The Devil's Interval

by Kevin Tumlinson

  Holden turned back to Peters. “That right?”

  “It was me and two of my juniors. Scott Nolan and Christopher Partano.”

  “Partano?” Kotler asked. “Would that be Jared Partano’s brother?”

  Peters nodded. “That’s him. Chris brought Jared to me after he left the Marines. Good kid.”

  Kotler smiled. “I only chatted with him for a moment, but I liked him. Good that you brought him on alongside his brother.”

  Peters shrugged. “Kid had one of the cleanest backgrounds I’ve ever run. Exemplary service in Iraq. Not so much as a speeding ticket before going in. And his brother is one of my best. I mine all the gold when I find a vein.”

  “Can we look at everything you have on Ashton Mink’s last visit here? We have some evidence that there was a data card stolen from his apartment, on the night of his murder. The words ‘Devil’s Interval’ were found on the scene.”

  Peters guided them into a screening room, and had one of his people bring a couple of extra chairs.

  “Devil’s Interval,” Peters said, almost under his breath. He was shaking his head. “That’s a nasty bit of business.”

  “I take it you’re aware of the scarier parts of the research?” Kotler asked.

  Peters looked him in the eye. “The implications of this thing are more than scary. I can tell you that there are agencies in this world that would use this to completely disrupt civilization as we know it, and enslave the entire human race under one rule. And before you get any ideas, not all those agencies wear suits or use spy satellites. There’s a fundamentalist group in Pennsylvania that is actively trying to find ways to mind control people and turn them into soldiers of God, willing to die on command. And don’t even ask me about the Middle East. They’d just as soon issue a worldwide suicide command and have done with the lot of us.”

  Kotler could see that Peters was a controlled man, right down to his body language. But that control slipped when discussing Devil’s Interval. To Kotler, knowing the ex-CIA agent’s fear of this technology brought home the danger of it far better than anything else he’d heard so far.

  They settled into seats in the screening room, and were brought cups of coffee, notepads, pens, and anything else they needed. Peters was chatting with one of his team, giving instructions, authorizing access to files and logs, and sending him off to retrieve what they needed.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Miller said, as he stood in the doorway. “I have to get back to the rest of the business. Please, Detective Holden … if I can help at all, please contact me. Ashton wasn’t just our founder, he was a friend. He’ll be missed around here.”

  Holden shook Miller’s hand. “I’ll be in touch. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  Miller nodded and left as Peters closed the door. “I’ll run through things with you for now, and then I’ll have one of my team come in.”

  “We’ll need to speak with the two guys,” Holden said, flipping open his note pad. “Scott Nolan and Christopher Partano.”

  “I can arrange that,” Peters said. “Want to review the data logs first?”

  They spent the next hour sifting through logs of data transfers, as well as scanning video footage of the data wipes in progress. Holden and Denzel were rapt by the entire play, but Kotler found he was starting to grow bored. He was used to sifting through mountains of data, searching for kernels of the story in a deluge of details and side trails. But in this case, he was superfluous. Between Denzel and Holden, and with Peters assisting, Kotler wasn’t really needed here. He felt there was something better he could spend his time on.

  “Nick, do you think it would be possible for me to speak with Dr. Simon Patel?” he asked.

  Peters looked up from the terminal, “I can arrange that. I need to move on from here anyway.” He turned back to Denzel and Holden. “One moment, gentlemen.”

  He stood, opened the glass door, and caught the attention of a young, sandy-blonde man across the security suite. The man came on call, and as he entered the screening room Peters said, “This is Scott Nolan. Scott, I want you to assist Detective Holden and Agent Denzel in reviewing security logs for the Devil’s Interval project. They have my authority to review any and all records.”

  “Yes sir,” Nolan said. “Happy to help.”

  “We’d also like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Nolan,” Holden said.

  Nolan nodded. “Of course.”

  Peters motioned for Kotler to follow him out of the room.

  “I’ll see what I can learn from Patel,” Kotler said.

  “Can you handle that?” Holden asked, gruffly.

  “He can handle it,” Denzel said.

  Kotler grinned. “A ringing endorsement from the FBI, Detective. I’ll try not to let you down.”

  He left, following Peters out of the security suite and into an office just off the larger room’s entrance.

  This was clearly Peters’ personal domain. Every wall of the space was lined with shelves, from floor to ceiling, and each of these was crammed with all manner of items. There were books, manuals, and binders covering a large portion of the walls, but scattered among them were crates of security and surveillance gear. There was the odd decorative item here and there, of course, but this seemed limited to the bare minimum. Plaques honoring Peters for his work in the CIA, a photo of him and President Obama, next to another of him and President Bush—Kotler smiled, remembering similar photos in Denzel’s office. And in one Plexiglas case there was a gold-plated handgun, what looked like a Beretta 92.

  “Got that when I retired,” Peters said. “It was my service piece. I turned it over when I gave my notice and they put me on a desk for my last three months. They had it retired, too.”

  “A nice gesture,” Kotler said.

  “I would have preferred to have her back intact,” Peters said. “This is kind of like having a pet stuffed and mounted.” He turned and went to his desk, which was clean and well-ordered. He opened his laptop and used a fingerprint scan to unlock it, then started clicking and typing, pulling up records. After a moment, he grunted. “Huh. Patel didn’t show today.”

  “He’s out?” Kotler asked. “Did he call in sick?”

  “He hasn’t checked in at all. I have an automated email alerting me that his security card hasn’t been used anywhere in the facility today. It’s outside his pattern.”

  “His pattern?”

  “Activity pattern,” Peters said. “I have one for every employee here. The system keeps track of everyone’s movements in and out, and I have software that translates that into their activity pattern. It helps identify unusual behavior.”

  Kotler nodded. “Impressive. And kind of scary.”

  “It better be scary,” Peters said. “That’s the point.” He used the touchpad on the laptop to open another window, and tapped a few keys. “He checked out yesterday at 9PM. An hour earlier than usual. Hasn’t been back since.”

  “Can we contact him?” Kotler asked.

  Peters picked up the phone from his desk and dialed Patel’s number. After a moment, he hung up. “Voicemail. Went straight to it.” He turned back to his computer. “I’ll send you his contact information. And I’ll bring up his last activities on the logs, so you and your boys can review it. Something isn’t right about this.”

  Kotler agreed.

  Ashton Mink’s time of death was estimated to be around 10 PM. If Simon Patel left the building at 9 PM, he had plenty of time to get to Mink’s apartment. Kotler was sure that would make him a suspect, at least for now.

  And there could be a motive. Patel’s research was being quashed by the company, expunged from the servers. Everyone involved, including Patel himself, was required to sign an NDA, with heavy financial and even legal penalties. That meant there would be no patent on the final technology. And since AMSL’s policy was for research leads to be included on the patents, allowing them to receive a percentage of profits, Patel stood to miss out on a great deal of money. The technol
ogy he pioneered would make cochlear implants obsolete, and make it possible to provide or restore hearing to anyone, without invasive surgery. The permutations of that technology from there weren’t even calculable.

  It was entirely possible that Patel had decided to take his research and technological developments elsewhere, to receive his due. And if he saw Ashton as standing in the way of that plan, he might be motivated to murder.

  Kotler returned to the screening room and delivered what he’d found. The records search then turned to scanning both Patel’s and Ashton’s last moments in the building.

  Dr. Patel, an Indian man wearing the standard blue lab coat, was onscreen, putting away a few items in a secure cabinet. He took off his lab coat, hung it on a hook, and then left the building. He had no bags or attaché case. He passed through the security scanners without incident. He seemed calm and relaxed. Nothing about him indicated that he was doing anything untoward or suspicious.

  “Can we see outside the building?” Holden asked.

  Nolan brought up the outside cameras from two angles, splitting the screen. They could see Patel as he left, both from in front and from behind. He was casual. Walking with his hands in his pockets, against a slightly chill evening. After a moment, he passed under the camera he was facing, and a few minutes after that he rounded the corner and disappeared from the view of the camera at his back.

  “I’ll have someone check in on him,” Detective Holden said, picking up his phone. “Get his whereabouts and an alibi for last night.”

  Kotler leaned in. “What about Ashton? Can we look at what he was doing just before he left?”

  Nolan nodded and started to bring up Ashton’s video.

  “That’s weird,” he said. “It stops at noon.”

  “What do you mean?” Denzel asked.

  “We have tagged footage of him right up until noon, but then there’s nothing.” He typed commands and selected options onscreen. “I show that his security card was used for the helipad exit, on the roof. That was at 3 PM. But there’s no footage after noon.”

  “Someone erased it?” Denzel asked.

  “Looks that way, but … well, it’s not possible.”

  “Why?” Kotler asked.

  “Only security personnel can erase footage. Everything is backed up instantly, here and at an offsite facility. We can pull up both from any terminal here, streaming it from offsite. But you can’t delete the offsite footage without going there physically.”

  “Where is this offsite facility?” Denzel asked, taking out his notepad.

  Nolan had to look it up, and gave Denzel the address. “You’ll have to have someone go with you. Probably Nick. It takes high clearance to get in.”

  “Who has that clearance?” Denzel asked.

  “Nick and Mr. Miller. Other than that, I’m not sure. There are people who work in the facility. It’s a server farm, highly secure. They provide data security for big corporations and for government offices.”

  Kotler was thinking about all of this, and could see that something had gone on a tangent somewhere. It was even more disturbing when considering the epic levels of security that Nick Peters had enacted here.

  Not only had the company’s primary shareholder been murdered, he had apparently made off with highly secure data that was meant to be destroyed. His final three hours in the building had been somehow deleted from both local and off-site storage. And one of the company’s top researchers, and the lead on the very project in question, was currently nowhere to be found.

  Kotler wasn’t a detective. He wasn’t even an FBI agent. But he could see that whoever was behind this had covered it brilliantly. Was it Patel? Did he have the kind of security clearance it would take?

  He was a brilliant technologist—maybe he had worked out how to bypass the system. But was he a murderer?

  “Thanks,” Holden said into his phone, before hanging up. “I just got word back from my people. Patel booked a flight to London. He boarded at 12 AM.” He stood and pulled on his coat, stepping away from the screening desk and reaching for the door. “He’s in the wind.”

  Chapter 4

  Home of Dr. Simon Patel

  Simon Patel’s apartment was a modest walk-up, with a view of the street two floors below. The neighborhood was equally modest. This part of the city had a large Indian population, and its demeanor was pleasant and relaxed. Children played in the streets as adults walked among them, clucking at kids who were too rambunctious or too loud. The feeling Kotler got was that this was the “it takes a village” concept of child rearing, played out over a few city blocks. It was touching.

  Just down the block was a restaurant that poured aromas of curry and other spices into the streets. Kotler’s stomach grumbled, but there was little chance he’d be able to grab lunch. Things had taken a strange turn in the investigation. If this were a dig site, he’d grab a sandwich or something even while reviewing findings, but the NYPD and FBI both frowned on snacking during an investigation, it seemed.

  Patel’s apartment was neat and orderly—one bedroom, with a larger, open-plan living space that included a desk wedged into the corner of what would normally have been a breakfast nook or small dining area. This was where most of their attention had been since arriving, sifting through papers and rifling through the single desk drawer. There wasn’t much to be found.

  Two uniformed officers met them at the apartment, helping to comb the rest of the place, looking for any hint that Patel might be connected to the murder of Ashton Mink. Their warrant—hastened through approval due to the suspect fleeing the country—had given them access to every corner of Patel’s life. So far, they were coming up empty.

  “No computer,” Holden said, grunting.

  “He likely took it with him,” Kotler said. He was browsing through titles on Patel’s book shelves, and liked what he was seeing. There were books on acoustics, physics, and engineering, as would be expected. There were also a great many more books on music theory, art, the histories of various cultures, and biographies of the leading figures in acoustic research. Quite a few were names that Kotler had never heard of.

  It was a comfortable library, and spoke volumes—no pun intended—about Patel himself.

  What it didn’t do was give any clue as to why Patel had suddenly flown to London with no notice.

  “I have Scotland Yard putting Patel on their radar,” Denzel said, slipping his phone back into a jacket pocket. “He landed around 1 PM London time, 8 AM our time. They’re pulling footage to see if they can track where he went from there.”

  “Those guys have the whole country wired,” Holden said. “They should be able to drive right to him and pick him up like a bill of groceries.” He dropped a file folder back on the desk, having found nothing useful in it, and stood scanning the apartment in a slow circle. "I don't get it," he said. "I could figure this guy for corporate espionage, but he doesn't feel right for murder. No priors. No gun on record. And he lacks the training. Whoever killed those guards was a marksman. Two kill shots, from across the room. Patel has nothing in his background to suggest he has those skills."

  "He wasn't in much of a hurry to get out of the office, either," Denzel said. "Other than leaving earlier than usual, he was pretty casual about his exit. No signs of stress."

  "But he skips work and boards a plane to London," Holden said. "It just doesn't figure."

  Kotler was still scanning titles on the shelf when he came across something. Or rather, the lack of something. There was a gap—a space where a book had been removed. Judging from the pattern of dust on the shelf, it had been taken down recently.

  He turned and scanned the apartment. Nothing on Patel's desk. But on a small table next to the sofa, there was a book laying at an odd angle. Kotler picked it up.

  "Never a Reft?" Denzel asked, spotting the title.

  "Rest," Kotler said, smiling. "The font is a little old fashioned. This is Professor Richard Westfall's biography of Isaac Newton. It's been in pri
nt since '81."

  "You've read it?" Denzel asked. "What am I saying. Of course, you've read it."

  "I have," Kotler nodded. "Along with several other biographies about Newton." He fanned the pages of the book, looking for anything that might be helpful. Practically every page had hand-written notes in the margins, and highlighted passages. Midway through, however, Kotler found a scrap of loose paper. He opened the book to these pages, and lay it on the kitchen counter. Holden and Denzel stepped in beside him to have a look.

  Kotler picked up the paper and unfolded it.

  "What is that?" Holden asked, confused by the scrawl covering the paper.

  "Equations," Kotler said, frowning. "There's a formula I don't recognize, but a lot of this looks to be a frequency graph." Kotler pointed to a roughly drawn sine wave pattern, intersecting a vertical and horizontal graph. "And those notations are low and high cutoff frequencies."

  "And how do you know what any of this is?" Holden asked.

  "Didn't you know?" Denzel said. "Kotler here has multiple PhDs"

  "I thought he was a history geek," Holden said.

  "Oh, I'm a quantum physics geek, too," Kotler smiled. “And acoustics aren’t entirely in my bailiwick, but there’s quite a bit of crossover with wave theory, and I’ve studied enough to recognize it. I’m not at all sure what these notes and equations mean, but I think Patel was referencing them before he left.”

  “That paper is torn along the top,” Denzel noted. “Maybe he took something with him?”

  Kotler looked at the torn edge, then turned his attention back to the biography itself. He read the pages where the paper had been found, looking for context. The only passages that seemed relevant were references to the velocity of sound. Most of the section was related to the wave properties of light. Nothing about it stood out for Kotler, though he was worried his lack of expertise in this field might blind him to potential clues.