[Alex Vane 03.0] The Mockingbird Drive

by AC Fuller

  Quinn turned to me, body still wrapped around the duffle bag, back now to the door. "I wasn't always this crazy."

  "What do you mean?"

  I said it without thinking and I knew right away it was the wrong question. I wasn't always this crazy was the first piece of self-reflective personal information Quinn had volunteered since we'd met, and I didn't want to blow it. For better or worse, I was tied to her, and I wanted to know as much as I could. I wanted to know how she'd ended up this way, sure, but mostly I wanted to learn how to determine where her paranoia ended and her rational mind began. When she didn't respond, I tried to squeeze the dreamy images from my head as I booted up my inner-journalist: ask open-ended questions, not too pushy. If the subject gets defensive or clams up, pretend you didn't care about that particular question and shift to something else.

  "Are you thinking of a particular time?" I asked.

  "Nine-eleven."

  Now we were getting somewhere. But sometimes a subject will regret a major admission right away, so the next step is to pretend like the revelation wasn't a big deal, like you'd already heard it from three other sources. I chose a classic approach: share your own story as a misdirection, then come back to the main point. "Nine-eleven? I was in New York City back then. Court reporter. Job was mostly boring as hell but from time to time I got into some interesting stuff."

  "Did you cover it?"

  Perfect. Quinn was thinking that I didn't notice or care that she'd admitted that 9/11 was at least part of the origin of her crazy.

  "I didn't cover the Towers, no. It's something I'm pretty embarrassed about. Want to know where I was that day?"

  Of course she did, but she'd never admit it. She gave me grunt number one.

  "At the time, I lived in a little studio uptown, five miles north of the Towers. I covered cases in the downtown courthouses most days, so I was around the Financial District a lot, but not that day. I'd been out partying the night before and woke up late. Turned on CNN as I drank my coffee. Within minutes my phone was ringing. Friends, mostly, but also my boss from the paper. I worked at The Standard."

  "That thing is an unconscionable waste of trees."

  I shouldn't have mentioned The Standard. When trying to draw someone out, it's better to avoid details that could cause a reaction. But I hadn't lost her. "Want to know what I did when my editor called? You'll like this because it makes me seem like a shallow coward." I swung my legs around and sat on the edge of the bed, facing Quinn, but she wouldn't look at me. I shifted to a casual, confessional tone, like I was sharing an embarrassing story reluctantly. It was an embarrassing story, but I'd come to terms with it years ago. "I ignored the calls. I knew that he'd ask me to go to Ground Zero, to cover the story. I mean, we all knew right away that this would be the defining story of the year, the decade. So he wanted everyone down there. I ignored his calls and watched CNN all day. Emailed him halfway through the day and told him I had the flu."

  I'd learned that admitting my own imperfections was often enough to get a source to open up. But Quinn had closed her eyes halfway through and I didn't know if she'd fallen asleep, so I raised my voice. "At the time I still had two journalistic ideals in my mind. One was of the crusader journalist, the one who shines the light on the dark places, exposes corruption, all that stuff. The kind of journalist you'd like. The other was the breaking news hero-journalist. Reporting the hurricane from a hundred yards away, the fire as it burns, or the war from within the battle. That day I proved I was neither. I was scared."

  She turned onto her back, resting the bag on her belly. She drew a deep breath and I knew I had her. Everyone likes transparency, everyone responds to vulnerability. And, in the end, everyone wants to talk.

  "Austin," she said. "I was in Austin at the time, piecing together a living by overclocking computers for smart people and teaching dumb people what the Internet was."

  When you know you're about to go deep with a source, sometimes it's good to interject a seemingly meaningless question. It shows that you're not too hell-bent on getting at the good stuff, and it actually increases the chance that they won't clam up before they get to it. "What landed you in Austin?"

  "I moved out to work for a tech company. That was when Austin was supposed to be the Silicon Valley of Texas. Didn't work out. They were assholes—and so was I—so I split off to go it alone."

  "So what happened? On 9/11, I mean."

  "It wasn't one thing. First, it was the immediate reaction. Flags and flag decals on trucks. The wars. The message boards full of theories. The Internet got really ugly. A lot of things got really ugly. You probably think I'm gonna go conspiracy-theorist on you, right?"

  She'd read my mind. I'd been expecting an expletive-filled rant about the CIA or NSA or FBI. Or possibly a detailed theory about Building 7 or the melting temperature of steel beams. But I lied. "Not at all. I just…what else happened around then?"

  "I don't know about the conspiracy theories, okay? Could the CIA have been involved? Maybe. Could the Pentagon have planned it? Maybe? Or could thirty-seven hijackers have planned it and carried it out simply because they hate America? Possibly. I don't know. But it was the aftereffects. It was all gradual—and I didn't notice any of it until Jack told me—but I started isolating myself. I just felt down. I already knew that the CIA was after me—possibly for the off-the-books overclocking I was doing, possibly something else. But I'd come to accept that. Then the buzzing started. Up until then I'd been able to quiet it. Even to silence it for days on end. But each new theory I heard, each new horror story I read, the buzzing just got louder. Sometimes when it got too loud out in public I read people's thoughts just to have something else to do."

  "Jack was your boyfriend?"

  "In Austin, yeah."

  Now we were getting to it. I knew 9/11 had impacted people deeply, and differently. In addition to all the people who were personally affected, 9/11 cast people in all sorts of different directions. Military enlistment rose, but only modestly. Some folks rushed to learn Arabic. Some journalist friends of mine fought to get embedded in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nine months after 9/11, birth rates rose by twenty percent in New York City. Make of that what you will.

  But it went the other way, too. After the 2016 nightclub shooting in Orlando, a bunch of classmates of the shooter said that he'd first started acting crazy after 9/11. He'd started joking about the attacks, making airplane noises all the time, things like that. In the years after 9/11, a lot of people went down a lot of different rabbit holes. My sense was that Quinn was one of the people who never came out.

  "What happened?" I asked.

  "He left."

  I waited to see if she'd continue, but she didn't. The first question I thought of was "Why," but that was the wrong question, too direct. So I said, "Where'd he'd move to?"

  "He didn't move. Just left me. Told me he loved me but that I needed help. Said I needed to get on meds—fucking meds. I saw him once a few years later and started shouting at him in the street. Told him I wanted the truth, why'd he leave me, all that stuff people say. Said he was fine with me hearing voices, but 9/11 was when I started believing them."

  "A man. It's always about a man, am I right?" I knew it was a mistake as I heard it come out of my mouth. Not only was it a cliché, it was pseudo-chummy bro talk, like we were about to do a shot at a club in Vegas. Quinn rolled so she was facing the door again, clutching the bag tight. "I meant, what was that like for you?"

  Nothing.

  "How long had you been with him?"

  I'd lost her and, after, a few minutes of racking my foggy brain for a way to undo it, I was asleep.

  I silenced my alarm before it woke Quinn, who was snoring loudly, slipped on some jeans and shoes without socks, and snuck out of the room. In the motel office, a kid of no more than twenty was sitting on the floor behind a desk, playing with a toddler. He stood when he heard the bell on the door.

  "Are you one of the couple who came in last night. Moira somet
hing?" He was as tall as me, and thin, with thick black hair and even-thicker eyebrows.

  I slid $40 across the desk and extended my hand. "Thanks again for taking our reservation. Everything was great."

  The toddler squawked and he picked her up.

  "Your daughter?" I asked.

  "Niece."

  He didn't seem like he wanted to chat, but he wasn't rude. He just seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I wanted to ask about the mysterious computer woman, but didn't want to ask directly. I spotted an iPad on the floor, open to something that looked like a toddler-friendly version of Tetris. Big, colorful blocks dropping slowly into place. "Is that the new iPad? The thirteen inch?"

  "No."

  "I hear the next one's gonna have a sixteen-megapixel camera."

  He shrugged and put the girl down. She sat next to the iPad and pawed at the screen.

  "Hey, I heard something about a data center around here? I work in the tech industry back in Seattle, where I'm headed, and—"

  "Brenda."

  "Huh?"

  "You mean Brenda's place. She lives out at the edge, just before the Idaho sign, down Shale Road."

  "I thought her name was Tudayapi?"

  "She goes by that, too."

  "What does she do?"

  "I don't know, but something with computers. Data storage or something."

  "What's she like? I mean, I'm always curious about tech stuff. Might want to drop in and check out her setup."

  He just shrugged.

  "I mean, do you think she'd mind a drop-in?"

  "Don't know. She's a two-spirit. Doesn't come out too much anymore."

  The Seattle area is surrounded by reservations—the Puyallup, the Quinault, the Swinomish, the S'Klallam, and the Suquamish, the tribe of Chief Sealth who had given an Americanized version of his name to the city of Seattle. I grew up with many Native Americans, some of them good friends, like my buddy Bearon, who was still back in New York. I'd tried to learn as much as I could about the tribes around me, but I was far from an expert, and I'd never heard of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation or the Shoshone or Paiute Tribes who lived here. And I'd never heard the term "two-spirit."

  "What's that mean?" I asked, as he scratched the address on a sticky note.

  "You'll see."

  Chapter 14

  I woke Quinn and waited while she got ready to go, which didn't take long. Her personal grooming habits were pretty much what you'd expect: tie back her hair, put on her shoes, and go. Yes, she slept in her clothes. But I didn't care, because the sooner she was ready to go, the sooner we'd be at Tudayapi's, and the sooner we'd know what was on the drive, or whether we'd ever find out.

  Tudayapi lived at the end of a mile-long dirt road on the edge of the town of Owyhee. From about a quarter mile away, the house appeared from behind a stand of trees. It was brown and white and small and my first thought was: How can she run a data center out of that thing?

  I was about to say this when Quinn pointed. "There. That's the server farm."

  A structure that looked like a large aluminum shed was appearing from behind the house as we made our way down the driveway. The morning sun glinted off the metal roof.

  "I know this is going to sound stupid," I said, "but what exactly is a server farm?"

  Quinn sighed, like she didn't have the time to explain it to me. Then she cracked a smile. "You run a major website and you don't know what a server farm is? Do you know what a server is?"

  "Not exactly."

  "A server is a computer, the box, ya know. Not the monitor, or 'screen' as you probably call it. A server farm is just a large collection of them, used to store data, to host websites, and so on."

  "Okay," I said, parking the car behind an old red pickup truck. "But why would a tiny town like Owyhee have such a big server farm?"

  "This is actually a tiny one, relatively speaking, and I'm not entirely sure of her business model. But my guess is that she stores data for some people who may not be entirely above board. In some circles, data stored on an Indian Reservation is considered more secure, all else being equal."

  "Because the government recognizes reservations as sovereign?"

  We got out of the car and began walking slowly toward the house, the hard drive locked safely in the trunk. "Exactly. Don't get me wrong, if the CIA or FBI wanted those servers, they would just come take them. But, between lower levels of law enforcement—local police, state police, and so on—jurisdictional issues can sometimes make it tricky."

  "You're saying she probably stores data for criminals?"

  "Or grey hats."

  "Like you."

  Quinn knocked on the door, and Tudayapi answered right away. She wore a 1970s-style knit pantsuit in light aquamarine, with big gold earrings and a matching necklace. Her hair was short and had been styled into a kind of 1980s power-helmet. She looked like she was around forty, but she dressed like she was seventy.

  "Come in," she said in a low, husky voice. She barely looked at me and I was surprised at her response. It was like she'd been expecting us. I didn't feel in danger, but, at the same time, it didn't feel quite right.

  Tudayapi's living room looked like a set from The Golden Girls. In the center, she had a wicker furniture set, including a glass-topped table with four coasters and a neat pile of magazines, two chairs and a sofa with cheap cushions covered in floral patterns. The carpet was somewhere between beige and gray. A color so boring it doesn't even have a name. The prints on the walls matched the flowers on the cushions. Big, flowing orchids. And they didn't just kind of match. They were identical, like she'd purchased them from the same company. The room would have been a great fit in a low-budget condo in Clearwater, Florida, but it seemed wildly out of place at the end of a dirt road on an Indian reservation on the Nevada-Idaho border.

  Quinn sat in one of the chairs and I sat in the center of the couch, facing the door. Tudayapi disappeared into another room and came back a minute later with a pitcher of what looked like iced tea.

  "It's warm out," she said. "Would you like a drink?"

  "Don't you want to know who we are?" I asked.

  Quinn slid her coaster over to Tudayapi, who had taken the chair next to her. "Don't be rude, Alex." It was odd to get etiquette advice from Quinn, but she seemed to be in her element.

  Tudayapi set glasses down and poured tea in each, then carefully slid the coasters and glasses in front of me and Quinn. "Jamie, from the motel, called me. I was expecting you."

  I sipped the iced tea, intent on letting Quinn do the talking. It was like drinking a bag of sugar, and I almost spat it out, but managed to get it down.

  Quinn gulped hers like it was perfectly normal, then said, "Do you know why we're here?"

  "Not really, but I assume it has something to do with Baxter. I've seen the news."

  "I'm Quinn Rivers. We've traded parts before. I got the Apple 2e from you last year, sent you the Commodore 64."

  "Quinn, yes, I remember you. And this is Alex?"

  Quinn nodded toward me. "That's Alex. And you seem to remember Baxter."

  "Did he really kill all those people?"

  Quinn shook her head slowly. "No, he didn't. But he is dead."

  "Please don't tell me it had anything to do with me."

  "It may have," Quinn said. "Do you remember a pair of drives you sold him?"

  "Sure, IBM 2314. Two weeks ago."

  Quinn looked around the room. I got the sense that she was nervous. "Tudayapi, is it safe to talk in here? Is there any chance it's bugged?"

  Tudayapi reached across the armrest and took Quinn's hand. "It's safe. I rarely leave the house anymore."

  "Do you know what was on those drives?" Quinn asked.

  "No."

  "Where did you get them?"

  Tudayapi pulled her hand back and took a long, slow sip of her tea. She smacked her lips in a kind of faux-satisfaction, like she was the star of a Sunny-D commercial. "I don't think I want to say anything more."


  "Why not?" I asked.

  Tudayapi ignored me and spoke to Quinn. "They were supposed to have been destroyed."

  "We know that," Quinn said.

  "How?"

  "The sticker. Why did only one of them have a sticker on it? Were they both from the same place?"

  "How'd you know about the sticker?"

  "Because we have one of them."

  Tudayapi was quiet. She crossed her right leg over her left, then sipped her tea and crossed her left leg over her right. "Would you like a tour of my home?"

  I started to object, wanting desperately to get to the point, but Quinn said, "Sure," and Tudayapi was already standing.

  The living room led to a formal dining room, which matched the living room and was so clean I wondered if it had ever been used. The dining room led to a kitchen with a bright linoleum floor and beige counter tops and—you guessed it—a small wicker table. I half-expected to see Betty White and Bea Arthur eating cheesecake and talking about their day. Tudayapi didn't show us the bedroom, but I imagined a wicker, four-post bed, floral printed curtains, and a polyester robe that looked like silk.

  But when we passed through an immaculate laundry room into the garage, things changed.

  It looked more like Quinn's house. Disorganized, dirty, and full of tools, wires, scrap metal, and old computer parts. The only light came from five metal contractor lights, dangling from bent nails in the ceiling above work tables, giving the place a sense of dark corners and brightly-lit work areas.

  I glanced at Quinn, who was smiling as if to say, This is more like it.

  Tudayapi took three steps down into the garage and threw on a pair of brown coveralls that had been hanging on a greasy hook. Next, she stowed her earrings and necklace on a little shelf and put on a white trucker hat stitched with a LINUX logo. She now looked like an auto mechanic. "Better if we talk in here," she said.

  Tudayapi walked to the center of the garage and leaned an elbow on a table made from two sawhorses and a sheet of plywood. Quinn followed as though this was all perfectly normal, and sat on a swiveling black stool next to the table. I followed and stood awkwardly behind Quinn.