bud took the photos and p-99 code slips of the two women up to the terminal room on the fourteenth floor.
he quickly found a match for the woman with the handbag with the initials y c.
her name was yolanda carter. she worked as a grade three outside analyst for the 589 corporation, and had apparently held the job for fifteen years without any advancement in the company.
the 580 corporation listed her as having an a plus attendance score.
just like me, bud thought. good attendance, no promotion.
bud began to form a picture of yolanda carter in his mind. if her attendance was that good, like his, she probably did not have many, or even any, friends. he imagined going over to her apartment after she finished work for the day and making her acquaintance.
of course, he could not do that now, because she was dead.
bud began daydreaming, as he often did, of being a detective like the ones in t v, and singlehandedly tracking down and confronting yolanda carter’s killer.
yolanda carter’s record showed that she had one child - a fifteen year old male named yancey clevenger - whom she was receiving revolution payments to support. bud decided he must be an obnoxious little punk, like most of the younger generation, what there was of it.
well, that was enough to start on with with y c - yolanda carter.
bud scanned the photo and p-99 slip of the second woman into the terminal.
he did not have as much luck as he had had with yolanda carter.
the p-99 slip came up empty. a bad sign.
it meant that the woman was almost certainly a “sewer person” - the term used for people who managed to spend their whole lives under the net of the revolution, and in most cases, of the old regime.
it was hard to believe that such people existed, but bud knew from experience that they did.
and the photo of her face was not a good one. the small bullet entering the back of her head had not blown her whole face away, but was still not a pretty sight.
bud would almost surely not be able to identify her, and would not exactly be blamed for not being to do so, but he would not get any credit either.
especially as the woman would be regarded as “probably” a “dangerous counterrevolutionary” and bud’s failure to use “revolutionary insight” to identify her would just be another of the endless proofs of his unpromotability.
it was unfair, but what could bud do?
except keep showing up every day, one day at a time.
bud decided to concentrate on yolanda carter, get her out of the way, and then come back to the sewer woman.
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