“Maybe this weekend?” he asked, then added quickly, “Give you one night to catch up on your rest first.”
“Perfect,” she told him.
Hal grinned. Ryaan waved good night and started to her car without another word. She made it past the officer on duty and all the way to her car without looking back at Hal. He’d asked her out. Only after rounding the car and unlocking it with her key fob did she look up. The door was closed. He was gone. He had asked her out, though. Unless she woke up this moment, that part hadn’t been a dream.
Chapter 25
Mei woke Friday morning to her alarm with the fleeting thought that she’d set it incorrectly. It had to be Saturday. She read the word Friday across the phone screen. Rolled over and laid her arm across her face. Ugh. Outside, an electric bus passed with a static crackling. Behind that was the wheezing rattle of old cart wheels on the sidewalk, and a long, angry horn on the next block.
It was definitely not Saturday. Saturday sounded like the father and son playing basketball against the garage door two houses down, the group of women who power walked and complained about husband and children in loud, shrill voices, and kids riding bikes with their phones blasting Rihanna, Gaga, and Macklemore.
She had never once called in sick in Chicago. She and Andy used to joke about playing hooky. That other newlyweds were off to Mexico or Hawaii while they were spending Saturdays at work. Now she was in a new city with a new job, and she was desperate to roll over and go back to sleep. To have a day without thinking about work.
Weeks had been long at the FBI. She was used to the erratic hours and the cases that chased her through nights and weekends. What she wasn’t used to—doubted she’d ever be used to—was how close to home this case had hit. Literally. Mei reached for her phone and loaded her emails, hoping for an update about the shooting. Surely someone would let her know if they’d found out who did it. When they had him behind bars, then she’d feel rested. The idea that they’d found a print on that gun but couldn’t match it to anything was not reassuring.
Ayi had slept at Hui’s again last night. Mei had received a quick text from Ayi halfway through dinner with Sophie. At Hui’s tonight. Ayi was stubborn and strong and someone Mei had always regarded as unflappable. Since the shooting, that image of her aunt had shattered as completely as the front window.
The evening with Sophie was sort of a disaster, too. Mei had said too much in the car, making the subject of her sexuality too much at the forefront of the evening. Even when Sophie took the clue to stop talking about it, the subject remained in the air. While Sophie was cute and engaging, she seemed to be trying so hard. Mei couldn’t relax. Not that it was Sophie’s fault.
With everything going on, Mei should have canceled. She needed to keep her head down until this case was over, but who knew how long that would be, and Mei needed to get out of her own head, too. Maybe the real issue was that Sophie wasn’t her type. Mei was shy, introverted by nature, and she tended to attract people more like her. Sophie was anything but. She had the kind of ease with people that Mei once aspired to and now felt the desire to avoid.
Meeting Sophie right after the shooting had made her seem like someone more like Mei, but in hindsight, Mei realized it was not Sophie herself who was vulnerable and awkward. It was the circumstances that had removed her cloak of confidence. Last night Mei had seen a different Sophie. Where Mei found herself conversing in a near-whisper to avoid catching the attention of other diners, Sophie engaged them. Mei ordered strictly by guessing at what might be good from the menu. Sophie asked the waitress for a list of her favorite dishes and requested that the California rolls come rice on the outside rather than the house standard of seaweed out. “It keeps the seaweed from getting too dry,” she explained to the waitress.
Mei had felt slightly embarrassed at what felt like a lack of decorum, but it wasn’t that Sophie was rude. Not at all. It was that Mei judged everyone through the same, strict perspective as her conservative, traditional parents. To them, Americans were a loud, overly demanding and disrespectful bunch.
It felt deeply ironic that Mei had grown up to be a police officer, a gay or at least bisexual woman, and still retained some of her parents’ traditional bigotry.
When Sophie dropped her back at the station after dinner, Mei had the distinct feeling that they were on different pages about how the evening had gone. Mei gave Sophie a chaste kiss on the cheek, thankful again that she’d insisted on splitting the check, and hoped it wouldn’t be awkward at work. If she had to, Mei would use the shooting at Ayi’s as an excuse to stick close to home.
That Mei needed to focus on Ayi was hardly an excuse. What little time she’d been at the house the last two days, she’d spent making sure that the house looked as clean and undisturbed as possible. Other than the art, it was now exactly as it had been before the shooting. Before work that morning, she took Ayi’s gongbi to a place in Chinatown that handled art restoration. From the look the man gave her, he seemed to think that Mei had shot the piece herself. “What you expect me to do with this? I’m not miracle man,” he’d said in awkward English.
“I know. I’m very upset as it is my aunt’s picture,” Mei replied in her most formal Cantonese. “Is there anything you can do?” She offered no explanation of what had happened. He was clearly traditional Chinese, which meant that telling him she was a police officer was not going to win her any favors. In fact, it might be preferable that he’d thought she’d shot it herself. Maybe she should tell him her husband was a police officer.
The man’s expression softened. “I can’t promise, but I will try.” He pulled a card out of the plastic business card dispenser on the counter and handed it to her. “You call me end of next week.”
She thanked him and left in a slightly better mood. She was determined to spend the weekend at home with Ayi. Ayi needed to come home and the longer she put it off, the harder it would be. Plus, Hui had to be growing tired of the company. The effort wasn’t entirely unselfish either.
Mei certainly couldn’t move out of Ayi’s house or even tell her parents about a break from Andy until Ayi was comfortable there again. Mei pulled Ayi’s car into the entrance to the police parking lot and slid her card in the machine. The card returned. The barrier lifted. Friday. It definitely was Friday.
Her phone vibrated. Thanks for a great night. Hope the family drama doesn’t rear its ugly head today. Will keep you posted on weekend plans.
At the end of the night, Sophie had suggested getting a group to go out over the weekend. Mei had been careful not to agree, but she also hadn’t said no either. She was intrigued by the idea. She could decide later.
Mei sat down at her desk in the lab and booted her computer. The room was quiet but for the whir of the case fans and coolers of the computer. The mechanical platters buzzed softly as the tiny magnetic head leapt around to access her hard drive, the platters spinning an upwards of 10,000 times per minute. She loved the sounds of the machinery, could diagnose a sick computer just by the sounds. She used to wear headphones plugged into her computer without music simply to hear the computer speak to her. Data was tangible, secure, predictable. You didn’t need to listen to its tone or watch its body language to know if it was telling the truth. Data was always honest.
As head of the department, Mei no longer felt comfortable wearing headphones in the lab. It felt like she was telling people not to bother her. Which, of course, was exactly what she wished they would do.
Amazingly, Mei was able to work through all of her emails and run downstairs to buy an apple juice before anyone arrived. She arrived back at her desk to a voicemail from Amy saying she had a family emergency and wouldn’t be in. Mei was just settling back in at her desk when the lab door slammed open against the far wall. Blake struggled through the door, arms loaded with equipment.
Mei stood. “Let me help you.”
“I’m okay,” Blake said,
breathless. “Someone parked in my spot. I had to walk two blocks.” He set down a large, handled briefcase that contained everything they needed for collecting evidence and took his own computer bag and a department computer bag to his desk before coming back for the evidence kit.
“How did it go yesterday?”
Blake shook his head. “Not great.” He motioned to the outer office. “Mind if I get a cup of coffee first?”
“Sure. No problem.”
While she waited, Mei heard the annoying ding of a new email. From Aaron. The subject line read “Late.”
Running late. Be there by ten. AP
Mei stared at the words. It should have been a relief that she wouldn’t have to deal with Aaron this morning. There was something going on with him. Not only was he unhelpful, he was deceitful. He’d clearly hurt himself yesterday. Why hide it? And what else was he hiding?
Blake came back with a cup that said “#1 Dad” and sat down. She remembered the first time she’d seen it and asked about his kids. “I don’t have kids,” he’d said, motioning to his weathered appearance like that should have been evidence enough to deduce his parental status. The mug, it turned out, was a relic from some earlier employee of the team. At this point, no one could even remember who the #1 dad had been.
Blake sat in the chair and brought the mug to his mouth. He took a long drink.
“Rough morning,” she said.
Blake shook his head. “Totally.”
“You want to talk about yesterday or do you need some time?” she asked.
“No, I’m fine.” Blake set the mug on the edge of her desk. “They weren’t exactly cooperative. The law firm denied any access at all. They didn’t let me anywhere near their logs. I know it’s bullshit—excuse the French—because all the junior guys were acting like they’d been handed their asses on platters. Excuse the—”
“French,” Mei interjected. “Don’t worry about it.” She slid open her top drawer and reached in for her tablet to take notes.
“One of the younger guys stood in the corner, staring at his shoes,” Blake went on. “The other two junior guys just took notes like they’d never heard the kind of bullshit this guy was spewing.”
Only half listening, Mei pulled the drawer open farther. She shuffled through all her papers. “My tablet isn’t here.” She tried to move casually, but panic was setting in. She’d locked her desk. She was sure of it.
“Did you take it home?” Blake asked.
“No.” Her heart raced. She opened her side drawers even though she never put it there. She always left it in the center drawer. It was the best locking drawer. Something her first boss at the FBI had told her; he’d always been full of idiosyncratic facts. The others could be opened a few millimeters and picked or pried, he’d explained. The center drawer was much harder because it closed under the lip of the desk.
“Maybe you left it somewhere else?”
Her tablet held all her crime scene reports, all the photos and documented evidence. All of it was backed up, of course, but losing the tablet was like losing the case file. She opened her computer bag and searched it. Nothing.
“Maybe you locked it in the safe storage,” Blake suggested.
That was ridiculous. She would never have done that. “Do you mind checking?” she asked.
Blake rose from the chair. She just wanted him out of her space. It wasn’t the missing case information. She wished it was only that. Worse. It was much worse. She’d been tracking her team’s hours, keeping a file on case progress and activities to document which of them were working—i.e., Teddy and Blake—and which were not—i.e., Aaron and Amy. The period for annual review was nearly up, and Sergeant Lanier had made suggestions for salary adjustments that felt completely out of line with the performance she’d seen. That file, including all the documentation of Aaron’s absences, his stubborn denial of the projects she assigned him and his secret refusal to divulge what he was working on and for whom. It was all on there. Not to mention a journal of her feelings, her most honest reactions to seeing the pictures of Jodi and her wife, and a hundred other things that were deeply personal.
Teddy stood at her desk. She hadn’t even heard him enter the lab. He held something small in his hand and for a fleeting moment, she thought it was her tablet. Then she recognized the Raspberry Pi. “You want me to start on this?” he asked.
Mei nodded, forced herself to say please.
Blake returned a moment later. “It’s not there.”
Teddy looked at Blake. “What’s not where?”
“She can’t find her tablet.”
“I have it,” Teddy said. “I found it on my desk when I got back from the Lindley scene last night. I didn’t even notice it until I was packing up to go home.”
Teddy took the tablet from one of his drawers and brought it to her.
“Thanks,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Had me worried for a second.”
“You must have left it there before you left.”
Mei took the tablet back and thanked Teddy. Blake sat back down and Mei stood. “I have to run one quick thing up to HR,” she lied. “Can we talk about yesterday when I’m back? Say fifteen minutes.”
Blake shrugged without standing. “Sure.”
“Maybe see what you and Teddy can find out about that Raspberry Pi.”
Mei took the tablet and, remembering her excuse about HR, grabbed a random folder from the files in her drawer and held them both to her chest as she walked out of the lab. She didn’t go to the women’s bathroom on her floor but instead walked up three flights to the third floor and went into the farthest stall.
Someone flushed and washed her hands. Mei waited until she was positive she was alone before entering her password and opening up her tablet. She did not believe for one second that she had left the tablet out. She knew she’d locked it in her desk last night.
Data security was as ingrained in her as brushing her teeth before bed. Maybe even more ingrained.
Mei entered her passcode into her tablet and went to Dropbox. She opened the app and clicked “show change log” on the drop down menu and waited while the log populated, scanned the times. Nothing last night. Which meant… nothing.
The files were unchanged, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been accessed. Teddy had found the tablet on his desk. She had been by his desk before leaving last night. Her favorite professor in college always adhered to Occam’s razor which said that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be chosen. In this case, the simplest possible explanation—that she herself had left it there and Teddy had found it and put it into his desk—would be the correct one. Mei changed her log-in code to something less obvious than her Chicago street address and hoped Occam was right.
Chapter 26
Roger Sampers’s team brought in three boxes of computer equipment from the warehouse. It had all been fingerprinted on site. Sampers himself arrived a few moments later.
“There is only one set of prints that came up.” Roger handed her a copy of a print card. “Sam Gibson. His prints weren’t on file because he doesn’t have a driver’s license.” Roger paused before saying, “These are the same prints on the electrical tape and on the gun found at your home.”
Mei felt like she was breathing through a straw. The man who tried to kill her?
Roger nodded. “You know him?”
“I don’t think so. What do you know about him?” Mei asked.
“Surprisingly little. We’re working on obtaining records from his schools, but so far we only know that his parents are both very powerful in Silicon Valley. Gibson is an only child and one of the youngest hackers to shut down a major website—”
Mei made notes on her tablet.
“He chose Cisco,” Roger continued. “That’s the company where his mother worked, if that tells you anyth
ing about the family dynamic.”
“How did he shut it down?” Mei asked.
Teddy walked to her desk. “I remember him. Greeneggs.”
“Green eggs?” Mei repeated.
“That’s his screen name,” Teddy explained. “He shut down Cisco’s site for six or seven hours with a denial of service attack.”
“I remember,” Blake added. “He was like twelve.”
“You need anything else from me?” Roger asked.
Mei shook her head and looked down where she’d written only two words. “Gun. Gibson.” She didn’t know Gibson. She certainly had never had interactions with him at the bureau. She couldn’t imagine that he knew her well enough to choose her as a target. That meant someone else had made her the victim.
Roger left and Mei closed her tablet, returning her focus to the case. The answers had to be there. “The first step is to confirm his identity and link him to the Raspberry Pi since the first computer was completely clean,” she said. “Then, we need to track any known associates.”
Blake looked at Teddy who shook his head. “It’s a pretty loner occupation. Not a lot of hackers sitting together in rooms. At least not outside the movies.”
“He’s working with someone,” Mei said.
Blake nodded. “At the very least someone who was driving during the shooting at your place.”
Mei said nothing.
“I’ll try to track the user name through some forums or IRCs,” Teddy said.
Mei hadn’t heard anyone refer to inter-relay chat in ages. “People still use IRC?”
“You’d be surprised,” Teddy said.
“I’m on DALnet all the time,” Blake added.
“I use Quakenet pretty regularly, too,” Teddy added sheepishly.
Mei laughed, shaking off the uncomfortable thoughts about Gibson. “And I thought I was old school.”
Mei’s phone rang. “Ling.”
“It’s Sydney… Blanchard.”
Interference Page 16
