by Ed Markham
The ranch’s property was composed of a loose cluster of farmhouse-style buildings and bungalows, all of which lined the edges of a post-and-rail-fenced sheep pasture that stretched out toward the Pacific Ocean.
“You know this is Eastwood’s resort, right?” Martin said as they made their way toward the guest cottage where Beatrice was waiting to meet with them.
David looked at his father, not understanding.
“Clint Eastwood,” Martin said. “Dirty Harry. The actor.”
“I know who Clint Eastwood is,” David said.
“Well he owns this whole complex. The pilot filled me in before takeoff. I guess Clint used to play piano once in a while at the restaurant’s bar, and he still shows up from time to time for dinner or drinks.” He looked around, as though the Man with No Name might even now be leaning against a building in the distance—a stub of cigarillo wedged in the corner of his mouth. “You know I don’t care much about celebrities, but that’s one guy I wouldn’t mind having a drink with.”
“Him and Paul Newman.”
This made them both smile. David’s late mother’s favorite joke was to call her husband “Paul Newman’s ugly brother.” There was no doubt the two men shared a resemblance.
They found Vince Beatrice sitting in an Adirondack-style chair on the porch of one of the small guest cabins set apart from the main cluster of buildings that held the ranch’s restaurant, bar, and offices.
Beatrice was lean and tan, and was dressed in gray trousers and a trim Stanford Cardinal-colored long-sleeve polo shirt. He had what David thought of as “piano player hands”—long, slender fingers—and he stood and extended one of these hands to him as he and his father stepped onto the porch.
“I know your names are David and Martin, but the gentleman I spoke with on the phone didn’t tell me which of you was which,” Beatrice said, offering them a pleasant but strained smile.
“I’m Martin Yerxa,” Martin said as he shook Beatrice’s hand.
“Pleasure to meet you both,” the professor said. “I thought we could sit and talk out here, if that’s all right with you?”
David looked at the row of Adirondack chairs. Each of them faced out toward the sheep pasture and the ocean beyond it. “I think it would be better if we spoke inside,” he said.
Beatrice had started to sit down, but he stiffened halfway into his seat and straightened up. He looked nonplussed at David’s suggestion, and Martin put in, “It’s a pretty view, but we like to look a man in the eye when we’re speaking with him.”
“Of course,” the professor said, shaking his head as though he should have realized the inappropriateness of his earlier suggestion. As he led them into his guesthouse, he said over his shoulder, “As detectives, you two are no doubt masters of nonverbal communication. So you probably know it tends to make men uncomfortable to sit face-to-face with other males.”
“Come again?” Martin said.
“It triggers something in our brains akin to a dominance challenge,” Beatrice went on, speaking quickly but not nervously. “We feel threatened. Brain scans show men are more at ease with one another and converse more easily when sitting side-by-side, facing in the same direction, like in an automobile. That’s what made me think to suggest the chairs out on the porch.”
“You assume our goal is to make you feel comfortable,” Martin said. His expression was sober.
Beatrice let out a hesitant chuckle.
His guesthouse included a small living room with a fireplace, a circular breakfast table and chairs, and a few pieces of upholstered furniture. The Stanford professor took a seat in an armchair, while David and Martin sat down on the sofa and chair facing him.
“You understand why we asked to speak with you?” David began.
Beatrice nodded. “It turns out Brad Ketchner and Garrison Pool were last seen together at my summit.”
“Yeah, explain that to me, will you?” Martin said. “People keep trying, but I still don’t get what an ‘ideas summit’ is all about.”
David could see a trace of annoyance tighten the delta of skin between Beatrice’s eyes. He knew his father was purposely acting obtuse to get under the man’s skin, which was Martin’s favorite method of feeling a person out.
“I run a non-profit organization called Next Steps,” Beatrice began. “Our membership is small, and includes some forward-thinking people in business, technology, education and the arts.”
As he spoke, he alternately folded his hands together and spread them in a manner that struck David as practiced.
Beatrice went on, “Our goal is to get a firmer grasp on how the decisions we make today—as a species—are going to affect our future. One of the ways we do that is to hold meetings with other people in leadership roles in order to share ideas and information. We call these meetings ideas summits, which I realize sounds a little pretentious.” He smiled. “If we called them ‘conferences,’ we couldn’t pay a lot of these people to attend.”
“People like Ketchner and Pool,” David said.
Beatrice nodded, his smile fading quickly at the mention of their names.
“So neither of them was a member of your non-profit. They were just attendees at your summit.”
“That’s correct.”
“History would suggest,” Martin said, “that the sort of forecasting you’re talking about is a fool’s errand.”
Beatrice leaned forward, his expression growing intent. “Yes that’s true. But we can’t let that truth absolve us from attempts to predict the consequences of our actions. That would be irresponsible, and I’d argue history can also provide us with plenty of examples of forward-thinking men and women who were able to predict what would come next, at least approximately. Look at Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock.”
David could have guessed what his father would say next.
On cue, Martin added, “Or the Founding Fathers.”
“Exactly,” Beatrice said. “It’s showing its age, but the Constitution may still be the most forward-looking political document in history.”
“You’ve written a fair amount yourself,” David said.
Beatrice shrugged. “It’s a job requirement if you’re in my field.”
“Don’t you mean fields?” Martin said. “I remember spotting neuroscience in your bio, but there were a few other big words in there.”
Beatrice spread his hands in a gesture that said you got me. “Computer science and philosophy. I started with an interest in the human mind, and eventually got interested in how our minds interact with technology.”
“I haven’t read your books,” David said, “but I understand they focus on the role computers and technology play in shaping the ways our minds work.”
“Or don’t work,” Martin added.
“That’s right,” Beatrice said. “Based on my own research and a lot of other people’s, I have significant doubts about the benefit of ubiquitous Internet access to people and societies.” He paused. “The Internet is the most powerful tool mankind has ever developed, and while incalculably valuable to a certain kind of human productivity, I believe there may be a real cost associated with it when it comes to human intellect and emotional stability.”
“Give me an example,” David asked him.
“Sure.” The professor leaned forward, and his interest in their conversation seemed to intensify. “The human brain is very much like the human musculo-skeletal system in that you have to exercise it in order to keep it strong. Also like the human musculo-skeletal system, the human brain adapts to the type of work it’s asked to perform.” He became more animated as he spoke, his hands drawing abstract shapes in the air to illustrate his points. “You look at the brain of a twenty-year-old who has spent all of his adolescence online, and you see that it has become very adept at rapidly switching among many different tasks.” His hands picked invisible objects from the air, one by one. “Sending texts while reading Facebook posts and editing photos has trained our twenty-year-old’s mind
to efficiently juggle multiple tasks—albeit simple ones. That’s a benefit to him, but only in some situations. Sit that same twenty-year-old down and ask him to perform a single task that requires deep and prolonged focus—say, close reading a dense chunk of pending legislation and considering the social and political ramifications of its passage—and his mind will struggle to stay focused. It has grown accustomed to jumping from task to task every few seconds, so spending ten straight minutes on something—let alone hours or days—is supremely difficult for him. We’ve done studies that bear this out.”
“Broad thinking, not deep thinking,” David said.
“Exactly,” Beatrice said, nodding quickly and enthusiastically. “You ask the twenty-year-old if this bothers him, and he invariably says, ‘No, I can just read about the piece of legislation on a political blog or news site.’ You see, he assumes someone else out there will be able and willing to do the deep reading and analysis for him. And that’s true right now. Someone will. But as our society spends more and more time with these new technologies, there will be fewer and fewer of us who can manage that kind of profound thinking and analysis. So the pool of people deciphering the complex information for the rest of us will shrink and shrink, and those people will therefore wield more and more influence per capita. At the same time, the Internet has a kind of echo-chamber effect in which ideas or ways of thinking ripple through a person’s social media feeds and blog posts until it’s nearly impossible to recognize where they began or how they gained momentum. You hear it called ‘hive mind’ or ‘group think.’ And we have these and a hundred other different factors all converging in ways we never predicted and are only just beginning to understand.”
“This hive mind you’re talking about,” Martin said, “others might call that a herd mentality.”
Beatrice’s expression tightened, and he said, “ ‘Men go mad in herds. Break free, and see again with your own eyes.’ I assume that’s what you’re getting at?”
David said, “We heard you and Brad Ketchner butted heads during the summit.”
Beatrice sat back in his seat and rested his face on the tips of his fingers. Finally he said, “I didn’t realize we’d be having this type of conversation. It makes me uncomfortable, but I’m willing to continue this because I have nothing to hide, and I want to be as helpful and disclosive as I can.”
“We appreciate that,” David said. “We’re just trying to be thorough in our work.”
Beatrice looked from him to Martin and said, “Butted heads is a fair characterization of my disagreement with Brad. In the heat of the moment I think I would have liked to actually head-butt him.”
“What was the disagreement about?” Martin asked
Beatrice pondered this for a minute. “I only get angry with people I know are intelligent enough to recognize their own follies. And Brad Ketchner was a very intelligent man—a man I had a lot of respect for. So when he started pitching his company’s latest profit-generating ad vehicle as some kind of public utility, I just couldn’t let him off the hook. I’m sure the stress of organizing the summit also exacerbated my temper in the heat of the moment.”
“So you two knew each other well?” Martin asked.
“I wouldn’t say well. I don’t think we ever had a strictly personal conversation. But we attended enough conferences and charity functions together over the last decade for me to feel like I knew the man.”
“And Pool?”
“Same story. Not someone I would call a friend, but an acquaintance.”
“Did you ever butt heads with him?” Martin asked.
“Speaking figuratively, I think I’ve butted heads with almost every major executive or investor in Silicon Valley. But I try always to be respectful and open. I try to have a dialogue with people I disagree with. My goal is not to lecture them.”
“Nor to kidnap and murder them,” Martin added.
Beatrice’s expression became flinty and humorless. “No, Agent Yerxa. I did not kidnap and murder Brad Ketchner. And I’m still hopeful Garrison Pool will turn up hale and healthy.”
David searched Beatrice’s face. If the man was hiding anything, he couldn’t detect it. He considered revealing to him the latest on Pool in order to elicit a telling reaction from him. But he decided against it. He’d spoken with Section Chief Dean before they’d made the trip down in the helicopter, and had been told the FBI would break the news that the body was Pool’s once their forensic team had wrapped things up on Stinson Beach.
David asked Beatrice, “When did you arrive here for the retreat?”
“Yesterday evening.”
“And you’re here alone?”
“Yes.”
“At what times since you arrived could other people here account for your whereabouts?”
Beatrice thought about this. “There was a reception last night at the restaurant. I was there until eight-thirty or nine, and then I came back here to sleep. I was up early this morning and went for a run. I don’t remember seeing anyone I knew while I was out, but plenty of people saw me at breakfast when I got there around seven-thirty.”
Again David examined the professor closely, but could discern nothing contradictory in Beatrice’s expression or gestures.
The three of them spoke for a while longer about the professor’s whereabouts the previous week. Before driving down to Carmel, he had been in Palo Alto lecturing and working his usual schedule at the university.
“The ideas summit,” David said. “Do you have video or transcripts from the event?”
“Some,” Beatrice said. “It’s mostly footage of the panel discussions and some of the remarks delivered at the opening and closing receptions. You’re welcome to see all of it. My research assistant in Palo Alto can help you with anything you need.”
Twenty minutes later, as David and Martin drove back to the Carmel Valley airfield where the Bureau’s helicopter was waiting for them, they discussed the Stanford professor.
“Tough to get a read on him,” Martin commented.
David nodded but said nothing.
“Big brain between those ears,” his father went on. “A guy with his background studying the human mind and behavior . . . I don’t trust myself to judge whether or not he was shooting us straight.”
“I don’t either,” David said.
.
Chapter 20
A kempt, thickly built young man greeted David and Martin at the entrance of the computer sciences building on the campus of Stanford University.
“I’m Derek Gould,” the young man said, flashing an easy smile as he shook their hands.
Gould wore his brown hair in a tidy part, and was dressed in a tailored Oxford shirt, jeans, and tan penny loafers. To David, he looked like a caricature of a youthful over-achiever—the kind of valedictorian-cum-quarterback who made it into a school like Stanford with relative ease despite the long odds facing most applicants.
“You don’t look the way I’d imagined FBI agents looking,” Gould said. “I’d expected men in dark suits and aviators. I guess I’ve seen too many movies.”
The student laughed self-deprecatingly, and David had the impression Gould was accustomed to being liked.
After taking the chopper back to San Francisco, David and Martin had driven south to Palo Alto to meet with Gould, who was Vince Beatrice’s graduate research assistant. While the video files and transcripts Gould had prepared for them could have been sent electronically, David had decided he wanted to meet with the student personally, and as soon as possible.
“I want to get a better handle on Vince Beatrice,” he had explained to his father. “So I’d rather talk with his assistant in person and check out his office now, before he gets back from Carmel.”
Martin had agreed.
Like many of the structures on Stanford’s campus, the computer science building was cream colored and roofed with maroon tile in a style that was vaguely Southwestern. Gould invited them to follow him to Beatrice’s office on the sec
ond floor. When they’d arrived, David saw the space was composed of two adjoining rooms; the first was a tightly packed warren of books, plants, and computer equipment. There was a smaller, neater office tucked beyond it.
“Apologies for the mess in here,” Gould said. He walked toward a table situated in front of a window that looked out on the campus. There were three laptop computers open on the table, and Gould started opening files on one of them. “Vince called and told me what you needed. I’ve been organizing everything into a Drop Box folder for you because the video files are too big to email. I’m also going to put it all on a flash drive you can take with you.”
As Gould spoke, David and Martin peered into the adjacent room—the smaller and less cluttered of the two. In it, they saw ordered bookshelves and a large metal desk holding several laptops on different pedestals that appeared to be height-adjustable. The desk was positioned over something that resembled a small treadmill.
“That’s one hell of a desk,” Martin observed.
“Yeah,” Gould said, smiling. “Vince likes to stand and walk while he works—at least while he’s answering emails. He says walking or standing can limit your ability to focus, so there are other times when he sits.”
“Very Jeffersonian,” David remarked, knowing this would delight his father.
Martin laughed. He had once built a bookstand modeled after a contraption Thomas Jefferson had at Monticello. The Jefferson bookstand could hold up to five volumes—each at different heights—in order to assist the founder and former president in his studies.
“Jeffersonian?” Gould asked.
He looked at them questioningly, but Martin didn’t bother to bring him up to speed. Instead he said, “Your boss keeps his own space a lot neater than yours.”
“It’s all Vince’s space,” Gould said quickly. “I’m just lucky to be here.”
“He’s an interesting man,” David said, taking a chair next to the student. It was clear to him that Gould was enamored of his professor, and he thought a little flattery might get them somewhere. “It must be an honor to work so closely with him.”
