Control: Out of the Box (The Girl in the Box Book 38)

by Robert J. Crane

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Chapman

  Time to Play!

  God. These idiots again.

  He logged in immediately, though.

  JOHANNSEN: Are any of you watching Gondry's speech?

  BYRD: this is crazy guys

  KORY: Who the hell left the big bowl of cocaine out on Air Force One?

  Chapman sagged. What the hell had happened now?

  CHALKE: For those of us not connected to our phones via USB straight to the brain?

  KORY: Please, USB is so 2012. It's all Bluetooth now.

  JOHANNSEN: The president is currently giving what can only be described as a...well, it's a speech. That's as far as I can go before adjectives fail me.

  BYRD: srsly cray cray u guys i think hes lost it

  Well, this was a waste. Chapman almost closed the app, but stopped himself in time. Maybe, with a properly asked question...

  CHAPMAN: I'm on a plane. I don't have news apps on my phone because they're largely a waste of time. Anyone want to summarize the high points/low points of the speech for me?

  KORY: Ouch. Harsh critique. Also, you're lucky this isn't prior to 2012. You'd be thrown off the plane for dicking with your electronic device in flight.

  Chapman closed his eyes. Kory was such a dimwit. And he flew commercial, clearly. No pilot on a private plane would dare tell their fare to turn off their phone, even in 2012. But that was the difference in classes. Even as a CEO, Kory was small time. He'd burned through his venture capital money doing stupid shit like opening an office in Brooklyn and decorating it with signed merchandise from various luminaries. What a waste, especially when the entire news business was going insolvent. In five years, Kory would be a low-level coder for a tech startup. If that. Loser.

  JOHANNSEN: Namechecked in the president's speech thus far: more sanctions on China. Also, a mysterious “Network” that may be involved in the death of Bilson.

  Chapman thudded his head against the soft seat rest.

  JOHANNSEN: As I said before, I'm not really sure how to describe this speech.

  CHALKE: Sounds like canonically it fits in the vein of “ravings of a crazy homeless person.”

  JOHANNSEN: That's really regressive. Plays on bad stereotypes of homeless people and stigmatizes the mentally ill.

  Chapman burned. Really? Now was the moment to talk about how the speech made people feel? As everything collapsed around them?

  CHAPMAN: Plus, he just exposed us TO THE ENTIRE WORLD.

  Jaime was steaming. How could no one else see what a problem this was?

  JOHANNSEN: Well, the name at least. Speaking of, we should change it for deniability reasons. How about, “The Society?”

  KORY: Too generic. Maybe “The Chatroom?”

  CHALKE: I thought you were saying generic was a bad thing, then you come out with “The Chatroom?”

  How could these people be any less serious? Here they were, having just been outed by name in Gondry's speech to the damned world, tied to Bilson's death, and they were arguing over aesthetics.

  BYRD: guys u know its probably not time to argue over name when we need to talk about how this affects us if u know what I mean???

  Chapman closed his eyes. Byrd was the damned voice of reason. That was the bind he was in.

  CHAPMAN: Byrd is right.

  Typing those words pained him, almost physically.

  CHAPMAN: It doesn't matter what we call ourselves internally. We need to contain this situation. We need to change the conversation.

  JOHANNSEN: As far as these things go, pushing “the Network” out of the coverage shouldn't be too hard on the mainstream side. We'll cover it for a day and then let it die.

  CHALKE: How do you do that?

  JOHANNSEN: Simple – when we have a story we want to cover in detail, we write multiple spin-offs and follow-ups about it, keeping it alive day after day, even when there's not much to it. A good reporter can make a mountain out of a molehill, can make readers care about seemingly insignificant things by writing a story with fresh speculation, even if there is no new news breaking on it. We're pretty good at that particular art by now, if I do say so myself. The “Network” coverage can fit neatly under the rubric of today's outrage du jour – and then we'll forget about it tomorrow, and draw the attention of the rest of our peers in the press to something else.

  KORY: Easiest thing in the world. I can have my people spread some disinterest on it, too. Push some rumors around that would make reporters want to back off of it.

  CHAPMAN: Like what?

  This was important. He needed to be sure.

  JOHANNSEN: Something sensitive, politically. Like that the Network is a group of oppressed peoples, trying to find ways to increase the fortunes of minorities as stakeholders in society. We can find some political buzzwords to slap on it to make them back away. Leave it to us. ;)

  KORY: Yeah, we got this. But it wouldn't hurt if you throttled the traffic on it, too.

  CHAPMAN: Done – but you want me to kill it today or tomorrow?

  JOHANNSEN: People have short memories, but it helps if they never hear it at all. Maybe throttle it by 50% today and jack that up to 75% tomorrow, then sort of kill its organic reach completely the day after? That, combined with our efforts, will send it so far into the background that no one will even remember it a week from now.

  Chapman gritted his teeth. They still had to survive this week, though.

  CHALKE: Sounds like a plan, but I see a flaw. What do we do if Gondry keeps banging that drum? He's a pretty good lightning rod for reporter interest, after all.

  Chapman swore so loudly that three of his assistants looked at him. Then they averted their eyes when they saw he was talking to his phone. Smart move on their parts.

  BYRD: also not sure how much influence we r gunna have on him now that he knows he's being influenced

  Damn. Byrd just scored another point.

  CHALKE: Well, he never really knew he was being influenced by us, did he? And it's not like he can shut everyone out. The man still has to make policy. Still needs to take meetings with movers and shakers – like Jaime.

  CHAPMAN: I'll get a meeting with him when I get to town. That should be a good guide to see how much he's willing to listen.

  FLANAGAN: But what if he's not willing to listen anymore? Just curious, because it seems like we'd lose our raison d'etre.

  CHALKE: Agreed. Connecting with you all has been useful, but the idea was to have some real influence. Move the ball forward on our agenda as well as work to our own advantage. Without Gondry, we're all just spinning our wheels.

  JOHANNSEN: Especially without Bilson and his legislative contacts, we're shut out of the process entirely.

  KORY: Yeah, I like you guys, and the scoops are killer, but I was here because we talked about changing the world, making it better. Gondry was looking like he might do that, albeit slowly, until he tripped all over this stupid China thing.

  Chapman found himself nodding along with Kory, which disturbed him. He hated agreeing with that bastardized programmer and reporter. How was it that a man who did neither well somehow made a success out of himself at both? Whatever.

  CHAPMAN: Yes. I still have a deal hanging in the balance worth a lot of money, one that could change the future of China. But Gondry will definitely shoot it dead if he keeps going down the current path. I'm going to talk to him while I'm in Washington. Maybe I can make him see reason.

  CHALKE: That'd be nice. And solve at least one of our problems. If you can prove he's still amenable to listening...

  JOHANNSEN: Yep, then we'd just have to keep our heads down until the furor over the Network passes, and whoever's responsible for Bilson gets ferreted out.

  CHALKE: Which we will. I've got Nealon on it, and she always (annoyingly, at times) gets to the bottom of these things.

  BYRD: sounds good go team!!!!!!1!!!11!!!!!!111

  Chapman cringed. They had a plan of action, at least.

  But that wasn'
t going to be enough, was it?

  Someone out there was taking individual action. Chapman had made the opening moves in setting up his own plans, but he needed...more. Quicker action, perhaps.

  He looked up at his assistants. “Which one of you called those metahumans recommended by Bernice?” He waved a hand when one of them started to speak. No, he didn't know the names of his assistants. Nor did he need to; their faces all blended together anyway. “Doesn't matter. I want you to call them again. Get them on a plane to Washington. I want to meet with them while I'm in town. Like, today.” He averted his eyes as the assistant scrambled to heed his wishes.

  Yes, it was time to take action. He couldn't leave it all up to others, after all. Even in the Network, letting other people see to important details was a recipe for disaster.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sienna

  “Did you hear that?” VP Barbour asked in a crisp, slightly annoyed tone as I held the phone to my ear.

  Credit to the VP for immediately making our conversation immediately uncomfortable. I struggled for a moment, trying to figure out how to respond to her accusatory tone without lambasting the president for broadcasting the remix version of my case's evidence to the entire world.

  “Sorry, what?” I asked. “I'm in the middle of about five things related to the case right now.” As if by witchcraft, my email dinged and a forensic report for the rooftop the shooter had likely used for a sniper nest popped into my inbox. “Interesting,” I muttered, under my breath. “Something just came in.”

  “The president just mangled your case on national TV,” Barbour said, and she sounded a little like she'd had about enough of Richard Gondry's shit. Gone was the carefully composed, thoughtful lady from earlier, and replacing her was a woman who sounded like she was right next to the edge and deeply contemplating taking a leap. “He threw everything you told him in a stew pot, boiled it, imbibed it, then vomited it all back out in the middle of one of his speeches.”

  I blinked at her colorful use of language. “That sounds...bad. You're not calling me to clean it up, are you?”

  “Well, you did get mentioned by name, so I wouldn't be surprised if you get a call from an enterprising reporter or twelve asking for comment.”

  “I'm not allowed to talk to the press,” I said quickly. “For their safety as much as my own. I mean, I have a really bad track record with reporters.”

  “I remember well the great Minneapolis reporter-punching incident,” she said. “As well as that time you nearly burned a wild pack of them to death, sparking a two-year manhunt for yourself.”

  “See, that's just one of those lies that persists after the truth comes out. The reporters were well clear of the fight in Eden Prairie before I went off. Camera footage shows that they fell over themselves scrambling away after I broke the spell over them. I swear, the lie gets around the world twelve times before the truth gets its shoes on. It must have flight powers.”

  Barbour chuckled. “Regardless...we have a mess, Agent Nealon.”

  “Madam Vice President,” I said, wishing I could abandon the pretense of this conversation and just dive into that forensics report, “if you can point me to a time when I don't have a mess, that'd be the aberration. Whatever the president has done, I'm sure it's not unfixable.” That was a lie. Hell if I knew the long-term consequences of his speech. But I also knew that dealing with any of this PR bullshit was way above my pay grade.

  Barbour just sighed, long-suffering, on the other end of the phone. “Do you know what my job was before this?”

  I did. “You were the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, ma'am.”

  “We did important work over there,” VP Barbour said plaintively. “If there's any department that's crucial to the functioning of this country, it's HHS. I administered programs that genuinely helped people.” Her tone changed, hardened. “Now I bat cleanup for a man who – don't get me wrong, knows a lot, but can't decide which important change to make first, so he goes after all of them and achieves none of them.” Her voice tightened. “Until this China business. Now he's completely focused on it to the exclusion of everything else, and anything that borders it gets dragged in, like Mr. Bilson's untimely death.”

  What was I supposed to say to the VP's critique of the president? Nothing. So I did exactly that.

  “You need to solve this, Agent Nealon,” Barbour said. I guess she'd finished venting. “Get to the bottom of it so that the president can find his satisfaction that China wasn't involved, and we can try to normalize relations. I mean, I didn't care if he mucked things up with Revelen. They were small and inconsequential, until we found out they were a nuclear power. But China? They're one of our largest trading partners, a huge swath of the president's donors are affected by this in myriad ways, and the more fuel gets put on this fire by things like this Bilson incident, the longer this drags on and the less willing to listen the president becomes. He needs to see reason.”

  “I'm not sure what reason is in this case, ma'am,” I finally said, not because it was the smart thing to say, but because I couldn't keep it down. “But I promise you that I'm working on the case. I'll pursue every lead, follow every possibility. We'll figure it out.” I smiled tightly. Hilton was watching me from across the table, not even bothering to hide her eavesdropping.

  “Please do, Agent Nealon,” Vice President Barbour said crisply. I guess our heart to heart was over. “Before something happens that can't be undone.” And she hung up, leaving me with that thought.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Impossible.”

  That was Hilton's pronouncement, anyway, once I'd opened up the forensics report.

  “We don't know for a fact that this is accurate,” I said. “No powder. No shell.” It was the report for the rooftop of the building where the suspected shooter had taken aim at Bilson. “It might not be the place.”

  Hilton was leaning over my shoulder, which I would have found irritating at the best of times, but it was made worse by her having gone a little heavy on some sort of perfume that really wasn't doing an adequate job of covering the fact that she had not showered in the last twenty-four hours. I could kinda understand given the abruptness with which she'd been called in, but she smelled like a club on the morning after a raucous party, and she was standing way too close to me to be reeking of her own failed deodorant, artisanal cocktails that lacked any artisanship, and the sweat of some dude who had apparently made Drakkar Noir one of the pillars of his faith. “Are you reading the same thing I am?”

  “Presumably. It's only about three paragraphs.”

  Hilton pointed at my clunky, outdated “new” laptop's screen. “They say it happened from the rooftop of that building based on the angle and other factors. And that this building is, by air, 1.3 miles from the victim's apartment.” She pressed her finger on my screen like it was a touchscreen, leaving behind a print so clean I could have secured a criminal conviction with it. “A 1.3 mile shot? Come on. Impossible.”

  “Not impossible. Just really difficult.”

  She cocked her head sideways at me. “Did you do sniper training in your quickie course at Quantico?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you ever try a mile shot?”

  I nodded. “Tried, yes. They wanted to test me.”

  “How'd that go for you?”

  “I was pretty far off,” I said. “Didn't even hit the target.”

  Her eyebrows rolled upward. “Wow. Really? Even you, huh?”

  I sighed. “I may have higher strength, dexterity and muscle control than normal humans, but that doesn't automatically translate to excellence in every category. I'm a fair shooter at 500 meters or less, but beyond that, you get into factors of windage and bullet drop-off that I just don't have the training to overcome with my powers alone. That's skill and practice, usually years of it. It's not an innate talent I have.”

  “Who would?” Hilton asked, blessedly standing up and removing herself from
my immediate vicinity as she paced back over to her seat. Admittedly, I probably didn't smell the best either, at this point, but she didn't have the meta sense of smell to detect it.

  “Military guys,” I said. “Though anyone who did serious sniper training might be able to do it, provided they were sufficiently skilled.” I looked at the photographs in the report on the locale. The sniper had probably lain prone across the stairwell structure that popped up above rooftop level when delivering the killing shot – or so forensics assumed. There was a suggestion that a blanket may have been laid across it. The shooter would have taken it when exiting the scene to avoid leaving behind hair, fibers, cartridges and powder residue. Which was logical, as assumptions went.

  “Did they pull building security footage?” Hilton asked.

  I shook my head. “New building. Apparently it's not fully complete yet. There were enough cameras not working that we've got almost nothing, footage-wise. No sign of anyone moving through the site.”

  She caught my nod and stalked past her chair. “Are they gonna comb the building looking for forensic evidence?”

  I glanced at the report. “They'll probably try, but it's essentially still a construction site. Hundreds of people have been in and out over the last six months. Forensic evidence will probably be hard to come by. At least anything conclusive, unless the killer walked through a dusty area that captured their foot prints, but so far...nada.”

  “And Bilson's apartment?” she asked. She was really getting into this, and I almost hated to quash her enthusiasm, because it was making up for my tired, jaded, lack thereof.

  “Killer didn't show up there, at least last night.” I pulled up a second report – all these were preliminaries, and could certainly change if the teams dug up any additional evidence. “He didn't have any visitors at all that they could find on the security tapes.” I flipped through the digital record of still photos of his condo. “We'll need to make a list of known associates. Conduct interviews with his co-workers, friends. That's the grunt stuff, though.” I rubbed my eyes, feeling the bleariness settle in. I looked at my watch. It was getting pretty close to five and we had no hot leads, not a one.