by Ed Markham
“Yes and no. He’s broadcasting it through accounts that are actively using the live function, but it jumps from one to the next every millisecond. He’s stitching them together to create a steady video feed.” He shook his head. “Basically, he’s hijacking other people’s broadcasts so we can’t pin the feed to one location. Omar and I can’t figure out how he’s doing it. We also can’t track it.”
“Did you really think,” Martin said to him, frustrated, “that after all the other computer wizardry you’ve been telling us about, this guy would just drop his pants for us?”
David began to pace, no longer listening to their bickering. He was revisiting the details of the case—poking around for soft places that might give way to new avenues of investigation.
While Harris had been at work with Omar and other members of the Bureau’s technology unit, David had spent much of his time communicating with Dean, the NSA, and FBI leadership back on the East Coast.
Ken Kresge, the NSA agent who had informed David and his team they no longer had the lead on the Ketchy website breach, had also been the NSA representative to return David’s call about the Pithy live video.
“I’m sorry I don’t have much to share with you and your team at this time,” Kresge had said.
“After forty-eight hours, you’ve gotten nowhere with the Ketchner video or the accompanying download,” David had said. “What about Peter Newton’s email and phone records?”
“We’re working our way through them, but excluding those items national security concerns preclude me from sharing with you, we’ve found nothing that we’ve deemed pertinent to your investigation.”
“So you’re telling me there is information pertinent to my investigation in his records, but national security concerns prevent me from seeing it?”
“No,” Kresge said, his voice growing more nasally as he became irritated. “I’m telling you I can only share with you details of those records that don’t contain information that could compromise national security, and within those emails we’ve found nothing to do with your investigation.”
Although it was unlike him, David had lost his temper. “You don’t even have access to the records, do you, Kresge?”
“Excuse me?”
“I get the sense you’re a spokesman—the guy the NSA assigned to keep my team up to speed, but not the guy actually involved with investigating these crimes.”
Kresge had been silent for a beat. “I’m not sure how the specifics of my role are relevant—.”
David had interrupted him. “Just send us those records we’re allowed to see.”
“If you’d like.”
“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”
It was only the first in a series of frustrating phone calls David had made as the afternoon stretched into evening.
FBI Deputy Director Jonathan Reilly had been blunt during his conference call with David and Martin, which had also included Andrea Dean and David’s section chief back at Quantico, Carl Wainbridge.
“So we have no suspects, no motive, and no significant leads,” Reilly had said before exhaling audibly into his telephone’s mouthpiece. “I’ve learned not to second guess you, Agent Yerxa. But I have to voice my concerns about the progress you’re making out there.”
There was a lot David would have liked to say, but he had said none of it. “We share your concerns, and we’re doing all we can,” he had told Reilly.
Both with the deputy director and with Dean, David kept his briefings light on specifics. His assignment to the case, as well as the NSA’s seeming carte blanche over certain aspects of his investigation, made him wary. His father had agreed with his decision to withhold as much detail as possible.
“Something’s going on here that you and I aren’t in the loop on,” Martin had said. “Better to say too little than too much.”
Leaving Harris’s office, father and son returned to their team’s conference room. Megan Brandt greeted them at the door.
“I may have something,” she said.
The three of them took a seat at one end of the long table, and Brandt gestured toward a wall-mounted monitor, which she had synched to her laptop.
“I’ve been going back through the video record from the ideas summit,” she said. She glanced at David as she pulled up a video on the screen. “You mentioned that whoever infected Ketchner and Pool with rabies would probably have done it around the head or neck—otherwise it would be too difficult to predict when they’d show symptoms. That gave me an idea.”
She started the video, which was of a cocktail reception held in what looked like a common area of one of Stanford’s buildings. Vince Beatrice was speaking on a microphone to the attendees, but the audio on Brandt’s computer was muted.
“Are we meant to hear this?” Martin asked.
Brandt shook her head, and as she did she skipped ahead in the video to the 8:43 mark. “Okay, recognize the guy standing about five people to the left of Beatrice?”
“Ketchner,” David said.
“Keep your eye on him.”
They watched, and saw Brad Ketchner bring a hand up to the side of his throat. He winced, and jutted his chin forward as though his neck were in pain.
“Good eye,” Martin said. “But hard to base much on that alone.”
“We don’t have that alone,” she said. “I found video of Pool and Weissman making similar gestures—like the back of their heads or necks were sore. Also this.”
She pulled up a second video—this one of a kind of panel conversation that included four people. One of them was Kirill Mozgov. As they watched, Mozgov brought a hand to his shoulder and rotated it, wincing slightly as he did so.
“I did some more research on rabies and how long it takes to incubate before symptoms emerge,” she said. “If our perp was trying to orchestrate when these men would succumb to the virus, he’d start at the highest part of the throat—sort of up under the ear where Ketchner was rubbing himself—and then he would work his way down for the later victims. Pool and Weissman rubbed higher up on their necks, not down where Mozgov seems to be irritated.”
David started to speak, but Brandt cut in, anticipating what he was going to say. “I’ve already got a call in to Mozgov, and some of our people are headed over to his publication,” she said.
Even as she spoke, Walker called to them from the far end of the table.
“We just got a call back from Mozgov,” he said. “He got a text five minutes ago requesting that he show up to a private meeting down in Portola State Park. The sender asked that he delete the message and ditch his phone.”
David stood up from the table. “Do we have the number the text came in from?”
Walker nodded. “It came from Vince Beatrice’s cell phone.”
.
Chapter 34
Vince Beatrice’s home was a beautiful cream-and-ochre Spanish revival, and Craig Meredith was tired of looking at it.
Since Beatrice had returned home from Stanford’s campus nearly three hours earlier, Meredith had been sitting in his Bureau-issued SUV and watching the front of the professor’s house through high-powered Bushnell binoculars.
To pass the time and stay sharp, he had started practicing the deep-breathing meditation techniques his wife had taught him. This was difficult because his surveillance partner, John Campbell, wouldn’t stop talking about the Giants’ early season pitching woes.
“Last season we had a Cy Young winner and a starting rotation with a sub-three ERA,” Campbell said to him now. “This year we get the same group back, and the lowest ERA of the bunch is barely under four. It’s nuts.”
“I think it’s time for another loop around back,” Meredith said to him.
Campbell tapped the clock in the car’s dashboard. “You went at half past. It’s only been twenty minutes.”
They’d been taking turns walking around the block to keep an eye on the backside of Beatrice’s property, which opened toward the woods that bordered the St
anford University Golf Course.
“I’ve got a feeling,” Meredith lied. “Humor me and take a look.”
Campbell chuckled and started to climb out of the SUV. Before he made it out, the cell in the car’s cup holder began to ring.
Meredith answered it. He listened quietly for a few seconds, and as he did he motioned Campbell back into the car. Still on the phone, he pulled forward until they were just two driveways from Beatrice’s in a spot where they could observe the professor’s home without the aid of binoculars.
After another few seconds, Meredith said, “Understood,” pocketed the phone, and said to Campbell, “Beatrice just became the prime suspect, and a flight risk.” He spoke quickly but calmly, his voice even and his words precise. “Menlo Park P.D. will be here in five. Our people are right behind them. Sit here and make sure he doesn’t leave through the front. I’m going around back.”
Campbell started to ask a question, but Meredith was already out of the SUV. He shut his car door without slamming it, and began to lope swiftly toward the end of the street, which terminated in a copse of trees just one house beyond the professor’s own. Though going around the block to check out the back of the house would have been simpler, it would also have taken more time—time Meredith suddenly felt he didn’t have.
As he moved, he could feel the weight of his Bureau-issued Sig Sauer 9mm against his ribcage. He reached the trees and moved quickly through the underbrush, which tugged at his pant legs and suit coat. A low wall encircled the house he was running alongside, and he followed this wall all the way around until he reached the area behind the professor’s house.
As he looked toward Beatrice’s place, he stopped suddenly.
Vince Beatrice stood ten yards away from him, a black pistol held in one of his slender hands. The professor had obviously been moving toward the woods. But, hearing Meredith, he had stopped and raised the pistol.
“Who are you?” Beatrice asked him, his voice tight and anxious.
At the sight of the drawn weapon, Meredith had lifted his empty hands to shoulder level. Now he could feel blood in the tips of each of his fingers pulsing to the rhythm of his heartbeat. “I’m FBI,” he said. “Don’t shoot.”
Beatrice’s eyes grew wide, as though mention of the FBI had confirmed his worst suspicions. “Lie down on the ground,” he said, his voice and the pistol in his hand quavering. “Just lie down right now.”
Meredith saw the way the gun was bobbing in the professor’s hand, and did as he was told. Lying face down in the grass, he brought his hands to the back of his head and laced his fingertips together. “Please,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. “Please don’t shoot me.”
“Just be quiet.”
Meredith could hear Beatrice walking toward him in the grass—could hear the way the professor’s breath was quick and uneasy.
Beatrice stopped near him and said, “Are there more of you? Answer me quickly.”
“There’s another agent in front of your place,” Meredith heard himself say. He realized he was too frightened to lie. “Also more on the way.”
“God damn it,” Beatrice said under his breath. Then, to Meredith, “Where’s your gun?”
“It’s in a holster I’m wearing on my shoulder.”
“What side?”
“My right. No, left.” He could feel Beatrice’s pistol pointed at his back, and found thinking difficult as he imagined what it would feel like for a bullet to rip through the sinew, muscles, and bones of his back. Then something did touch his back, just behind his heart, and he held his breath.
“That’s my gun,” Beatrice said. “Move, and I’ll pull the trigger.”
Meredith felt the professor lift his jacket and withdraw his weapon. He waited for further instructions or, he hoped, the sound of Beatrice moving on into the woods. The silence drew on for several interminable seconds. Finally, the professor spoke.
“Why are you people doing this?”
Meredith licked his dry lips, trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t get him killed. “It’s our job.”
“Your job?” Beatrice nearly shouted.
Meredith again felt a pressure in his back, and was sure this time the gun would fire. But then the pressure withdrew.
“Stay here, on the ground,” Beatrice said. “If I see you stand up, I’ll shoot you.”
Meredith lay in the grass long after the woods around him had swallowed the sound of the professor’s footfalls.
.
Chapter 35
David stared into the treetops, trying to discern some movement or inconsistent shape in the expanse of green. He’d once read a book on tracking, and had learned that trained hunters, rather than sharpening their vision, learned to relax their eyes in order to pick up on out-of-place shapes or colors.
He attempted this hunter’s trick, but his eyes found nothing that raised suspicion.
Riding in the FBI’s chopper, he and Martin had already completed two passes of the woods near Vince Beatrice’s home. He could clearly make out the line of agents and local police working below him in the shadows of the trees—shadows that were growing long as the evening sun made its way toward the horizon.
The headset David wore buzzed, and he heard the voice of the agent in charge on the ground say, “We’re got a firearm down here. Just about thirty yards off Junipero Sera. Looks like a Bureau-issued Sig nine.”
After another thirty minutes of searching, the helicopter carrying David and Martin touched down at a landing site on Stanford’s health campus. Though they’d set up roadblocks, terrain patrols, and an all-points bulletin in the neighborhoods surrounding Beatrice’s home, the net they had cast had thus far failed to ensnare their quarry. The local search apparatus would stay in place for at least another twenty-four hours, in case Beatrice was hunkered down somewhere within its parameters. But David felt the professor had slipped through their barriers and was gone.
Fifteen minutes after landing, he and Martin stood in the front driveway of Beatrice’s Menlo Park home, speaking with Craig Meredith—the agent Beatrice had encountered and disarmed before disappearing into the woods.
After listening to Meredith relate the details of his interaction with the professor, David asked him, “Do you think it was likely he saw you and your partner parked in front of his home?”
Meredith considered this. “It’s possible. When we got the call that he was our prime suspect, we moved to a position that would have allowed him to see our vehicle had he been looking for it. We were trying to keep tabs on him ourselves. I exited and moved around back. Beatrice could have seen me or seen our vehicle, and decided to leave through the rear of his home.”
“And you thought he seemed freaked out?” Martin asked him. “Or no, what was that word you used . . . antsy?”
Meredith nodded.
“Tell me again,” David said to him. “What was the last question he asked you?”
“He asked why we were doing this.”
“Those were his exact words?”
Meredith considered this. “I think his exact words were, ‘Why are you people doing this?’ ”
After finishing their talk with Agent Meredith, Martin said to his son, “So what’s our timeline here? Beatrice tries to set up his rendezvous with Mozgov, goes to leave, and sees our guys out front? Then he panics and takes off through the back door?”
David thought about this but didn’t answer. His mind was still turning over the professor’s final question to Meredith. Why are you people doing this?
Inside Beatrice’s home, David and his father met with the leader of the Bureau’s tactical unit, who told them a sweep of the house had turned up no people or signs of someone held captive, and certainly not the missing Mark Weissman. “Just seems like some rich nerd’s house,” the tactical unit leader told them. He grinned. “Too many books, not enough TVs. We’re turning things over to the techs.”
He was referring to members of the Bureau’s Forensics unit,
who were already at work sectioning off the scene. David spoke with the woman in charge of that team, Carrie Michaels. He asked Michaels to take him through the house, which she agreed to do only after he and Martin has slipped plastic footies over the soles of their shoes.
They moved from the foyer down a hallway and into the kitchen, then through it to a living room. The house was light-filled and contained few pieces of furniture or knickknacks, but many, many books. David examined several of the titles, expecting to see the usual professorial mix of academic works and literary fiction. He was surprised to see that many of the books were science fiction and fantasy works—classics by Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ray Bradbury.
Beatrice’s bedroom was spartan in its décor and furnishings. A low wood-framed bed sat in the middle of the room, rather than up against one wall, so that David and his father could easily step around it on either side. They moved into Beatrice’s bathroom, and then back through the living room and kitchen to tour the rest of the house.
Had the Bureau’s tactical unit not yet swept the place, David would still have known the house was not the setting of the Ketchner video or the Weissman live feed. The air and the light were all wrong—warm and rich, and quite different from the coolness he had seen in those video images.
When they’d finished their cursory inspection, David and Martin conferred for a time with Michaels. “Check any refrigerators or freezers for strange liquids or containers,” David said to her. “Look for anything that looks like it came from a lab or hospital.”
They drove back to the FBI’s downtown San Francisco headquarters.
“I have news that won’t surprise you,” Brandt said as they entered the conference room, where Walker was waiting for them. She went on, “When we got the call from Mozgov about Beatrice, I had Stanford’s lab double check their rabies samples. They say several appear to have been tampered with. The lab tech who checked didn’t notice it when she gave them a quick look, but there are puncture holes in the tops of several vials that suggest a syringe was inserted and part of the sample removed.”
