions and a few years ago, he believed that death by lethal injection was a just punishment and deterrent for crimes that required the ultimate penalty.
“Now I’m not so sure,” the 53-year-old Blue said, running his hand over his close-cropped hair. He looks more the Marine he was than the stereotyped image of a Texas warden. He doesn’t even own a pair of mirror sunglasses, but he does have a “Don’t Mess with Texas” bumper sticker on his pickup truck.
“We’re required to have an AfterNet terminal available in the visitor’s center. And we’re just waiting for the day when we execute a prisoner and see his name pop up on that screen 15 minutes after he stops twitching.”
That hasn’t happened yet, but executed criminals have logged on using that terminal. The quickest turn around time to date has been two days.
Vikki Rawlings is hoping to reduce that time. She’s a registered transition counselor with the criminal justice department. Her job is to file living identity certificates for the men and women on death row, and give them basic instructions on how to use an AfterNet terminal.
“So far, no one’s been able to use a terminal while alive. As you know, not many people can. I can’t. But I can prepare them for the experience.”
    Munroe cringed when he saw Yamaguchi throw the young officer to the mat, falling on his back. Ow! That must really hurt. Then she appeared to cradle his arm and danced around his head, turning all 225 pounds of cop onto his stomach, then holding his hand against her leg while using her knee to lock his elbow as her foot slid under his shoulder. The procedure happened so fast the man didn’t have time to resist, but he was now slapping the mat with his free hand.
    Munroe guessed that it was an indication that he was completely at her mercy and starting to feel pain, but she ignored him, still talking to her other students in the arrest control class. She pulled a tissue out of the back pocket of her sweat pants and blew her nose while still keeping him pinned.
    She’s really in a bad mood. Poor … oh, what’s his name, Martin? Just his luck to be her victim after she’s seen the video. He wasn’t there when she saw it. He heard about it from Marianne, the criminal justice intern who helped out in the detectives’ room.
    Now she was making her victim stand back up while holding his hand almost like a baseball bat. He stood on tiptoe whenever she twisted his hand a little.
    Munroe had snuck into the gym to watch his partner. He sometimes did when she taught arrest control training because he worried how his tiny, petite partner could handle herself in a real fight with an unruly suspect. He knew she was a black belt in aikido and an arrest control instructor, but it just seemed impossible that she could defend herself.
    He could see he was wrong. She brought her hands down in front of her, still holding the young man’s arm. His elbow came down like a Whack-A-Mole mallet and his body followed. He fell face down onto the mat. He lay there a while before rolling onto his back to stand up.
    She reached down to help him up, but he backed away as if she were a snake. Yeah, she can handle herself. Maybe I’ll talk to her later.
    He left the gym to head back to his desk. She’d be in class all day and he was left to his own amusements. Which meant another pile of disembodied witness reports.
    He found his chair at his desk and started compiling mug shot lineups for witnesses. An attempted bank robbery on Colorado Boulevard a week ago was observed by at least three disembodied witnesses. Of course, there may have been hundreds who saw the crime, but subtract the ones who were insane, didn’t know how to use a terminal or didn’t care, and he was left with three, still a pretty good number. And unlike the living witnesses, whom the gunmen had terrified, the disembodied got a good look at them.
    Detectives had identified one man as a suspect and Munroe was collecting stock mug shots from the database the FBI maintained on the AfterNet just for this purpose.
    He’d scheduled chats beginning at 3 p.m. with the detectives, an assistant DA, the defense attorneys and the first of the witnesses, who was now in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was going to be a long day.
    Yamaguchi rubbed her sore