by Kat Wheeler
She had planned to leave it alone hours ago, but two more drinks had made her curious about the hubs again, and as she tripped over them on the way to her bedroom, she decided to give it one last go.
Cameron walked to the hall closet and dug into the back for an old toolbox a long-ago boyfriend had left behind. She dragged the heavy box out, wiped the dust off the top, and reached inside for a screwdriver. If the software wasn’t the issue, maybe something in the hardware was defective. She’d just take both units apart and have a look.
If she weren’t four cocktails into the evening, she’d have realized the futility of that idea. She had no way to test any of the individual components that make up the HTH, much less the know-how to even approach something like that. Her brain was pretty foggy, and when she plopped down on the floor with the screwdriver in her hand, she’d passed the point of analytical thought. So, like the layman she was, she tore into the HomeTech Hubs and began taking them apart.
Chapter Six
Mornings are a bitch
The shrill beeping of her cell phone alarm jolted Cameron awake with a vengeance on Saturday morning. She reached over with a groan and turned it off. It was so tempting to sink back into the haze embellished by her white-noise machine. But if she did that, then she’d miss her yoga class and feel like a slug all weekend. Plus, she needed to hit the market on her way back. Her cupboards were chronically bare due to her long hours and dinners out wining and dining her customers. She was going to be home all weekend. No reason not to cook, although it was tempting to order in every night since everything in New York could be delivered. But she got her fill of eating out during the week with her clients. This was her time.
If she forced herself to get up now, she could get all her errands done early and spend her afternoon watching football. If she was really lucky, Kentucky might even pull off a win.
She pushed herself up and staggered into the kitchen. She grabbed her standard breakfast of Diet Coke and chugged it with two Advil. It was her usual hangover cure, and that combined with a shower should have her moving at normal speed in no time. Stripping off her clothes and getting into the shower felt more challenging than usual, probably due to the bourbon. After she was out and dressed in her workout clothes, she was beginning to feel like a human being again. She’d headed out of the bathroom, blindly walking through her living room to the opposite side to hit the switch for her automated shades. She really should take the time to sync them with her HTH so she could raise them with voice commands, but somehow, she just never got around to it. It felt too much like work for her to play with tech on her off time.
Blackout shades in NYC were a godsend. With all the light pollution in the city, it was hard to sleep without them. But they really did black out all the light, and in her haze, she hadn’t flipped the light switch, so she just had very little ambient light from her hallway to guide her. It wasn’t enough, she realized, as she stepped on a sharp piece of plastic lying on her floor. She jumped up, grabbing her foot in pain, and as she landed, her other foot smashed down on something else sharp and she shrieked, windmilled her arms as she lost her balance, and promptly fell on her ass. In her shock, Cameron burst out laughing, thankful no one was there to see that display of grace. But what had she stepped on? She wasn’t a clean freak by any stretch of the imagination, but she generally kept her floors clean. She had to; she had a remote vacuum cleaner she scheduled to sweep her place while she was working, and it wouldn’t be good to get it caught on something when she wasn’t home. Theoretically, it was supposed to turn itself off if it jammed, but being in the industry had taught her that what machines were supposed to do and what they actually did wasn’t always the same thing.
Cameron reached out and grabbed the offending object, picking it up to examine it.
Oh yeah, she remembered now. She took apart Barry’s HomeTech Hubs last night. She hoped she could put them back together, or better yet, maybe Barry wasn’t expecting them back. Worst-case, she’d just buy him two new ones if they were beyond her ability to fix. They were cheap. She could eat that as payment for her drunken act of stupidity. Maybe it would help her learn her lesson, and next time she felt the urge to get creative, she’d just go to bed.
It was there, sitting in the pitch black of her apartment, throbbing pain in both feet, hair wet from the shower, that Cameron made the discovery that would change the course of her life. Giving her foot a final rub, she swept the pieces of the HomeTech Hubs away from where she was sitting, clearing herself space to get up without any additional incidents. Pushing the last piece aside, she stopped. Something caught her eye. There was a faint glow coming from one of the pieces. Impossible, she thought. Both units were trashed and incapable of working. They were also unplugged and had no batteries or internal power source. There shouldn’t be any way anything could be glowing on that device; it must have been a reflection.
It was faint, and there was no way she would’ve noticed it with any light on, probably the reason she hadn’t noticed it the night before in her fervor of deconstruction and bourbon. But there it was. A soft green light coming from one of the pieces. Even in pitch black, the light was barely visible, and she had to focus to see it, but there was no doubt. Something on this device was getting power from something. But why? And how? It was a cheap consumer product. It didn’t cost enough to have any of the advanced technology that would keep something powered without a source. Sure, there were things available to do that, but they were expensive. Much too expensive to add to a cheap device. And certainly not necessary on a product that lived indoors and would be able to be constantly plugged in.
With a sick feeling in her stomach that had nothing to do with the booze from last night, Cameron set the piece on her coffee table. She got up, turned the lights on, and raised the blackout shades. Slowly she made her way back to her couch and hesitantly picked up what she could now see was a computer board. The light wasn’t visible now, but she could see the indicator it came from. It was a small part. Less than an inch square. Setting it back down on the coffee table, she moved again to the floor and started digging through the parts of both hubs that she had disassembled the prior evening. She missed her yoga class in her focus, but she kept searching. She busied herself playing a solo version of the strangest match game ever.
Finally, after an hour, she gave up. It wasn’t there. There wasn’t a duplicate to the piece that was on her table. She’d meticulously laid out every part of both hubs on her floor with its corresponding twin right next to it. All the pieces were there. Two complete units. She looked under the couch, in the kitchen, even in the bedroom, though she knew she wouldn’t find it.
Cameron Caldwell had discovered why some HomeTech Hubs failed and others didn’t. But it wasn’t an answer at all.
She picked up the circuit board on her coffee table one more time and examined it. She knew enough to know it was a transmitter of some kind. She knew it had to be expensive since it could power itself. And she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever it did, it wasn’t good, and it wasn’t supposed to be there.
Chapter Seven
What do you mean, you don’t have an iPhone?
Will wasn’t having a good start to his Saturday. It was six in the morning, and he was standing, untouched coffee in his hand, in the misty rain in front of the Synergistic Engineering headquarters on 29th Street. Detective William Justus had been an NYPD homicide detective for seven years, and he was acutely aware of the irony of his last name. Some days it seemed like everyone he met commented on it. It was a credit to his laidback nature that it didn’t even faze him anymore.
The one thing this crime scene had going for it so far was that it was on the same block as a great local coffee shop. He couldn’t even begin to wrap his mind around what the eight-story former hotel had cost the company not only to purchase but to renovate. The interior was wasted, in his opinion, with too much open space. Space being
such a commodity in the city, a native New Yorker like Will resented the opulence it represented. He lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in Greenpoint that he bought long before the neighborhood had become gentrified. That was the only reason he could afford to live there now. Prices in the city kept rising, driving working people farther and farther out to make room for the elite and the foreign investors who owned apartments they didn’t even live in. It was good for him though. He planned to cash out on his retirement. Take his measly police pension and the profits from that apartment and buy himself a place in the country. Far away from the throngs of people and the worst of humanity. Cynical? Hell, maybe he was. But he’d dare anyone to point out any NYC cops with as many years on the force as he had who weren’t.
The first floor of the Synergistic building was leased to several bespoke clothing companies he was sure he couldn’t afford to buy a sock from. The lobby of the business was still as large as a storefront. All he could think was that it was a terribly vain waste to have such a showy entrance when the monthly rent for a business there would earn tens of thousands of dollars a month.
It wasn’t that he hated tech people, or rich people in general. It was just that they had a way of looking down on him, either for his lack of technical know-how or his lack of finances. Will was a Luddite. He didn’t have a smartphone. He only carried a mobile phone as a consequence of his job. He didn’t participate in social media; he didn’t stream anything. He didn’t even have Wi-Fi at his apartment. They had it at the station, and that was enough for him. It was unusual for someone his age. His generation was the first to grow up with computers. Pagers and cell phones started to gain popularity when he was in high school. But unlike his peers, he didn’t embrace the technology, and joining the Army lessened his exposure to it. By the time he opted out of his service and used the military to fund his education, he wasn’t interested in catching up on the current trends. He knew enough to get by, but he preferred the outdoors to sitting in front of a computer; and for the life of him, he couldn’t understand the appeal of scrolling through a feed of people he used to know trying to outdo each other and prove how great their lives were. He had to pretend his friends’ kids were cute in person; he didn’t need to do it online too.
Police detectives in New York weren’t exactly raking in the big bucks. During a murder investigation, people’s worst traits tended to come out, and the situation was always worse when dealing with the wealthy. Their lack of respect for his authority, their sense of entitlement, and their quick calls to their lawyers almost always impeded an investigation.
And that’s why Detective William Justus was pissed off. Standing on the street, trying to inhale his coffee and waiting for his partner.
Will watched his partner, Detective Alan Jones, walk out of the doorway to Synergistic and give him a wave.
“What have we got?” he said, dispensing with the pleasantries, as was his custom, and getting right to the point.
“Cleaning crew found him,” Alan replied in his slow, even way. Nothing seemed to rattle him. A twenty-two-year veteran of the force, he’d passed on retirement two years ago to increase his pension. He had two daughters and one granddaughter, and according to him, girls were expensive. But with his experience in the city, he’d pretty much seen it all. And in contrast to Will, he was the first person in their precinct to purchase any new technology that came on the market. “The victim is twenty-eight-year-old engineer Matteo Rodriguez. Matt to his friends. He’s loaded. Practically a god in these circles. He’s the one who invented the HTH.”
“The what?”
“Really? The HomeTech Hub? Everyone has one of those. Got mine for the kids, They love it. Grandkid does too. Delia says she doesn’t, but I catch her talking to it sometimes.”
Will was nodding along, half paying attention, until he heard the last part. “What? Talking to it?”
“Yeah, it’s an artificial intelligence device. You say anything starting with ‘AIME,’ you know, like AI for Me, but pronounced like the girl’s name, Amy. Anyway, it’ll give you an answer. You can ask about the weather, sports scores, make a phone call, ask how many cups are in a gallon, whatever, and it answers you.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I don’t expect you would, but it’s the hottest thing out right now. You can use it to listen to music, shop from it, and a million other things. The best part is that it hooks into the thermostat and learns what you like. That way Delia and the girls can’t overdo it on the air-conditioning and freeze me out when I get home. Not to mention it saves me a pretty penny too.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Oh sure, and that’s not all. Companies are going nuts trying to tie into this thing and monetize it. It’s already made this company over a billion dollars.”
“Now that I understand,” Will said, finishing his coffee and throwing it in the nearby trash can before reaching for the door handle. “And that’s worth killing over.
Their conversation continued as they entered the building and nodded at the receptionist, who was desperately trying to stop crying and pull it together. They continued to the elevator. Will stopped and stared at the wall next to the door. There were no buttons. It had a black scanner-like pad instead. Sort of like what was on a grocery checkout. He stared at it for a beat, then slowly ran his hand back and forth in front of it, trying to figure it out. The chuckle from his right told him he was getting it very wrong.
Alan held his phone up to the scanner, and the doors closed and began to take them up to the eighth floor.
“We’ve got to get you a smartphone, man. What would you’ve done if I hadn’t been here?”
With a slow grin creeping on his face, showing the dimples that made him look younger than his forty-one years, he replied, “Stairs, man. I would’ve taken the stairs.”
“Victim Matteo Rodriguez, chief engineering officer at SE. He earned a scholarship to MIT, where he majored in computer science and engineering, then on to a master’s in mechanical engineering. Fit guy, he was a rock climber. Cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head,” Alan recited. “He was beaten repeatedly with a crowbar. Found it at the scene. Looks like the victim stayed late at the office last night, which, according to everyone asked, is not unusual. Was working at his computer when someone snuck up behind him and hit him several times in the head. We’ll know more once the ME takes a look, but that’s the gist.”
“Any sign of a break-in?”
“Nope, not a thing,” he replied, closing the notebook app on his phone that he had been reading from. “And let me tell you something else. It isn’t easy to get in this place. At night or otherwise. There’s a security guard. Keycards are required to enter all doors and the stairwells, including the one to the victim's office he was killed in. You saw the elevator. It identifies everyone who uses it by their phone.”
“Don’t they have security cameras in a place like this? Seems we should at least be able to take advantage of all the technology in here.”
“Disabled.”
Will swore under his breath. Figures.
“What about the keycard access? Does it show whose was used?
“It was the victim’s. Our tech guys say at a place like this, that means nothing. It could’ve been cloned, hacked to make it look that way, or any number of options. If whoever did this was smart enough to get past the cameras, the rest of it was just easy.”
Will sighed. Not good news.
The elevator dinged. They finally reached the crime scene.
“You know, Al, I think I’m really going to hate this case.”
Chapter Eight
Saturday, wait. But Sunday always comes too late.
Cameron Caldwell hadn’t moved in some time. After making her discovery that morning, she’d dropped the shades back down, turned the lights off, and stared at the glowing green dot on her coffee table. J
ust to convince herself she wasn’t losing her mind. She’d stood up and paced for a bit, but mostly she just sat there, in the dark, staring as she tried to figure out what to do next.
Her brain was racing with the possibilities of what the device could be used for when it hit her. That was the wrong question. The better question was what couldn’t it be used for? This thing was implanted in the HTH, which was connected to and given a password to the user’s home network. It could get into and gather information from any device connected to the home network. And with the right programming, it could get anything. It could get the date, time, and location information. See when your TVs were on, what you were watching. It could access your surveillance cameras, download videos of you in your house when you thought no one was watching. If whoever did this was clever enough—and at this point, she had to assume they were—they could even get into all the computers brought into the home. Download any information the user had. Because they were given access when you connected the hub. Anyone bringing a laptop home from the office with corporate secrets or people's stored photos and videos. All of it could be gathered with something like this.
But how did it work? How often did it transmit? If it could discern location information, would someone know where the device was now? Could they realize it had been tampered with? Her mind was spinning with the possibilities.
Her stomach growled, bringing her back to reality and making her realize it was almost lunch and she hadn’t eaten anything all day besides her Diet Coke and Advil. Breakfast of champions. And really, if she stepped back from it a little, it probably wasn’t that bad. This may be the only hub affected. It could be a bug planted by a PI or something. She didn’t know anything about the guy whose house this came from. He could be going through a messy divorce, and his wife could be spying on him. Or he could be a criminal, and this device could’ve been planted by the government. Or the cops. There could be any number of reasonable explanations for it that didn’t have anything to do with a crazy conspiracy or anything like that. She’d been watching way too many spy movies.