Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend

"Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"

"Got a weird one for you, Adele."

"I always get the weird ones, Hank," Detective Adele Franken responded as she walked past the sergeant and headed for her desk. She folded up her umbrella, taking a moment to make sure the rain hadn't frizzed out her long brown hair too much. "The bidding rights for my memoirs are going to be fucking historic." She took a seat and reached for the file at the top of the stack. She flipped it open and her eyes automatically scanned the pertinent information, the action so customary that talking didn't even dent her concentration. "Jewelry store robbery, suspect in custody...so what's weird about this one?"

"Where to start?" Hank replied. "How about the whole thing happened in broad daylight in front of sixteen customers and seven employees?"

Adele flipped through the file idly, scanning for witness statements. "Good, that'll make for an easy case when we..." She flipped through the file again, a little more urgently this time. "Where are the statements?" she said, looking back up at Hank.

"We don't have any," Hank said, slowly shaking his head. "Instead, we got twenty-three cases of obstruction of justice sitting in the cells and waiting for prosecution. Not a goddamned one of them would talk. Not even an 'I don't remember,' or 'He was wearing a mask.' They all looked us right in the fucking eye and said they weren't saying a thing."

Adele flipped to the end of the file. "I haven't had enough coffee to deal with this shit yet," she muttered. She reached over and took a long swig of something with so much cream and sugar in it that it barely qualified as coffee. She'd heard of people who actually enjoyed the taste of the drink, but she'd also heard of people who liked having sex with farm animals.

"Oh, it gets better," Hank said, grinning. Adele began to suspect he'd been waiting hours to spring this one on her. "The suspect we've got? He's the store manager."

"The store manager stole the diamonds?" Adele wasn't exactly bowled over; she'd worked enough thefts to know that everybody had a weakness for money in large quantities. But usually jewelry store managers were paid well enough and had been through enough background checks that they didn't steal their own inventory. It was the counter clerks that wound up helping themselves to the stones more often than the upper management.

"Nope." From the tone of his voice, Hank was getting all the entertainment value he'd hoped for out of Adele's reactions. "Store manager's on video handing the stones right over to another guy, smiling and laughing the whole time. Even bagged 'em up for him. Then he went in the back and smashed up the hard drive with the security footage on it. Lucky for us, the store owner had a backup computer he didn't tell his employees about."

Adele sighed, a crooked smile on her face. "I guess there's just no trust in this world anymore." Her smile vanished as she got her head around the case. "So the store manager gives the diamonds to his bagman, tries to make it look like a robbery...but then why not try a little harder? Why not act scared, leave the video intact? Why get twenty accomplices involved, and have them all refuse to back up your story?"

"Dunno," Hank said with a shrug. "Like I said, weird. But I ain't told you the weirdest thing about it yet."

"What's the weirdest thing about it?" Adele asked dutifully. She knew she was feeding Hank a straight line, but she had to know the answer anyway.

"The robber, the guy that got away with the goods?" Hank grinned. "He was walking around with a fucking sex toy." He paused a moment to revel in her perplexed expression, then elaborated before she could respond. "One of those Girl things. The walking talking robot vibrators, you know? It was following him around the whole damned time."

Adele sat silently for a long moment. She took another long swig of mochachino. "Let me see the video footage," she said at last.

Two hours, three calls to the help desk, and an assorted variety of spirited swearing later, Adele had managed to open up the computer files that the store owner had emailed to them as evidence. Sure enough, they showed the robber walking into the building and heading straight for one of the clerks, with a jet-black figure following along. Adele hadn't seen one up close before, but she'd seen the ads on late-night TV. The form was unmistakable-it had the lines and figure of a woman, but the fluorescent lights gleamed off the plastic in a way that made it clear she was looking at a Girl(tm).

The robber talked to the clerk for a moment, Girl at his side-there wasn't sound, but the clerk smiled and nodded to him in a way that suggested they were old friends. After a moment, she walked off to get the manager. While she was gone, the robber took a seat and waited, seeming perfectly calm. Meanwhile, the Girl wandered around the store chatting to the staff, then to the customers. Most of them seemed surprisingly calm about the fact that some stranger's personal blow-up doll was engaging them in conversation; a few of them acted startled at first, but they relaxed quickly enough.

Then the manager showed up. The Girl made a beeline back to the robber, as though she wanted to get in on their plans. The manager...Adele watched him talk for a moment. Then she ran the footage back and watched him talk again.

There was no sound, but sometimes sound was just a distraction. Adele watched his facial expression as he talked to the robber again. He didn't look like he was planning to hand over the diamonds to his accomplice and bagman, not when he first walked up. He looked incredulous at first, as though he was expecting someone to jump out with a hidden camera. Then he looked angry. Then...

Adele kept winding back to that moment, pausing the screen on his slightly blurry face. There was a moment, barely even half a second until Adele froze it into an eternity, where the manager didn't look like anything at all. He looked lost in thought, his face holding absolutely no expression as he stared straight ahead at the robber and his Girl and listened to them talk. And then, as Adele pressed 'Play' again, his face broadened into a smile and he began gathering diamonds for them.

"Them"? That was interesting. Adele paused the screen again. Why did she think "them" just now, and not "him"? The robber might have had a crazy taste in distractions or a weird sexual fetish he couldn't leave at home when he started his crime spree, but it wasn't like his Girl was actually a partner.

Was it?

She watched the rest of the video. The manager continued to gather diamonds, the Girl went back to talking to the customers. The more Adele watched it, the more purposeful her behavior seemed. Adele rubbed her chin, an idea slowly beginning to form in her mind.

She'd never seen a Girl in person before, but...actually, the more she thought about it, the less she could get past that basic point. Crime had been going down the last couple of years, but she still had plenty to do every day. She was a police detective in one of the busiest cities in America, with an arrest record that was one of the best on the force. And she had never busted anyone with a Girl. Not even one. She'd busted people of every race, creed, religion, sexual orientation, people with hobbies kinky and mundane...but none of them had ever had a Girl. The absence suddenly struck her as strange, like the silence you get when your alarm doesn't go off. She scribbled down a note in the margin of the file, illegible to anyone but her: "Invstge: Crm rt drp frm Grls?"

Adele went back to the beginning and watched the video again. This time, she watched the Girl, not the robber. Now that she was looking for it, the pattern was absolutely clear; the Girl went to every person in the room, making sure to hit the staff first. It made sure it was there for the manager's appearance, and once his attitude totally and inexplicably changed from hostility to an eager desire to please, she went back to the last few customers she hadn't talked to.

And every single one of them-or at least every single one whose face Adele could see-got that exact same blank, thoughtless expression that the manager wore. Just for a moment, then it went away and they started smiling, but Adele was getting pretty good with the pause button. They all went...blank.

Adele jotted down another note in the margins. "Chk crzy thry." Because it was crazy. Probably crazy. Possibly maybe certainly crazy. But what if these things, these Girls, did something to people? Made them mellow, or calm, or something? They said these things were supposed to give you the best orgasms ever-what if that was how they did it, by getting into your head and making it just...happen? And what if someone had worked out a way to reprogram one, turn it into a weapon...well, not an actual weapon, nobody was getting hurt, but what if this guy had figured out how to make his Girl help him rob jewelry stores?

Another idea suddenly struck her. She pulled up the arrest records for the last few months and began looking for patterns. It took a little digging, because she wasn't exactly sure what she was looking for, but she knew it when she found it. Two other diamond robberies and a charge of insurance fraud at a jewelry store. All three involved authority figures giving away diamonds by the handful, no witnesses or uncooperative witnesses, evidence destroyed and no gems ever recovered. This wasn't the guy's first theft. This was just the first one where he was caught on tape.

She went through the video again, found the clearest image she could get of the robber's face and took a screenshot of it. She sent it off to Public Relations to get it turned into a wanted poster, and then she went onto the web and began browsing. If she was going to get her crazy theory out of her head, one way or another, she needed to talk to the company that made the Girls.

*****

And then it was a week later, and she had nothing to show for it. The district attorney hadn't gotten anywhere with the manager or any of the witnesses; they were all facing charges, but it hadn't budged their resolve not to testify. Even when confronted with the video footage showing their involvement, they just shrugged impassively. Adele suspected they would all plead guilty when they got in front of a judge.

Searching the web for information about the Girls had been a waste of time. She'd found the corporate website, with its cutesy little counter ("427,986,391 people worldwide have purchased a Girl(tm). Even if 000,000,000 of them will admit it.") She'd clicked on every single link, even going ninety-nine percent of the way through the purchase process just to see if there was some information in there. (She wasn't quite ready to buy a Girl yet, though, not even for the sake of the investigation. She'd been a cop long enough to develop instincts about scams, and something was fishy about the whole deal.) But she'd found nothing. No mailing address, no telephone numbers, no information on Technical Support if your Girl broke or Customer Service if it wasn't getting the job done and you needed a refund...nothing.

She'd seen plenty of Girl fansites online, with testimonials galore and even some pornographic videos from the more exhibitionistic Girl enthusiasts (with plenty of repetitions of the same "Girl(tm)-on-girl action!" joke)...but nobody knew where they were made, or who made them. Nobody even asked. Adele wasn't sure which was building up faster, her frustration or her sense of being creeped the hell out. She thought about posting some of her questions to the Girl forums (of course they had forums.) But something stopped her.

As for the robber himself, nothing. Nobody called the tip line saying they were his friend, or his girlfriend, or his next-door neighbor. Adele somehow didn't find herself a bit surprised; if she was right, the people who knew this guy would be falling over themselves to keep his secrets. And Adele knew she was right. She didn't have anything like proof, nothing she could even talk to her superiors about, but she knew it with the certainty of a decade's experience as a detective-the idea was crazy, but it fit the facts like a glove. The outfit making the Girls had designed them to brainwash people into liking them as some sort of marketing scam they were keeping on the Q.T., and the robber was some sort of über-nerd who'd cracked the case and hacked the motherboard and all that other "leet" shit, and he was using his to commit crimes. Now all she needed to do was wait for the guy to screw up so she could catch him.

Then it was two weeks later. And she got a tip.

"Is this Detective Franken?" the man on the phone asked. He sounded kind of nervous. Not like he'd done something wrong; Adele suspected he probably sounded that nervous when ordering Chinese take-out. "Only I asked the switchboard lady to send me to Detective Franken."

"It is," she said, putting on her 'calm' voice. "They said you wanted to speak to me about the man on the poster?"

"Well, I don't want anyone to get into trouble," he responded. Adele bet herself five bucks he'd been working up to this call for at least a week. "But I saw your poster a week ago, and...well, it's very blurry, but I thought it might be Donald. I mean, I don't think it really could be. Donald's worked in our office for years now. He's not any sort of criminal."

"Only...?" Adele recognized the tones in his voice. She'd need to coax the information out of him.

There was a long pause before the man spoke again. "Well, it's just...he's been acting funny for a couple of months now. He's been calling in sick-that's not like Donald, he's always been so responsible. And then about two weeks ago, he stopped coming in. No phone call, not even a word of explanation. He won't even answer his cell phone. I've been very worried about him, and then I saw that poster, and I thought...well, I thought maybe he might be in some sort of trouble. You know?"

"I understand," Adele said. "And don't worry, I'm sure there's a perfectly innocent explanation for this." She wasn't, but it always helped them to hear that. "I'll just drop by Donald's house and have a talk with him. You have the address?" She reached for a pen to jot down his response. "...in Queens, mhmm. Yes, thank you. And his last name?" A further scribble. "And can I have your name, as well?" She wasn't at all surprised at his refusal.

It was only later, much later, that she realized what question she should have asked him. By then, it was too late.

*****

She pulled up about a block away from the small one-bedroom house, leaving the sirens off and coasting to a stop well out of hearing distance. The search and arrest warrants sat snugly in her coat pocket, making sure that her plan was nice and legal.

Her plan, which she continued to refine as she walked in the direction of the house, avoiding the patches of light created by the streetlights, was to bust in and jump him before he could get to his Girl. Slap the handcuffs on him, give him a gentle tap with her nightstick to keep him quiet, and bundle him out of the house and into the car. Once she had him out of the way, she'd go back to the house and look for evidence. She was a lot less worried about the Girl without him around to tell it what to do. Which didn't mean she wouldn't put a few bullets into its CPU if it started talking to her, but she'd prefer to confiscate the damned thing if she could.

She briefly pictured a Girl sitting forlornly in the evidence locker and stifled a chuckle.

Adele paused outside the house, taking stock of the situation. She wavered again on the idea of calling in backup, but came down against it for the third time. If she was right about what the Girl could do, calling in too many cops was the worst possible mistake. All it took was for just one of them to get the idea that Donald wanted them to help him escape, and then she might be in a gunfight with a fellow officer. Better to handle this alone. At least she knew what she was getting into.

She looked at the windows, and smiled coldly to herself. Donald was up late, it seemed, pacing back and forth through the tiny kitchen. She moved cautiously through the yard, sizing up the room from as many angles as she could, but she didn't see the Girl anywhere. It couldn't be going better. She looped around to the corner of the house, then sidled along the wall until she reached the door. She took a long, quiet breath, held it for a count of three, then let it out slowly. Her fingers wrapped around her nightstick. Her eyes narrowed.

One,

she counted in her head.

Two...

She felt the adrenalin kicking in, washing through her whole body like a sluice of liquid fire.

Three!

Adele darted forward and kicked the door as hard as she could. She felt the latch splinter under her boot, but before she could even consciously register it, she was already through the doorframe and heading for Donald in a flying tackle. He didn't look like much of a fighter, but Adele didn't plan to take any chances. He obviously made up in brains what he lacked in brawn, and Adele wanted to take every chance she could to keep him off-balance.

He looked up at her, his face a mask of surprise and alarm. He looked gaunt and haggard, like a man who'd been under terrible pressure for longer than anyone should ever have to bear. Clearly the criminal lifestyle didn't suit him. Judging by the looks of this place, he probably didn't even know where to fence the diamonds. All that went through Adele's mind in less than a tenth of a second as she flung herself across the distance between them and tackled him to the ground.

He went down like a ragdoll, hitting the kitchen floor hard with his left shoulder. An explosive grunt of pain whooshed out of his lungs, and Adele didn't intend to give him a chance to fill them again. She flipped him over, slapped the handcuffs on him in a single practiced gesture, and then put him into a choke hold-not hard enough to cut off his air completely, but enough to stop him from shouting.

"You have the right to remain silent," she said quietly into his ear. "Anything you say may be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?"

His response was barely a whisper. "Don't hurt her," he said desperately.

Adele's heart sank. He was going to try for an insanity defense, she just knew it. He was going to try to claim that his fucking sex toy talked to him and made him steal, and what's worse, her case was going to play right into his hands. She was going to bring this to a D.A. with the claim that the Girls could make people do things, and Donald was going to claim that he was just an innocent victim of circumstance.

Adele frowned. Now she really couldn't damage the fucking thing. She needed to have it intact enough for an expert to examine and prove that Donald modified it, which meant that she needed to hope that it really was inert without Donald telling it what to do. Or at least that it had an off switch she could find in a hurry.

The adrenalin rush meant that all that ran through her head in about a half a second. Out loud, she just said, "Oh, don't even try it, Donnie boy. One of your buddies at work fingered you. We'll find the tools you used, we'll confiscate your computer, and they'll all testify that you had the know-how to hotwire the stupid thing."

"Tools?" She heard the confusion in Donald's voice. That was when she realized what question she should have asked her anonymous tipster, back when she had the chance. "Know-how, what know-how? I'm an accountant..."

"It's okay, Donald," Adele heard behind from behind her. It was the sexiest voice she'd ever imagined, somehow breathy without any actual breath. That voice was designed to hit the hindbrain, to find that deep-down ancestral part of every human being that had evolved to want sex, and to hit it hard. Adele was straight, she was wired for flight-or-fight, and she knew what the Girl could do, and it still sent a shiver down her spine. "You can relax and sleep now. I'll take care of everything."