The Girl and the Pendulum (An Original Story – Part 7)

Part Seven

The address given by the receptionist led to a string of townhouses and three-story flats in the Sunset, a district known for its family homes and bitter ocean fog.

Cattrell was surprised by how intact the homes were, as it was unusual not to see the occasional burned-out husk or bare concrete foundation in a vacant lot overgrown with wildflowers. At the end of a cul-de-sac was a small but ramshackle house with peeling gray paint.

He parked his sedan and turned his headlights off. Evenings were the best time to observe homes, and his car would fit in with the many cars abandoned on the street, some with decaying flats. He pulled his fedora over the top of his head and settled in.

The receptionist had found only one customer order since the date of the droid’s disappearance, delivered to this address. The part was ordered four months ago, a battery pack.

A light came on in the front window of a ground-floor flat. He pulled out his camera and zoomed in on the silhouette in the window. Female. About 5’9, with a suggestion of curves. Barely a glimpse, and as fast as the light came on, it went off.

Click. Rrrr.

He put the camera down. For the next hour he thought of the possible uses a woman might have for a droid in a neighborhood like this. Gardening? Housekeeping? Catsitting?

It could have been the wrong house.

The numbers on the flat were correct, but anyone could paint numbers wrong. Especially someone trying to hide or hide something. He aimed his camera at the neighbors’ porches to the either side of the house and found numbers. Each home differed by 12. This was the correct address.

Another light came on in the home, and Cattrell zoomed the lens in closer. He watched as the woman played with a cat - no surprise there - and sat down to an episode of “Jeopardy!” A few of the local stations could still broadcast, but instead of new programming they played reruns of game shows.

Cattrell shifted impatiently. Why was he wasting his time hunting down a cat lady addicted to game shows? The droid was likely stolen, its parts spread to the four winds. Someone scamming parts for another stolen droid somewhere else in the city was hijacking this woman’s address. He’d seen this kind of racket before.

He left the sedan again and walked to the corner, where he remembered seeing a liquor store. He bought a few bottles of malt from a Chinese lady who couldn’t speak a lick on English and returned to the sedan, where he opened the first bottle. He’d watch her tonight, see if there were any other residents at the flat, and talk with her tomorrow.

It was going to be a long night.

Read from the beginning:
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six
To be continued (installments 8 through 18 of this story are coming soon.)

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"The Girl and the Pendulum" is an 18-part future-noir science fiction story about a a private investigator's search for a missing android. How can a man who searches for missing women find lost artificial intelligence? I welcome feedback on this story about a man and his difficult case in a post-war, post collapse world. Stay tuned, as I also will begin publishing my 300,000 word epic novel "The Messiah" on Steemit in 2017.

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