The Victim of the System

by Steve Hadden

  “Think about the timing. The data was processed by Tom, then your brother died just before Tom did.”

  “Patrick,” she said softly. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked off somewhere in the distance.

  Ike waited, knowing piling on wouldn’t help this process.

  She looked back at the note. This time Ike saw rage. “Patrick.” Her gaze bored into the note.

  He asked the question again. “Did you know that Tom set up the e-mails?”

  “All I knew was that he said he was entangled in something he was trying to exit. Now I know what it was. He said it was better if I didn’t know.”

  “Did you take that to the police when he died?”

  “Yes. Detective Cassidy. He was at my father’s house and I told him. I was certain Tom wouldn’t do that to himself or Jack, but Detective Cassidy convinced us he killed himself.”

  “You and Tom, was it ser—”

  “Serious. Yes. I know how it sounds with me being Brenda’s half sister. But it just happened.” She set the gun on the island. “We decided to keep it secret. Brenda was whacked out on coke—no telling what she’d do—and I was certain my father would demand I stop.”

  Ike wasn’t there to judge her. He had little room to criticize based on his past choices. But they needed to get the image. “I need your help getting to the seismic image. Does Workstation 15 mean anything to you?”

  Shannon nodded. “It’s a computer on the eleventh floor.”

  “Not on the twelfth?”

  “No. It’s not part of the Minuteman prospect. It’s a machine used by one of the Gulf of Mexico teams. One of Tom’s people showed me some of their work on it. The machine belongs to Cole’s Seismic, and the person operating it was contracted to the team.”

  “I need you to get me in there.”

  She looked back at the clues. “Why does Tom say, ‘Look below’?”

  “I don’t know. But whatever it is, it won’t be good for your family.”

  Shannon looked up at Ike with a hardened vengeance. “I’ll take care of that.”

  “Can you get me inside? To the workstation?”

  “I’ll need something from you.”

  Ike was surprised by the negotiation. “Okay. What?”

  “Let me be the first to tell my father and my brother.”

  “Done.”

  “Tom asked me to help you. That’s the least I can do. But I don’t know the passwords.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll get Bobby Scott to help us.”

  “Let’s go,” she said, heading for her purse on the kitchen counter. “You stay here and I’ll let my father’s security team know I’m going to the office. You meet me in the garage. You can hide in my backseat.”

  She walked to the front door and left, and Ike wondered what she’d do. She’d just found out her brother and her lover had been murdered. The words loose cannon came to mind. But he sensed she was a woman of her word. And that word would destroy one family and save another.

  CHAPTER 56

  Ike’s trust in Shannon grew with every turn of her SUV. She’d concealed him in the back of her Range Rover as they left her townhome. She’d followed his instructions perfectly as they lost her security tail and trekked out to Southpointe to pick up a bleary-eyed Bobby Scott. By three a.m. they were on the nearly empty Parkway West. They headed through the Fort Pitt Tunnel and over the bridge into the city. Shannon’s serious and determined demeanor told Ike he had a chance, but something was missing, like a gap in the bridge that led to her family’s destruction. Ike hoped the discovery they were about to uncover would solidify her commitment.

  Shannon swiped her card past the card reader for the security gate to the executive garage at Falzone Center. Ike and Bobby sat up in the backseat when they’d cleared the gate. She parked and they all headed to the executive elevators. Ike spotted the cameras, but at this point it didn’t matter. A blue-blazered woman stood in the shadows at the lone elevator in the corner of the garage. Shannon had assured him that she knew the head of the overnight security team well and that access, despite Ike’s robbery attempt, wouldn’t be a problem.

  “We okay, Jo?” Shannon asked as they approached the woman.

  She eyed Ike and he recognized her from the lobby. “It’s all good, Ms. Falzone. Just three on the graveyard shift, counting me. They’re all good.”

  “Thanks, Jo. I’ll owe you. Don’t tell anyone else we’re here.”

  Jo grinned. “No worries, Ms. Falzone. We ladies need to watch out for each other.”

  Once in the elevator, Bobby asked about the legality of the whole thing, explaining for the fifth time that his company couldn’t afford to lose its leader again. Ike assured him that when they saw the image, it wouldn’t be an issue. Shannon surprised Ike by adding that she’d attest to authorizing Bobby to access the data and he’d be off the hook regarding their confidentiality clause. It wasn’t her offer itself that surprised him but what it implied about the depth of her relationship with Tom.

  The executive elevator went straight to the fifty-second floor. Shannon led them down a long mahogany hallway that was the artery connecting the plush executive offices. She used her key card and pushed through a set of glass double doors to a bank of elevators. When the door opened, she turned to Ike.

  “I’ll get you to the eleventh floor and show you where the workstation is, but I need to get something up here when we’re done. Then we should go.”

  Ike nodded and followed her into the elevator. They rode to the eleventh floor, which was a carbon copy of the twelfth. She led them down the hallway and stopped at the door marked Gulf Team. Swiping her card, she unlocked the door and then guided Ike and Bobby inside.

  The room was filled with cubicles and rimmed with private offices. At the far end, Ike could see colorful maps and charts hung on the back wall marking the team area for the space. Shannon walked halfway down the right side and stopped at an outside office.

  “Here it is. Workstation 15.”

  Two large flat screens sat side by side on a worktable with a keyboard centered in front of them. To the left, Ike noticed the thick stubby tower connected to the monitors.

  Ike gently corralled Bobby into the office. Bobby eyed the computer and then looked back at Ike. “Workstation 15.”

  “Can you access it?”

  Bobby nodded, seemingly muted by his nervousness. He dropped into the chair and powered up the computer. He deftly worked through the log-in screens and began scrolling through the folders on the right-hand monitor. Ike knew the processed three-dimensional image could be a large file. Bobby had promised he could spot it by the file size. Ike watched the folder names race down the screen. The further Bobby scrolled, the more Ike felt his lungs tighten. It had to be here.

  Bobby stopped the scrolling and pointed to the screen. “What about this?”

  The folder name was “Jackknife.”

  “Might be. Open it.”

  Bobby clicked, and in seconds an image opened on the left screen. The background was black, but the image was a colorful array of hues covering what looked like a photograph of the surface of a lifeless planet, with a large mound surrounded by crevasses and pinnacles.

  “No. Sorry. This block is in the Gulf of Mexico,” Bobby said as he clicked the image away and the screen went dark.

  He went back to the folders and continued scrolling. Ike spotted a fragment of another folder name that started with Jack. “There. Stop.”

  Bobby froze the screen.

  “There. ‘Jack and Jill.’”

  Bobby opened the folder and again pulled up one of the images. This one looked like a high-definition picture of the wall of the Grand Canyon. Layers laid one atop the other, varying in color from red to blue to green and black. The layers were jagged and interrupted by thick vertical lines that seemed to form wedges across entire sections. Ike knew they were faults that ran miles into the earth. But this cross section was clearer than any other Ike had seen. The depth
scale on the left showed that the cross section ran from eight thousand to sixteen thousand feet deep.

  Bobby leaned closer to the screen. “This is it,” he whispered. “Minuteman.”

  He scrolled down and stopped. See these facies here,” he said, pointing to a bright blue line marking the top of one of the rock layers that rose and formed a giant hill. He moved the cursor just below the blue line to a thick continuous black layer that ran over the entire structure. “My God, that’s probably all oil, and it covers all three blocks. Fifteen thousand acres.” He moved the cursor to the depth reading on the left side of the image. “Sixteen thousand feet. That’s the Jurassic Age.”

  Bobby looked at Shannon. “Congratulations. That’s one of the biggest oil reservoirs I’ve seen offshore. The question is, why kill for it? Your family controlled the blocks. You’d have most if not all the oil under them.”

  Ike could see that one word cut her. Kill. Kill Tom and kill Patrick.

  She stayed stoic, staring at the screen. “The clue Tom sent said look below the image.”

  Bobby turned back to the screen and scrolled down the image, looking deeper into the earth. As the image scrolled up Ike saw it. Bobby did, too, and he stopped scrolling.

  Ike’s mind didn’t accept what his eyes were seeing. “What is that?”

  Interrupting one of the layers was a series of what looked like perfectly formed pyramids. They went on for miles, according to the scale Bobby pulled up.

  Then Ike’s eyes froze on another image farther toward the right side of the screen. It was long and continuous, a quarter of a mile. Over four hundred yards. The image was sleek and looked like an elongated bullet.

  Bobby saw it, too. He turned back and ogled Ike. “That can’t be.”

  “Still Jurassic?” Ike said.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “What is that?” Shannon asked as she stepped closer to the screen.

  “I’m not sure, but it shouldn’t be there,” Ike said.

  Shannon dropped even closer to the screen. “It looks like pyramids and a craft of some sort. Buried—” her eyes widened when it clicked in her mind. “Buried by eighteen thousand feet of rock over millions of years!”

  “Exactly. What are structures that are clearly engineered doing in a formation that was deposited one hundred and fifty to two hundred million years ago?”

  For a moment, they all just stared at the screen. Ike knew nature wouldn’t form those structures. He also knew that man had first appeared on earth between one hundred thousand and three hundred thousand years ago. That left one easy answer. One he’d never really given much credibility.

  “This is crazy. Someone was here one hundred and fifty million years before we were.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Shannon said.

  “Afraid not. Tom’s processing is very precise. Now I know why they’d keep this covered up. They’d never get a permit to drill here until the U.S. government figured out what this is.”

  “Can you pull up the 3D image of that layer?”

  “I’m sure Tom put that together. Let me see if I can find it.”

  Bobby had the image in less than a minute. The image looked like an aerial view of a large town covered with pyramids, with the long ship in the center.

  Ike turned to Shannon and pointed to the screen. “This is the reason why Nick killed them.” Shannon dropped her head and cried silently for a moment. Then she stopped and lifted her head. “Remember what you promised me.”

  “I’ve gotta get this to Jenna and maybe the FBI.”

  “Not until I talk to—”

  Shannon’s phone chimed. She read the message.

  “They’re here. Somehow my father or Nick found out we were here. Jo says they just pulled up out front.”

  Ike grabbed Bobby’s shoulder. “Download the file.”

  “I’ll meet you upstairs,” Shannon said and headed for the door.

  Ike grabbed her. “Where are you going?”

  Ike could see the pain in her eyes.

  “I’ve got to get something.”

  She pulled free and ran from the office.

  Ike turned back to Bobby. “You got it?”

  Bobby had his hand on the portable drive. “It’s almost there.”

  Ike ran from the office to the doorway of the Gulf Team Section and checked the elevators. Three of the indicators showed the first floor and the last showed the fifty-second.

  “We gotta go,” Ike yelled.

  Bobby barreled out of the office with the drive in his hand. Ike sprinted to the elevators and pressed the button. One of the elevators began to move from the first floor. Either it was empty and coming to pick them up or the Falzones and the security team had made it to the elevator and they were sitting ducks.

  When Bobby arrived, Ike took the drive. His body crackled with anticipation as he tucked it into his pocket. He envisioned Jack’s face when he was freed. A protective force swelled inside. They’d have to kill him before he surrendered it.

  Ike watched the indicator count the floors. When it hit the ninth floor, he pulled Bobby back behind him against the wall. He unleashed the aggression he kept chained inside and readied for a fight, but then noticed that another elevator started to rise from the first floor. He pulled Bobby to the first elevator door as it arrived. It opened and Ike yanked Bobby in with him and hit “52.” The elevator rose as if in molasses. Ike guessed the Falzones were headed to the eleventh floor first. He hoped he wasn’t wrong. Either way, they’d quickly head to the fifty-second.

  When the elevator opened, he headed to the glass double security doors. Shannon had left one wedged open with a notepad, and they headed down the long hallway. Ike stopped when he spotted Shannon in an office, glued to the computer screen. Tears streamed down her face.

  “They’re coming,” he said.

  Ike’s warning jolted her from the screen. She grabbed the keys from her desk and tossed them to Ike.

  “Go to the garage and take my car.”

  “What about you?” Ike said.

  She glared at the computer screen, condemning it like a criminal. “I have to take care of this. Go.”

  CHAPTER 57

  Shannon had heard the footsteps all her life. They had a comforting rhythm and always carried the promise of something special. Most of her most precious moments had been with her father at the office. Now the rhythm of those steps was panicked, like she imagined a war drum would have sounded. Instead of joy, she hoped his footsteps carried an explanation for the terrible revelation on the screen. She exhaled and fortified herself just before he appeared in the doorway. The pain had aged his face and worry radiated from his eyes.

  “What’s going on, Shannon?” He edged into her office. “Why did you shake your security?” He looked like he already knew the answer.

  Shannon tapped all her courage. “First, I have a question for you, Father.”

  A storm of indignation flashed across his face at the sudden insubordination. “Answer me.”

  Shannon redoubled her challenge and pointed to the screen. “I came to check the flight log.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Rossi.”

  “He’s not here.”

  A second set of footsteps, running, closed in on her office. Joseph’s most trusted bodyguard, Kent, burst in. “The eleventh floor. She went to the Gulf of Mexico team room.”

  Joseph furrowed his brow, and she could see him instantly make the connection. “No. No! What did you do?” He turned to the bodyguard. “Tell Cassidy he has it. He’s got the file.” The bodyguard bolted out the door and down the hallway, yelling into his phone. Joseph turned back to Shannon. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

  “Perhaps. But it’s what you’ve done that may be my biggest problem.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Shannon crossed her arms, partly for effect but partly for comfort. She was about to find out if the man who’d giv
en her everything was someone else. “On the night Patrick died, you took the plane to Houston.”

  “Of course I did. He was my son.”

  She turned the flat monitor toward him. “This says you left at 9:40 that night.”

  Joseph eyed the screen and refocused on Shannon. “Okay.”

  Shannon watched her father’s face. Ever since she was a kid, she could read his heart in his expressions. As she readied to ask the next questions, she knew she was about to jump off a ledge into a bottomless ravine. “We didn’t get the call from the Harris County sheriff until after eleven.”

  Joseph froze, and the split second before he spoke was enough to formulate a lie. “I had them wait until I made sure it was Patrick.”

  Shannon’s core quaked and her red-hot disdain overflowed. “You didn’t. Tell me the truth.”

  He held his resistance, but then his shoulders dropped as if surrendering to a truth neither of them wanted to hear. Sadness shaded his demeanor, and seeing that, she started to cry. This would be too hard—but it had to happen.

  “The truth, Father.” She felt her jaw quiver under the weight of the words about to cross her lips. “Did you kill Patrick?”

  Her father looked like he’d been shot. “No. I didn’t. I would never hurt Patrick.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Her father scrubbed his face in his hands and sat on the corner of the desk. He didn’t look at her but instead out the window at the cresting dawn. “I’ve always tried to do the best for all of you. I thought if I loved you all enough, we’d have the family I never had growing up. Nick and Brenda had it hardest, and that’s on me. But you and Patrick brought such joy and pleasure to me. It was like a do-over. A wonderful do-over. I did everything I could to help Brenda, but she was too far gone. And I held on to Nick, hoping my love and support would overcome his anger. All I wanted was for all of us to be a family.”

  Shannon saw where this was headed. “What happened? Was it Nick?”

  He dropped his head. “It got away from me before I could fix it.”