Android: Golem (The Identity Trilogy) by Mel Odom Page B

struck her. I saw her jerk backward and tumble slowly over the roof’s edge.
    Calculating the distance and the necessary effort, I threw the Synap at the same time I changed direction and raced toward Shelly. The weapon flew through the air and struck the assassin in the head, rendering him unconscious.
    I flung myself forward the last few meters as Shelly went over the side head-first. I locked a hand around her ankle, stopped her fall, and gently drew her back onto the rooftop.
    She didn’t move. She didn’t say anything.
    The pulse in her foot was already gone.
    When I got her onto the rooftop, I saw the bullet hole in her forehead just above her left eye.
    The support team arrived forty-nine seconds later. I held Shelly until they took her from me.  

 
     
     
    Chapter Eight
     
     
     
    The day the NAPD buried Shelly, rain filled the city.
    I don’t know what prompted me to go to the funeral. There was nothing I could do, no benefit to be gained by anyone. I could not replace what Kurt Nolan and his two daughters—Shelly’s children—had lost, nor could I offer them solace.
    I didn’t have the words, other than the impersonal responses I had in my cache dedicated to dealing with victims at a crime scene. Once I made contact with bereaved victims, my first order of business was to find them appropriate human counseling.
    At the church, I sat in the back row and reviewed my personality index, looking for something that might have crept through the neural channeling that would guide me in what I was supposed to do. I didn’t truly feel anything. My emotions had been effectively negated during the personality transfer, allowing me to operate coolly and calmly within the parameters established by the Three Directives.
    Shelly was gone and there was nothing I could do about that. I accepted it the same way I accepted the sun coming up. Her death was a fact.
    I missed Shelly. With her, I’d had a certain amount of stimulus. We’d had work to do. For the last three days since her death, I’d shown up at work and sat at our desks. I’d talked to no one and no one had talked to me. I’d waited for assignments that didn’t come.
    On the day of the funeral, Lieutenant Ormond told me not to come in. Since I had nowhere else to go, I went to the funeral. Sitting at home by myself had seemed…incomplete. I couldn’t explain it any better than that.
    Everyone dressed in black. Kurt was there in a black suit. His two daughters, in black dresses, stood at his side. The youngest daughter, Susan, came to me and took me by the hand. Not wishing to hurt her feelings, I let her pull me up to join the family.
    During the graveside service, Susan pulled me down so she could speak in my ear. “I know you can’t cry for Mommy, so I’ll cry for you.”
    “Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say. I stood at Susan’s side and we got through the service.
    After the service, Kurt took Susan by the hand and looked at me with pain and anger. “You should have been there for her. She should have had a real cop at her side.”
    I didn’t argue. A real cop would have had a real gun and would have killed the man who had killed Shelly. But, a real cop would have died earlier in the building. If things had been different, they would have been different, but there were no guarantees that the outcome would have been affected. If the man’s aim had been better with the 20mm rifle, I wouldn’t have been there either. No one seemed to acknowledge that.
    I continued standing at the gravesite, not knowing what to do, as the rain pelted the ground and streams ran through the grass and into the open hole. Soon, everyone left and I stood there and watched the casket lowered into the rainwater and mud. A backhoe scooped sloppy dirt into the hole and covered Shelly’s body.
    It seemed like a bad place for her body to be, but I knew Shelly was no longer there.
    When night came, I went home. I had nowhere else to go.
    *
    The next morning,