Damage Control

by Gordon Savage

  I was discouraged. Yesterday had been more plusses than minuses. I’d gotten to spend time with Troy, even if it was long distance. I had talked in person with the president, and he had asked me to be an envoy to the Alternates. Me! What an honor. And yet, I was having a hard enough time as an unofficial detective. Wasn’t being an envoy way over my head? So mostly a good day, but looking at it, all I could think of was that Wells still refused to understand the impact of his pigheadedness. To me my biggest concern was that my investigation was bogging down. I needed something concrete, something that couldn’t be interpreted for anything but what it was. I had to track down some real leads, but I had no idea where to start.

  I stared down at the desktop long enough to realize I was looking at something I hadn’t already tried. My desk pad was an oversized tablet of blank paper, except for the top sheet that I had scribbled all over. I ripped it off and threw the wadded mass into my trash can. I grabbed a pencil and started brainstorming. The central circle said, “What I need.”

  The first thing I thought of was finding evidence that Coach Bednarik had set the explosive. As soon as I wrote that down I knew it was wrong. I was assuming he was guilty before I had any credible evidence. If I was going to solve this “case” correctly, an open mind was crucial. It may not be good brainstorming, but I erased Bednarik and wrote down “Open Mind.” That ought to be self-evident, but I had already violated it, so I wanted it staring at me while I tried other ideas.

  I only spent about 15 minutes scribbling ideas on the paper. One idea that should have been obvious had come to the forefront, and I sat there staring at it. I needed to find out who had suffered when Reid abruptly cut off their test answers. The football players weren’t the only “clients” he had. That meant talking to Laura Bachman again to see if she’d be as liberal with me looking for other kids whose grades had taken a nose dive when Reid stopped supplying answers. I’d have to wait to call her until I finished with Rebecca since I had no idea how long that would take.

  Just like that my mood had changed. I couldn’t help but feel relieved. Having a plan made a big difference. Was I really onto something?

  ◆◆◆

  Day 10, 8:45AM

  I was fifteen minutes early when I rang Rebecca’s doorbell, but she answered almost immediately. The dress she was wearing was fashionably short and open deeply at the neck, showing plenty of cleavage. I almost sputtered, but instead just managed to say, “Hi.” How she decided to dress for a major interview was none of my business.

  “You’re early. Great. I talked to Lassen after we hung up last night. He’d like to do this down at the station. Let me grab my bag, and I’ll be right with you. Come on in.” She reeled it off so fast I had a hard time keeping up. Lassen was right, of course. It made better sense to have everybody involved on hand when I introduced the Alternates.

  I stopped right inside the door to wait for her while she strode to the dining room table and grabbed her purse. As she returned, she asked at the same light-speed pace, “How did you get here? Did you drive? If it’s alright with you, let’s use your car.”

  “Yes, I drove.”

  “Great. Let’s go.”

  She closed the door behind us. “Max wants to set up all the production shots while I get acquainted with the Alternates, as you call them – make it a kind of dress rehearsal. Then everyone will know how to proceed when we go live. I imagine he’ll have some suggestions for the Alternates as well.”

  I smothered a snicker. She was still talking at ninety miles an hour when we reached the studio. I squeezed her hand when we were almost there and said, “Take a breath.”

  She laughed. “I’m sorry, but I’m so excited. This will be national, and it’ll be exclusive, and …” She stopped. “Turn into the parking garage. They’ll let us in.”

  I had to slow down abruptly. The driver behind me blew his horn and gave us a one finger salute.

  The guard at the garage entrance, had to squat down to see us in my TR-6. He smiled and said, “Ms. Williams. Ms. Pederson. Go on in. Number three is reserved for you.”

  As I pulled forward, I said, “Wow! Who did we displace?”

  “I’m not sure. At home it would be the senior producer.”

  As we were getting out, another car pulled into number four. The driver looked awfully familiar. He waved as he got out. “Rebecca, wait for me.”

  We both stopped. I glanced at her. “Rebecca?”

  “Don’t look at me.” She appeared as surprised as I was.

  He hurried up and extended his hand to Rebecca. “Hi. Sorry for the informality. You can call me Bill.”

  He offered me his hand. “And you must be Samantha Pederson. Do I call you Samantha or Sam?”

  “Either one. Do I call you Bill?”

  “Absolutely. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Why don’t we head upstairs?”

  I couldn’t help but wonder who this clown was. He was definitely familiar but I couldn’t place him. He sure was good looking, and he had the kind of voice that TV anchors would love to have.

  Too my surprise Rebecca appeared angry. She stared at him. “Did Lassen call you in to cover the story?” she asked with a definite hint of disappointment in her voice.

  He must have read her concern. “No. No. I’m just here to observe.” He smiled. “We’ll be running excerpts from your interview on Night Shift this evening. I want to be familiar with what goes on behind the cameras as well as on the screen.”

  I would have preferred the stairs, but Bill punched the elevator button. When we got off on the first floor, Lassen was waiting for us. As we entered the room, he looked flustered. Finally he said, “Ms. Pederson, Rebecca, Mr. Croft, it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.” He offered Bill his hand.

  “Call me Bill.”

  “Please, call me Max.” He started down the hall. “This way.”

  Mr. Croft? The Bill Croft? It finally dawned on me. He was the anchor for the Night Shift. I rarely watched TV news. Because of my job I generally knew more about what was going on in the world than the networks did. But Bill Croft was a household name, and so was Night Shift. I was in the company of a real celebrity.

  We stopped in news room studio. Max sat Rebecca down at the news desk. The crew had put an 86 inch TV on the other side of the desk and connected a computer to it. “We wanted to make this interview as natural as possible,” Max said. “The computer is offline just to make sure no one can hack into it.”

  He turned to me. “Do you have the board?”

  I fished it out of my purse and showed it to him along with the flash drive. “Troy coated the board with some kind of antistatic compound so I wouldn’t accidently destroy a circuit with a discharge. It’s safe to touch it.”

  I sat down at the console and plugged in the flash drive. In a couple of minutes the microportal was up and running. I talked them through it as I brought up the software and scrolled down the list of names, indicating who was on this Earth and who was on the other Earth. Finally, I selected Dr. Friedlund and clicked on connect. The speakers gave out the same annoying telephone ring—I’d have to talk to Troy or Dan about that.

  After the third ring, Lisa Kennedy, Friedlund’s top assistant answered the call. When she saw me, she acted surprised. “Samantha? I wasn’t expecting you. I’m still getting accustomed to using this microportal device.”

  “This isn’t a bad time is it, Lisa?”

  “Oh no, Troy said you would be calling. It’s just that I was expecting a call from Melissa. Are you ready for the interview already?”

  “No, we’re setting up here for the interview tonight. I wanted to get the crew acquainted with the system and hoped to introduce them to as many of you as possible.” I backed to the side of our image on the screen and waved at the trio behind me. “These are the people who will be running the interview from this end. First is Rebecca Williams, the interviewer.”—Rebecca waved.—“Second is Max Lassen, the news director.”—He nodded.—“He’ll want to ta
lk to all of you about the production tonight. And finally, Bill Croft from the network. He’ll be observing.”

  As soon as the introductions were over, I realized I should have waited until all the Alternates could watch. Oh well. I gave Rebecca the chair and went to stand beside Bill. Lisa introduced all of us to the rest of the Alternates who were in the lab. Then she and Lassen started talking over the procedures for the interview, and I quickly lost interest.

  Since I now knew where I was going to start, I began thinking about how to convince Laura Bachman to release the grades of other potential Duncan Reid clients. I finally thought I was onto something that had real promise, and I was anxious get on the phone.

  Chapter 25

  Rebecca Williams guesting on Channel 15: “So Dr. Friedlund, is it true there has been no evidence of a matter/antimatter explosion on your world?”

  Friedlund: “None, but we’re still trying to track down the person who made contact with your Duncan Reid.”

  Williams: “Is it possible that Reid contacted yet another universe?”

  Friedlund: “It is possible, but not likely. We’ve run a scan of over 20, 000 neighboring universes so far and have not detected any operating portals. Of course, we’re only searching for the same kind of portals that we’re currently using to communicate with you. That seems reasonable since Mr. Reid was using Dr. Kim’s research.”

  – Channel 15 News

  Day 10, 1:30PM

  Laura turned out to be more cooperative than I would have expected. She smiled. “Besides hunting for a murderer, you are volunteering to help me track down students who were potentially cheating, aren’t you?”

  She took me into a side office and put me in front of a computer. “We’re still scanning, but we’ve gotten through all the current students. To prevent hacking, all the record keeping computers are on an isolated local network with no access to the internet.”

  She logged in and brought up the program that tracked and reported the grades and showed me how to use it. Finally, she walked me through pulling up individual records and building a report. “Let me know if you need anything else. I’ll be in my office.”

  It didn’t take me long to figure out why she was so willing to let me search. The program was efficient, but there were thousands of students and each had multiple courses with multiple grades. Even using the graphing function which made it easier to spot the anomalies, I had to go course by course and individual by individual to find what I was looking for.

  The pattern didn’t take long to show. As soon as it did, I was able to narrow the search down to courses taught by eight professors. Most of the discrepancies were in basic courses where tests were multiple-choice – not all but most. And it appeared that all eight of the professors graded generously. Some students had grades all over the map, so individuals’ grades suddenly improving and deteriorating didn’t stand out—unless you knew what to look for.

  I was absorbed in my research until late in the afternoon when Rebecca’s interview with Dr. Friedlund went live. Before it was over, my cell phone rang. It was Frost. I knew what he was calling about. It had to be Wells’ reaction. I answered with, “Good afternoon, Dr. Frost.”

  “Wells is mad as hell.” I could hear the suppressed amusement in his voice. “How’d you pull this off?”

  I kept it simple. “Troy put together a circuit board that you plug into a computer and it allows you to call anyone who has one plugged into theirs, audio and video. His friend Dan Howell is setting up for mass production as we speak.”

  I could swear I heard a gasp. “Lordy. And Wells is already boiling. … Wait, you mean he’s going to be selling these things?”

  “Oh, it’s more than that,” I responded. “There’ll be a hand held unit that you can use like a smart phone and call anyone else who has one.”

  “Oh my God.” I don’t think I’d ever heard Frost so shocked.

  I was almost ready to ask if he was still on the line when he finally continued, “Wells told me to have you in his office first thing in the morning. He growled something about going over his head…. Now I’m really worried about your head.”

  “I’ll survive.” Tears filled my eyes as I remembered the chewing out I had gotten from Colonel Weston when he found out about Dwayne and me. Not because of the chewing out, but because of the memories it brought back. That had been a complicated situation. I hadn’t known Dwayne was enlisted before we got intimate, but I didn’t break it off when I did find out. As far as I was concerned our relationship didn’t compromise any of the criteria for fraternization. We were in different organizations, so it couldn’t violate chain of command or partiality. Then I got pregnant, and Dwayne was killed by that IED. Dwayne’s death upset me so much I couldn’t do my job … That was another matter. The catch all “good order” came into play. The pain I felt every time I thought of that – or dreamed of it like I did in the hospital – was still intense. Colonel Weston’s reaming me didn’t hurt nearly as much. Whatever Wells did would be trivial.

  I was so wrapped up in reverie I almost missed it when Frost changed the subject. “How’s your research coming?”

  “Slow. I’m straining student records for evidence of cheating, and there’s too much data.”

  “Well, good luck. By the way, I got your new charge number, so you’re back on the clock. Gotta go. Keep your head down.”

  I had finally gotten the hang of sorting through the records when Laura appeared. “It’s time to close up for the day. How are you doing?”

  “I’ve come up with fifteen probables so far. Low or failing grades that suddenly became spectacular and just as suddenly dropped, all about the same time that Reid quit ‘tutoring.’ I did find a couple of the professors who put notes in students files saying their grades were inconsistent, suggesting some kind of complicity, but I can’t find any evidence they ever followed up.”

  I sent the report to the printer and logged off. Stretching, I stood up. “If it’s alright with you, I’ll be back tomorrow to finish up.”

  “Glad to have you,” she said. “I get here at 7:30. Just knock on the door, and I’ll let you in.”

  “Unfortunately, I’ve got an appointment to be boiled in oil at 7:00. I’ll limp in as soon as I can after that.”

  Laura looked puzzled but let it go.

  I collected a copy of the report. As I headed out the door, I thought, So this is what real detective work is like. I think I’ll stick with being an analyst.

  ◆◆◆

  Day 10, 6:30PM

  I really wanted to talk to Troy when I got home, but we had decided that when I called after work it would be best to wait until the group at the safe house had finished eating. That was around 9:00 pm eastern time. What I had to say frequently was important to all of them and there was no point repeating it. Then Troy and I would get some personal time afterwards.

  To kill time until nine, I reran of the Alternates’ interview. Then I took another look at my brainstorming pad. I couldn’t shake one idea on it that kept coming back to me. We needed to find someone who would admit to selling C4 to Bednarik. I wondered whether Phil might be able to help me there. I wrote down “Check with Phil.” I fiddled around with the pad for nearly a half hour. When I looked at the page and saw nothing new but my note about Phil and the output from the previous brainstorming attempt, I decided I was wasting my time.

  I dragged out the reports I had put together that afternoon at the registrar’s office and began reading them, trying to sort out those who were “injured” the most when Reid pulled the plug. Since I had no concept of the personalities involved, only a few of the students who fit the grade progression I associated with Reid had crashed so badly when he retired that they seemed even slightly likely to resort to violence over it. Still, I knew I needed to cover all the bases. I’d have to find someone who knew the suspects – make that ‘subjects’ since ‘suspects’ was too strong a word at this point – and talk to them.

  Then I re
membered McKenzie Gardner. Unless Reid made a point of meeting his clients someplace they wouldn’t be seen, he probably met with many of them in his room. He had certainly been arrogant enough to think no one would possibly report him for cheating. That meant Gardner would surely have seen some of them come and go and was probably present for many of the negotiations. When I had talked to him before, though, he had said he only knew of Coach Bednarik. I got it that he probably wouldn’t have told me everything the first time. I hadn’t known the right questions to ask, and volunteering what he knew could connect him to Reid’s business. I needed to make it clear that my end game wasn’t to report people who knew about the cheating. Then, maybe he could point me to the right people to talk to about Reid. I’d have to make time to meet with him again.

  ◆◆◆

  Day 10, 9:03PM

  Absorbed in my thoughts about the investigation, I forgot to call Troy at 9:00 o’clock. The annoying phone-like ring coming from my computer made me jump and broke my concentration. Troy Santori on line one, I thought. I smiled to myself and clicked on the microportal icon.

  “Hi there, beautiful. Did I tear you away from something?” Troy smiled brightly.

  When I told him about my plan to question people whose grades had taken a hit after Reid pulled the plug, he replied, “That sure sounds boring.” He changed the subject. “By the way, we all watched the interview of the Alternates. I hope Wells enjoyed it.”

  “He loved it. In fact, he’s invited me in for a private discussion about it first thing tomorrow morning.” I could tell he understood the irony in what I was saying.

  “I hope we didn’t get you into too much trouble,” he said with a slight frown.

  I did too.

  Chapter 26

  Rebecca Williams guesting on Channel 15: “Did I hear you correctly. You’ve scanned more than 20,000 other universes?”

  Friedlund: “Please understand, we can only scan for active teleportals, not anything else. The equipment that detected Dr. Kim’s teleportal only has the capability to detect an incipient wormhole. Your teleportals, as do ours, use a very limited wormhole to establish contact, the call-in function. Our scanner can only detect that device or teleportals in actual operation, not any details of the universe.”