Ghosts in the Machine (A David and Martin Yerxa Thriller - Book 3)

by Ed Markham

  David watched as they sedated Weissman, as a precaution, without incident. He then stepped into the hallway to join his father, who was standing silently alongside Brandt.

  “Now what?” Martin asked him.

  David replied, “I want to put in a call to Walker—see what he’s turned up before we put the word out.”

  Brandt was standing alongside them, and she asked, “What about the live video feed? Isn’t the word out already?”

  He shook his head. “Harris managed it somehow. He said he’d been working on a solution. I’m guessing he somehow looped a portion of the existing video and incorporated a clock to make it seem like it was still live.”

  He stepped away from them both and called Guy Walker. When Walker answered, David asked him, “Have you heard from Harris?”

  Walker was quiet for a beat. “Heard what?”

  David could tell he was being sincere, and that Harris had kept the discovery of Mark Weissman under wraps. “Never mind,” he said. “What have you found on Gould?”

  “He has an aunt with a place near La Honda.”

  “Where’s La Honda?”

  “About twenty miles south of Palo Alto. It’s almost directly between Stanford’s campus and Waddell Creek State Park—where Ketchner’s body turned up.”

  As he listened to Walker read him the aunt’s address, David motioned for his father to start heading toward the exit. Asking Walker to hold on, he told Brandt to stay put and coordinate things at the dorm. “Contact Dean and other law enforcement to let them know what’s happening here,” he told her.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  He ignored the question, knowing that the less Brandt knew, the better. As he stepped away from her, he said into his phone, “Martin and I are heading there now. How many other people at our office know about this?”

  “About the aunt’s place? As of right now, only me.”

  “Keep it that way,” David said, glancing at his father as the two of them exited the dormitory and made their way toward the parking lot. “I’ll make sure the proper people are informed.”

  He pocketed his phone and began to jog, waving for his father to pick up his pace.

  “Where are we going?” Martin asked. He did his best to keep up with his son, but he had one bad knee and it slowed him down.

  David waited for him, and the two trotted together until they reached their vehicle. “Gould’s family has a place twenty miles from here,” he told his father as they backed out of the parking spot and accelerated away from the lot. “It’s a long shot. But if Gould’s there, that might be our only chance to find out what all this is about.”

  .

  Chapter 44

  Thirty minutes after leaving Stanford’s campus, David and Martin took a hairpin turn west off State Route 35 and onto Alpine Drive. The road was winding and mountainous, and was buttressed on either side by brush and overhanging trees.

  Checking his rearview mirror, David could see dawn was coming on; the sky behind him was just beginning to turn from black to deep blue, though ahead and off to the left the low, rolling peaks of the Santa Cruz Mountains were still shrouded in darkness.

  Neither man had spoken for a time, both keeping quiet as adrenaline and anticipation filled the car. Now Martin cracked a window to allow some of the charged air to escape.

  David could smell dry earth and the pungent aroma of juniper. It seemed to crackle in his nostrils. He checked the GPS on his phone, and said, “The house should be on our right in another three miles.”

  Martin let out a low breath. “We’re pretty far off the reservation here, son. In every way.”

  David didn’t reply.

  During the drive, he had received a dozen calls—several from Andrea Dean. He’d answered none of them. He knew it was against Bureau regulations for him and his father to attempt an apprehension of Gould without assistance, but he didn’t care. He just hoped Walker would keep their destination a secret long enough for them to investigate the house alone.

  “Depending on how this goes,” his father went on, “there’s a chance we’ll both be out of a job when this is over.”

  Again, David didn’t answer. He was listening for the telltale sound of helicopter blades that would signal the end of his and Martin’s opportunity to learn what was going on. At the same time, he was saying a silent prayer that, when they reached La Honda, there’d be answers waiting for them.

  The driveway leading to Gould’s aunt’s home was neatly paved. It slivered away from Alpine Drive at an acute angle before doubling back and disappearing behind the crest of a nearby hill. It looked and felt like the entrance to a private ranch, and David wondered how far away the house might be situated. He switched off his headlights and pulled over to the side of the road a hundred yards past the drive. Both men stepped out of the car, taking care to open and close their doors as soundlessly as possible.

  Looking around him. Alpine Drive swung out of view a short ways from where they’d parked, and Gould’s aunt didn’t appear to have any nearby neighbors.

  David watched his father zip up his navy windbreaker, and was glad to note both he and Martin were wearing dark, non-reflective clothing. They’d blend in well with the lingering night.

  Both men began to clamber up the grassy slope that separated the road from the mountainous land above and below it. It took them less than a minute to reach the top of the slope, and when they did they could see the lights of a house glowing at them two hundred yards farther up the hill and through the brush and valley oaks that littered the hillside.

  “Someone’s home,” Martin said.

  He and David canvassed the land for a moment in search of a suitable path up to the house, and then they began the hike.

  As they moved, David could hear nothing but his father’s labored breathing and the sounds of their footsteps. It was that time of morning when the world seems to hold its breath in anticipation of daybreak. Beyond the house, the still-dark sky was already a bluer shade than it had been minutes before when David had examined it in his vehicle’s rear-view mirror.

  Both men stopped and kneeled as they reached a flat stretch of land that separated them from the house, now just fifty yards away.

  David could see the house was encircled by a paved patio. The edge of the patio closest to them ended in a low wall they’d have to climb over. Beyond this, the house appeared to rise in several blocked tiers as it stepped up the natural slope of the hillside.

  Yellow light glowed in several of the windows facing them, though David could not see any movement inside.

  “Let’s put a little space between us,” he whispered to his father.

  “I know the drill,” Martin said. “Let’s not have a repeat of Ganther’s, all right?”

  He was referring to the previous winter, when he and David had made a similar approach on a house they knew contained a disturbed young man and a boy he held captive. David had been forced to kill the man—Ian Ganther—but not before a bullet Ganther fired grazed Martin’s temple.

  Looking at his son and managing a smile, Martin added, “It’s your turn to get shot.”

  They separated and approached the house in a crouched shuffle, their weapons drawn.

  When David reached the low wall of the patio, he kneeled again and peered over it into the light of the house. The room he was looking into was a large, open living space. Patterned rugs lay in irregular shapes on the floor beneath pieces of sculptural art and mid-century modern chairs and sofas. On one of these sofas, a man was sitting facing away from David and toward the darkened interior of the house.

  David looked down the patio wall to where his father was kneeling. When Martin gave him the all-clear, he shuffled to his side. From this new vantage point, David could see that the man on the couch was Derek Gould.

  The student’s eyes seemed to be focused on something on the rug in front of him, though David couldn’t see what was there because the couch blocked his view.

/>   He began to speak to his father—to ask him how they should enter—but then Gould let his head tip back until it was resting on the sofa cushions, and father and son could see clearly that the student’s cheeks were wet with tears.

  David shuffled a little farther down the patio wall toward the front of the house. He stopped abruptly when the body of Vince Beatrice came into view.

  Beatrice was lying on the rug a few feet in front of Gould. His eyes were open, and the rug around his body appeared to be stained a darker shade.

  Martin joined him, and let out a low groan when he saw Beatrice’s body. “What now?” he whispered.

  As if in reply to this question, Gould stood up from the sofa. He held a gun loosely in one hand, and he stood for a moment over his professor’s body. Then he stepped away from it and toward a sliding glass door that opened out on the patio where David and Martin were crouched.

  Father and son sank down to avoid being seen. They heard the glass door sliding in its track, followed by the sounds of footfalls on the cement of the patio. When the footfalls stopped, David could hear the sound of weeping in the pre-dawn silence.

  Motioning for his father to stay still, he started easing himself silently along the patio wall and away from where he could tell Gould was standing. When he had put twenty yards between himself and his father, he stopped and listened to make sure he could still hear Gould’s weeping. He could. Bringing his pistol up alongside his head, he peered over the wall.

  The grad student was standing a few feet in front of the sliding glass door, his gun held loosely at his side as he covered his face with his free hand. His mouth gaped in anguish, and his shoulders convulsed as he wept.

  David rested his weapon on top of the low wall and aimed it at the center of Gould’s chest. He glanced at his father, and could see Martin clutching his weapon by his face and just below the lip of the wall. Speaking loudly but not aggressively, he called out the student’s name. “Derek.”

  Gould snorted in surprise, his hand dropping away from his face as he raised his weapon toward the darkness of the hillside surrounding the house. He didn’t immediately locate the source of the voice he had heard, and he swung the gun wildly until he saw the pistol pointed at him. He leveled his gun in David’s direction.

  “Lower your gun,” David said, his voice louder than before but still calm. “Do it now, Derek.”

  Gould’s mouth turned down at the corners and he squinted, his face the picture of anguish. His hand adjusted itself on his gun’s grip, but he did not lower his weapon.

  David knew he should fire. If there was any doubt whether Gould was their man, the body of Vince Beatrice had erased it. But staring down his gun sights at the student, he couldn’t help thinking of the young man he had killed all those years before—the man who had raped and murdered his first love, and whom David had shot in cold blood.

  It was the memory of that murder that always jerked David’s hand on the firing range. And now the memory of that murder prevented him from pulling the trigger.

  The two regarded each other quietly for nearly twenty seconds before Gould broke the silence. “Agent Yerxa?” he asked. He choked on the words, and had to swallow back his tears.

  “Yes,” David answered.

  “Is your dad here too?”

  “Right here,” Martin shouted.

  Gould’s eyes flashed to where Martin had raised himself and his weapon above the rim of the patio wall. But the student did not take his gun off David.

  After another long pause, Gould seemed to grow calmer and steadier. He asked David, “So what are you two waiting for? Why haven’t you killed me yet?”

  When David didn’t immediately reply, Martin said, “You’re the one who’s been doing all the killing, kiddo. We’re here to arrest you. So put down the gun.”

  “And it’s just you two?” Gould asked, his gun still trained at David. His eyes shifted in his head as though he didn’t know what to make of this.

  “Why did you do this, Derek?” David asked him, trying to get Gould talking. He knew their time was short, and he wanted answers.

  “This?” Gould repeated.

  “Why did you abduct and murder these men? Why did you kill Vince?”

  The student shook his head. “I didn’t kill Vince,” he said.

  “For god’s sake, Gould,” Martin said, “we can see his body lying on the ground behind you in the house.”

  “He shot himself,” the student said. His eyes dropped away from David’s, and he took a few steps back until he bumped against the glass wall of the house. He slumped to the ground, his gun coming to rest on one of his knees.

  David felt the muscles in his shoulders loosen. “Why would he do that, Derek?” he asked. “Why would Vince shoot himself?”

  Gould opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head. Finally he replied, “He understood what he’d done, and he hated himself for it. He already felt responsible for Pete Newton’s suicide. When I confronted him with everything—when he saw he’d ruined me too—he couldn’t live with himself.”

  “What did he do?” David asked. “How did he ruin you?”

  A sardonic smile creased the student’s tear-damp face, and he brought his eyes back to David’s. “Please don’t play games with me.”

  David was quiet, waiting for Gould to elaborate. Eventually the student said, “You’re asking me what you already know.”

  “We don’t know, Derek,” he said. He considered carefully for a moment, and then went on, “My father and I work out of the FBI’s Quantico, Virginia office. We don’t know why we were assigned to an investigation so far outside of our jurisdiction, but more and more it’s seemed to us we were handed this case because we’d be unlikely to solve it. Other government agencies have blocked our progress repeatedly, and we’re here tonight—alone, without SWAT assistance—because we were hoping to find you and find some answers.”

  Gould stared at David, and then closed his eyes. He let his head fall back against the glass wall of the house, and said, “I don’t believe you, but I can’t see any harm in pretending you’re telling me the truth.” He opened his eyes, and regarded David with a mixture of sadness and curiosity. “Last month, a man named Peter Newton dropped off a package at Vince’s office. I opened it, mistaking it for a manuscript we’d been expecting.”

  Gould let his eyes drift up toward the sky, which was growing more blue and less black every minute. He went on, “At first I didn’t understand what I was looking at, and I nearly put it back in its envelope to leave for Vince. But I noticed pages of it were marked ‘top secret,’ and I couldn’t help myself.” He shook his head. “They were all part of it. Ketchner. Pool. Weissman. And more like them. And not just men like them. Men like Kirill Mozgov. Men like Vince.”

  “Part of what?” David asked.

  Gould frowned, and rage creased his brow. “Part of a clandestine propaganda program that uses the Internet to inject or reinforce ideas in the public consciousness.” He brought his eyes back to meet David’s. “That’s why Vince chose me. My project analyzing trends in social media discussions . . . it was rubbing up against this program, and he wanted to keep an eye on me.”

  “I don’t understand,” David said to him. “How could the government be injecting ideas into the public mind, and what does Vince have to do with it?”

  Gould smiled bitterly. “There are a thousand ways. Search data manipulation. Artificial promotion or suppression of certain types of social media content. Planting theoretical concepts and supporting source materials—or removing them—from online encyclopedias or knowledge repositories. Chain emails. Basically, littering the internet with ideas or concepts that, over time, our brains take up and accept as truth.” He closed his eyes, and exhaled deeply through his nose. “It’s probably the oldest and most effective form of manipulation known to mankind. You tell someone what to believe, and they reject it. But you make them think they stumbled onto an idea or belief on their own, and they’ll
never doubt it.”

  “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” Martin called out to his son. “Because I’m lost.”

  “I’ll give you an example,” Gould said. As he spoke, he regarded the gun in his hand absently, as if it were some object he didn’t quite know what to make of. “People hear red meat is unhealthy, so they start eating less of it. That’s bad for the American beef industry. And not only is it bad for beef, but it’s bad for grain. If fewer people eat meat, there’s a lower demand for cows, and therefore a lower demand for cow feed. Probably hundreds of major or minor industries take a hit when Americans eat less beef. All this hurts the economy. So how do you get people to eat more beef again? You promote news items or posts that somehow highlight the pleasures of a good steak or a juicy burger—new recipes from famous chefs, or new research showing beef may not be bad for us. Or you promote content about salmonella outbreaks in spinach—anything to drive people back toward meat.” Gould shook his head. “There are countless subtle ways to manipulate what a person sees when he checks his phone or sits down at his computer. And after an hour or twenty minutes or twenty seconds of reading, the person sits back and thinks I’m in the mood for steak tonight. And even that example is more straight-forward and blunt than what’s really going on. It’s everything—everything you think you know or understand or believe about the world around you. It’s all being massaged or manipulated in ways that may not affect every person in the way it’s intended to, but at a population level the ripples and waves are apparent, and they carry us along in whichever direction they’re flowing.”

  “Men go mad in herds,” David said.

  Gould smiled and nodded, but his eyes didn’t leave his gun. “Yes they do, Agent Yerxa. Especially these days. We look at our social accounts or our news feeds or our email, and we might as well be hardwiring our brains into the propaganda machine. And it’s all possible because these men—Brad Ketchner and Garrison Pool and Mark Weissman—they all enabled it. That was the price of their success. They played ball, and so they received investment capital and artificial promotion while their competitors were torpedoed. The game was rigged from the start.”