“Nobody will believe me,” he obsesses.
“Did you and Vera email or text each other? If so, maybe there’s a record of her referencing the thumb drive or asking you questions.”
“No,” he blows out in exasperation. “It was always in person or over the phone, and I can’t prove anything. Why? Because I’m stupid. Then I did even stupider things today.”
He was no match for Neva and Vera, they set him up but good, entangling him in their web. Then he made matters worse by turning the NASA campus into a potentially deadly amusement park with his Helmet Fire game. The sad fact is, it won’t be easy to extricate him or clear his name, assuming he’s guilty of nothing more than cyber mischief.
Committed under great duress by a juvenile, I might add, and we’ve almost reached NASA’s modern brick protective services headquarters next to the firehouse. Scottie, the other Bobbsey Twin, is waiting in the parking lot, my headlights blazing on her holding a small green quilted jacket that doesn’t look very warm.
Opening the Tahoe’s front windows all the way, I’m back to doing things for myself, placing phone calls, finding switches, doing things manually as if there’s no ART, and not liking it much. Scottie bends down to get in Lex’s face, unable to resist asserting her big bad authority to an upset kid the size of a minnow.
“It wasn’t cute what you did earlier,” she says aggressively, her long pale-blonde hair blowing around her self-conscious prettiness. “In fact, it was really dumb for someone who’s supposed to be so smart,” she shoves his coat at him, and I never knew she was a bully. “You’re lucky you didn’t get lost down there. You might not have been found for years, if ever.”
“I don’t get lost,” Lex says to me, not her, as we sit in the protective services parking lot, the last embers of the setting sun reflected by our headquarters’ big glass windows.
“Huh, you’re just lucky you didn’t turn into a mummy. You know how hot it can get in those old steam tunnels?” Scottie snarls.
“Up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, 60 Celsius, if you end up in the wrong ones at the wrong time because you don’t know the schematics,” he replies, not looking at her.
“Well, aren’t you a walking Wikipedia,” she sputters.
“That’s not how I know about it.”
“I’m sorry NASA ever gave you permission to come here. I’m even sorrier you’ve decided to abuse a privilege nobody else gets. Hey! Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
His answer is to stare straight ahead.
“You think I can’t make you?” And to me, she says just as inappropriately, “Do you believe this? Can you get over this smart aleck little piece of . . . ?”
00:00:00:00:0
“THAT’S ENOUGH,” I cut her off, and I should have done it sooner. “You’ve more than made your point. Thanks for bringing his coat . . .”
“Before you boogie on out of here,” as if Scottie hasn’t been rude enough. “Did you by chance have words with Butch? Because he’s in one of his funks. I mean, he was fine until he ran into you at the Gantry and you were short with him?”
“Not now,” I warn her. “It’s not a good time for this,” not that there ever is when it comes to hearing such horse crap, and I shut the windows in her face, shoving off.
“She doesn’t respect you the way she should,” Lex announces, his astuteness unnerving, and I’m not sure I appreciate it.
“The person she’s most unhappy with is you,” I’m driving toward the main gate, the black Suburban nowhere to be seen anymore, and I wonder when I’ll hear from Dick again.
“You don’t have to put up with the things you do,” Lex renders another opinion as if he’s the expert.
“That’s presumptuous considering you know nothing about how I spend my days,” I reply. “You have no idea what I do and don’t put up with no matter what you might think you know about me.”
“You’re a captain in charge of cyber investigations. Plus, a scientist who’s probably going to be an astronaut,” he says, and he’s been talking to my father, I suspect. “The other officers, even Deputy Chief Lacey? You shouldn’t let them treat you the way they do, is all.”
“When people are stressed, they aren’t always polite,” is as much as he’s going to get out of me. “I pick my fights, having learned the hard way that it’s usually not a good idea to throw your weight around.”
“Tell me about it,” he says, studying the overhead panel that looks like a large sunroof but is part of the Retractable Attack Turret. “You have to be careful about acting very smart, about being really good at stuff.”
He twists and turns in his seat, looking back at the overhead storage box, making connections that remind me of his good and bad potential.
“What you did today hasn’t earned you any friends,” I reply.
“Big deal. I don’t care,” he fingers the sensor-laden upholstery next. “I’m used to being by myself. I didn’t grow up with people around me like you did. I don’t need anyone.”
“Everybody needs other people.”
“There’s no point in needing something you can’t have,” he says matter-of-factly. “The older kids at school don’t want me around. They think I’m a pest, a freak, nothing but an annoying tagalong, and I can understand it,” he echoes my own experiences. “I’ve never fit in anywhere and guess I never will.”
“Right now, people don’t know what to think of you, Lex. Myself included,” I tell him the truth. “No matter your excuses, you violated our trust. You deliberately exploited a backdoor cyber vulnerability at a highly sensitive government installation,” and as I say it ART confirms in my lenses that the software glitch has been fixed.
The malware has been neutralized. Lex is shut out of NASA’s servers and anything else he shouldn’t access. His clever gaming algorithm won’t work anymore. Neither will the thumb drive Vera gave him, and I tell him so as we exit the Langley campus.
“You’re going the wrong way,” he sounds uneasy as we pass the speedway where Carme and I have been behind the wheel in our share of stock car races and truck rodeos.
“Nope,” I reply, headed in the opposite direction of his mobile home. “We have a stop to make.”
“Where are you taking me?” he asks anxiously, probably worrying about jail again.
“I don’t know about you but I’m starved,” I reply. “I bet you could eat a little something?”
Wondering what he’s had today besides the sandwich Fran got him, I’m feeling guilty as I think of Mom and how well fed I’ve always been.
“I don’t have any money,” Lex’s attention is back out the window.
“Is there anything you can’t eat? How does Bojangles’ sound?”
“I can’t afford it,” glumly.
“I have a food budget for prisoners. At the moment that would be you. I’m bound by the Geneva Convention to treat you humanely, and that includes fried chicken.”
“Ha ha,” but not as hollowly this time, his mood lifting.
“How about your grandmother? Maybe we can pick up something for her?” I suggest, and he nods his head.
“She doesn’t eat anything with heavy metals like mercury in it,” he says. “Same with shellfish, anything that she calls a bottom-feeder.”
“I think we’ll be safe then,” I reply.
It’s 6 o’clock on the nose, and business will be slower than usual around here as long as the government remains shut down. There are only 4 cars in the drive-through line, and I pull in behind a pearl-white Jeep Cherokee that gives me an eerie feeling. It looks very much like the one I saw parked outside the Hampton Hop-In during the blizzard.
Creeping closer to the illuminated menu, I’m unhappily aware of the dark displays inside my truck, of the muted au
dio and other limitations. I don’t like it when I can’t talk to ART as if he’s next to me, and it’s amazing what we get used to in short order. I’m finding it increasingly anxiety provoking when I don’t have multiple data sources to monitor at once.
I hate that I can’t ask my invisible assistant out loud to run the Cherokee’s tag. Instead I have to stare at it long enough for ART to inform me in my lenses that the pearl-white Jeep with tan interior is a 2014, which is old for a rental. The company, Catch-A-Ride, is Virginia based, the driver listed on the contract, Beaufort Tell, age 44.
The billing address for the credit card is a seafood distribution company in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Probably someone here on business, a “salesman,” ART shows me, and Beaufort Tell’s photograph on his driver’s license looks like the clerk I saw inside the Hampton Hop-In.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this car before,” I comment for ART’s benefit, not Lex’s, and I’m shown a traffic video of a pearl-white Cherokee driving along I-64 East outside of Richmond yesterday morning.
The rear license plate in my lenses matches the one I’m looking at for real in the Bojangles’ drive-through line. Sure enough, in the traffic video, the underside of the front bumper is damaged, and I have no doubt the Cherokee in front of me is the same one that was parked at the Hop-In convenience store 4 mornings ago.
“In fact, I’m sure it’s the same car,” and I describe it to Lex, including the damage to the bumper.
“How do you know that if you can’t see the front of it? I’ll take a look,” he says eagerly, his hand on the door.
But he’s not going anywhere. My Chase Car doesn’t answer to him.
22
“I CAN TAKE a picture,” Lex tugs at the handle again to no avail. “But you need to give me my phone back and unlock the door.”
“Absolutely not, and act normal, please,” I’m doing my ventriloquist trick as I watch the Jeep ahead, hoping there’s nobody in it I should be concerned about.
“You know, I can help if you let me,” Lex is more excited than afraid. “Is there somebody bad in it? Are we about to get into a chase? Because we’ll blow that tin can off the road in this thing!”
“I find it curious that someone would plan a business trip to Hampton when we were about to be evacuated because of a nor’easter,” I think out loud, other cars falling in behind us.
“Maybe the person got stuck here.”
“Maybe.”
What I don’t say is I find it even more curious that a salesman for a seafood distributor might have been sitting inside the Hampton Hop-In this past Wednesday morning.
“Have you and my dad ever stopped at the Hop-In close to the farm?” I test his veracity again.
“A few times when he gives me a ride.”
“How else would you get to our place if my dad didn’t give you a ride?”
“The bus. It lets me out not even a 15-minute walk from your farm. They’ve got good hot food there, and root beer,” he means that the Hop-In does. “Is that where you saw it?” he asks, and now he’s talking about the pearl-white Jeep.
I’m reminded that Lexell Anderson is a mental force to be reckoned with. He makes connections way too fast, and if I’m not careful he’ll react the way he did at NASA today, and a moment ago when he tried to get out of the Tahoe to check on the Cherokee. He doesn’t look before he leaps or believe he needs permission, and I ponder what Dick told me about the burner phone.
It was part of a shipment that went to the convenience store in question, and from there somehow ended up in Lex’s backpack at Wallops Island. I have no doubt Neva had the phone planted or did it herself. But how did she get it to begin with? Because I seriously doubt she walked into the Hop-In and asked for a burner phone and prepaid card.
“When was the last time you visited our farm?” I ask Lex.
“Two weeks ago. George and I were working in the barn, and while he was driving me home, we stopped at the Hop-In,” he says. “As you know, since you were there too.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, and ART begins playing the security video in my lenses. A time stamp of 3:36 p.m., Saturday, November 23, and I see a recording of Dad and Lex walking into the convenience store. Then ART shows images of them cruising the aisles, and I realize with a sinking feeling that my father was doing a lot more than buying drinks or snacks.
He was filling a basket with luncheon meats, cheeses, bread, a dozen eggs while encouraging Lex to grab milk, cereal, orange juice, bananas. The Hop-In is owned by a couple, the wife a heavyset older woman, Bunny, and unlike what her name implies, there’s nothing warm or fuzzy about her.
I’ve always suspected she hates her life in addition to her job, and at 3:42 p.m. she’s irritably ringing up Dad’s purchases, and there’s no sign of a burner phone. A minute later, he and Lex are leaving, the bell jingling as they go out the door. I watch them carrying bags to Dad’s white Prius, and there’s a gray Tahoe like mine in the background parked at the gas pumps.
Carme is dressed in my same protective services fatigues, filling up her Chase Car, something I knew nothing about several weeks ago. Certainly, I wasn’t driving one then, leaving no doubt that Dad is intimately involved in whatever Carme has been doing. Two Saturdays ago, she was in the area, already doubling for me without my knowing.
My sister has been impersonating me longer than I thought, and I watch the pearl-white Cherokee stop at the squawk box. The window rolls down, and I can’t see who’s inside.
“Welcome to Bojangles’, may I take your order?” the disembodied garble is almost undecipherable, and the driver hesitates as if deliberating.
“Two lemonades . . . ,” an Asian accent without the politeness, definitely a woman’s voice, cold and brittle.
She goes on to order a grilled chicken salad with extra honey mustard dressing, green beans, coleslaw, a 4-piece combo with dirty rice. Obviously, she’s not Beaufort Tell, the bearded clerk I noticed inside the Hop-In during the blizzard. Possibly she’s his girlfriend, a relative, a colleague.
Something as innocent as that or maybe not, and I recall the undercover agents I saw on the streets and inside the NASA hangar several mornings ago. All of them could pass for local, and it’s impossible to tell by looking which side anyone is on. The woman in the pearl-white Cherokee could be a civilian who has no idea she’s being watched as she buys her take-out salad, chicken and fixings.
Maybe she works in the seafood industry the same as Beaufort Tell (assuming that’s his real occupation and name), and they’re in Hampton together. It’s possible they know the owners of the Hop-In, might do business with them and therefore had reason to be inside the convenience store when I noticed the unfamiliar bearded man sitting by the glass front door.
In other words, there’s no reason to suspect anyone associated with that pearl-white Cherokee with its scraped front bumper is connected to subterfuge, spying, plotting crimes including cyber ones and violence. But it also doesn’t mean they’re not. They also could be CIA, the Secret Service, military special ops. Or my real fear, adversarial minions deployed by Neva Rong and those who do her bidding.
“What’s your pleasure?” I ask Lex as the pearl-white Jeep noses toward the pick-up window, and it’s our turn next.
00:00:00:00:0
“I LIKE WINGS,” he hungrily studies the bright-yellow menu glowing in the dark. “But anything’s okay.”
I keep my eye on the driver ahead, making out her vague silhouette. She’s a little shorter than I am, with narrow shoulders, and straight hair that brushes her collar.
“Wings it is with a few other things thrown in for good measure,” I reply. “Cajun spiced?”
“Just regular, please.”
I order a dozen of them, talking to the squawk box
loudly enough that I don’t have to lean out the window.
“Two steak-and-egg biscuits,” I add my personal favorite. “A 12-piece box of chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, Cajun pinto beans, extra hot sauce, butter and honey,” I’m in hog heaven. “Plus, two chocolate milks, and an iced tea.”
“Will that be all?” the squawk box asks, and gosh knows it should be enough, but it never is.
“And 4 cinnamon pecan twists, please,” I add. “Plus, lots of extra napkins, salt, pepper, forks, and that should do it.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of food,” Lex marvels. “More than we need, and kind of what your dad does.”
“It’s good as leftovers.”
“That’s what he says. And he’s not fat either.”
“That’s nice of you,” and I mean it. “In our family we feed people. No one should go hungry.”
“George says that too when he orders double everything,” Lex replies as I dig out my badge wallet, realizing I don’t know what’s in it.
I’m pretty sure I had close to 75 dollars before I was knocked out and held hostage, all of my belongings gone through, some items missing when I woke up. The spent cartridge cases I collected from the parking lot of the Point Comfort Inn, my breath mints were gone, in addition to all sorts of things inside my police truck, I have no doubt.
No telling what’s at large, hopefully my money isn’t, and I’m immensely relieved to discover it’s not. But I shouldn’t be surprised. Mom has a house rule that you don’t go anywhere without enough cash for an emergency, and it turns out I have plenty. In fact, more than before, and my NASA refrigerator magnet is accounted for, which also makes me happy.
Rolling ahead, I watch the Cherokee’s driver reach out the window for her order. Her tapered arm is sleeved in smooth black leather, her nails weirdly painted the same pearl-white as the car, and I stare hard enough at her flashy rings for ART to get the hint.
Spin (Captain Chase) Page 18
