Kingston, New York, was an old town. Opened for business in the days of Charles II. Of course, hardly anyone alive was either aware of, or interested in the town's history. History was a subject that was way too dangerous and it wasn't taught anymore.

It was raining again, raining hard, in that way that was now the norm in summer. Three inches had fallen already and plenty more was due. The riff-raff had long since been swept off the stretch of Broadway they infested just up from the HudVal PD building. Huge torrents of dirty water were sluicing down the drains with a familiar throbbing sound. Anyone with leaking roof problems was getting deluged today.

Rook Venner, Senior Investigating Officer, HudVal PD Homicide, turned away from the window as the implant in his right ear, his office phone, beeped once.

"Yeah, what've we got?"

"Something very ugly. Inna upscale devo down by Peekskill. Seems like a corporate hit."

"Peekskill, our side of the line?"

"Apparently."

Pity about that. South of Front Street, Peekskill and it was Westchester's problem, not his.

"Why corporate?"

"That's what Officer Trand thinks. He was first responder."

"Shit. What a way to ruin a day."

Rook Venner clicked out of civilian netfeed. His daughter wasn't around anyway. Their daily netchat would have to wait. He began assembling kit. Since this wasn't a mission to the uninsured world, he didn't need body armor, or the knock-hammer, or any of the heavy toys. He did pack the gun, and his helmet, or technical headpiece, as the manual liked to call it. On a hot muggy day it wasn't his first choice for headgear, but he knew he had to take it. An IO without his helmet was unlikely to receive full and due respect. Way of the world. A quick check of the office screen showed no dust storm forecast, and it was raining, so he didn't bother with the respirator kit.

His partner, Assistant Investigator, Lindi MacEar-- tall, blonde, strong, fond of triathlons, was coming down the hall. She had all her gear strapped on, gun, lights, chem-lab, specimen-safe, multi-cam, the works bar the armor and hand-to-hand weapons.

"You ready, boss?"

"Yeah." He pulled on his raincoat, flipped up the hood. "Gonna get soaked before we can even get in the damned car."

The rain was drumming hard on the skylights. The gutters were overflowing at the back of the building sending sheets of water straight down into the courtyard.

He checked his chest pocket for the reassuring solidity of his Nokia Supa. Way beyond regulations, of course, but when it came to encryption, the best small budget device you could get.

True to prediction, they were wet by the time they got into their old GM200. On the upside traffic was light. Summer monsoons did have that effect. If you didn't absolutely have to to go somewhere you tended to stay off the roads. Rook let the car drive itself. He couldn't see a thing through the wall of water anyway and the car knew precisely where all the big potholes were on the city streets.

On the Thruway they rode the rail on the outside lane. The inside truck traffic howled past in its robotic way, exploding through the rain. .

"Where does it all go?" Rook mumbled as a caravan of giant silver truck-bods hurtled past them at more than two hundred miles an hour.

"New Jersey, of course," said Lindi.

For a moment Rook marvelled at New Jersey's apparently endless capacity for absorbing truck-bods. A set of long, low black tankers howled by, each one emitting a shrill wail of wind over some external projection. They were followed by white container boxes, you could just catch a flash of a shipping line logo as they whipped past your eyes; HK, Maersk, UKL, the names of global trade repeated endlessly in some odd coding known only to the software that stacked the traffic.

Six minutes later they exited at Harriman and rode the GM 200's cranky cell-drive over the mountain to the bridge. Once they were over that they were onto Route 9, which had had rail installed all the way now, so they latched on again for the rest of the ride down to Peekskill. But the route still had to weave its way along through the curves imposed by the landscape, so total elapsed was still close to 30 mins by the time they were getting out under the coverway of Highview, an ochre-brick devo from the forties bristling with security gear. The rain was still pouring down, gushing from gutterspouts, and forming brown torrents in the ground drainage.

Uniformed house flunks in black rain gear waved them in. A pair of cops in full Tac-squad shells were positioned to cover the stairs and passageway leading to the scene. People were peering down from the upper floors. Yellow tape blocked off the corridor, with another Tac-suit to make it real and keep the curious away.

Inside the apartment, Venner was grateful to find the South Valley CSI team already hard at work. Chatt Fletcher in charge, a rotund, cheerful kid out of Brooklyn, who was glad to have jumped upstream to the Valley.

"This is a wild one," murmured Chatt, while Rook absorbed the sight of blood sprayed up a wall, with a real heavy mess on the tiles below.

"What the hell was that?"

"Shotgun, heavy gauge buckshot. Fired three times, at least one hit, what you're looking at."

"All this blood, from who?"

"Not the target. He's over there." Chatt looked over his shoulder, into the big, high-ceiling, living room.

A big man, lying faceup beside a lifesize marble statue of a woman wearing a robe, one arm held out as if in a blessing.

"That's the Virgin Mary," muttered Rook with the shock of recognition.

"She took one too."

Lindi was getting closeups of the damage to the statue's head.

Chatt read off his notes. "Vic is Manuel Sangacha, age not yet determined, but I'd say at least 60. Looks like he kept fit, but he was a big guy, six foot two, at least 265 pounds."

Rook took in the entry wounds, and then the other stuff.

"What's all the secondary damage?"

"Not sure yet, but we think a whip."

"You what?"

"They whipped him pretty darn good before it went upside down. There's a little blood evidence here and there."

Rook studied the sawn-off lying on the floor. Remington's popular Home Safety six shot with the smart magazine. Someone must've made a big mistake in not nailing that down. From the huge blood sign on the other wall they'd paid for it too.

"His clothes?"

"In the bedroom. No sign of struggle, everything neat and orderly."

Rook had observed the bloody bootprints on the floor.

"Messy." Very unusual in a corporate hit.

"It all went wrong. We have blood traces all over the parking."

"And they left all this. Unprofessional."

"The shotgun noise must have frightened them."

"What d'you think?" He said after a few moments.

"Hard to say, yet. Most likely this was top down, not an inside thing."

"Murder weapon?'

Early for forensix, but most likely 5.5 millimeter handweapon. Sophisticated shit, delayed explosive rounds."

The usual thing for assassinations in the modern era, quiet, but deadly and small enough to be concealed from the Sec-cams.

"Venner, where are you?" whispered a familiar voice in his right ear.

"I'm at Highview devo, Peekskill district, talking with SoVal CSI re Case 4257, vic ID M. Sangacha."

"Yeah? It's ugly I hear. What's it about?"

"Not sure yet, but all signs are corporate hit of some kind."

"Not good. Keep me informed. Out."

Area Chief Lisa Artoli removed her presence from his right ear.

"You're back?" Chatt was staring at him.

"Yeah. The boss."

"I know how it is."

"You do?"

Chatt shrugged. When it came right down to it, he didn't. Venner and Chief Artoli went back a long ways with ups and downs and something peculiar in there that nobody who knew Venner asked questions about.

"Okay, what do we know from the Security systems?"

"Security was dazzled for about an hour, and didn't even know it."

"So these guys were pretty good then."

"You have to think so. No visual of the car or cars involved. The dazzle started at 4.20, stopped at 5.26. Everything inside those times is good quality CGI garbage."

"Standard formats?"

"Pretty skillful, I'd say. Borrowed characters from earlier storage, real people who live here. Then used them for comings and goings."

"So penetration of the system began a lot earlier."

"Yeah, this was in the works a while."

"And you don't think this came from the inside?"

"You mean someone uploaded the dazzle inside, did the vic, took the hit, and got away?"

"Or they're hiding right now in another duplex."

"Oh, anything's possible. Your call, yeah?"

But Rook was already making it. "Four teams, three apiece, check every dwelling, every locked door, every service tunnel, room, whatever. Max caution. Look for blood, we got a lot of it here."

Chatt shook his head. "You know there's so much blood sign in the parking that I have to think they left that way. They fucked up, they ran."

"Probabilities?" Rook had his little Nokia out, the black and yellow plastic fit the hand perfectly.

"92% probability that the perpetrators have fled," said the default voice, the one Rook called Ingrid, with its cool swedish overtones.

Rook looked to Chatt.

Chatt nodded. "Yeah, 8% is too big to let it go. Just in case."

"I have an image on some fragments," said Lindi stepping carefully through the mess.

"Okay."

"Analysis indicates 5.5 millimeter bursting Spiretops."

"I don't know that one."

"Military round, bit out of fashion now. Still in use on border robots."

Rook felt his eyebrows bob involuntarily. "Where did that information come from?"

"I dunno, mmmm," Lindi checked her handheld. "Pentagon open site."

"Wonders will never cease." It was the sort of thing that if you asked for it, officially, the Pentagon would deny. It was the way the system worked. You asked, they said no. Then you found it on an open site, available to all.

Venner stalked slowly around the apartment, leaving Chatt to work on the messy stuff. Everything here would be sifted, scanned and tested, then matched with state and national dbases. It was an unusual crime site, definitely on the insured side of the highway, so everything would have to be done correctly, no corners cut. The vic, whoever he'd been, had had money and influence. No one without them could live in a devo like this.

Weird details though. The killers had fucked up. That was unusual in itself. Rook had handled maybe a dozen corporate killings in his decade on Homicide. Usually the crime scene was so clean it squeaked. The killers were always ultra-professional, left no traces, made no sound.

Then there was the whip. When hit teams had to extract info before terminating a subject they usually used a combo of drugs to increase sensitivity and really painful tricks, like skinning a man's penis, or boiling his hands. A whip simply wasn't painful enough given the usual time constraints. But Chatt hadn't mentioned fancy drug residues, though that might come with later analysis. Odd.

The bedroom was painted light green with white ceiling. The bed was relatively small, just a double and covered with a grey-green duvet that matched the walls. The pseud-wood floor had a couple of antique looking rugs. Everything was neat. The vic had an almost military sense of style. Nothing out of place, nothing flamboyant, everything in muted colors. What it didn't look like was a crim residence. At least not any crim in Venner's experience.

"No signs of a search for anything?"

"Ah, no." MacEar was working her handheld for info.

So, a straight out corporate hit. That was the best fit here, though there might be possible crim associations. The first thing was to learn who the vic was.

"Got it," muttered MacEar.

"Yeah?"

"Military. Had to go to a Freedom site. This is General Manuel Sangacha."

"General?" Rook felt a cold premonition. Something big and awful was turning around in its lair.

"Retired in '52. Service period began in 2019. Commanded a border division during the emergency."

Border division? Rook chewed his lip. This sounded like stuff he didn't want to have anything to do with.

He tapped the button on his waist unit.

"Leave a message," said the Chief's personal unit in her voice.

He did. Military stuff was dangerous. Like unexploded ordinance in a former battle zone. With luck the Chief would pull him off this thing and call in Military Intelligence. Let them take care of their own.

Chatt was back. "We turned him over."

"Yeah?"

"Back, buttocks and thighs are covered in welts. Blows from a whip and something else, maybe a cane?"

"Hmmmm. Punishment or interrogation?"

"No idea. Exit holes confirm nature of the rounds used. And, he's been dead about four hours. In other words killed during the dazzle period on the Security system."

"All fits together then."

"One thing, he seems to have no active sub-cutes, no BIMS not even an Insurance Rfid."

"I guess that explains why it took so long for us to hear about this."

"Yeah. I've identified the usual neck and upper arm sites where he had SCs, but not for a long time now."

"Well, he was military. He had his removed when he got out."

"Right. And never had another put in."

"Hmmm, yeah, unusual that."

Which it was. Insured people wore a palette of implants, from uni-IDs to feelgoods and personality modules. Uninsured people were planted with Locators and BIMs and tended to go for a lot of vanity chips, moral improveers, 12steppers, even bible-verse devices.

The resulting plague of chipsick and BIMkosis was a national obsession.

Rook had had his own problems. HIs original HudVal PD Subcute had been part of a batch with a tiny defect. Unfortunately it locked up with a feelgood he'd had put in after his wife left him, took their daughter and the contents of the bank account and moved to LA. That gave him weird nightmares. But the combo did something to the NEA rfid in his neck. As someone who legally carried weapons, he had to have the National Emergency Act SC. Normally not a problem, but then he started having real bimkosis, with flashes of robo-brain, when human thought gave way to machine codes. That was dangerous shit, and some victims never came back, never spoke again or reacted to the outside world. Adult Onset Autism via Body Implant Malfunction Syndroms, -- AOA for short-- was the pop term. Fortunately, Rook had psych coverage, being a cop and all and they replaced his chips.

"So," Rook, looked along the book shelves. The General had been a reader, something of a rarity these days. Liked military history by the look of these shelves. "He was found by the devo security?"

"Yeah."

"Why were they interested?"

"Someone reported loud noises."

"Yeah?"

"It seems the neighbors. Joe and Berine Marcy, were on their way out when they heard these loud sounds. They didn't report them for a couple hours or so because they were late and in a hurry to get to grandma's place."

"Okay."

"And devo security were slow to investigate because it was the shift change. The outgoing left it to the incoming. They didn't take a look for a while because, well it doesn't say why."

"Coffee, probably. Donuts."

"Yeah, well, whatever. Then someone knocked, entered and we got the call."

Venner was looking at the taped off blood stain on the floor and wall of the hallway.

"That's the bathroom?" he nodded to the closed door where the tape was attached.

"Yeah."

"What's in there?"

"Interesting." Chatt was reading off his hand held. "We think someone wiped it down."

"No prints?"

"Lots of prints, but mostly Mr. Sangacha's. Same with dna so far. But areas like the sink and shower very thoroughly wiped and no sign of whatever was used to wipe it with."

"Took it with them, SOP."

"I suppose. Some water in the shower, indicates shower was used today."

"The vic wet?"

"Like, did they do him in the shower?"

"Whatever."

"No, he's dry."

MacEar had the phone log analysis.

"Not many calls. Relatives in Albuquerque and LA, a broker in White Plains, a law office in Manhattan, another one in Newburgh."

"Friends?"

"Working on it."

"Any military? Any government?"

Lindi shot him a look. He made his eyes big and kept his mouth shut.

"I'm checking." Lindi was good. He probably didn't deserve her.

Rook went back to studying the scene.

"The door," he said.

"Any sign of tampering?" said Lindi without looking up from her handheld.

"Nope," said Chatt. "He either let them in or they had the code. He didn't have it bolted, either."

Rook took a look. There were heavy duty bolts top and bottom.

"He put bolts on the door, but he didn't use them when he needed to."

"Isn't that always the way?"

Or, just as likely, Mr. Sangacha was ambivalent. He felt like he ought to be safe and secure here, but another part of him said he wasn't. So he put on the bolts and bought the Remington six shot and kept it handy. But he didn't lock the bolts, because it's a pain in the ass to have to unlock bolts to go in and out of your front door. But he did keep the Remington somewhere reasonably handy. Not good enough to save his life, but good enough to ruin someone else's day.

"I'm back, Venner."

"Hi."

"This is now Super-priority, you got that?"

"Shouldn't we hand this off to MI?"

"Nope. This is from Albany. Super-Priority, minimize cooperation with federal agencies."

"Uh, oh."

"No kidding, Rook, this is a big one. Don't fuck up."

"If it's big then the Feds are already on their way."

"Then do the dance. But if you get something good it goes to Albany and they make the decision."

"Okay. I hear you."

In other words this was a political killing and Rook knew that meant extreme danger, for everyone involved.