Identity Theft Read Online Free PDF

not sure.”
    “Maybe he wanted to escape his spouse.”
    “Maybe — but she’s a hot little number.”
    “Hmm,” said Raoul. “Whose body do you think he took?”
    “I don’t know that, either. I was hoping the new body would have to be at least roughly similar to his old one; that would cut down on the possible suspects. But I guess that’s not the case.”
    “It isn’t, no.”
    I nodded, and looked down at my drink. The dry-ice cubes were sublimating into white vapor that filled the top part of the glass.
    “Something else is bothering you,” said Raoul. I lifted my head, and saw him taking a swig of his drink. A little bit of amber liquid spilled out of his mouth and formed a shiny bead on his recessed chin. “What is it?”
    I shifted a bit. “I visited NewYou yesterday. You know what happens to your original body after they move your mind?”
    “Sure,” said Raoul. “Like I said, there’s no such thing as moving software. You copy it, then delete the original. They euthanize the biological version, once the transfer is made, by frying the original brain.”
    I nodded. “And if the guy I’m looking for put his mind into the body intended for somebody else’s mind, and that person’s mind wasn’t copied anywhere, then…” I took another swig of my drink. “Then it’s murder, isn’t it? Souls or no souls — it doesn’t matter. If you shut down the one and only copy of someone’s mind, you’ve murdered that person, right?”
    “Oh, yes,” said Raoul. “Deader than Mars itself is now.”
    I glanced down at the swirling fog in my glass. “So I’m not just looking for a husband who’s skipped out on his wife,” I said. “I’m looking for a cold-blooded killer.”
* * *
    I went by NewYou again. Cassandra wasn’t in — but that didn’t surprise me; she was a grieving widow now. But Horatio Fernandez — he of the massive arms — was on duty.
    “I’d like a list of all the people who were transferred the same day as Joshua Wilkins,” I said.
    He frowned. “That’s confidential information.”
    There were several potential customers milling about. I raised my voice so they could hear. “Interesting suicide note, wasn’t it?”
    Fernandez grabbed my arm and led me quickly to the side of the room. “What the hell are you doing?” he whispered angrily.
    “Just sharing the news,” I said, still speaking loudly, although not quite loud enough now, I thought, for the customers to hear. “People thinking of uploading should know that it’s not the same — at least, that’s what Joshua Wilkins said in that note.”
    Fernandez knew when he was beaten. The claim in the putative suicide note was exactly the opposite of NewYou’s corporate position: transferring was supposed to be flawless, conferring nothing but benefits.
    “All right, all right,” he hissed. “I’ll pull the list for you.”
    “Now that’s service,” I said. “They should name you employee of the month.”
    He led me into the back room and spoke to a computer terminal. I happened to overhear the passphrase for accessing the customer database; it was just six words — hardly any security at all.
    Eleven people had moved their consciousnesses into artificial bodies that day. I had him transfer the files on each of the eleven into my wrist commlink. “Thanks,” I said, doing that tip-of-the-nonexistent-hat thing I do. Even when you’ve forced a man to do something, there’s no harm in being polite.
* * *
    If I was right that Joshua Wilkins had appropriated the body of somebody else who had been scheduled to transfer the same day, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who’s body he’d taken; all I had to do, I figured, was interview each of the eleven.
    My first stop, purely because it happened to be the nearest, was the home of a guy named Stuart Berling, a full-time fossil hunter. He must have had some recent success, if he could afford to transfer.
    Berling’s home was part of a row of