“I hate kid cases.” Det. TwoAxes rubbed at her eyes, a sure sign she is tired. I watched her hands as delicate strong as shells. Her eyes open wide like sails in a wind. The thin and thick lines of her irises remind me of a spiral staircase. I leaned in.

“Whoa, you’re doing it again.” Her words startle me. I’m afraid. I cast my eyes down.

“Sorry Detective TwoAxes. I was monitoring your vitals for optimum performance,” I lie.

“Liar, cut the shit. You’re not a med unit or a psych bot or a goddamn toaster. You’re a cop. Same as me. Be a cop.” She stretched, her body an island I want to explore. I force myself to calm down and schedule a deep maintenance sequence during my next restoration cycle.

We go through the John Doe file line by line. There were so many theories from the previous homicide team migrant workers abandoning a dead child to avoid the authorities, human trafficking rings, a new serial killer. All the leads had chilled on the vine. TwoAxes reads the autopsy report for the 23rd time.

“Death blunt force trauma, head. Series of older bruises. Last meal grape jelly and bread. God he was so small, malnourished. How do you starve a little kid. I wish I were an android. People suck,” she said.

“Yeah they do, no offense.” We laughed. Her hand warm as sand in the morning touches my arm.

“Wasn’t there a hotline tip about a missing little boy and toast?” I scan my internal database linking to the metropolitan police server. “Hazel Oh, identification number 56200973, sector 7, reported her little brother missing, favorite meal toast and jam.”

“I know Oh back when I started in missing persons. They called her Hotline Hazel, she called in missing person tips every damn day,” TwoAxes said. “But…” Her eyes shifted as she accessed her own database. I smiled.

“ Tell me what you think.”

“Hazel has mental health issues, in and out of foster care, but I never laughed at her because I always thought she was a little girl lost. I always thought Hazel called because she wanted to help us. I always thought she felt guilty and wanted atonement.”

We looked at the screen together. The John Doe’s hologram revolved, a beautiful broken doll of a boy approximately five years and three months old. When his body was found there was reporters and news reports, press conferences and public outcry. Then there was another war, another scandal, another season of Martian Idol and people forgot. The funding trickled from a task force to a detective and her android.

“Atonement.” The word simmered in my positronic brain. The human need to be forgiven seeped through me. I understood so little. I looked up and Det. TwoAxes was watching me. Her smile was an invitation.

“Let’s pull up a record of every foster home Oh lived in and…” TwoAxes said.

“And cross check each foster parent and the ret-scan each previous foster home for John Doe’s trace DNA,” I said, “We can create a suspect board with string and photos.”

“BEN 2582 is you bring up crazy boards one more time. I’m going to detach your arm and slap you with it.” She pushed my forehead. I am confused. She laughed and my insides crested. Now I am confused and happy. We returned to the work sea and sand in rhythm.