“Did you think we wouldn’t find you?” I have my phone in hand like a regular person who’s not bionic.
“I don’t know,” shrugging again.
“What was going through that head of yours?” I ask, trying to find the blasted recording icon without being obvious.
“That I had to get away,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking. It was self-defense,” he adds as I locate the app I need.
“By the way, where’s your coat?” I look him over, thin, disheveled and dirty in jeans that aren’t nearly warm enough.
His boots are rubber with leather uppers, and not suited for the conditions. He has on a generic gray hooded sweatshirt, no gloves, and I have a feeling his grandmother doesn’t do a lot of shopping.
19
LEX TELLS ME his coat is in the conference room at protective services headquarters. Leaving it behind when he fled adds credence to his claim that he was frightened, and nothing about his demeanor suggests he wasn’t.
“Did you bring anything else with you this afternoon?” I inquire as we talk inside my truck, sitting in our same spot. “What about your backpack?”
“They took it from me at the rocket launch when they found the phone that isn’t mine. The phone someone put in there to set me up!”
“I’d like to record our conversation,” I inform him, and in the process, I’m cueing ART to do it if he hasn’t been already.
Setting my phone on the console between Lex and me, I continue to hide my new abilities from him, to keep my SIN to myself and all that goes with it.
“Okay,” I begin. “I’m sitting with Lexell Anderson inside my protective services truck. We’re parked at the Gantry on the NASA Langley campus where I intercepted him after he escaped from our custody at headquarters.”
I state the date and time, adding a few more salient details, asking him to verify that what I said is accurate.
“So far,” he replies with a chip on his shoulder.
“And I made you aware of your rights a few minutes ago.”
“Yes,” he loudly sighs in frustration.
“You said you don’t want an attorney. In other words, you don’t want to be represented by a lawyer even if it’s at no expense.”
He shakes his head.
“No one can hear you nodding or shaking your head on a recording,” I remind him. “You’re indicating that no, you don’t want a lawyer even if it doesn’t cost you. Free, in other words, with nothing to lose. If that’s what you want, Lex, I’ll leave you alone for now.”
“I’m not talking to some lawyer. It won’t do any good,” he repeats flatly.
“You’re waiving the right, yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you say that having an attorney wouldn’t do any good?” I watch him carefully, his hands balled up tightly in his lap.
“If you talk too much or don’t do what people want, bad things happen,” his attention is out the window, and he’s nervously chewing his lower lip. “You think people care, then you find out differently.”
“What got you so spooked you decided to hightail it across campus?”
“I don’t want to end up like them,” wiping his eyes on his sleeve, he refuses to look at me.
“It’s normal to be scared. It wouldn’t be normal if you weren’t,” I tell him plain and simple. “I’m familiar with the photographs you saw in Deputy Chief Lacey’s office. I’m sorry you were exposed to images and information that had to be upsetting,” and I’m assuming he’s most upset by Vera Young.
I don’t know for sure how well they were acquainted but it had to be a shock to see photographs of her body hanging from a door, and as I’m thinking this, the images play in my head like a slideshow . . .
The cord wrapped tightly around her bruised, furrowed neck . . . Her dead eyes bright red from pinpoint hemorrhages . . . Her clothing, the wooden flooring around her dangling bare feet bleached of color by a caustic chemical . . . The gouged-out areas of her fingertips and other parts of her body where sensors were removed postmortem . . .
“That’s what happens,” Lex sounds defeated and far away. “If they decide you’re a problem, that’s how you end up. You saw what was done to punish them! They were nice to me! I wish I’d never met them! I don’t want to be next!”
I have no visible reaction to the extremely disturbing implication that Lex was somehow acquainted with the man in the Denali, the assassin who intended to riddle me with armor-piercing bullets fired from a Chinese machine gun. I roll down our windows halfway to get some fresh air.
“You’re talking about Vera Young and the unidentified dead man you saw in the photos at protective services headquarters,” I finally reply. “Did they know each other?”
“I don’t know why they would have,” Lex says as a black Suburban slowly sloshes by.
I don’t need to run the government plate to know that the SUV with its dark-tinted windows, its antennas and signal jammer is the same one that picked up Dick at Dodd Hall earlier this afternoon. It stops at the edge of the splash basin’s concrete apron.
“In what way were Vera Young and the unidentified dead man nice to you?” I’m careful not to come across as overly concerned.
What I don’t want to do is get Lex fired up again. Based on my observations so far this day, he doesn’t exactly use the best judgment when he panics, and I’ve had enough of chasing after him. It’s a wonder I didn’t take a bad spill in the snow, maybe landing on my gun in front of Dick and everyone. My leg muscles burn from sprinting in unsafe conditions, and I’m ferociously hungry and thirsty.
“She’d invite me to see what her lunar robotics team was doing, promising I’d come work for her at Pandora someday,” Lex can’t keep the disappointment out of his voice, and what kind of monster leads on a kid like that? “She kept saying maybe I’d end up on the moon helping with their antennas, satellites, maybe fly a spaceship. And she bought me lunch sometimes,” he adds sadly, and I just bet Vera did all that and more.
I can well imagine her making any number of grand gestures to win Lex’s admiration and allegiance. Most of all, it was her cold-blooded intention to manipulate someone vulnerable. For that alone I won’t forgive her, and it flickers darkly through my vengeful thoughts that Vera might have deserved what she got.
“I saw the pictures,” Lex reminds me of what he inadvertently witnessed in Fran’s office. “Is that what Neva did? Did she kill her sister?”
“What do you think?”
“I think she used her the same way both of them used me. I think Neva hates everybody but herself,” he says insightfully, uneasily to the background din of diesel engines and warning beeps.
The SNC aerospace engineer named John is piloting the cherry picker again, inching the platform closer to the test model floating in a million gallons of greenish chemical-infused water. As I wait in my Tahoe for Dick to emerge from the Gantry’s main hangar, and I envision his silhouette behind glass in the control room, staring down from on high, witnessing my undignified foot pursuit of a child.
What an inauspicious start for 001, a prototype in a project that’s been Dick’s all-consuming ambition, doesn’t matter if it might have been Carme’s or mine, given a choice. I have no idea what we might have picked, and likely never will. But one thing I do know, I didn’t sign up for babysitting a 10-year-old genius who has an adjustment disorder and behavioral problems.
00:00:00:00:0
“VERA likely had mapped out a way of hacking into NASA long before any of us were aware it was in the works,” I reassure Lex but not too much. “Consider yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Ha ha,” he says hollowly as I realize the pun.
“Neva, Vera, yes, the Rong sisters. They want
ed access to our campus to take unfair advantage, and you got caught in the middle of it,” I summarize, watching the engineer in the cherry picker reconnect the test model to the hefty shackle hook on the end of the crane’s thick steel cable.
“What if nobody stops her?” Lex means Neva. “Someone put that phone in my backpack, and she was in the same room with me! She wanted me to get in trouble!”
“Well, she certainly gets away with it if she can hang everything around your neck, right?” baiting him, I keep an eye on the black Suburban parked as close to the splash basin as one could safely get.
Its headlights and others of the parked vehicles shine on the spacecraft as it’s slowly hoisted from the pool, water splashing, engines rumbling, hydraulics straining.
“I’ve been led to believe you spent time with Neva before you were together in the VIP room at the rocket launch,” I set up Lex some more, testing his basic honesty while lying through my teeth to him.
“I don’t know who told you that because it’s not true,” he replies. “We weren’t together, and I didn’t spend any time with her.”
“What about when you were introduced?”
“We weren’t. We never talked, were in the same room and that’s it,” he says what I know to be true.
“At any time in the past have you had contact with her in emails, texts, messages? Maybe talked on the phone?” I keep probing.
“No. I’ve never said a word to her,” he answers indignantly, and I believe him.
“Look, I know how smart you are. I’m well aware of all the grades you’ve skipped, of your many gifts,” I’m blunt, not messing around. “I know what people at NASA say about the bright future of our youngest intern . . .”
“That’s a joke!” he blurts.
“It’s not.”
“What future do I have anymore?”
“I certainly hope you have one,” I reply. “But unfortunately, if you’re found guilty of a crime, it will greatly diminish any opportunities you might have had. Deservedly so if you did something bad.”
“I didn’t! Except I’m sorry about the game.”
“This was no game. For now, the more important question is whether you’ve been set up, framed.”
“I have!”
“If you’re innocent, then we’ll fix it,” I offer what I’m not sure I can deliver. “But you’re not naive. You understand what hacking is. And I’m pretty sure you know about espionage since we only have warning posters in every building on campus,” and I sound a lot like my mom right now.
“I haven’t spied. Even if someone wanted me to, I didn’t.”
“Did Vera ask you to do favors for her? Because that’s what it’s sounding like.”
“Kind of,” he shrugs, watching the crane set down the test model on a specialized flatbed trailer.
“What exactly did she ask of you, Lex?”
“Information. She would ask me all kinds of stuff about what your dad and I have been working on. And what I know about your family.”
“Who specifically?”
“You and your sister.”
“What did you tell Vera about us?” and as ART and I record the conversation, I’m mindful that it’s also being transmitted.
Or I suspect as much, considering the electronics inside and all around me. The displays and audio might be off inside my truck but that doesn’t mean we’re not talking into an open microphone. And I wonder who might be listening as I continue to watch for Dick.
“I told her hardly anything,” Lex replies. “I said I know what you do at Langley but we’d never been around each other. And that your sister’s a fighter pilot overseas, some kind of special ops legend to hear George talk,” and of course Dad would brag about Carme like that.
“What about my mom?”
“Vera asked me all kinds of stuff, really personal stuff, but I never went along with it,” his eyes are wide with fear again. “I always pretended I didn’t know much.”
“And the special computer chip my dad’s been involved in developing,” I go ahead and bring it up, “what did you tell Vera Young about that?”
“I swear I never said a word.”
“How did you know about it?” I have a depressing feeling I can guess the answer.
“George,” Lex confirms my fear. “He told me about it one time when we were working on the PONGs in the barn.”
“Did he show it to you?”
“Just a picture of it next to a match head so you could see how small it is. A quantum computer on a chip, the first one ever,” he adds to my growing dismay. “He called it the GOD chip.”
“Did he tell you what that means?”
“Well . . . ,” he hesitates as if wary of getting Dad into trouble. “He said it meant Gemini Original Directive. All I know is it’s got to do with a top secret project, and the chip is locked up in the big gun safe in the barn where no one would think to look for it,” he adds, and I’m getting no indication that he knows the chip is missing but he shouldn’t know about it at all.
“Why do you think my father would share such confidential information with you?” I act as if I doubt what Lex has told me when I absolutely don’t.
“Because it’s awesome. I’d be proud of it too,” he says. “And he trusts me. Well, he did, I guess.”
“When did he show you the picture of the GOD chip?” and as I think of the tracking device placed on my police truck, I have to wonder if something similar might have been done to him.
“About a month ago.”
“Who have you told besides me?”
“No one,” he says as my suspicions deepen.
“Did Vera ever give you anything?” I ask. “Any kind of gift. Maybe let you borrow something? Anything at all? It doesn’t matter how small.”
Another shrug, and he looks away from me again. “Nothing big.”
“Nothing big?” I repeat as one of our protective services white Silverados drives past my rear bumper, aggressively slow and close. “What are we talking about?”
“A thumb drive with a bunch of stuff on it,” Lex says. “Her publications, info about Pandora, plus a lot of cool games and apps.”
“Where is this thumb drive now?” I ask, watching my rearview mirror.
Butch is sitting in his truck, stopped in the middle of the road, blatantly checking us out, and my blood begins to boil.
“It’s at home, hidden in my room,” and Lex explains that he stopped carrying the thumb drive around with him after the rocket blew up. “When the phone was found in my backpack, I didn’t know who to trust. Then I heard Vera was dead, and I got scared about what would happen if someone found out about what she gave me. I don’t want to be in trouble for something else that’s not my fault!”
As he says this, my attention is fastened on Butch climbing out of his pickup truck, and I can’t believe he’s about to intrude when he should know better. But even if he doesn’t, it’s not his darn investigation. Not to mention, I outrank him, and how is it I never knew before now that he’s full of himself and pushy?
“Obviously someone wants to get me in trouble,” Lex is back on that subject. “They’ve set me up.”
“You seem pretty adept at getting into trouble on your own,” I retort lest he forget the crimes he’s committed.
20
HACKING, trespassing, tampering with government property, vandalism, I go down the list as Butch walks up, and it’s rare to see him without Scottie.
They could pass for fair-haired Bobbsey Twins except they’re not brother and sister. That’s a good thing since their partnership on and off the job is anything but platonic, and he peers past me at my prisoner.
“What you did back th
ere wasn’t cool, buddy,” he has to remind Lex it wasn’t nice to escape while being escorted to the men’s room.
Or better put and what Butch doesn’t say is that he’s angry some little smarty-pants kid dared to make a fool out of him.
“I’m handling this,” I let Butch know without my usual smile, my demeanor hinting strongly that he needs to make himself scarce. “Tell Fran I’ll update her later,” I give him a not-so-subtle reminder that technically I may answer to the deputy chief but I sure as heck don’t to him.
“When are you bringing him in?” as if he didn’t hear what I said while staring menacingly at Lex. “You know, so we can get down to the nitty-gritty about Einstein’s shenanigans on campus today,” snidely, he’s puffed up and powerful in his uniform and gun.
“We won’t be getting down to anything,” and I inform him that I already have a pretty good idea what happened from a cyber perspective. “I’m still gathering information and will be for a while, dealing with my usual counterparts at the CIA, Secret Service, the military like always. I’ll be sure to ping you if I need anything,” I don’t say thanks or catch you later like I once did.
I can tell he’s miffed as he stalks away. Almost slipping in the snow, he climbs back inside his truck, slamming the door shut. I watch in my mirrors as he drives off in a huff of exhaust, his big tires spewing gritty dirty slush.
“I don’t like him,” Lex says.
“That might be mutual,” I don’t offer that I might like the brash special agent even less, out of the academy barely a year, presumptuous, vain, he and Scottie both, and I didn’t really notice before now.
I suppose what I’m experiencing are the gifts and curses that go along with having a SIN and other technical assists that offer clarity I didn’t know I needed. The blush is off the rose, the tonic loses its fizz (as Mom likes to say) when you start seeing people for what they are including those you care about most.
Spin (Captain Chase) Page 16
