by Thomas Scott
“Sounds good to me.”
And Virgil was in.
23
Snowhill and Epps took him to a break room where three other programmers were eating vending machine dinners. All together the five of them looked a little like a Seattle grunge band from fifteen years ago. Epps made the introductions by pointing at the other three programmers and said, “Wu, Myers, Rand.” Then he pointed his chin at Virgil and said, “Cop.”
Virgil pulled out a chair, sat down at the table and got right to it. “My name is Virgil Jones. I’m investigating the death of your co-worker, Nicholas Pope. Anything you guys could tell me would be a big help.”
Myers spoke first. “Might want to get your facts straight. Don’t know that I’d call him our friend.”
“Why not?”
“He was my friend,” Wu said.
Myers ignored Wu as if he hadn’t spoken. “Because we hardly knew him. Most of us have been here for quite a while, hired directly by the lottery, but Pope came over with PTEK. He hadn’t been here that long before they sacked him.”
“Sacked him? You mean he was fired?”
Rand gave him a dry look. “No dude, it means they put him in a paper bag.”
Virgil ignored the jab. “Why did they fire him?”
They all looked at each other but no one answered. “Look guys, let’s decide something right here and now. You agree to talk to me and I’ll give you my word that whatever is said here stays here. Sound fair?”
“Sounds like cop bullshit to me, that what it sounds like,” Wu said. “Wu want no part of it.” He stood from the table. “If the rest of you had any sense you no want it either.” He walked out of the room.
Virgil looked at Rand, Myers, Snowhill, and Epps, raising his eyebrows at them. Snowhill waved the expression away. “Fuck Wu, he gets all worked up over everything.”
Myers shouted into the hallway. “Yeah, fuck Wu, fuck Wu, and they all laughed and high-fived each other. Virgil shook his head.
Wu was worked up. He was sitting at his desk, his computer monitor displaying the live feed from the break room. He called Pate. “It Wu. Police are here.”
Pate was instantly worried. “Wu? What the hell is going on?”
“Wu just told you. Cop. That what going on. Here at lottery office. What you want Wu to do?”
“Hold on.” Pate set the phone down, took out his cell and called Hector. When Hector answered, Pate said, “Come to the office, now,” then ended the call and turned his attention back to Wu. “How many? Lots of cops? Like a raid?”
Wu rolled his eyes. “Not lots. One.”
“Who’s he talking to?”
“Some of the programmers. You want live feed? There are security cameras in the room.”
“Yes, yes. You can do that?”
“Wu can do. It is not exactly live, live.”
“What does that mean, Wu?”
“There is approximately ten second delay.”
“I don’t care about that. What do I have to do to get it?”
“Turn on computer.”
“It is on. What do I do?”
“What is your I.P. address?”
There was a flicker of silence. “I don’t know what that is.”
Wu sighed. “Here is what you do…”
“What do you mean, he gets worked up over everything?”
“Well, there’s some loyalty there, I think,” Snowhill said. “What Wu said is true. Him and Pope were friends.”
Epps nodded. “They hung out together. Not a lot, but some. He came over with Pope…from PTEK. What I told you earlier? When I said I idolized him? It wasn’t just me. Everyone did. Pope was something of a legend and I don’t mean just around here. I mean out there…on the net. He’s been places the rest of us don’t even like to dream about going. I’m talking heavy duty places that are firewalled so thick that the Chinese and the Russians don’t even bother.”
“You mean government systems?” Virgil said.
Rand turned the corners of his lips down. “No, man. I’m talking about cracking the places that really run the country. The corporations. There really isn’t any notoriety with cracking the government anymore. That shit’s too decentralized after 9/11 no matter what the media says. They go on TV every night and talk about interagency cooperation and communication, but I don’t care who you are, it’s all bullshit.”
Myers agreed. “It’s true. They’re lying through their teeth every time—”
Virgil cut them off. “Look guys, this is all very fascinating stuff, but we might be getting a little sidetracked here. I’d like to focus on who killed Pope and why.”
Rand swished his index finger back and forth like a windshield wiper. “No, no, no, it matters. Don’t you see? Pope came up late in the game. Hell, we all did. There isn’t much money to be made anymore in hacking, at least in the traditional sense.”
“What do you mean by in the traditional sense?”
“What I mean is, and just about any other hacker would agree, the whole damn thing was never about the money. It’s about the game, the challenge. Sure, a lot of guys made a shit pot of money stealing corporate secrets and credit card information from databases—and a lot still do—but the guys that are really good used to do it for the thrill, the rush. The bragging rights. Now they do it to expose wrongdoing and corruption. Look at Snowden or Anonymous. You think they’re doing it for the money?”
“He’s absolutely right,” Epps said. “It’s what you might call catch and release for coders. Besides, it’s too damned dangerous anymore to steal. Who wants to go to jail?”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re doing it for sport or profit,” Virgil said. “The activity itself is the part that goes against the law. To use your catch and release analogy, the game warden doesn’t care if you haven’t caught any fish when he pulls his boat up next to yours. If you’ve got a line in the water, you better have a fishing license. If you don’t, it’s illegal.”
“Only if you get caught,” Snowhill said.
“As much as I enjoy the philosophical debate, none of this helps me find who killed Nicholas Pope.”
“That’s because we don’t know anything,” Rand said. “I get that you guys probably hear that a lot, but in this case it’s true.” The others nodded their heads in agreement.
“Why was he fired?”
“Who knows?” Snowhill said. “I’ll tell you this though, it wasn’t for the reason they’re saying.”
“What reason is that?”
“Ah, he smoked a little dope.”
“But that’s not why they fired him?” Virgil let the skepticism creep into his voice.
“I really don’t think so,” Rand said. “It’s…mmm…tolerated, I guess would be the right word.”
“Why?”
“Any number of reasons really, but the main one is simple. Show me a coder who doesn’t mellow out at the end of his shift and I’ll show you someone who isn’t a coder. We all smoke. It’s as simple as that. Odd hours, bad food, too much caffeine, no social life…hell, the pot is the only thing that keeps us sane.”
“And they overlook it?”
“They have so far. They have to, really. If they didn’t there wouldn’t be anyone to do the job. Besides, that shit is going to be legal before too long anyway.”
“So all of you believe Pope was fired for something other than drug use?”
More nodding. “Had to be,” Myers said. None of us have ever been drug tested. I can tell you this though, I’d like to know why he got fired. We all would. Whatever he did—and he must have done something wrong—I’d like to know what it was so I don’t make the same mistake. I’m not talking about the job, either. I’m talking about getting whacked.” He said the word ‘whacked’ like he’d been watching too much television. “The two things must be connected, right? Him getting fired and then killed?”
“It is possible,” Virgil said. “You guys might want to watch your backs for a while. Don’t get al
one with anyone you don’t know.” He let them sit with that for a minute before he asked anything else. “Tell me about your boss, Abigail Monroe.”
“Like what?” Snowhill said.
“Like what kind of person is she?”
“She’s okay, I guess,” Epps said.
Snowhill was taking a drink of his Coke when Epps spoke and snorted a mouthful onto the table. “Okay, I guess? Christ, Eppy, tell the truth why don’t you?”
Virgil looked at Snowhill. “What?”
Snowhill wiped his mouth on his sleeve and shook his head at Virgil.
“She’s hot, dude,” Rand said. “Epps wants to bang her just slightly more than the rest of us, and the rest of us want to bang her pretty fucking bad.”
Even Virgil had to smile at that. “What about Wu?”
“Well, there’s some debate there,” Rand said.
“A debate? What do you mean?”
“Ah, there’s no debate,” Myers said. “Wu’s a little gay.”
Wu was giving instructions to Pate on how to receive the feed when he heard Myers say, ‘Wu’s a little gay.’
What? Gay? Where that come from? Wu not gay. He turned the volume up slightly so he could hear more clearly.
“Wu? Hello, Wu? Are you there?” Pate. He’d forgotten about him. Had Pate heard what they were saying about him? He didn’t want that. He killed the outgoing feed. “Wu, what happened? I had it for a split second then it was gone.”
Wu thought for a moment. “Mmm, Wu not sure. Check the sub-net mask on your router. It is probably not correctly configured.”
“For Christ’s sake, Wu, I don’t know how to do that…”
That might be something, Virgil thought. “Tell me more about Wu.”
“Why, do you lean that way?” Epps said. “You don’t look like the type.”
Virgil laughed at the question. “That’s good to know and no, I don’t…lean that way. I’ll tell you this though, the crime scene at Pope’s was messy. It looks exactly like some of the ones I’ve seen before. The…brutality of it all. When you get to that level of violence it’s often the result of a scorned lover. And when that type of violence is done to a man, it’s usually indicative of…well, you can see where I’m going with this, can’t you?”
“Well, I can tell you this,” Snowhill said. “Wu didn’t kill Pope.”
“How do you know?”
“He was killed the same day he was fired, right?”
“Yes.”
“We were all here, working on the code. Wu was right here with us.”
“He didn’t leave, go out to lunch, or anything like that?”
“No. None of us ever do,” Epps said. “When you’re working the code you get into the zone, man. You might be able to step outside for a quick smoke or something, but no one takes the time to get in their car and drive to a McDonalds. You’d lose your rhythm.”
“Eppy’s right,” Myers said. “Besides, that was the day we had the air conditioning problem. It was about ninety-five degrees in here and we were all running around setting up external fans to keep the servers from overheating. Wu was fried by the time we were done. We all were, but he was here. Hey, you know what’s funny? That’s the day we figured out he was a little gay.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Virgil said.
“Monroe,” Epps said. “It was so hot in the building she was walking around barefoot. It’s her feet. Have you ever seen them?”
Virgil assured them he hadn’t.
“They’re amazing,” Rand said. “I don’t quite know how to describe them.”
“I do,” Epps said. “They’re the sexiest feet I’ve ever seen…”
“How does that prove Wu is gay?”
“He thought her feet were disgusting,” Rand said. He verbally italicized the word ‘disgusting.’
Virgil was skeptical. “That’s hardly indicative of sexual preference.”
They all stared at him for a few moments, then Rand said, “Whatever, dude. Wu’s still gay.”
“Fine, fine,” Virgil told them. “I’m not interested in Wu’s sexual leanings. I’m interested in Pope…”
“When Wu heard the cop say he wasn’t interested in him, he hit the button and released the outbound feed. “What about now?” he said to Pate.
“Yes, yes, I have it,” Pate said. “But the picture looks wrong.”
“What mean, wrong?”
“Sort of rounded. Like looking through a glass bowl or something. I can’t tell who is who.”
“Yes. Fisheye lens. Get whole room that way.”
“Can you zoom in or something?”
“Yes. You want the cop?”
“No, Wu, I want the microwave. Of course I want the cop. And I can barely hear them.”
Wu tapped a few keys on his keyboard to zoom the camera, then upped the audio output. “How that?”
Pate leaned closer to his own monitor. “Yes, that’s much better. I can—”
Wu waited for his boss to finish, but the line remained silent. Finally he said, “What wrong?”
“That’s not a cop, Wu. That’s the man who murdered my son.”
Wu had watched Augustus Pate’s son, Samuel, commit suicide on national TV like everyone else, but he wasn’t about to debate the facts with his boss. “What you want Wu to do?”
Pate was silent for a few moments and then said, “Nothing. Let’s hear what he has to say.”
“The thing about Pope,” Epps said, “is he was a little shifty.”
“Shifty?”
“Yeah, you know, sort of slippery. I never really trusted him. None of us did.”
Snowhill, Myers, and Rand all nodded their heads. “Wait a second…earlier you all said you idolized him.”
“We do,” Rand said. “Or did, I guess I should say. But it was because of his talent. The guy was the best I’d ever seen at what we do, but he was still sort of a shifty fucker.”
“Shifty how? In what way?”
“I’m not sure I could define it,” Epps said. “I don’t think any of us could.”
Virgil put some gravel in his voice. “Try.”
“Jesus, dude…chill,” Rand said. “We’re trying to help.”
“Then help,” Virgil said, but he dialed it back some.
Snowhill looked at Virgil. “It’s like you said when we were outside. You asked if we had anything going on the side. That was Nick. He always had something going. He was always talking about making a big score, but he never spoke about anything in particular.”
“That’s true,” Epps said. “He was the kind of guy who dreamed big. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but he was also the kind of guy that might go a little outside the lines to make it happen.”
“Maybe more than a little,” Snowhill said.
“So. A risk taker,” Virgil said.
“More like a risk maker. And now he’s dead.”
“Tell me about his sister, Nichole. Any of you guys ever meet her?”
Hector walked into Pate’s office and started to say something, but Pate waved him around behind his desk, a finger touched to his lips to shush him. He pointed at the monitor. “Live feed from the lottery building.”
Hector squinted at the computer monitor. “Where’s Wu?”
“That’s how we’re getting the feed.”
Hector pulled a chair around behind the desk and sat down. He’d just caught the end of what one of the programmers was saying…“Nichole, she was here quite a bit before Nick was killed. It was against the rules, but with the jacked up hours we keep around here no one ever said anything. I liked her. We all did. Easy to talk to, didn’t treat us like nerds, listened to what we had to say like she was really interested. Plus, she’s good looking…in a hard sort of way. Not surprising, though, given the way they were raised.”
There was a long silence at the table. Pate thought he might have lost the sound. It went on long enough that he picked up the phone and called Wu. “Wu, I’m not g
etting any sound.”
“That because no one talking.”
“Right,” Pate said into the phone before hanging up. He looked at Hector. “That Wu is sort of a smart ass. He gets on my very last nerve sometimes.”
“I think some of it is his broken English,” Hector said. Then he pointed to the screen. “Here we go…”
“I’m familiar with what happened to them as children,” Virgil said.
“How’s that?” Epps said.
“Nichole has asked me to help find out what happened to her brother.”
“So she told you that the cops gunned down her old man while she and Nick sat there and watched?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“She didn’t have to,” Virgil said. “I’m the one who shot him.”
Hector looked at Pate. “Did you know any of this?”
Pate shook his head. “Not all of it. Something is going on here. Get me everything you can on Nichole Pope. I want it by tonight before we go to Pearson’s.”
“You got it boss.”
Virgil still couldn’t connect what he’d learned about Pri-Max—Pate’s other company that held the state contract to build the private prison in Hendricks County—with the death of Nick Pope. “Tell me about the unclaimed funds,” Virgil said. That got them going.
Wu killed the feed. He picked up the phone and dialed. When it was answered he said, “He knows. It’s time to move. Take your emergency exit bag and leave everything else behind. Go now.” He hung up without waiting for a reply. Ten seconds later his phone rang. Pate.
“Wu, I’ve lost the feed.”
“Hold on. Wu try to reroute through a proxy server.”
“I don’t know what that means, Wu, and I don’t care. Get me that feed back.”
Wu clicked at his keyboard…a series of meaningless jabs that he hoped sounded like a frantic effort to get the feed back up. “Hold on. Wu trying.”
