Digital Divide

by Spangler, K. B.

  Sturtevant put his palm flat on the glass and appraised Glazer for a long moment, then pointed at Hill. The other man nodded, and scooped up the plastic bin and the evidence bag as he left the room.

  “Where’s he going?” Jason started to ask, then stopped as he saw Hill push open the door to Interrogation. Glazer went ever so slightly yellow as he recognized the detective, but his wariness was tempered with dark professional blues as he prepared himself.

  Glazer’s got a job to do, Rachel thought. Great.

  “Hill’s the best interrogator we’ve got,” Zockinski replied.

  “Him?” Jason’s scorn was an ugly orange.

  Zockinski smirked. “The man never talks unless he has to.”

  On the other side of the mirror, Hill looked straight at Glazer as he placed the three devices on the table, one by one, pressing each down so it clicked as it left his fingers. Then Hill sat, slowly, his eyes never leaving the other man.

  A full minute ticked by. Glazer moved his hands to cover each other, the chain on his cuffs slipping across the steel table the only sound between them.

  “Your name isn’t John Glazer,” Hill finally said. He put an index finger on the first device in the row and slid it two inches forward. “But that doesn’t matter.

  “We can’t find your fingerprints, or DNA, or any other record to prove who you are,” Hill said, pushing the second device to align with the first. “But that doesn’t matter.

  “You don’t have to say a damned word from now until Judgment Day.” Hill pushed the last device into the new row. “You can sit there like a sphinx and pretend you’ve got control, that you’re going to walk away from this, that maybe you’ve got a future outside a concrete box,” he said. “But we both know better.”

  Hill crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “So tell me what matters.”

  “Motive,” Glazer replied.

  His voice was gentle, almost soft. It was the voice of a much different man. Rachel shivered and everyone in the room went a little white with chills.

  Hill nodded. “Assault, kidnapping… murder. You must have had a good reason to take this that far. We want to hear it.”

  Glazer shrugged with one shoulder. “What do I get?”

  “Depends. You give up your accomplice, lots. Maybe your room will have a view,” Hill said. “Nice second-story room at a Supermax, somewhere in a city. In the spring, you can watch all the pretty girls walk by. You can tell yourself they smell sweet.

  “That’s the best you can expect,” Hill said with a dismissive gesture, “so if he’s not worth anything to you, he’s worth that much to us.”

  Glazer said nothing.

  “No?” Hill leaned forward and smiled. “Good. Thanks. I don’t sleep well when I make deals with creatures like you. And since you made this personal for me, I will personally make sure they put you in a hole so deep you will never see daylight again.”

  The minutes ticked by, neither Hill nor Glazer moving.

  Hill stood. “Good luck in your hole.”

  “The Agents,” Glazer said, and Hill sat back down. “Those things are walking around, pretending they’re human. They’re corrupting us from within. They’ve infiltrated the government. You know this—some of them work with you. Give them a few years and they’ll control the entire country.”

  Lie, Rachel saw, but before she could open her mouth, Hill laughed in Glazer’s face.

  “Bullshit,” the big man said. “A guy like you doesn’t waste his time on paranoid delusions. The videos, the kidnappings... Those required someone with specialized skills. And these?” Hill tapped one of the RFID devices. “These show you’ve been working on your master plan for months. Crazies don’t have that kind of training or focus. Try again.”

  When Glazer didn’t answer, Hill smirked. “Okay, let me take a shot at this,” he said. “You know the system, you’ve got the resources. That puts you as either military or mercenary. Since we’d get yanked off your ass if this were an official operation, that leaves two options. One, you’re military and went rogue. But that would make you a crazy, and we’ve already decided you aren’t crazy.

  “Two? You’re a merc. This is all for profit.”

  Glazer’s steel blues hardened as Hill struck close to home.

  “Someone paid you to take out OACET,” Hill said. “You were setting them up, making it look as though an Agent had gone rogue. Then we find your hidden tunnel, and you had to scrap that plan before you got to the part with the big explosions. So you decided to prove they’re a different kind of threat. Orwellian monsters, right? You tried to play on everybody’s worst fears. Show the public how they’ve been living in 1984 all along, and they turn against the Agents.

  “That scene at the shipping yard? Clever,” Hill said. “Real clever. You couldn’t incriminate them, so you tried to get them to incriminate themselves.”

  Glazer did his single-shoulder shrug again.

  “Didn’t work, though. Clever won’t keep you out of prison. But you know what? If you were paid to commit murder, kidnap all of those kids? You’ve got an employer. You’ve got someone’s name.” Hill leaned forward and dropped his voice to just above a whisper. “You’ve got leverage.”

  The other man lifted his hands so the chains rattled across the desk. “Not from where I’m sitting.”

  “Ask for a lawyer,” Hill said. “Get a bargain-basement public defender and tell them what they’re supposed to do to keep you out of that dark hole.”

  Glazer gave Hill a guileless smile.

  Hill slid the dry cleaning coupon from Witcham’s little shoebox across the table. Unlike the three RFID devices, this seemed to catch Glazer’s interest; his eyes flicked down and back up to Hill’s.

  “You let me believe you had figured it out on your own,” Glazer said, shaking his head. “Shame on you.”

  “So you know what this is,” Hill said. “And you probably know the Agents found it and called the number. Your boss told them everything before he signed off.” The detective mimicked Glazer’s innocent smile. “He abandoned you.”

  “We knew the risks,” Glazer said.

  “Some risks,” Hill chuckled. “We don’t even know who he is, but you get caught and you get to sit in your hole for the rest of your life.”

  On the other side of the glass, Rachel hissed between her teeth as Glazer’s surface colors strengthened, a dark marine blue fitting him like a suit. Interrogations were a cop’s equivalent of picking a lock; each pin needed to be tumbled in order, and a misstep could cause the whole process to fail. Hill was moving through the right questions, and Glazer had slumped ever so slightly, his hands folded into each other for comfort. To Hill, those tiny tells screamed the job was nearly done. But Rachel was thoroughly familiar with the dusky grays which saturated a soon-to-be-broken man, and Glazer was nowhere near to breaking.

  He was preparing.

  Great, Rachel thought. Perfect. He’s going to try and play Hill, get a little leeway…

  And then Glazer shocked her with the truth.

  “There’s a senator involved,” Glazer said, straightening in his chair as though he had found inner resolve. “That’s all I’m going to say until I talk to my lawyer.”

  Hill didn’t move but his colors popped yellow-white with surprise. “U.S. or state?”

  “Who gives a fuck about state senators?” Glazer said, and crossed his arms. The chains dragged across the table. “Get me my lawyer now.”

  Hill pushed his chair back and walked out without another word, leaving the card and the three RFID readers on the table, just out of Glazer’s reach.

  The interview room went mad when Hill returned, Zockinski congratulating his partner while Gallagher and Sturtevant negotiated terms for Glazer’s representation. Standing apart from this, Rachel stared at Glazer while Jason and Phil burned beside her.

  “What the hell is this guy playing at?” Jason hissed in their heads.

  “He was supposed to do this,”
Rachel shot back. “He was supposed to mention the senator.”

  “Then why didn’t he just tell Hill it was Hanlon?” Phil asked.

  Rachel shrugged. “Credibility? Plausibility? How should I know?”

  “Because you should!” Jason shouted. “You’re the one who’s supposed to—”

  “Guys?” Phil interrupted. “Please don’t scare the normals.”

  Rachel took a breath and stepped away from Jason before they started waving and pointing or, God forbid, throwing punches without having spoken a single word.

  “Agent Gallagher?” Rachel stepped over to where Gallagher and Sturtevant were engaged in quiet war. “In your interviews, you asked these same questions?”

  She blinked at Rachel, annoyed by the interruption. “Yes. Why?”

  “And he didn’t say anything while you had him?”

  “No,” Gallagher said. “But we didn’t have that card or the readers as prompts.”

  “Mhm,” Rachel glanced back towards Glazer. The man looked beaten but was deeply self-satisfied.

  “Another hunch?” Gallagher asked her.

  “Yeah,” Rachel said. “Same as with the truck. None of this seems accidental or coincidental.”

  The SAC was not convinced, and dots and streaks of orange began to catch among the non-cyborgs in the room. “The truck had a broken axle,” Gallagher said. “When we took it apart, we found nothing to suggest it was anything other than an accident.”

  “I might be wrong,” Rachel added quickly. “I probably am. I just think there’s something else at work here. We have to play it safe with these guys.”

  “Good advice, Agent Peng,” Sturtevant said, but while he added: “What would you recommend?” his conversational colors showed nothing but irritation.

  “Different questions,” she stalled. Behind her, Zockinski sighed.

  “Such as?” Gallagher asked.

  “Let me make a call first,” Rachel said.

  “Take your time,” Sturtevant said, and meant it.

  There’s a senator involved…

  The door clicked behind her, sending a chill up her spine. She knew she was on edge; this was the closest they had come to third-party evidence against Hanlon. Rachel could practically feel her fingers close around Hanlon’s neck. There has to be a word for that emotion between elation and dread, Rachel thought. Not for the first time, she wished she could read her own colors; she’d probably learn more about herself in five minutes than she would over the next five years of therapy.

  Rachel searched for the closest empty office, then locked the door behind her. “Hey,” she reached out over the link to Mulcahy. “You busy?”

  “Yes.” He sent her a peek of oak paneling, Carrera marble floors, and a dozen furious older men with nametags and microphones in front of them. “Can this wait?”

  “Yep. Just wanted to let you know that Glazer might give up Hanlon.”

  Mulcahy’s avatar appeared in front of her. “You’re kidding.”

  She covered her mouth at the look on his face. “Nope.”

  “You’re kidding! How did that happen?”

  “I’m that good.”

  “Rachel?” Mulcahy said with a trace of irritation.

  She dropped her smile. “If he gives it up, it’s because he wants to. No other reason. I think he let himself get caught so he could testify.”

  Mulcahy shook his head. “End this,” he said. “I don’t like how they’re treating this like a game. Nobody lets himself go to prison. Make sure one of us is with him at all times.”

  Rachel unconsciously reached out to rattle Glazer’s chains. He was still bound to table and floor, enduring a nervous young man who kept the table between them as he held up photographs of various crime scenes. Glazer’s meek little boy of a public defender had arrived. “I’ll watch him,” she promised. “He’ll testify.”

  “If he doesn’t, we lose… Ach,” Mulcahy muttered, his avatar fumbling slightly as he lost concentration. “I need to go. I’m in a shouting match with Hanlon.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked at her. “Penguin,” he said, “we’re losing. Josh, Mare, and I are doing all that we can, but it’s just a matter of time before Hanlon gets enough momentum to break us apart. He’s trying to get us shipped off to military think tanks, and you know what that means.”

  Dark rooms, she shivered to herself. No sunlight, no escape. The endless, endless, streaming code. And beyond those selfish fears lurked the big picture: the child’s body lying by the side of the road; the drone screaming black rage overhead; the empty stone of broken hospitals, homes, schools… The day she had realized she was blind had been the exception to the rest of her life: she had never woken up screaming when she was in the Army, only singing, with an old Van Halen song ringing in her ears and one line of prose lifted from its video wrapped around her during the boiling days and the freezing nights in Afghanistan. Right now, hey…

  “Yes,” she whispered, then raised her head and looked him straight in the eyes. “Yes, I know what that means.”

  “I’ve got enough on him to keep him off of us if there’s no other option,” Mulcahy said, “but if I do, I burn our safety net. I don’t want to do that unless we’re trapped, and we’re pretty close to that right now. Hanlon knows he’s got to get rid of us before we go public. We can’t do that yet; it’s too important to push it ahead of schedule. If you can get Glazer to go on record that Hanlon hired him, it’ll be enough to shake Hanlon’s credibility for a few more months.”

  Right now, it’s your tomorrow… She nodded quickly, hands deep in the pockets of her suit pants to keep herself from trembling. “Okay, okay.”

  “Buy us some time, Penguin,” Mulcahy smiled sadly. “Good luck.”

  Rachel stared at the empty space where his avatar had stood until her heart stopped pounding in her throat.

  The little animated doodle of two men pranking the third with a table top…

  Right now, our government is doing things we think only other countries do…

  She waited until the hall was clear before vacating the office, then rejoined the others in the observation room. Phil and Jason were gone. She searched for them and found them in the break room. Excellent. Less chance of accidental contact, of needing to explain why she had left the room with good news and had come back shaken.

  She peered through the glass into the interrogation room. The public defender was terrified and shied away from Glazer if his client so much as twitched. He looked the way she felt.

  “Oh, the poor thing,” Rachel said to Santino.

  “We’ve got a pool going,” he said. “You want in on how long before he needs a bathroom break?”

  “Nah. Wait, yeah,” she caught herself. They’d know something was wrong if she didn’t bet. “Seven to ten minutes.”

  “Peng’s in under the spread,” he announced to the room.

  Rachel turned back to the one-way glass as the others renegotiated the pool. Glazer was answering his attorney’s questions but was still professionally blue; this was part of his job.

  On a whim, she flipped off the emotional spectrum and tried to view him with her old Army CID eyes. Afghanistan had been nothing but a hairy mess of Special Forces, and her job had been to sort them out when they got too tangled. Glazer had that steady confidence that she associated with Special Forces operatives, a perverted form of inner peace attainable only by those who knew how to kill everyone else in the building.

  Back in her old life, interrogating these operatives had been a complicated process. The United States did not hold a monopoly on tactical bad-assery. Those who reached her holding cells were usually part of an allied military division, and knew they would be leaving as soon as the paperwork cleared. They were great fun and glad to be in American hands; Americans always had pizza and beer.

  But once and a while, an orphan would show up. They claimed they didn’t belong to a country, or the phone calls to their alleged homeland went unanswer
ed. These orphans had nothing to gain by staying, and once they were sure they had been abandoned, they would simply wait for the right moment and then try to leave.

  There was usually quite a lot of cleanup required after someone with Special Forces training had decided it was time to leave.

  Glazer had been Special Forces, she was absolutely sure about that, but he wasn’t an orphan. He and Witcham were still working this together. The only thing that Glazer had in common with those orphans was that as soon as he was done with his job, he would try to leave First District Station.

  The cleanup would be atrocious.

  Oh, God, she thought. How much of this is inevitable?

  “I think he’ll talk to me,” she heard herself say.

  “Hm?” Sturtevant, stubby pencil in hand, looked up from a Chinese takeout menu.

  “I think he’ll talk to me,” she said, the plan coalescing in her mind like ice crystals forming. “He’s got a bug up his butt about OACET. Why not see if I can get anything else out of him before he tells his lawyer what to ask for in negotiations?”

  “Conflict of interest,” Sturtevant said as he passed the menu to Santino.

  “You let him talk to Hill,” Rachel retorted. “Let me try. Maybe I can get him to give up that senator.”

  “Really.” It wasn’t a question. Sturtevant was pushing reds in irritation, with flecks of Hill’s forest green core; Sturtevant thought she couldn’t do any better than his own man. “Fine.”

  “Can I speak to you privately?” she asked him, mostly out of habit. Rachel had always discussed strategy with her CO before an interview.

  Sturtevant shook his head and took the menu back from Santino. “Peng, just do what you need to do.”