by Kat Wheeler
“Shit,” Will said again. “You’re right. It doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“The only thing we found in the chip’s software design that might help is there’s a setting in the code to determine which device information takes priority over another. That’s why Casey and I focused on this being something directed either at the bank or insider trading. Priority was given to Minsky’s computers over his personal tech.”
She was explaining the details of the code and its implications when the door to the conference room opened and a uniformed officer poked his head in.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, looking at Will. “Mr. Minsky is here. We have him in interview room one.”
“Thanks, Nick,” he replied. “Well,” he said, addressing the room, “let’s see if Mr. Minsky can narrow this down for us.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Meeting the mysterious Mr. Minsky
Will installed Kim and Cameron in the room adjoining the interview room before going in to meet Mr. Minsky. To Cameron's surprise, it was almost exactly like what she had seen on cop shows. A small narrow gray room with a large two-way mirror showing the interrogation room. She felt absurdly cool to be allowed on this side of the mirror.
The excitement of the moment—or maybe her caffeine buzz—must have shown on her face because the ADA was quick to comment.
“It’s only an interrogation room, not Bergdorf’s.”
Don’t engage. Don’t engage.
Cameron just rolled her eyes and focused on the activity in the room before her. She noticed it was the same one they’d put her in a few days before. Or maybe they all just looked the same.
“Mr. Minsky,” Will greeted as he walked into the conference room, “thank you for meeting with us today. I’m Detective Will Justus, and this is my partner, Detective Alan Jones.”
Will and Alan both sat in chairs at the small table in the interrogation room.
“Call me Mark,” he answered. “The officer who called said this was about Matt’s death? I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
“We appreciate that,” Alan said, his manner light and friendly. “We were wondering if you can tell us how you knew Mr. Rodriguez?”
“Sure. I met Matt through my friend Trey I guess five or six years ago now. When he went to work for him.”
“Your friend Trey Howell?”
“Yes, he owns Synergic Engineering, where Matt worked. When Matt joined the company, he started hanging out with us. Going to ball games, dinner, bars, that sort of thing.”
“And by us you mean…?” Alan asked.
“Well, me, Trey, Tessa Wells, and Brandon Reece. We’ve all been friends forever, and Matt just fit right in.”
“Any issues or problems between any of you?”
“No, not at all. We all get along well.”
“Do you know what Matt did for SE?”
“Sure, he invented the HomeTech Hub,” he said, smiling. “The guy was a genius. That thing made them all a fortune.”
“And you too, right?” Will interjected. It wasn’t hard to see who was playing bad cop in this interview. “You’re an investor in the company. You made a lot of money as well.”
Kim commented, “He’s got to expand the line of questioning. Making money doesn’t make you a murderer.”
“Sure, but there are only a few motives for murder. And money, sex, and revenge top the list.” She caught the ADA’s skeptical glance before turning back to face the interview. “I told you, I watch a lot of Law and Order.”
“True,” Mark answered. “I invested in Trey when he first started the business. And again when I saw the prototype for the HTH. Technology is the future. And I saw the potential in the hub the first time I saw it.”
“The potential for it as a consumer electronic device or as a method of data collection?” Alan asked, clearly testing the waters.
“Well, both really,” Mark replied. “It’s no secret that’s how companies like Google make the majority of their money. The sale of collected data would fund the research at Synergistic indefinitely. The goal of the HomeTech Hub was to be as successful to marketing companies as well. The revenue of the hardware is small change compared to what it can generate long term.”
“What kind of data?”
“Oh, you know, the kind of products people buy from it, who in the house uses it most. Things marketing companies can use to narrow their demographic.”
“I see,” Alan replied.
“This is procedure, Mr. Minsky, but can you tell us where you were last Friday night?” Will interrupted.
“Sure, I was at Trey's house in Southampton. All of SE was there celebrating the ten-million-unit mark. Matt was supposed to be there too, but he never showed.”
“I see,” Alan said. “And you own one of those ten million HomeTech Hubs?”
“Of course. I have several at both my houses.”
“Where did you purchase these hubs?”
“I didn’t,” he answered. “They were gifts. Matt gave them to me.”
“I see.” He nodded and looked to Will, who took the cue and broke the bad news.
“Mr. Minsky, you employ a company called Digital Lifestyles for the smart home technology in your Hamptons home, is that correct?”
“Yes,” he confirmed. A look of confusion formed on his face, looking unsure as to where they were taking the line of questioning.
“And you’re aware there have been some issues regarding the communication between your HomeTech Hubs and the SmartTech control system?”
“Yes, I gave both Hubs that Matt gave me to the owner of Digital Lifestyles last week. He was going to have SmartTech look at them, try to see what the problem was. What does this have to do with the murder?”
“SmartTech did look at your hubs, Mr. Minsky. They found an extra chip in one of the units. We had our techs check it out and determine it’s a transmitter. Someone has been spying on you, sir.”
Mark went white. There was no faking the surprise on his face. “What? Jesus, for how long? What did they get?”
“We’re looking into all that, Mr. Minsky. First thing, we’d like your permission to send a technician back to your apartment in the city with you. We’d like to check your HomeTech Hub there and see if it contains the same spyware.”
“Yes, of course. Christ, I can’t believe this.”
“Mr. Minsky, do you have any idea who would want to do this to you?” Alan asked.
“Mark, please,” he replied offhandedly, getting up and beginning to pace in the small room. “First guess, I’d say my wife. We’re separated. But she’s not technical enough to pull something like this off. She can’t even check her voice mail.”
“She could’ve hired a PI,” Will suggested. “At the advice of an attorney perhaps?”
“She doesn’t have an attorney. We’ve been separated for over two years. She spends most of her time in Europe. Italy mainly, the south of France sometimes. I haven’t seen her for at least a year. I can’t see how this would benefit her unless it was simply stalking, and I wouldn’t put that past her. She’s in a better position now than if we divorce. We have an ironclad prenup. She wouldn’t get much. Financially she’s much better off staying married to me.”
“Then why haven’t you divorced her?” Will asked the next logical question.
Mike shrugged, still pacing. “No reason to, I guess. It’s kind of an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ thing. And in my position, the illusion of a family man sits better with the board in some instances than a single man does. Regardless if it’s just an illusion.”
“You said Mr. Rodriguez gave you the hubs. Could he have done this?” Alan inquired.
“Technically I’m sure he could. But I can’t see why he’d do it. We were friends. Good friends. And I was an investor in his work. I see no reason for
it to be him. What could he possibly gain?”
“What about a list of people who have been to your house in Southampton while this thing has been installed? Could you give us that?”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start. I have parties out there all the time, not to mention the staff. There could’ve been hundreds of people in that house. And I doubt I knew half of them.”
They finished questioning Mr. Minsky soon after and arranged for Doug Pernick to accompany him home to inspect his HTH. They reconnected with Cameron and Kim back in the conference room.
“Anything?” Will asked them.
“I’m hopeful the unit in the city has a chip in it as well. Then we’ll be able to use it during prosecution if we need to. It won’t have a broken chain of custody like the last one,” Kim said, looking pointedly at Cameron, who just met her gaze but said nothing, again choosing not to engage.
Be the bigger person, she chanted to herself like a mantra.
Will nodded. “Cameron?”
“I’m interested to see if there's a device in his NYC home as well,” she replied. “As you know, Casey checked several other defective units at SmartTech and didn’t find any other chips. If he has another one, it’ll confirm this was targeted to him specifically. I also found it interesting that he said Matt gave him the hubs. He looked surprised, but what if he’d discovered them? Wouldn’t that give him a motive?”
Will nodded, agreeing with them both. “Let’s see what Doug finds. But in the meantime, we’ll look a little deeper into Mr. Minsky. And track down his wife.”
“I’ll start on that,” Alan said, adding notes to the board under Mark Minsky’s picture. “Take Kim in with you when you talk to Trey Howell. I have a feeling with his lawyer in the room, it might be a different type of interview.”
Alan was right, Cameron thought as she watched Will sitting in the interview room with Kim by his side. Cameron was again watching through the two-way mirror, this time alone. The room seemed a little lighter without Kim’s presence, and Cameron felt like she could breathe a little easier. Trey Howells's attorney had been contentious since they’d started, barely letting his client answer any of their questions. It was the second time they had met, and it didn’t seem like Will's opinion of Trey Howell had improved. He was trying to sell the aw-shucks, good-ole-boy persona just a little too hard, and Will didn’t seem to be buying it.
Cameron could also see the shark behind the shiny veneer. If her experience in sales had taught her anything at all, it was how to read people, and she didn’t like what she saw in Trey Howell. But what was he hiding? The motive for murder, covering for a friend? Or was he just protecting his business? It was impossible to tell at this point and would continue to be unless Will could get some straight answers out of him.
“Mr. Howell, I understand your feelings about having an attorney present, but please keep in mind you haven’t been charged with a crime. We’re simply trying to get more information and discover why someone would want to kill your friend. Can you please help us?”
Trey Howell looked to his lawyer, who gave him a single nod.
Maybe now they would get somewhere.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Scan, discard, select, move on
The two detectives, one lawyer, and the suspended sales manager reconvened in the conference room after the interview. It was almost the start of a bad joke.
“We learned nothing,” Will stated. Frustrated, he sprawled out in a chair at the table, wiping his face with his hands. “We’re nowhere closer on this than we were yesterday.”
“I talked to Minsky’s wife. She is indeed in Europe. Been living in Greece for the last six months. Hasn’t talked to her husband. Doesn’t care. I think we can take her off the suspect list.” Alan added.
“Again, nowhere.”
“I don’t know about that. She said if we were looking into her husband, we should look at Tessa Wells. The wife claims they’d been having an affair through the whole marriage. Said they’d been sleeping together since high school. Claimed Trey and Brandon had been with her as well.”
“That’s interesting,” Kim said. “They seem like a close group. I wonder if there’s any jealousy going on there. Or maybe Tessa wanted to marry Mark and was looking for dirt to break up the marriage. Maybe the spyware was planted to spy on the wife.”
“Or Matt could’ve done it,” Will said. “He got involved with Tessa as well. Got jealous of her relationship, was trying to find a way to get between them, and one of them found out. Gives them both motives.”
“These are all good theories, but we need more information. There’s no evidence of anything at this point,” Alan said pointedly. “We just have more questions. Will’s right, we’re getting nowhere.”
“I don’t know about that,” Cameron added. “Trey Howell lied to you.”
“What?” Will exclaimed, raising his head off the table to look at her. “When?”
“I don’t know if it means anything, but he lied when you asked him if they had the ability to manufacture the chip. He said no, but they absolutely could.”
Kim was now looking at her with a little less disdain than she had earlier in the day. “Explain.”
“Well, Trey said all their manufacturing facilities are overseas. That’s not true. They have a small production facility in upstate New York. It was part of a marketing scheme to get some tax write-offs and highlight them bringing back American manufacturing jobs. They opened it when they started producing the hubs. Trey did the ribbon-cutting, see?” She reconnected her iPad to the TV on the wall in the conference room and brought up the article she’d found on the internet announcing the plant. “But that’s not all.” She tapped on her tablet for a bit and brought up a new set of pictures. “These are photos of the SE offices here in Manhattan. A PR article Trey did when he was named one of the top ten most eligible bachelors in the city. See those machines behind him? They’re 3D printers. Each one can print with different kinds of plastic. You use them to create prototypes.”
She turned around to see them all looking at her quizzically.
“What?” she said. “SmartTech has some. We use them for preproduction models to test the prototypes before we pay to have them made. It saves a ton of time and money when we develop new products. And see this picture?” She pointed to a new photo. “See behind him? Those are all components to build boards and chips. I can’t see everything, but those are circuit boards. There’s a soldering iron. It’s a workroom. They have the capability to make a chip there. Most tech companies would. I mean, some people send everything out to be made, but it’s more expensive and takes a lot of time. For a company as profitable as Synergistic, it only makes sense to do it in-house. And you need to understand, building a device like this isn’t the hard part. You could buy the hardware part at a million places in the city. There’s nothing special about it. It’s the programming, the software that would be the most complicated. And you could do that anywhere.”
“Son of a bitch!” Will exclaimed, slamming the files in his hands onto the table and scattering papers everywhere. “He lied to me.”
“I assume he thought you wouldn’t catch it,” Cameron said. “But more importantly, why did he lie? It isn’t that big of a deal. It’s a stupid thing to lie about. There are hundreds of facilities like that in Manhattan. Or hell, you could even make it in your apartment with the right gear. Again, the hardware portion isn’t unique. Is it because he made the chip or that he knows someone at his company did and he’s covering for them?”
“Son of a bitch,” Will repeated, trying to corral the scattered papers. “He knows something.”
“This is good, right?” Cameron questioned. “And he doesn’t know you know he lied. Could be useful.” She smiled at Will.
“Looks like you aren’t useless after all,” Kim interrupted their exchange, ruining the moment.
“I have to head back to the office. Let me know when you find out about Minsky’s apartment. I’d like to know if we have some admissible evidence. That way I can prepare if you guys end up needing warrants. Though how I’ll explain this to a judge, I don’t know.”
“I could help you with that if the technology is too much for you,” Cameron said sweetly, garnering her a scalding look from Kim before she turned away.
No one bothered to tell her goodbye as she made a rather dramatic exit out the door, artfully draping her scarf around her neck and throwing her coat over her shoulders. She seemed to put a little extra swing in her hips as she moved out of the room.
When Cameron looked over, she saw both detectives studiously eying the board, not even glancing at the ADA, and she wondered if the woman knew that little show had only been for her benefit.
Chapter Thirty
The hypothetical point at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible
“Cam,” Will said emphatically.
“Huh?” she said, snapping herself out of her thoughts. She must not have heard him the first time he called to her.
“Can you stay?” he asked. “I’d like you to be here when we brief the captain. I’d also like to have you coordinate with Doug about whatever he finds at the Minsky house. Are you up for it? We can order some food.”
