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“I’m very sorry to have to bring you this news, Mrs. Mitchell. It’s about your husband.”
Tears had welled up in Amber’seyes and she had started to shake.
“Oh no, please, oh no,” she moaned.
Lassiter glanced at the officer, who came forward with a box of tissues and a bottle of water.
Decker stood back against the wall, watching all of this.
Green said, “There apparently was a terrible accident at the fulfillment center. They did tell us that your husband didn’t suffer. Itwas very quick.”
Amber was clearly no longer listening. She was hunched over, her face near the tops of her knees, rocking back and forth. “Oh, God, please. Frank, oh, please. Frank…”
Green looked hopelessly at Lassiter, who pulled up a chair next to Amber and put an arm around her quaking shoulders.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Mitchell. So very, very sorry.”
FrankMitchell, gone, just like that.
Amber and Zoe, bereaved, just like that.
Decker could relate. The very same thing had happened to him when, coming home one night, he had found his wife, her brother, and his daughter dead. Murdered. Gone from him for all time. One night. One breath.
If there was anything in life worse than that, he didn’t know what it could possiblybe.
The mind, breathtakingly special as it was, had never been designed to take in such a crushing event with such little preparation. It took all the air from your body, all the rigidity from your muscles, all the synaptic impulses from your brain.
It left you lessened, hollowed, destroyed.
It had been well over two years now since Cassie and Molly had been takenfrom him, and Decker was still unable to plumb the total depths of what the loss had done to him.
Amber had composed herself in that police station room, wiped her face clear, walked out on steady legs, embraced her daughter, and escorted her home, her arm never leaving the child’s shoulders.
She had asked to see the body, but was told that it would not be a good idea. Thatthere had been…substantial disfigurement. It would most likely be a closed casket unless the mortician could work some wonders.
Jamison had gone with them while Decker had stayed behind to get fuller particulars.
Green and Lassiter provided them.
Green said, “That place is huge. And it’s got all sorts of automation. Robots going up and down aisles. These massive metalarm things putting incredibly heavy pallets of stuff way up on shelves. And they each do the work of about fifty people. What jobs are going to be left for humans, tell me that?”
Decker was less interested in the economic challenges of the coming automation revolution than in the exact details of Frank Mitchell’s last few moments alive.
“But what happened to Frank Mitchell?”he asked.
Lassiter took up the story.
“They’re working on an addition to the fulfillment center. Mitchell had gone there to check on some things. There was a mounted robotic arm that’ll be used to lift heavy pallets high up on shelves, like Marty just said. It’s in a confined space and wasn’t supposed to be operational. But apparently something went wrong. When they went tolook for Mitchell they found him crushed against a concrete wall with the robotic arm still holding on to him.”
“But if it wasn’t operational, how could it have come on?” asked Decker.
Green grimaced. “Now that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. They believe it was a computer glitch. Something in the damn thing’s software, or some spike in the power supply. Again, theplace is under construction, and I guess all the bugs haven’t been worked out yet.”
Lassiter added, “I researched it a bit after we got the news. It’s not the first death from some robot going nuts. There’ve been cases up in Michigan and Ohio and other places. It’s what you get when you put these super-strong metal beasts in with humans. They’ve got no shot if things go sideways. Thatarm can lift ten thousand pounds no problem. You let that loose on a human, well, I saw Frank Mitchell’s body. And it was…beyond horrible,” she added in a trembling voice.
And that had been that.
Decker had driven back here and met with Jamison.
