Snapshot

“Roger.”


Davis kept pace with Estevez. The perp was a thin man, but taller, more . . . intimidating than his mug shots had made him seem. He’d made a big mistake—not just in murdering a man, but in picking the man to murder. The mayor’s nephew.

This was already ramping up to be a big case for the prosecutor, who felt he’d have heavy hitters in the city leaning on him. Unfortunately, their case against the accused wasn’t strong. So he’d requested a warrant for a Snapshot.

The city government of New Clipperton had bought the Snapshot Project. Paid the Restored American Union through the nose for it. But what did they know about how it worked? Barely anything. One of those . . . things was trapped somewhere, kept unconscious, electricity buzzing through it and doing this. Re-creating days, in their entirety, from provided raw matter.

Well, you had a small window to get a Snapshot of a specific day made. A few weeks, and that was it. You had to start it up in the morning, insert people right away. If you waited it grew more difficult. Like the doorway in just wouldn’t open. And getting data out . . . well, the cops had to carry it out with them. You could usually get secure texts through, but even with those there was interference sometimes.

Privacy watchdogs had lost their minds when they’d found out about the Snapshot Project. Particularly when they’d discovered that originally, the mayor had been using it for personal enjoyment, details redacted.

The resulting flurry of laws and restrictions meant that you needed a court order to re-create a day, and it could only be used for official government business. They could technically send in drones to record what was happening, and the precinct had experimented with that. Might eventually move to it full-time, but for now, old-fashioned detective work seemed most effective. This way you could put a cop on the stand to testify about what he’d seen with his own eyes. Juries responded to that sort of thing.

He was proud of how he stayed on Estevez’s tail with no sign of alerting the man. Like a real cop.

Chaz met him at an intersection, and the two kept following as Estevez called someone on the phone. They were too far back to hear anything, but the end result was that they saw when the man knelt down at the edge of the sidewalk and fumbled with something, then stood and darted down another alleyway.

Chaz cursed, speeding up, but Davis caught him by the arm.

“He’s getting away!” Chaz said, reaching under his arm for his gun again.

“Let him. This was what we’ve been waiting for.”

“This?” Chaz asked.

Davis walked up to the place where Estevez had knelt: a storm drain on the side of the road. He peered down, then reached in with his phone and took a few pictures. He held it up, scrolling between them until he found a good shot.

A handgun lay in the filth of the drain. “Murder weapon,” Davis said, standing up and showing Chaz. “The IRL detectives have been searching for this in all the wrong places.” He attached it to a message, then opened the secure HQ communication app on his phone.

He sent the message to Maria, their HQ liaison. Murder weapon found, he wrote. Storm drain in front of a beauty salon on the north side of Twenty-First, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues.

“I hate just letting him go,” Chaz said, folding his arms.

“You hate not being able to get into some kind of gunfight,” Davis said back.

He waited, worried he’d need to send the message again. You never could be certain what would get out. Fortunately, a few minutes later his watch buzzed, and he glanced at the phone. A line was open, for the time being.

Intel received, Maria sent. Nice work. Between Tenth and Eleventh? That’s far from where you should have been.

Eyewitness is wrong, Davis sent back. Estevez went east after the murder, not west.

Chance of Deviation? Maria sent.

Ask the bean counters, Davis replied. I’m just reporting what I’ve found.

Roger. Sending a team to that gutter IRL. Stay close in case they need follow-up.

Davis showed the phone to Chaz.

“So . . .” Chaz said, looking around. “We have some time. You want to head to Ingred Street?”

“It’s noon,” Davis said dryly.

“And?”

“And it’s a school day.”

“Oh. Right. What, then?”

“Well, we had some million-dollar burritos,” Davis said, nodding toward a diner. “Shall we have some million-dollar coffee to wash them down?”





Two





Davis couldn’t help wondering how the people in the diner would react to knowing they were dupes. The fat lady behind the counter, going over receipts. The two white guys in flannel and trucker caps, chewing on Reubens and grunting at each other. The mom with a gaggle of kids, hushing them with force-fed fries.

Davis felt he could take the measure of a man or woman by the way they handled the news that they weren’t real. It was uncomfortable, intimate, and fascinating to watch. Some got angry, some got morose. Others laughed. You saw something about a person in that moment that they wouldn’t ever know—couldn’t ever know—about themselves.

His watch buzzed as the waitress arrived with a plate of fries for him and topped off his coffee. Davis had momentary sadistic visions of himself guessing the reactions of the people in the room, then pulling out his badge and showing it around to see if he was right. Trouble was, Chaz might do something like that if he got too bored.

Chaz got back from the restroom as Davis was munching on fries. “Sure,” Chaz said, sitting, “you’ll put mustard on those.”

“Mustard belongs on fries.”

“Like it belongs on burritos.”

“Disgusting.”

“You just aren’t willing to live, Davis,” Chaz said, stealing a fry. “Try new things, you know?”