by Boo Walker
“Yeah, well it’s good to stay ahead. At least we made a friend, even though the cops got to her as well.” I told her about my call with Detective Jacobs.
“We’re going to have to be more careful,” she replied.
“Dr. Sebastian has a lot of enemies, but what did hookers have to do with it? I can’t seem to come up with any kind of logical explanation.”
“Maybe someone paid them to do it,” Francesca offered.
“But they had to know they weren’t going to get out of there. Why would they do something so risky?”
“They might have been lied to. They could have been told there was an escape plan. I can’t imagine those two girls were the smartest on the planet,” she said.
“Francesca, that’s awfully mean of you.”
“Do you disagree?”
“Of course not,” I said. “They were giving blow jobs to fat, dirty baby boomers that couldn’t get any without paying for it. I’m not going to associate that with intelligence. Just saying it sounds like I’m rubbing off on you.”
“Enough,” she said. “Or maybe they thought they could handle some jail time. Could have been paid for it. Jail couldn’t be worse than what they were doing.”
“That’s subjective,” I said. “Don’t know about you, but they were getting more than I was.”
“Classy, Harper. Nobody screwing assholes these days? Shocker.”
“Not this one.” I stood and got my phone. “I’ve got an idea.” I dialed a number I knew by heart. A guy I went to high school with. “Jason, it’s Harper. How are you?”
“Oh, geez. Haven’t you run out of favors yet?”
I pulled a shirt over my head. “I was just calling to see if you wanted to join my bowling team.”
“Right. You know, saving my life more than a decade ago doesn’t mean I owe you forever.”
“You don’t owe me anything. This is more…just friends helping friends.”
“I’m going to lose my pension because of you.”
“No chance. A friend of mine was killed yesterday during the Singularity Summit. And I’m trying to figure out why.”
“Of course you are. I’m sorry to hear about your friend.”
“Thanks. A Detective Jacobs is running the show.”
“Yep, I know him.”
“I’d love anything you can get me on him. But more importantly, I need to know what they have right now. What do they know that they’re not telling the press?”
“Uhhh…okay.”
“One more thing. I need a list of everyone that was arrested during the protests. Names and addresses. It would help me a great deal.”
“What do I get out of this?”
“You still owe me, Jase. This is the last time—”
“I thought you said I didn’t owe you.”
“Please do this for me.”
“Jesus. All right.”
“Let’s meet at that Imperial Lanes Bowling Alley on Twenty-Second. At ten.”
Jason sighed. “Fine,” he said. “See you there.”
CHAPTER 17
First, we needed to go see Luan Sebastian. We left the hotel and drove across town in the rain, the kind just light enough that you can leave your rain jacket at home. In all the madness, I hadn’t even thought about what was going on back at the vineyard. So on the way to the Sebastian’s home in Magnolia, I checked in with Chaco. Roman was happy, but there were some problems with the tractor, and Chaco said he couldn’t keep fixing it forever. Said I needed to buy a new one soon. I told him a new grape press was in line before a tractor. Ted had been right. Making wine eats cash. It might have been healing me, but now both my wallet and I had severe cases of PTSD. And I certainly wasn’t going to get paid for what I was doing now.
Two FBI men in an unmarked sedan stopped us as we walked up to the Sebastian’s house. I told them who we were, and they called Luan.
“Go right up,” he said after speaking with her.
Luan answered the door of her home with an apron on. An ironed apron. Even in cooking mode, she was all nice and neat. Her hair was still in a bun. Perfectly applied makeup. “Good morning,” she said. “I never got a chance to thank you for yesterday.”
“Our pleasure. I’m glad we could help,” I said.
“I’m sorry to hear about your friend.”
“Thank you. We wanted to have a few words. We’re trying to get to the bottom of all this.”
“It’s the least I could do.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “How’s your husband?”
“He’s fine. Back to work already, of course.”
“How about your boys?”
“They’re great. Playing upstairs. You guys come inside.”
“We won’t be long,” I said as Francesca and I entered. “Just a few questions.”
We followed Luan inside and took a seat in the living room. Something about “modern” always means uncomfortable. I was going to need a masseuse after a few minutes of sitting in their chair/contraption with a circular ottoman.
“Tell us about the threats,” I started. “I know you’ve already spoken about them many times.” And I’d heard about them several times from Ted, but hearing things straight from the source can often open new doors.
“Well, for the first one, we were all here. I was in the kitchen cooking dinner. The phone rang. No one else picked up so I got it after a few rings. I said hello. A man’s voice I’d never heard before answered. He said, ‘Those that interfere with God’s greater plan must suffer in hell’s eternal flames.’ Then he hung up. That was it. That’s when my husband contacted you guys.”
“How about the others?”
“There were three calls before we changed our number. The first two were from the same guy. The second time…he quoted something from the Bible, but I was so shaken up I honestly can’t remember what he said. It was similar, though; about flames and hell. My husband picked up the last one. He didn’t say anything but stayed on the line for a long time. That was it.”
I ran a hand over my beard. “Does he have any specific enemies? I mean, outside of the medical world. Anything not having to do with his profession?”
“I didn’t realize he had a life outside of his profession.”
She said it awkwardly, but I let it go with a little forced smirk.
“Neighbors; the guy at the grocery store. Anything?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“How did you two meet?” Francesca asked. She was on the couch with Luan.
“At MIT. We were in a lot of the same classes.”
“This was grad school?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What were you studying?”
“We were both studying chemical engineering at the time. He switched over to the biology department after a year.”
“And you chose not to finish? I think I remember you saying that.”
“I got pregnant. We did, I mean. So I took some time off.”
“Were you ever going to go back?”
“Sure…that was the intention. I never found the time, though. Raising two boys was about all I could fit onto my plate.”
Francesca said, “Can I ask you something a little more personal, Luan?”
“I suppose.”
“Have you and your husband ever had problems with your marriage? Did you ever split? That kind of thing?”
“No, of course not. Sure, we’ve had our ups and downs, but we never split.”
“Has he ever cheated on you?”
“No. That’s absurd. He doesn’t have time to.”
“Nothing with his partner, Dr. Kramer?” I asked, just throwing out anything that could get a rise, thinking that there had to be some jealousy over the fact that Luan’s husband worked so many long hours with Dr. Nina Kramer, this young Scandinavian blonde. From my experience—though I can see the women of the world shaking their fists at me—all women have a bit of insecurity when it comes to other attractive women. So it
was a good way to stir the pot.
“Of course not,” she said in a snappy tone. She didn’t like that question. You see…as I had suspected, ladies.
“Luan,” my Italian partner interjected, “Please, don’t get upset. These are just standard questions.”
“How about the chimp?” I asked. “Any possibility there?”
Francesca brushed me away. “Harper, please shut up.”
“You ask me this because of the prostitutes?” Luan asked. “You think he knew them?”
“We have no idea,” I said, jumping back in. “It just makes sense to pursue any possibility.” She was a bright one, that Luan Sebastian. And oddly more outgoing than she had been in our past encounters. Perhaps nearly losing her husband had softened her some.
“I can assure you he has never had a prostitute in his life. They disgust him. Not to mention he is OCD about cleanliness. Despite what all these religious yahoos are saying—that Wendy Harrill woman on TV especially—he’s a really good man. I wouldn’t say he believes in God and Jesus Christ, but he is as spiritual as anyone I know. Whoever those women were, he did not know them.” A little defensive, but I tended to agree with her.
“I hear you, Luan,” I said. “I don’t doubt your husband’s character.”
“Why don’t you just ask him these questions?” she asked.
“As you can imagine, our questions are not welcome by the authorities. He’s a little hard to get to at the moment without drawing some attention. I am going to find Dr. Kramer soon, though. You don’t happen to have her address?”
She gave me the address in Green Lake and told me how to get there, which I wrote down on my trusty notepad.
Then I said, “I know there are plenty of reasons, but I want to hear this from you. Why don’t people like what your husband is doing? What’s wrong with it?”
“Because of what it leads to, Mr. Knox. Once this technology goes into the first human brain, how far are we from putting whole computers inside the brain? Inserting terabytes of memory? How far are we from copying one’s entire brain onto a hard drive? How far are we from mind uploading? Being able to take one’s entire mind—the memories, the thoughts, the experiences, the knowledge, the individuality—and upload it all onto a hard drive. That’s when it gets scary. One day, they’re going to be able to hook you up to a computer and make an exact copy of everything that makes you you. Then, when your body dies, you will not.” She looked at me and raised her eyebrows.
“So it’s more like making an exact copy, as opposed to actually sucking out the mind from the body?”
“Right. From what Wilhelm told me, there would be two of the same thing, the exact same thing. And the new brain would grow just like the old one had.”
“It doesn’t sound like it would be the same person.”
“There are arguments both ways. We’ve talked a great deal about it. Think of a Word document. If you save a copy onto a disc and open it on another computer and continue to modify that one after deleting the original, then is that the real document?”
“Perhaps.”
“It is. It really is. You can see why this would upset people. If you were a believer in the afterlife, suddenly you must make a choice that we never had. Do you want to die? Or go to—” she raised her fingers in quotes, “‘Heaven?’ And if we choose to live on, would we do so in some kind of created software world, or would we create robot bodies that could be our vessel? Then what happens when we grow to such a population that we outgrow earth? Could we transfer everyone, via satellites, to some other planet? You can really get out there with your thoughts.”
It occurred to me that they had spent much of their marriage discussing the Singularity. She was well equipped to discuss the topic at length, and showed much more than a passing interest.
“What if heaven was a virtual world that we create?” she continued. “Then it would be true, that you create your own heaven.”
Was this really possible? Well, if I were living two hundred years ago, and someone told me about Skype, I would not have thought it possible. Look at military warfare. Men used to throw stones at each other. Not two hundred years ago, armies used to face each other in lines and fire their guns back and forth. Now, we fly unmanned drones and engage enemies with joysticks thousands of miles away from the battlefield. So, yes: I was a believer.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about who would go after my husband specifically,” Luan said, “and I don’t think he was targeted because of his work with Rachael. I think it was because he was the keynote speaker of the Summit. Because he represents this movement. Anyone involved in these kinds of technologies is breaking down what we grew up believing. There’s a chance that fifty years from now, the only thing certain in life will be taxes. Death might just be a choice…carried out by hitting the delete button.”
A chill ran up my spine.
CHAPTER 18
We arrived at the Imperial Lanes Bowling Alley just in time to meet Officer Jason Hartman, who I knew from my days growing up in Benton City. The year I went to Fort Bragg, he went to the Police Academy. Now, he was a cop in Kent, Washington, not too far down the highway.
About ten years ago, after not seeing him for years, I had run into Jason when I went out to run an errand while staying in Benton City at my parent’s farm. I was driving over to the hardware store to grab some zip ties and came around a corner to find two cars had slammed into each other. One was on fire. I ended up dragging Jason out and saving his life. Complete coincidence. But I had been squeezing him dry of favors ever since.
I sat down in the shotgun seat of his little Honda. Jason was a stubby, short fellow. He was one of those people that you could never tell if he was in shape or not. He had a pudgy nose to go with it.
“You know,” he started, “sometimes I wish you’d never pulled me out of that car.”
“Sometimes I wish I’d climbed in there with you. So it goes, ol’ buddy. What you got for me?”
“Detective Jacobs. He’s good at what he does. Solved that raincoat murder last year. That guy with the axe.”
I knew the one and nodded in acknowledgement.
“He’s got a good record. I imagine he will beat you to finding out what’s going on. Why don’t you let him?”
“I serve my own kind of justice. Certainly don’t trust someone else to do it. Besides, I’ve made promises to people.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
“So what’d you hear?”
“They obviously know both women were prostitutes. One you killed, the other died of cyanide poisoning. They know that at least two other men are involved, the two who held the security guy’s family hostage. Jacobs is trying to find out more about them. They wore masks but we know they’re white. Didn’t hurt anyone. As far as Jacobs’s next steps, he’s looking deeper into both women’s lives. That’s all I could get for you…except this.”
He reached under his seat and handed me a thick stack of papers. I looked through it. It had names, mug shots, arrest histories, and last-known addresses of everyone associated with the Summit the day before.
“There are 308 people on there,” Jason said. “I don’t know what you expect to do with it—not that I care, as long as my name doesn’t come up. They’d have my job, no doubt about it.”
“Have I ever done you wrong?”
“Other than stealing Debbie Hammond from me?”
“Man, you still haven’t let that go, have you?”
“I never will.”
We said good-bye, and Francesca and I went back downtown and found a coffee shop where we could look through the pages of the arrests. It was going to be a long day. It had been twenty-four hours since Ted was shot, and we hadn’t gotten very far.
We sat at a small bistro table in the semi-crowded shop with cups of single origin, fair trade hipster java steaming in front of us and began thumbing through the pages. Three hundred and eight arrests. Most of them were out or getting out today. How the hell cou
ld we sift through this information and get anything useful? I began to read through my half of the stack carefully. I was particularly interested in those with longer rap sheets. Someone in this pile had to know something. Not that they would be willing to share what they knew, but perhaps we could get it out of them. These people were the most vocal against Singularity. They were the ones willing to spend time in jail over their beliefs. Perhaps even willing to kill for their cause.
After a while, I said, “I’m not seeing anything that immediately jumps out at me. How about you?”
“Not yet. Maybe we’ll have to visit every single one of these people. Ask them questions.”
“We don’t have the time. There has to be a pattern.”
“Then let’s find it.”
I nodded. “I’m really backing off the idea that this had something personal to do with Dr. Sebastian. Let’s face it. He wasn’t sleeping with these girls. It has to do with Singularity. Why else would they try to get him during the Summit? It’s too risky—unless they’re making a statement. And Luan is probably right. Sebastian was the target because of what he represented, not because of what he was doing. This is a group motivated to fight Singularity. It has to be.”
“Right. This isn’t two prostitutes and their two pimps getting even for some unpaid debt.”
“Exactly what I’m trying to say. I think we have to assume we are looking for an enemy to Singularity.”
“So, we’ve got an answer right in front of us.”
“Yeah, someone here has to know something.”
“Still,” Francesca said, “it doesn’t explain why Lucy and Erica are involved. What? Did they find God all of a sudden?”
“That or they were paid to do it. What other motivation could there be?”
“I can’t think of any.”
A homeless man pushed his way through the door, and I watched him for a moment. He must have finally collected enough change to get his caffeine fix. The man had a terribly hunched back and brought with him a tremendous stench that floated through the air like fresh cookies from the oven in an opposite world. When he saw me, he began to head my way.
