by Lee Winter
“Well.” Her mother cleared her throat. “I think that concludes the family business.” She gave Catherine a measured look. “For all time.”
Catherine’s gaze slid between her parents, the finality of it all hitting her. There was no coming back from this.
Her father smiled. Smug and wide. Like a man who’s won. “I’ll let you see yourself out.”
She left without another word.
Chapter 22 –
Deal with the Devil
Catherine returned home to find Lauren bent over a cell phone in the living room, typing furiously, legs stretched out along the sofa. “What’s happening?” she asked her.
Lauren looked up. “Oh, hey, how’d it go?” She dropped her feet to the floor to make room beside her.
“About what you’d expect.” Catherine lowered herself to the sofa. “My parents confirmed they paid for my career’s destruction.”
“Ah, hell.” Lauren’s eyes filled with sympathy. “Damn.”
“With a small twist: my mother was adamant Michelle was supposed to befriend me, not romance me.”
“So Michelle overstepped?”
“I’d say that’s the understatement.”
Lauren bit her lip. “Jesus.” She shook her head. “I’m really sorry. And hey, your parents… I mean…where is that at?”
“Our relationship is over.” She lifted her recorder from her pocket. “There are a few bits on here we can use for our story. Stuff about Lesser being the key and he and Hickory being set up as fall guys if Ansom’s data chip blows up in their faces. But the rest is just…” She took in a breath. “It’s humiliating. They don’t have any regrets about what they did to me.”
Lauren leaned into her. “I’m so sorry; I really am.”
Catherine waved dismissively. “I don’t think I really expected otherwise. But it would have been nice, just once, to have been pleasantly surprised.”
“Yeah. It sure would.”
Catherine decided a change of topic would do her depressed mood good. “So what’s happening? You looked pretty industrious when I came in.”
Lauren straightened. “Well, we’ve squared away all the wedding prep…mostly. The stuff we couldn’t figure out, Mrs. Potts is fixing. We’re definitely in her bad books. Apparently, weddings thrown together in a day is “crazy talk.” Still, she’s doing a great job. So that’s all good. But what’s better is this…”
She waggled an unfamiliar phone at her. “It’s Matthew’s—I’m not risking mine to do anything anymore, of course. So I was telling my family this morning there might be something weird with My Evil Twin but that we just can’t see it. My brothers tried to figure it out. They couldn’t, so they suggested we crowd source the answer with our friends. We offered a Meemaw pork sandwich to the first person to spot it.”
Was second prize two sandwiches? Catherine hid her smile at her inner joke. “And?”
“We owe Zachary a pork sandwich. He spotted it in ten seconds, bam. I guess that makes sense. A designer would have an eye for detail.” Lauren opened the app. “There are forty faces on this phone of random people of every shape, size, and background. We’ve put them all into My Evil Twin. Now watch.”
One by one, each face was matched to a supposed criminal.
“See anything unusual?” Lauren asked as she went through them.
Catherine looked. She frowned. They were close matches, by color, face, and hair. People with facial tattoos were even matched to others with them, too. So what was she supposed to notice?
“Do it again, Catherine,” Lauren instructed. “And this time focus on the crimes.”
A pudgy white man’s face. Matched to a pudgy white bicycle thief. A tall African American paired with a tall African American rapist. A teenaged white woman paired with a teenaged white shoplifter. An elderly Asian man paired with an elderly Asian drug runner. A black woman with tattoos, paired with a black female killer with tattoos.
Catherine’s breath caught. “Oh.”
“Yep. White folks’ shit don’t smell on this app. Lesser’s just a smooth-talking racist piece of crap.”
Catherine settled cross-legged on the bed, placing her iPad in front of her. The moment she’d understood Lesser’s game, a plan had struck her. It was a simple one: given she now had the upper hand, she’d simply squeeze him until he popped.
She took in a deep breath and hit the button to establish the Skype interview Lesser had agreed to by phone earlier. His eagerness fit what Lauren said about him. He was smart and cocky. He liked outwitting people, testing himself with them. She’d grown up with a man exactly like this. You just had to know how to tackle them.
She hit Record on an iPad app and waited for Lesser to respond.
Lauren came in, quietly closed the door, put a cup of coffee on the bedside table for her, and assessed Catherine’s posture. “He agreed?”
“A little too quickly.”
“Hmm. Not shocked.” Lauren sat beside her. “Careful with him. He’s so damn slippery.”
The screen shifted as Lesser’s face suddenly appeared. “Catherine Ayers, what an honor.” He beamed at her. “When my secretary told me you wanted to Skype me, I thought it was a hoax. Because what could a woman busy planning her wedding in Iowa possibly want with me?”
“We could start with where to send the bill for the cost to remove the spyware in Lauren’s phone.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He looked amused.
“Hell of a business model you have there,” Catherine continued. “So, how does it work? Any Fixers client who downloads your staff list gets spied on? I didn’t think you were derivative.”
“Derivative?”
“Stole the idea from SmartPay?”
He laughed. “You have no idea why that’s so funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“A conversation for another day.” He glanced to Catherine’s side. “Ahh, I see Lauren King has joined us. How is Iowa?”
“Awesome,” Lauren said. “You should visit sometime.”
“I’ll pass. So, what do you two want?”
“It’s about MediCache,” Catherine said. “The software you wrote to go with Ansom’s data chip?”
“And by Ansom, you mean your father’s company.” He lifted his eyebrows.
“You think I should be impressed you know that? I’m not. But this is about you. And what my father thinks of you.”
She hit Play on the recording she’d cued up.
I like to look long term. I don’t mind kicking a bastard and a fool to the curb if I need to later. Not like Lesser and Hickory don’t deserve it, let’s face it. They’ll be first ones I nuke if this project destructs.
Lesser’s expression was thoughtful. “Ooh, shocking.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“If you had any actual dirt, you’d have played me a far juicier quote.”
Catherine’s lips thinned.
“Is that really all you have?” His tone was pure boredom. “Because I have important things to do.”
“I know you’ve come up with a plan that the FBI wants that’s going to affect national security. I have sources who—”
“Oh, come on, Catherine, what plan? You don’t even know. Let me save you some work. Next, you’ll tell me you have high-level sources willing to speak out. Then you say if I tell you my side of the story, you’ll spin it so I come off sounding not so bad. Right?”
Catherine’s jaw worked.
Lesser leaned forward. “I know you’re bluffing.”
“That’s a bit of a risk to take. What if you’re wrong?”
“Call me crazy, but I’m going to take the bet that your father—a man who paid to have you fucked over in so many ways—did not tell you the plan.”
For a moment, there was s
ilence. There was only the hiss of Lauren’s breath, the tick of the old wooden clock on the wall, and the thud of her own racing heart.
“And besides”—he smirked—“you’re too late. Dear old Dad’s already called to warn me you know jack.”
Damn it.
Catherine stared at the screen, and her eyes drifted past Lesser to the office wall behind him. “Nice pit bull,” she said, after a moment.
He turned, looked at the framed photo, and turned back. “So?”
“I see you’re a man who appreciates signs and symbols. That one”—her finger shifted—“is a Klan symbol. “And all the twelves? Why so many?”
He looked unsettled now. “It’s my favorite number.”
“Not surprised. One and two in the alphabet is A and B. So twelves represent AB, or the Aryan Brotherhood. The dog? Pit bulls have, of late, been adopted as a white-supremacist mascot.” She pointed to the wall to the right of his head. “That is an Othala rune, which white supremacists also love. Are you going to tell me all of this is a coincidence? Or do you want me to scour the Charlottesville neo-Nazi parade footage to see if you’re waving a tiki torch, too?”
Lesser scowled. “Let me guess. Your gambit now is to tell everyone I believe in white rights if I don’t spill about the plan for Ansom’s data chips?”
“Well, I wouldn’t write that because, it wouldn’t be true.”
He blinked.
“I would tell everyone that you are a fully-fledged white supremacist trying to poison the world with your racist agenda. Far more accurate.”
“How am I doing that?”
“Are you really going to pretend My Evil Twin isn’t just pure racism?”
He shifted in his seat.
“Oh, it is devious,” Catherine continued. “And subversive. White people matched with whites who’ve done minor misdeeds. The crimes increase in severity the darker the skin of the people using the app. The darkest-skinned people are matched with only rapists, pedophiles, and murderers. Your app subliminally tells users that black people equal violence and the worst crimes.”
“Or it’s just a computer algorithm.”
“An algorithm that you told Lauren you designed yourself. And I notice you don’t deny My Evil Twin does what I said it does.”
He peered at her. “No comment.”
“Well, if you won’t talk about what you do at Lesser Security, let’s talk about Ansom. What’s the big, bad plan? The one my father is willing to tell the world you masterminded if it goes sour.”
“Not biting.”
“Okay, then… Let me lay it out for you. If you refuse to help with my story, I will tell everyone that you built America’s most popular and most racist app because you’re a neo-Nazi. I will plaster your name everywhere. If you think the Charlottesville protesters couldn’t even get a job in fast food after a tiki-torch hate march, what will America make of an unrepentant, hardcore neo-Nazi, with the white-supremacy app to prove it? An app that aims to corrupt their sweet little children.”
Catherine leaned in close to the screen. “How long will the FBI and any of your future clients want to work with you then?”
“They already know my position on things,” Lesser said. “They don’t care. I’m too valuable to them.”
“Really? So far only the insiders know. But when the whole world knows, that’s when it stings.”
He cocked his head. “And if I do cooperate?”
“Then my story on your racist app will merely explain what it does, and will not call you out by name, only your company.”
“Except the people who know me, know that’s my app. It’d be the same as outing me anyway. Why would I agree to that?”
“Let me tell you something as a woman who has been nationally vilified—keeping the number of people who know your failings small is preferable. Anything is better than being mocked in the street or being the nightly butt of jokes by talk-show hosts. It’s better than being unable to leave your house without jackals thrusting microphones under your nose. Only a small number knowing? That would have been a dream. So tell me, Mr. Lesser, do I sound like someone who doesn’t know exactly what she’s talking about?”
The condescending smile he’d worn from the outset fell away. “So you’re a blackmailer. How…unexpected.”
“I prefer ‘someone who knows other people’s weaknesses.’ The choice is yours.”
He tilted his head. “All right. I’ll do it only if you name me as a whistleblower in your Ansom story.”
“Name you? With your real name?”
“In full.”
Catherine stared at him in confusion. That had no benefits to him at all. Quite the opposite. What on earth was he up to? “I’ll consider that if you take Fiona Fisher out of your app database now. As an act of good faith.”
Lesser leaned forward and made a flurry of tapping noises. “Done. Feel free to check.”
Lauren pulled up the Evil Twin app on Catherine’s phone, tapped a few buttons, then looked up and nodded.
“That it?” Lesser asked.
“And you call off the dogs,” Catherine said. “No more doxing us or hacking us or spying or anything in between. Now or ever again. Or our families. Leave us alone for good.”
“Fine. Dogs off.” His eyes glinted. “That wasn’t an admission of guilt, either.”
Lauren cut in. “Hey, how did you know about me going to Iowa when we first met? You hadn’t cracked my phone then.” She blinked. “Had you?”
“Have I made you paranoid?” Lesser looked proud of himself. “Well, if you really must know, you two are popular topics on the Hill. DC’s a fishbowl, and you can learn just as much about people from watercooler gossip as any other way.”
Catherine narrowed her eyes. Great. As she’d suspected.
He cracked his knuckles. “Now, I believe we have a deal? Douglas Lesser, whistleblower in your Ansom story. But you’re not to mention me in connection with My Evil Twin.”
“We have a deal,” Catherine said.
“So,” he said, “we’re now on the record with this interview.” His voice became mockingly polite. “What would you like to know?”
Catherine sized him up and her smile was feline. “Everything.”
“It’s like this,” Lesser said. “MediCache’s data chips are all well and good, but then what? The bio-info on you just sits in your body and does nothing till the next medical person scans you. How is that useful? Especially given how valuable data is these days. It shouldn’t go to waste.”
“Let me guess,” Catherine said. “You found a way to value-add.”
He nodded. “It’s not dead data anymore. It gets a second life.”
“How?”
“My solution was data scooping. We scoop the valuable data out of one pot that does nothing, MediCache’s clients—the military veterans—and tip it into another, the FBI’s database, where it gets to live again. It makes sense. Biometric details were being gathered anyway, so why not poke them in the biggest biometrics database?”
“Except the biggest database isn’t medical, too. It’s for criminals.”
He shrugged. “Like I care. Anyway, at a think-tank security meeting, I was asked whether I had the ability to take data from MediCache and copy it into the NGI. The FBI director loved the idea. I said sure I could do it—quite easily, in fact.”
“I suppose the veterans have no clue this is being done with their data?”
“It’s in the fine print when they agreed to the MediCache trial that any data may be shared with government agencies. None of this is illegal.”
“It’s unethical and creepy,” Lauren said. “And now innocent people who aren’t even criminals are in the NGI.”
“There were always non-criminals in that database. I know; I helped build it. There are a lot of errors that get people stuck
in there.”
“How did Fiona Fisher get pulled into it?” Lauren asked.
“I don’t suppose you noticed her hand when you met her? She have a little scar just here?” He pointed to the soft skin between his thumb and forefinger.
“No way,” Lauren whispered.
“Oh, yes, she’s a MediCache trial participant. Served in Iraq, discharged after an injury. So later, when that food-bot photo of her was entered into the computer system by local DC police, the photo was also automatically uploaded to the FBI computers. That was a neat little bit of coding from the FBI end. What local police don’t know, won’t hurt.” He grinned. “Anyway, Fiona Fisher’s NGI file, which exists thanks to her using MediCache, was updated with the new photo and the fact she was a suspect in a theft. I was pretty happy when you told me about her complaint. It meant my data-sharing system is working to perfection.”
“How do you get away with taking people’s information from an FBI database for use in your Evil Twin app?” Catherine asked.
“The FBI allows a few security companies to use its database contents if they are for legitimate security reasons.”
“My Evil Twin is not legitimate.”
“My other security apps are, and I have clearance for those. So I simply share the NGI’s database with all my apps. And even if the FBI knows I’m data-sharing between my apps, they’d turn a blind eye. I’m too useful to them.”
“But what’s the point of all this?” Lauren said. “I don’t get it. Why poke average citizens like Fiona, or even beach-loving teenagers, into a criminal database? Where’s the advantage in it?”
“You really don’t get it?” Lesser asked. “The secret is the FBI wants everyone in their database eventually. That’s their dream. They think crimes would be a cinch to solve if everyone’s identifying features were in one big nationally shared program.”
“Abuses would be a cinch, too,” Catherine said. “Data could be leaked, stolen, sold. Well, it’s already being sold, if security companies like yours have access. But some operators could on-sell our information to criminals. The dangers are endless.”
