Mrs. Gardener’s tattooed eyebrows rose only slightly. Her forehead would not permit any further wrinkling than that. “Quite a bit, as a matter of fact,” she said. “It’s a very popular presentation topic in Mr. Harris’s Introduction to Psychology elective.”
“Could I please see what you’ve got?”
“Certainly. Are you looking for books, periodicals, media, threads, or immersion?”
Joel brightened. “You have immersions for that kind of thing? Really?”
Mrs. Gardener lowered her voice to a delighted whisper. “You have no idea. If you want, I can let you walk through Whitechapel. Or Leimert Park. Or Jones Beach. Even the Manson houses! Every scene of every crime in the catalogue.”
Hwa blinked. “Seriously?”
Mrs. Gardener nodded. “The more recent cases sometimes have their faces changed—when the victims’ next of kin wouldn’t license their likenesses—but all the other details are the same. Some of the nudity is fogged over, naturally.” She snapped her fingers. “Not for you, though, Hwa! You’re not a minor, any longer.”
Hwa grimaced. “That’s fine, thanks. Had my fill of it.”
“We’re interested,” Joel said, as though he hadn’t heard her.
“No, we’re not,” Hwa said.
Joel held up a finger. “Just a moment, please.”
He walked a little ways away from the immersion booth. “What are you at?” Hwa asked. “I thought you wanted to work on your generation ship thing—”
“I think your friends are being hunted by a serial killer,” Joel said.
Hwa blinked. “Eh?”
“Well, Dad took me on a trip to D.C., because he had to talk to Congress? Or a subcommittee? Or a hearing? Something like that. Anyway, I went to the FBI’s Museum of Behavior. It used to be called the Evil Minds Research Museum. I don’t know why they changed it; I think Evil Minds would have looked better on the t-shirts in the gift shop. But they had a whole exhibit about serial killers. It was next to the Wall Street exhibit.”
“Serial killers.”
“Yeah. They’re pretty rare. And they don’t happen as much, anymore, because of the birthrate and data collection and stuff. Also now that the DSM says you can diagnose psychopathy in children—”
“Why would you think someone like that killed Calliope and Layne?” She shook her head. “Sorry. My friends.”
“Because they were prostitutes,” Joel said. “That’s who they kill. Mostly. Prostitutes.”
Hwa closed her eyes. “The correct term is sex worker, Joel. I belonged to the sex workers’ union. Okay, b’y?”
“Okay. I’m sorry.” He sounded genuinely apologetic. It was hard to tell for real. But he was the kind of kid who liked to know the right words for things. “But, if you’ve been looking into it at all, I mean, if you had some data to make sense of, you could put it into the immersion unit. There’s a lot of processing power. You could even ask the AI inside some questions! It’s been really helpful, with the ship design.”
“If I’d been looking into it.”
Joel looked at the floor. “You know, investigating it.” His voice cracked. “It would be private. Outside the Prefect system.”
She let the full weight of her gaze fall on him. “Joel? Is there something you want to tell me?”
“You might want to change your privacy settings,” Joel mumbled.
Hwa rolled her neck back to look at the ceiling. Master control room, she reminded herself. She waited for the overhead lights to beam some patience into her eyes. “I’m going to make you very sorry, during tomorrow’s workout.”
He sighed. “I know. But…” He gestured at the booth. “This is better, isn’t it? Better than going out there on your own.”
She didn’t know how to tell him that his instincts were better than he knew. That in all likelihood, the person killing her friends was probably after her, too. On the other hand, an offsite storage facility for all the data, all the footage, was probably a good idea. If she stored it somewhere else, maybe the people peeping her Prefect account would think she’d given up.
“You don’t get to go in there, with me,” Hwa said. “I don’t want you looking at that shit. Any of it.”
“I won’t see anything! I’m a minor!”
“Aye, exactly me point. You’re too—”
“I thought you were trying to toughen me up,” Joel said. “And not just physically. It’s going to be my town, someday, Hwa. I have to take care of it. I have to learn how to take care of it.”
Mrs. Gardener walked them to the booth. It was fashioned entirely of glass, or something like glass that wouldn’t break and wouldn’t transmit sound. You could wear the helmet in perfect silence, and no one would be annoyed or distracted by your commands. As Hwa watched, Mrs. Gardener waved her way into the booth with her right hand. The doors clicked open, unfolding as though to embrace the booth’s next visitor. Mrs. Gardener pointed at a couple of X’s on the floor marked out in tape.
“Stand on those,” she said. “You have to hit your mark so it can calibrate. Now, where would you like to start?”