by Ben English
The confession came in a sobbing stutter. His name was Gary Bunnit, and he’d been a freelance thug and hitter for a few years, originally with one of the Southern California arms of the mafia. He worked security at the central L.A. offices of Raines Capital, but took his “special orders” from someone called Marduk. Pete noted the names Fenn, Gledhill, and three others marked for assassination. “Coupla’ others, I dunno, down around L.A. Computer-types. A photographer chick. We were supposed to do them all this week. Kids and widows of dead researchers who might have information left over on their home computer systems.”
Los Angeles. Pete wondered just how fast he could move.
The wind broke over the trees in a wave, tugging the man away. He screamed, but Pete held tight.
“That’s it, that’s all. Let me go, man!”
Pete had no trouble finding the man’s eyes. “Not quite all.
“I know what you’ve been doing in my city. I know all about Martin, Amy, and Melissa.” Pete pulled him closer, close enough to fish the camera out of the killer’s inner jacket pocket.
“Hey, hey. Hey, you know, you look just like that actor, man, that Jack Flynn guy. Yeah, you could be his brother or something, you know? I could get you a job in the business if you want, ‘kay? My boss, he’s got all kinds of connections, he knows the people, man, the people.”
Pete knew he couldn’t bring himself to look at the pictures the killer had taken. He’d leave the camera for the authorities to find, maybe on the front seat of the killing duo’s rental car.
Tears and snot, and phlegm streaked the killer’s face. “So what do you say, man?” He gaped beseechingly upward, whimpering for grace.
Fort Point was a squat, symmetrical box nestled under the bridge. Pete let him go.
Hardware/Wetware
“Hello, this is Steve Fisbeck, calling for Dr. Mitchell Fenn.”
“This is Mitch Fenn.”
“Dr. Fenn, I’m sorry for calling at this hour. I got your number from Dr. Douglas Gale at MIT.”
“Not at all, don’t worry about it. Right, I expected you’d call. Doug got hold of me at the office this afternoon, told me all about your interesting project. Even sent me your files.”
“Ah, I’m not the designer, sir. Though I do have several ideas about it, I have more questions than anything else. I hope you can help me with a few things.”
Oh. Fenn made sure his voice remained clear of any obvious disappointment. “I’ll try and explain what I’m able, Steve. Anyone with Doug Gale’s recommendation…” He hoped the young man would grasp the subtle rebuff.
Since first glimpsing the schematics and associated files that accompanied the email, Fenn had looked forward to this conversation the entire day. He found himself strangely unprepared for the letdown. He witnessed innovation daily, but the designs attached to the email were brilliant. It just looked right in a simple, solid manner that he’d seen perhaps once before.
“Dr. Fenn, I’ll be perfectly honest. This is more than a passing interest. Did Dr. Gale mention who I work for?”
“National Security, if I’m not mistaken. Told me over the phone.” He smiled at the memory. “As soon as he mentioned you by name, we both wondered if your desk alarm in Fort Meade had gone off. We had a long talk about the design you sent him, the obvious leaps in nanotech applications.”
“So he managed to send you the files? All of them?” Steve sounded surprised.
“Forwarded the lot of it to me, I supposed before the unfortunate accident in his office.”
“I’m sorry, it sounded like you said 'accident'”.
“Yes, hasn’t anyone told you? A woman who works at night in the office had a heart attack, just outside his lab.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Can’t get any worse. He knew her well. Terrible stream of odd accidents there lately.”
“There’s more?”
“The entire computer network crashed that night. Research was destroyed, all his email. The hardware, too. Complete loss.”
The voice on the other end was incredulous. “That’s impossible. I helped set that system up. At least the redundancy systems—”
“And that’s where it becomes odd,” said Fenn. The older backups are fine, but everything Doug’s team has been working on for the past few days—including the files you sent—gone. Some kind of electrical chain accident at the remote backup facility.”
The other man’s voice drifted a moment. “Yeah, we’ve been having a few of those lately ourselves.” There was a sharp snapping sound, followed by a crisp rustling. Could have been static on the line, but it sounded more like a candy bar was being unwrapped.
“As soon as I heard I made a copy at work and sent the files here, to my home as well. I wanted to review it again. Fascinating.”
“Dr. Gale and I were hoping you could have a look, tell us what you make of it.”
“Beg pardon?”
“We need to know the final likely applications of this material, doctor. Complete composition, bill of materials; we need to know where it can be manufactured and who supplies the components.”
“I’m not strictly in applied science any more, Fisbeck. Give me a few days, I’ll show it around. To be honest, I’ve seen some of these designs before.”
“You have?”
“Years ago. The foundation work is identical to a project I worked on years ago.
There are definitely modifications to the design, I wouldn’t call them improvements, but—”
“Sir, it’s very important that I get a more comprehensive grasp of where this device could be manufactured. Anything would help, anything to pinpoint the supply chain.”
Fenn actually caught his breath. “You don’t mean to tell me this is in production?”
He detected a deep yawn on the other end, and Fenn realized the younger man was near exhaustion. “Doctor, a few hours ago I was standing in a building which incorporated these cables into its networks, power grid—pretty much the entire infrastructure except the plumbing, and even that I’m not sure about.”
Fenn thought a moment.
“We’d need to look at the original work, the notes and papers my partner and I worked up.”
“Is your partner available?”
“No, passed away. I have a library of our work together, but it won’t be enough by itself. Nanotechnology wasn’t my specialty at the time, and he—one moment, he did leave his files and papers with his family. That would certainly help. Between his files and my notes I should be able to work up the information you need.”
“Dr. Fenn, if my team can help in any way-”
Fenn considered the possibilities. “Are you local? If I arranged things ahead of time, do you think you could pick up the files and bring them to my home? I can have my assistant drive over, but that would be a very poor use of his time. I’m going to need all the help I can get tomorrow with the slow crawl through the specifications you sent. The last time I looked at this material was ten years ago, and it was advanced even then.”
“Can you hang on a moment?”
There was a brief pause, and Steve said, “I can have someone from my team drop by, say tomorrow afternoon or early evening.”
“Mmm. The later the better. My former partner’s daughter is at work until late, and her husband…spends most of his time out of the house.”
Steve took down the name and address, prompting Fenn to add, “I’ll call ahead so they’ll know to expect you.”
“Great,” said Steve, still writing. “The name of our courier is Alonzo Noel.”
There was a murmur of voices from Steve’s side of the conversation, indistinct. At least one voice raised in protest.
After a brief, muffled discussion, the third person spoke up. Though some distance from the microphone, he was shrill with enthusiasm. “I don’t care how much you hate L.A. I’m wearing my own stogies. What makes you think I’m not going to straight to Cuba?”
Someone else spoke a
question, and the first voice immediately piped up again:
“I’ll flip you for it.”
There was a loud, muffled crash, followed by what sounded like a bucketful of silverware falling over.
Steve spoke in a rush. “Pardon me, Dr. Fenn, I apologize. We’ll work it out on our side, but someone will be there tomorrow. You can count on it.”
“Fine. Tomorrow, then.”
As he hung up the phone, Fenn glanced at his watch. Technically, it was already tomorrow.
Spook
Los Angeles, California
Staying pink and vertical was the key. Pink and vertical. The key was to think of the job in the scientific aspect, not its horrendous and pathetic morbidity. In terms of pure science, blood spatter is fascinating in that droplet size and shape can help determine a wealth of near-fact, such as whether the victim was struck while beneath the assailant, or whether the attacker used his (or her) right hand or left when striking, or if a blunt or sharp object was used.
Growing up in northern Idaho, with future real estate brokers and movie stars as her playmates, Irene Archer never expected to know these things. She didn’t expect her mixed bag of undergraduate degrees in biology, chemistry, and behavioral science to lead anywhere near crime scene investigations, or that twenty years after helping her grandfather field dress an elk she’d be gathering evidence at a millionaire’s murder.
Pink and vertical. The homicide at ArmSine was the first time she’d ever seen a dot-com from the inside, though strictly speaking it wasn’t the typical venture-funded startup. While still a private company, ArmSine held contracts with the U.S. government: DARPA, some aerospace, a little lockbox work for the Department of State, but mostly nanotech. Three shifts of programmers—it was fully staffed, around the clock.
Security had closed up tight behind them. Irene and the other members of the L.A. Critical Incident Team were escorted—marched—to the executive offices, but they’d all seen the splash-colored sign above the busy cubicles: Beat the Deadline for Two Weeks in Belize!
Every computer had its own human, no conversation, no dust, everybody tap-tapping away. Mercedes would have a good laugh when she passed the cube potato farm.
Plenty of Big Brothers around tonight, Irene noted as they set up their equipment under the eyes of several extremely calm yet alert men in loose fitting suits. FBI? NSA?—apparently they all shopped at the same Brooks Brothers discount outlet.
Two offices, an outer and an inner, and a homicide in each. A Dr. Gupta (male, early fifties), according to the prelim notes, and his secretary (male, late thirties).
She put a forensics team to work on the body in the reception area, a combination drawing room-gallery with carpet the color that made spilt blood turn purple. The team moved around the man’s body, running electrostatic dust lifters but not actually touching anything. In the inner office, a single man stood guard over the desk—over the papers on the desk, more likely—and the computer, which was on. As long as the suit kept out of their way. It was something of a mystery as to why her Scientific Investigation Division were given such quick access, but Irene determined to make the most of it.
The team talked about it all the way over: by law the local authorities had to be at least notified of this kind of crime, but ArmSine was practically little brother to the Department of Defense, a body famous for stonewalling the local police. A little resistance was to be expected, but the spooks were practically falling over themselves to get out of their way. Irene didn’t know what to think. The CSI. teams lived with the possibility of federal intercession—any one of the government’s bureaucracies might show up and decide it knew better than the L.A. police, usually wasting a night’s work. Irene saved the worst of her steam for the junior officers from Homeland Security, former lobbyists or aspiring statesmen anxious for a quick case, a glad-handler padding a resume while he (or she, to be fair) played at the law.
Irene had even been allowed to bring in the whole team. Practically a crowd. So much latitude left a funny taste in her mouth.
Irene directed two of her people to assist the coroner with the body and set Matthew, her assistant, to work on the physicals of the room. She’d do the fingerprint scan on the computer herself.
The reedy man behind the desk looked a little spooked himself. Irene smiled gently as she worked over the desk. It was plain he hadn’t expected them to be so loud. One of the techs working the body laughed at a joke over his headset, then continued to feed information about Gupta’s demise. It was how they worked. No use making apologies for the fact that a crime scene reconstruction was less a funeral service than a lumberjack festival.
“Confirm that,” Irene said, eyes on the screen. Gupta’s heart stopped just over two hours prior, right after sunset. Matthew had worked his way over to the desk. “I’d like to bring in more lights for the photographs.” She nodded, and Matthew entered that as well into his handheld, right along with the pathology notes.
“I heard we’re not important enough to get a department photog tonight. Who’d you get to take pictures?” he asked, taking inventory of the desktop. It was sparse; the scientist didn’t collect miniature robots or anything.
“Mercedes Westen. She’s a freelance,” Irene responded. My cousin, she didn’t add. “Shot the tattoo shop for us last February, before you got here.” Matthew made a sour face, and she added, “Mrs. Westen knows her way around a crime scene. She cut her teeth with Big John Holdaway.”
That got his attention. “The war photographer? So she’s a real jungle girl, hunh?” He turned back to his work. “As long as we don’t get another wimp in here, puking all over our crime scene.”
Irene finished recording the fingerprints off the keyboard and turned her attention to the computer itself. “Couple of years ago I saw her stuff, shots of a broken door, glass dispersal, thrown furniture showing its trajectory, and the best blood spatter shot I’ve ever seen. She’s got a good eye.”
“How’d you know she’d be tough enough for this?”
Irene looked at him. “The shots I saw, she took them herself, right after her husband damn near tried to kill her. She was almost the evidence in a murder.” Irene turned her full attention back to the screen. “Not much Mercedes can’t handle.”
They’d barely gotten started here, and it would be a long night. Lucky to finish by breakfast, she thought to herself. Quicker if Mercedes was on her game—and if the murder didn’t affect her cousin too much, despite what Irene had said to Matthew. She put up a good front on the job, but Irene knew murder scenes made Mercedes as jittery as they would anybody still human.
“Not quite in the final stage of rigor,” said a tech into a recorder. “Fluids have barely begun to seep to the lowest points in the body.”
Clues just don’t fall together that fast. Processing a crime scene took time. Examining the scene to identify possible items of evidentiary nature came first, followed by identifying point of entry and point of exit (easy enough tonight) and getting the general layout of the crime scene. Taking hair samples, fingernail samples, etc. Trying not to speculate about the crime, just recording evidence. It was largely a museless occupation. If you got past the horror of what you were actually recording, CSI was much like any other clerical job; tonight Irene would account for the nature, notes, and trivia about a specific death. Old hat.
Irene Archer didn’t expect to find any ghosts at ArmSine.
She never expected it; though truth be told she’d hoped for a sighting all the way through medical school and well into police academy. Trouble was the Crime Scene Investigations Unit’s job entailed divining the circumstances of the spirit’s departure from this world, not its return. Irene made a few notes in her handheld computer, tapping past the screen of web sites she checked every morning. Only one dealt with the supernatural.
Since she was a little girl Irene liked ghost stories. All police districts have their ghost cops. Stories for the boys and girls to share in their offtime, as they deco
mpress over a couple of beers, maybe in the slow, slow hours of a team stakeout. Even the secretaries told spooky tales—though spook wasn’t a word used lightly around the Feds—and everybody on the forensics team knew the story of Zona Shue, the Greenbriar Ghost, whose death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared several times to encourage her own exhumation. During the autopsy authorities determined her husband had severed her neck at the first vertebra, and he spent the remaining few years of his life behind bars.
Irene’s favorite was still the first she’d heard, the one about the seasoned cop whose life gets saved by a rookie walking the beat. Together they’re something fierce, then later the old cop finds out his rookie partner actually died years ago, working the same job. That story—or whatever version of it they were telling, usually over a Michelob—never failed to bring a stroke of ice to her backbone, in a good way. Stories of revenant cops still working the job fed something in Irene, she reckoned, though she’d sneer down any mention of Bigfoot, Jersey Devils, or something a little too large in the loch. Wasn’t that Irene believed or didn’t, she just didn’t have time to form an opinion about things that bored her. Ghost cops, though…
Officer Hugh Hamblin works in Kingsport, Tennessee on River Road, in front of the old Netherland Inn. Bad weather and foggy nights alike find him wearing a trench coat and a big floppy hat pulled down over his eyes. He’s become such a familiar sight along River Road—waving his arms and telling motorists to be careful—that nearly everyone working the late shift in town has seen him. And they heed his warning: in 1922 Hugh was killed at that very spot in thick fog, after his son, Charlie, was fatally wounded in an automobile accident of his own.
Mercedes showed up, pale but awake, and Irene put her to work. She’d brought her Nikon and a digital camera with a wireless chip, so she could dump the picture files into their handhelds, straight into Matthew’s preliminary pathology report.
Irene moved to the outer office to check on the team running the dust print lifter. The first victim, Gupta’s secretary, looked simple: a low-caliber gunshot to the heart, stopping the muscle instantly and causing death just as quick.
