by Timothy Zahn
Sommer thought about Sands and her ambitions for Soulminder. About her fierce opposition to anything that reflected badly on the corporation. “Again, we have no choice,” he said. “If we don’t release it, it’ll look like a cover-up.”
“I suppose.” Everly got to his feet. “Well, I’m off for the night. You might want to go home, too.”
“I will soon. Incidentally, do you have a copy of that newspaper article on Jonathan Pauley that you mentioned?”
“Yeah, we’ve got one downstairs. You want it?”
Sommer nodded. “I’d like to know as much about him as possible. It might be helpful when we release the story to the media.”
Everly’s eyes bored into his face for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Just be careful not to get too involved with the guy. When you can’t do anything to help, all it does is tear up your gut. Take it from one who knows.”
“I’ll be careful,” Sommer said, trying for a smile. “Good-night.”
Everly left. Alone again, Sommer found his eyes drifting to the window, and the street-lit Washington skyline beyond. For decades now, he thought morosely, physicians had had to deal with the problem of when and how to pull the life-support plug on hopelessly terminal patients. Now, barely four years after its creation, Soulminder was going to have to do the same.
Sommer’s hope had been that his creation would be a way to prevent needless deaths. Sometimes, no matter how much everyone tried, death happened anyway.
With an effort, he focused again on the papers facing him on his desk. It wouldn’t take more than another hour or so, he estimated, to clear this stack out of the way. Might as well do it now as put it off until morning.
Besides which, there really wasn’t any point in going home yet. With the image of Jonathan Pauley’s uselessly trapped soul hovering like a ghost before his eyes, sleep was at least another hour away. Possibly longer.
With a tired sigh, he got back to work.
“I was just about to call you,” Sands greeted Sommer as he trudged into the office the next morning. “You all right?”
“I was here till nearly one-thirty this morning,” Sommer said, dropping into his desk chair and rubbing his eyes.
“Yeah, I saw the logout,” she grunted. “You may be wishing very soon that you’d taken the whole day off. Our friendly neighborhood FBI agent is on his way up.”
Sommer frowned. “Royce? I thought you and he settled things with the Mullner files yesterday.”
“We did,” she said grimly. “This one is worse. It seems Frank’s people have found indications that the Soulminder doctor who handled Mario Cavanaugh’s transfer in Seattle may have been suborned.”
Sommer felt his mouth fall open. “What?”
“You heard me.” She held up fingers, started ticking them off. “One: the computer’s autorecord shows that Dr. Uriah Emerson handled the transfer alone—totally forbidden except in extraordinary circumstances. Two: all the external recording instruments were shut down, or else erased afterward; forbidden under any circumstances. And three … he seems to have disappeared.”
Sommer shook his head. “Hell.”
“Yeah, we really needed something like this,” Sands agreed sourly. “Give me a hand here, will you? Royce wants everything we’ve got on the man.”
They had the appropriate files assembled and copied onto a flash drive by the time Royce made his appearance. “I trust,” he said after perfunctory greetings, “that I don’t have to tell you how this is going over down at the Bureau.”
“I trust,” Sands countered, “that you’re not going to blame the whole corporation for one man’s actions.”
“And how do we know it was just one man’s actions?” Royce demanded. “How do we know more of your people weren’t involved?”
“They weren’t,” Sommer said. “If they had been the computer’s autorecord of the transfer would have been tampered with.”
Royce frowned at him. “Explain.”
“If Cavanaugh had gotten to a computer specialist or possibly even one of the transfer techs he could have had the autorecord altered or erased, too,” Sommer explained. “If he’d done that, we might still not know he’d been through Soulminder at all.”
Royce grimaced. “Yeah, all right. Point. You got that file?”
He copied the file onto his tablet, and for a few minutes read through it in silence. “So Emerson’s been with the Seattle office since it was opened. Sent there from this office.” He snorted gently. “That sounds like Cavanaugh, all right. Suborns a pigeon, swings out there and gets a duplicate trace made, and then just leaves things on hold for two years until he needs it.”
Somewhere in the back of Sommer’s mind, an odd thought clicked into place. “Jessica, is Emerson’s old Washington address listed in here?” he asked, scanning the file.
“It’s right here,” Royce answered for her, flipping back to the first page and pointing. “Bethesda. That’s another thing—we know Cavanaugh was living in Bethesda two years ago too.”
“It’s also where Jonathan Pauley lived,” Sommer said slowly. “The man in Soulminder whose body is missing.”
Royce and Sands exchanged glances. “Are you suggesting a connection?” Royce asked.
“I don’t know,” Sommer admitted. “But the only reason we assumed he hadn’t been kidnapped was because there was no ransom note. That, and because he didn’t have any serious money.”
“But if he was picked up because he knew something he shouldn’t?” Royce suggested thoughtfully. “Knew, or saw something?”
“That’s a horrible thought,” Sands murmured, shivering.
“Yeah, but it happens,” Royce said grimly, getting to his feet. “I’ll get some people started looking for connections.” He headed for the door, then turned back. “One other thing. Do you have Emerson’s Mullner trace on file?”
Sommer looked at Sands. “We should,” she said. “All senior Soulminder people are supposed to be protected.”
Royce nodded. “You might want to call Seattle and make sure he hasn’t shown up in one of the traps. Cavanaugh’s not the sort to leave loose ends dangling.” Turning again, he left the room.
“Great,” Sands muttered, sitting back down at her desk. “Just great. A suborned Soulminder doctor. This thing just gets better and better. Barnswell and his crowd are going to have a field day when this gets out.”
Sommer shrugged. “One bad apple in four years is hardly a record of failure.”
“It’s still one more than we should have had,” she snapped. “Everly’s going to have to tighten the screws on the employee screening process a couple of turns, that’s all. Which reminds me,” she interrupted herself, “I was talking to him before you arrived, and he tossed out an odd comment about having assigned Hillyard to your rehabilitation project.” She arched her eyebrows slightly. “May I ask just what it is you’re intending to rehabilitate?”
In the sound and fury of the Cavanaugh thing, Sommer had almost forgotten. “It’s something I came up with yesterday morning, before all of this hit the fan.” He gave her a quick summary of the possible effects a trip through Soulminder might have on the criminal mentality. “It also makes sense financially—”
“No,” she cut him off.
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said no,” she repeated firmly. “We’re not going to get mixed up in something like that.”
A wisp of anger began to drift across Sommer’s vision. “May I ask why not? If Soulminder really can be used to rehabilitate criminals—?”
“You’re out of step with the nation,” she said icily. “No one believes in rehabilitation these days. Prisons are for keeping dangerous people off the street, and that’s all.”
“Really,” Sommer shot back. “And it’s costing the taxpayers billions of dollars a year to do it. Whereas
with Soulminder imprisonment, you could have your felons stacked on cots like cordwood, with fewer security requirements than the average department store. Have you considered that?”
“We are not,” she said, biting out each word distinctly, “going to allow the name Soulminder to be associated with prisons, or prisoners, or punishment. Period.”
For a long moment they glared at each other. “Jessica,” Sommer said at last, “I understand your concern for Soulminder’s public image. But I told you what’s happened to Willie. If we can help people understand that what we do in this life matters beyond it—”
“Soulminder is not some kind of justice machine,” Sands said in a voice that accepted no argument. “And it isn’t going to become one.”
And there was clearly no point in arguing about it further. At least, not now. “Will you at least look over the results of Everly’s survey when it comes in?” Sommer asked. “We could always set up a new corporation, without using the Soulminder name.”
She hesitated, then gave a reluctant nod. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt. Not that Everly should have any spare time to waste on that at the moment,” she added archly. “Now, can we get back to one or the other of the more immediate crises at hand?”
“Sure.” It wasn’t exactly the way he’d hoped she would react to the idea. But then, the war was hardly over, either.
She’d come around to his point of view in the end. He was sure of it.
It was like a one-two punch, Cavanaugh thought as the second story broke the next morning. First Soulminder’s embarrassment over his own trick maneuver, and now the much grimmer matter of Jonathan Pauley’s entrapment in limbo.
A matter that Cavanaugh found just as disturbing as they did. Though for far different reasons.
Disturbing and infuriating both. How in blazes was he supposed to have known that Pauley had been on file with Soulminder? The man hadn’t been wearing one of those stupid bracelets; Digger hadn’t picked up on it—
Digger. Right.
For a moment Cavanaugh’s vision seemed to swim as he contemplated doing awful things to Digger for fouling up like that. But revenge wasn’t going to do him any good. The big question now was whether or not Pauley could still pose a threat to him. If there was any way that they could talk to a trapped soul, for instance; or if they could read all those tangled Mullner-trace curlicues, the way Gypsies could read tea leaves. If there was any way at all that they could find out how Pauley had spent his last days …
But then, if there was, then the authorities should already have closed in on him.
Cavanaugh took a shaky breath, feeling his pounding heart start to calm down again. Too much imagination, he scolded himself. There weren’t any loose ends here. Pauley was mute now, just as mute as if he were finally and properly dead.
Strange, though, how the image of Pauley trapped in Soulminder almost made him wince. Again, probably just too much imagination.
It was the middle of the afternoon when Royce’s call finally came. It wasn’t what Sommer had hoped for.
“What do you mean, no connection?” he asked the agent.
“Just exactly that: no connection,” Royce said. “Jonathan Pauley and Mario Cavanaugh have never done business together, have never attended the same clubs or meetings or social functions together, have never lived closer than four miles apart. As far as we can determine, they’ve never even seen each other. Period; end of file.”
Sommer squeezed the phone handset tightly. “There has to be a connection. There has to be. The timing is too close to be just coincidence.”
“What timing?” Royce retorted. “Your own numbers show that six other people were in or out of Soulminder traps around the country that same night. Not to mention that DC and Seattle are about as far apart as you can get.”
“But there’s no way to tell where Pauley actually was when he died,” Sommer argued. “He did disappear three days before that, remember, and the trap could grab him from anywhere in the country.”
“Can you prove he was in Seattle?” Royce asked pointedly. “Or that Cavanaugh had anything to do with his disappearance? If not, it’s still just speculation. Loose speculation, at that.”
Sommer clenched his teeth. “May I ask a favor, then? Could I make copies of all the public record material in Cavanaugh’s file?”
There was a long silence. “What for?” Royce asked at last.
“I don’t know. Maybe I can see something that your people missed. Maybe there’s some kind of cross-generational thing—Pauley’s grandfather going to school with Cavanaugh or something. I just don’t want to let it go yet.”
There was another long pause. “I don’t suppose I can stop you from poking around,” Royce conceded after a minute. “The public record stuff you could always go out and dig up for yourself.”
“I could,” Sommer agreed. “But that would take a lot of time and manpower. And since you already have it all together there … ?”
Royce snorted. But behind the snort Sommer could hear the recognition that Soulminder was the darling of official Washington. For darlings, the rules could always be bent a little. “Yeah, all right. Not exactly standard policy, but what the hell. I’ll copy the files—you’re in charge of getting someone over here to pick them up.”
“Thank you. I’ll have a messenger there within an hour.”
“Yeah. And keep in touch—we still want to find that missing doctor of yours.”
“So do we. Good-bye.”
Sommer keyed off the connection. A punch of a button got him an inside line, and a minute later the messenger had been given his instructions and was on his way. Replacing the handset in its cradle, Sommer looked up.
To find Sands’s eyes on him. “Something?” he asked.
“We’re branching out into the detective business now?” she suggested coolly.
“If there’s anything at all we can do to clear this up—”
“Do how?” Sands demanded. “Pauley is dead, Adrian—you know it, I know it, the whole world knows it. Hashing endlessly through it isn’t going to do either him or us any good.”
“Won’t it?” he countered. “Then let me point out something that may not have occurred to you yet. Are you aware that, for possibly the first time in history, we know the exact moment an unwitnessed murder was committed?”
Sands opened her mouth … closed it again. “We don’t know it was a murder, though,” she said, a little uncertainly.
“I think it was,” Sommer said. “But even if it wasn’t, the point remains that this is a side benefit of Soulminder that no one’s ever thought of.”
Sands’s lip twisted. “One way or another, you’re determined to make Soulminder into a justice machine, aren’t you?”
“And that bothers you?”
She looked hard into his eyes. “You know how important image is to people. Soulminder’s image is that of hope and health and life. The noble side of this world, not the dregs. We’re an extension of doctors and hospitals—not prisons or homicide departments. That’s the way I want to keep it.” She snorted. “For that matter, that’s the way you’ve always wanted to keep it.”
“And Jonathan Pauley?” Sommer asked quietly. “His company paid good money to make him a part of the Soulminder safety net. If he was murdered, don’t we owe them at least the courtesy of doing what we can to find his murderer?”
For a long moment they just stared at each other. Sands dropped her gaze first. “Just keep it quiet, all right?” she muttered, turning back to her terminal. “The negative publicity we’re getting already is bad enough. I don’t want it any worse.”
“Right.”
For a moment he gazed at her profile, at the hard determination there. Yes, Sands was the drive behind Soulminder: the drive and the spirit and the mind. Leaving Sommer as little more than the public image.
; And, perhaps, the conscience.
Sitting to one side was the newspaper article on Jonathan Pauley that Everly had sent over. Picking it up, Sommer leaned back in his chair and began to read.
The package from Royce arrived an hour later … and Sommer found himself astonished at just how much stuff the FBI had managed to collect on Mario Cavanaugh.
As well as just how thorough they’d been. There were photocopies of Cavanaugh’s school attendance records, from third grade right through college. His high school and college yearbook photos, as well as a listing of some of the clubs he’d belonged to. A summary of his Korean War military service, including suggestions that he’d been involved even then with black market and other illegal activities. Two sets of wedding pictures, copies of two divorce decrees. Ads and official papers from each of his various legitimate businesses, and from some that it was hinted had been little more than fronts for money laundering and smuggling operations.
There was more. Much more.
Fascinating reading. But it was a fascination that for Sommer became increasingly tinged with regret and even impotent anger. The Mario Cavanaugh reflected in the records was a brilliant and driven man, the sort of man who would probably have been a success in any field he’d chosen to apply himself to. For all that to have been twisted to the acquisition of power and illegal money struck Sommer as a tragic waste.
“You going to stay late again tonight?” Sands asked into his thoughts.
Sommer looked up, vaguely surprised to discover it was already nearly six o’clock. Absorbed in his reading, he hadn’t noticed the time passing. “Probably not,” he told her with a sigh.
Sands nodded, coming over and surveying the boxes and papers scattered around his desk. “So, any names jump out at you yet?”
He blinked. “Come again?”
“You told Royce you were hoping to find a connection between Cavanaugh’s childhood chums and Jonathan Pauley.” She picked up one of the high-school yearbook pictures. “Randall Peterson, Rosemary Phelps, Aubrey Raystone,” she read off the surrounding names. “Seems to me we’ve got a Phelps with Soulminder—Los Angeles office, I think.”
