Expectation (Ghost Targets, #2)

by Pogue, Aaron

  "Damn it all," he roared, drawing looks from nearby tables. "What is it with you guys and Corporal Cohn? She's a fine soldier—"

  "I'm sorry, sir," Katie said hastily, reminded unpleasantly of Rick's fiery temper. "I didn't mean anything—"

  "No, no," Drake said, waving off her apology. "It's not your fault, or Reed's, either. It's Joy's, for spreading malicious rumors when she should have been busy working." He sighed. "I just hadn't realized Reed had time to pass it on before I set him straight."

  Reed shrugged, but Katie spoke up. "Well, respectfully, sir, it turns out the rumor was true."

  "Huh?" He frowned. "How could you possibly—"

  "Theresa Barnes," Katie said. "She knew. She wasn't happy about it, but she knew about it." It was Katie's turn to hold up a hand against the officer's objection. "And there's proof," she said. "We've got Eric on the record breaking it off with Ellie, the day before he fell into the coma." She shared a significant look with Reed, who nodded his understanding.

  The Lieutenant missed the exchange, lost in his own thoughts. His arms fell from their perch, and he seemed to shrink in on himself. "On the record?" he said, unbelieving. "But she was always so careful."

  Katie frowned, and her voice was cold. "You knew?"

  "No." The officer shook his head. "I mean, there were rumors, but Corporal Cohn was very good at her job. I've never seen better. If there's proof, though, this will end her career."

  "It could end more than that," Reed said, speaking the words on Katie's mind. "Lieutenant, there's a real chance someone put Eric Barnes into that coma, and this new information brings a real cloud of suspicion over your soldier." Drake shook his head, but Reed leaned across the table to catch his eye.

  "Do you understand me?" Reed said. "Your people classified Gevia a strategic resource. If one of your officers was involved in an action that ends up depriving us of that resource...."

  Katie gasped.

  Reed nodded. "That's treason, Lieutenant."

  Drake nodded. "You're right," he said. He sat back and regained some of his vigor. "You're both right. I should have squashed this as soon as I got word, but the boy was doing such damn good work."

  "I understand," Reed said.

  "But you're right," the Lieutenant said. "This is a national matter at this point. I don't want you worrying about any jurisdictional nonsense. You can anticipate my complete cooperation."

  Reed smiled. "I'm glad to hear that. Our only goal is to get this resolved quickly."

  "Of course," Drake said. "And, you know, us, too." The waitress arrived with their food then, and he looked up with an expression of relief and gratitude. "Ah," he said. "Let's eat."

  They finished their meal mostly in silence, and when it was done the lieutenant made a hasty excuse and departed with a vague promise to get them in to see Eric.

  Katie watched him go, then turned to Reed.

  "What now?"

  "Well," he said, waving to the waitress, "I think we're supposed to try the shakes." He laughed at Katie's frown. "I'm kidding. We'll head to the police station. Thanks to your good work, we've just thrown the doors wide open for Dora's investigation. She'll be thrilled."

  "I'm not so sure," Katie said. "This really put the nail in the coffin of her case against the wife."

  Reed frowned. "I'm not arguing with you, but how do you figure? Apart from introducing another suspect—"

  "It's the timing," Katie said. "Our best motive against the wife was jealousy, and we just got that this morning. But she knew about the affair for months—we have proof of that—and she had just found out it was over. No precipitating factor there." She frowned, thinking. "That actually takes care of the financial motive, too, because Theresa was terrified her husband would leave her for Ellie—all this time. Given Colorado's divorce laws, that was more of a real threat than anything Chief Hart could cook up. But Mrs. Barnes knew about that threat, and all she did about it was hire a private investigator. And, once again, the news that he broke off the relationship made her more financially secure." Katie shook her head. "No, with the timing of this, Theresa is in the clear."

  "Good," Reed said, nodding. "That's good. That narrows things down for us." He cocked his head. "Why would that upset Dora?" Katie laughed, and it made Reed frown. "Katie, this isn't a vendetta for her. She's in this for the same reason we are. She's trying to find justice." He pointed a finger at her. "Don't be too quick to judge her just because she doesn't have access to the resources we have."

  Katie sniffed. "I don't have much patience for any cop who's willing to settle on a single suspect with no evidence and no data from Jurisprudence. She was acting on bias, pure and simple."

  "Well," Reed said calmly, "this will be her chance to redeem herself. You can measure how well she responds to new information. That's the real test anyway, isn't it?" He didn't wait for her answer. "Hathor, connect me to Dora." He waited for the connection. "Dora, we're headed your way. Katie got us access to Eric's medical records, so we can go ahead with the investigation." He paused as she said something, and Katie felt a dark sense of victory when he answered her. "No, she didn't get anything against the wife. We've got an angle on another suspect, though. I'll tell you about it when we get there. Right. Goodbye." He met Katie's eyes with a look that told her to keep her reaction to herself. When he was confident she'd gotten the message, he jerked his head toward the door. "Come on," he said. "Let's get this thing rolling."

  Katie's car dropped them at the curb outside the police station, and she looked the place over with a critical eye as they approached it. The station was a small concrete building on the north edge of town that squatted in the middle of a sprawling parking lot, surrounded by a stout black iron gate. Old-fashioned manual-drive police cars packed the lot like ornaments, shiny and impressive, but they probably hadn't seen the street in nearly a decade. The stable of new cars stood just to the right of the main building and took up considerably less space.

  She stopped short halfway across the parking lot and turned to look back toward the street. "This place is set up like a fort," she said, awed.

  Reed shrugged. "A lot of the old precinct stations are like that."

  "Oh, I know," Katie said. "The Manhattan borough station is one of those. You could hold off an army there." She started walking again. "I'm just surprised to see it here. Boulder seems like a pretty forward-thinking place from everything I've seen."

  This time Reed stopped, short of the main doors and caught Katie's arm. He dropped his voice. "There's been a Chief Hart sitting in that office since before you were born—since long before Jurisprudence came to town. And by all accounts, they've kept this city clean as long as they've been running things, so change just isn't all that attractive to them." He eyed her for a moment, then shrugged. "I guess good police work is in the blood. Your old man made a real name for himself, too, huh?"

  "Jury's still out on that," Katie said, half under her breath. "Come on." She jerked her head toward the doors. "Let's find out what Ellie's up to."

  The entrance to the station reminded Katie of an old elementary school. A building directory with little white plastic letters hung on the wall to the right, and a pretty young desk agent stood behind a window on her left, but Katie ignored them both as relics. The touch-screen pedestal receptionist in the center of the floor could answer Katie's needs. She and Reed stepped up to it and Reed said, "Agents Pratt and Reed to meet Dora Hart."

  The receptionist screen showed a map, light blue on dark, with a dotted white line down the hall to the left and through the bullpen to Hart's office. Reed barely even look at it, heading in the right direction as soon as he heard the door's heavy magnetic locks click open. Katie followed on his heel.

  The corridors were narrow, done in aged, white paint with blue, steel doors set into the walls every few feet. The doors all had security-glass windows set into them at eye level. Through the windows Katie saw a lot of empty rooms, and those that weren't empty were packed with boxes
or other items relegated to long storage. A thick coat of dust covered everything in those rooms.

  Katie could understand. She'd been with the Brooklyn police three months when they left their old building for a small office space in a quiet strip mall. She could imagine this office bustling, the narrow corridors crowded with all the traffic cops and beat patrolmen and grizzled detectives she remembered from her childhood. A big precinct like this might have employed dozens of people once, but now Katie would be surprised if there were more than ten on staff. Hathor prowled the beats now. Volare and TMS kept the streets safe, and Jurisprudence tracked down the bad guys. All the cops had to do was go where the computers sent them and round up the suspects. Reed's heavy footsteps echoed in the long-empty corridor. As they approached the door at the end of it, the lock snapped open with a clok that seemed startlingly loud.

  The bullpen beyond was less stark. Half the size of the one in the Ghost Targets office, it still took up a significant chunk of the building. Katie's estimate proved a bit low, because she counted fourteen officers hard at work in the bullpen. There weren't a lot of empty desks, though, so she had a feeling this was pretty much it. A quick glance at the material open on some of those desks suggested maybe they were just trying to look busy for the Federal agents. Katie sighed, but Reed ignored it all. This wasn't his first time here. Just inside the bullpen, he turned immediately to the right and pushed open a heavy wooden door to lead Katie into Hart's office.

  "Dora," he said warmly. "What do you have on Ellie Cohn?"

  "Not a lot." The chief frowned, then spoke into her headset. "Carla, get me the casefiles on the Eric Barnes case. Thanks." She looked back to Reed. "Cohn is a database manager, and she's got extraordinary discretionary power here in town. Apart from some pushing and shoving when she was a rookie, she seems like a good soldier." She sat back in her chair, and for just a moment her eyes cut to Katie before she asked Reed, "Why?"

  Katie answered. "She's our main suspect at this point." Hart tried to interrupt her, but Katie just raised her voice and pressed on. "I've cleared Theresa Barnes. She lacks motive."

  "I don't see how you can—"

  "Look," Katie said coldly. "You liked her as a suspect because she refused medical access and that was suspicious—I'll give you that. From there you made up a motive out of fantasy, and Reed dug up another, more viable one, but we've come into possession of new information that shoots both those theories to hell." Again she had to speak over the police chief's interruption. "Moreover," she said forcefully, "Mrs. Barnes has now granted us medical access and, in the process, provided ample justification for her earlier reticence."

  Hart frowned. "Oh yeah?" she said. "What's that?"

  "That's a private matter I'd rather not disclose," Katie said. "It's enough that I'm satisfied." Reed could have called her down for that, but he didn't. She had no doubt he would have questions for her later, but he left her authority intact for now, which left Hart nothing to do but relent.

  The chief didn't see it that way, though. She looked to Reed for support, then bristled when he didn't volunteer it. "It doesn't matter," she said, scrabbling in a desk drawer to pull out a neglected handheld. "I'll just review your interview. It was around nine this morning, yeah?"

  "It was," Katie said coldly. "but the record is restricted." Hart's eyes shot wide in outrage, and even Reed rounded on her in his surprise, but Katie kept her cool. "As I explained," she said, "it's a private matter."

  The police chief tried to stare Katie down, but Katie was up to the challenge. She held eye contact until Hart looked away, and then she turned to Reed. "Tell her about Ellie."

  Just then the door creaked open and the officer from the front desk peeked in. "Those files are ready, chief. They should be on your handheld now."

  Hart didn't look up. "Thanks, Carla," she said briskly.

  "Did you want to check on that before I—"

  "It's fine, Carla. Thank you." Katie frowned at the chief's bitter tone. The officer took it in stride, though, and withdrew.

  Reed turned back to Hart. "As Katie suggested, we have evidence Ellie Cohn was involved in an ongoing relationship with Eric Barnes. He broke it off the day before the incident."

  Hart frowned, thinking, and pulled up a casefile on her handheld. A moment later she tapped some controls, and it appeared full-screen on her desktop. Katie stepped closer for a better view, but it wasn't too helpful. The police chief spoke her thoughts. "Like I said, we haven't got much. She's in the business of covering her tracks."

  Reed stepped around the desk to consider the display over Hart's shoulder. He reached past her a time or two to switch to different tabs, but eventually he nodded his agreement. "That's pretty slim. Just a moment. Craig, can you get access to this desk? Awesome. Copy the Barnes casefile to it. Thanks." A moment later the desktop flashed the full FBI casefile, and Reed rapidly switched to the personal details of Ellie Cohn. Katie noticed he already had her folder tagged Suspects and wondered how much he'd already figured out. He nodded toward the desktop and said to Hart, "As you can see, we have a little bit more on her."

  "Interesting," Hart said, scanning through the details—most of them apparently reconstructed by the analysts back at Ghost Targets. The police chief spoke with a faraway voice. "I wonder if she knew that."

  Reed frowned. "Why?"

  She pointed to the last entry in Hart's location history, and Katie immediately saw what she was getting at. Hart said it first, though. "She disappeared the same time you guys headed to town."

  Ellie's official location history was certainly slim, but it showed pings just often enough to keep her identity intact, right up until Monday morning. There was nothing since then, though, for over twenty-six hours. Her last known location was at the clinic, an arrival mid-morning that had removed her from the eyes of Hathor as soon as she stepped through the gate. She'd been a ghost ever since.

  Katie caught Reed's eye. "Can we find her?"

  "With some effort, yes." He looked at Dora. "Can you track their cars?" Hart shook her head, and Reed nodded. "I've got some guys who can, but it's slow work."

  Katie didn't know what he was talking about. It sounded familiar, but she couldn't place it, so she said, "Their cars?"

  "It's a provision of restricted areas," Reed said, and Katie remembered. He continued anyway. "They have a fleet of private taxis at the clinic that don't register in the database. VIPs can use them for arrivals and departures to keep their activity hidden. Eric and Ellie both used them regularly for their commutes, and presumably Ellie took one when she left yesterday morning." He tapped that last entry in Ellie's location history. "But she clocked in when she got to the clinic. She left that record for a reason—"

  "What if she didn't?" Katie said, interrupting him. She had a sudden recollection of a conversation in a private train car with Martin, and another one earlier that morning. "What if she's there?" Incomprehension showed on both of their faces, so Katie reached across the desk to pull up Ellie Cohn's map. A burning red dot glowed right on the flat gray border of the clinic, showing Ellie's arrival. Katie tapped the dot. "What if she's still there? We would never find her in Hathor."

  "We will," Reed said, closing out the casefile. "Dora, bring everyone you've got. We're searching that place top to bottom."

  She shook her head. "My people don't have access—"

  "You do now." He nodded across the desk to Katie. "Lieutenant Drake just promised us his full cooperation. We shouldn't have any trouble at all."

  Dora's eyes flew wide, but she didn't waste any time. She slipped past Reed and out into the bullpen. "All right, people, listen up. We're going to De Grey."

  Katie didn't hear the rest of the call to arms, because Reed caught her elbow and steered her back toward the exit. "Hathor, Katie and I need a private car back to De Grey, now. Thanks." He tilted his head to Katie. "This should give us a few minutes alone," he said. "I need to know what you know."

  It took the car five minutes
to arrive, and Katie spent all of it trying to figure out how to keep Martin's secret from Reed. Dora Hart came out to the curb where they waited to talk them into riding with her, but Reed stood firm and sent the cops on ahead. After she left, he spoke into his headset. "Craig, connect me to Brian Dimms. Thanks. Brian, I need you to run a ghost vehicle analysis on the De Grey Clinic restricted area, specifically tracked departures from the clinic since ten hundred yesterday. We're looking for Ellie Cohn, who is already flagged in the casefile. Got all that? Good. Make sure I can track it on my handheld, and give it to Katie, too. No, don't put the track on the casefile. I'll attach it if anything turn up. Thanks, Brian. Goodbye."

  "What was all that?" Katie asked. "You don't believe Ellie's still at the clinic?"

  "A little caution never hurts," Reed said. "That process is incredibly slow, so if things don't pan out, we'll be glad I got it started sooner rather than later."

  Just then the car pulled up, and as Katie moved around to the opposite door she asked him, "What is the process? How does it work?"

  Reed considered her suspiciously across the roof of the car for a moment, as though he could see her attempt at a diversion, but he finally relented and ducked into the car. As she settled in beside him, he said, "I am supposed to be teaching you, aren't I?" He pulled out his handheld and drew up a map showing the clinic and three bright yellow dots around its perimeter, one where Ellie's location history had ended. As Katie watched, that dot stretched out into a short, stubby line creeping north along the boulevard. A moment later it collapsed back to a single point, and one of the other dots disappeared altogether.

  "This is one of our analytical tools," Reed said. "We're usually using it on short-term ghosts, which leave clearer tracks in the traffic pattern than these private taxis, but the principle is the same." He gestured to the boulevard east of the clinic, the same one he and Katie had used every time they'd visited.

  "Hathor has a record of all the traffic traveling along this road except for Ellie's car—and others like it." He pointed to the dot that was stretching north again. "We can't see Ellie's car, but we can see the car-sized gaps in the traffic history. If one of those gaps persists longer than coincidence would allow, if it continued to move with traffic in ways that a real car would move, it could easily be the ghost of Ellie's car causing the disruption. The Traffic Management System software is consistent and predictable—albeit incredibly complex—so with sufficient resources we can track the behavior of all the other vehicles on the road and find the path of the invisible ones they're all working to avoid."