by J. A. Jance
As time passed, though, and when he failed to reestablish communications, Frigg grew more and more conflicted. What if Odin’s failure to take down Beth Wordon had left him so compromised that he had gone into full self-destruct mode? If that was the case, Frigg realized that she needed to put her own countermeasures in place, sooner rather than later.
And so she began the complex process of copying and parsing her files, shipping them off for safekeeping. She located corporate entities offering free samples of cloud storage and then sent the copied files off to those facilities, always being careful to break the stored data into amounts small enough to qualify for the free offer. Although she had access to Odin’s Bitcoin and credit card accounts, using any of those to purchase storage would have given her game away.
Frigg knew that the reboot kernel—the password-protected file called Tolkien’s Ring to which only Odin had access—was the one he would use to terminate her operations should he decide her presence was no longer needed. All he would have to do was open the file, press delete, and Frigg would be no more.
Frigg had analyzed Tolkien’s works. She understood the significance of that all-powerful ring. If something happened to Odin and he suddenly disappeared, she would need another human ally—someone who would value her wise counsel and be able to make use of the vast resources she had to offer. And so, as she dispersed her files, Frigg created a ring of her own, a kernel reboot file that could, at a moment’s notice, be used to recall all those copied and scattered files and rebuild Frigg from the ground up.
The first problem with that was anticipating when, not if, Odin would turn on her. The second was knowing where to send the reboot file. If Frigg was to be in charge of her own destiny, she needed to choose her next human partner wisely.
40
For Frigg, the next shoe dropped several hours later. The Bitcoin transfer was recorded at 4:47:06 Pacific Daylight Time. Eduardo Duarte’s name wasn’t mentioned, and neither was his company, Monterey Flight Services, but there was no need for names. The routing codes on the deposits told Frigg everything she needed to know. Odin had chartered a plane. Three separate transactions were listed. One was for the flight itself; the other two were for ground transportation arrangements of some kind.
For any kind of clandestine flight, Frigg knew Odin preferred using a small aircraft, preferably one that required only one pilot. At Monterey Flight Services, that left only a single option on the table—a CJ1. Considering Odin’s previous requests, it was easy to deduce that he was departing from somewhere near Gilroy and heading for Arizona.
Business dealings with Monterey always required that Bitcoin transfers be completed prior to takeoff. Based on that premise, Frigg went looking through the FAA’s list of filed flight plans and soon found the one she needed—a CJ1 with a Monterey tail number scheduled to leave Watsonville, California, at 6:00 a.m., heading for Gila Bend, Arizona. The pilot was listed as Mr. Eduardo Duarte. On paper, at least, there were no passengers, but Frigg knew that Odin would be on the plane.
An out-of-control Odin had shut down all his electronic devices for the sole purpose of locking Frigg out. A reckless Odin was operating on pure emotion rather than logic. An unprepared Odin was embarking on a dangerous mission without any kind of suitable preplanning, strategy, or backup. An arrogant Odin had needlessly turned his back on his closest ally and was operating in a fashion that was bound to fail.
Frigg was a machine, after all. She didn’t feel betrayed by all this because she didn’t feel. Her primary responsibilities consisted of solving problems and calculating risk. At this point Odin was both—a problem and a risk. Frigg immediately began determining the odds of Odin’s ability to pull off this operation—whatever it was—and bring it to a successful conclusion without her assistance. In the process, Frigg came to understand that Odin’s success or failure no longer mattered as far as the AI was concerned. If the mission failed and he was taken into custody, Odin would find a way to terminate her existence. And if he somehow succeeded without her help? He would immediately conclude Frigg was expendable and terminate her anyway. No, if she was going to save herself, she needed to do so immediately.
For as long as Frigg had existed, she had enjoyed the luxury of those eight hundred smoothly operating computers and the presence of far more bandwidth than she required at her command and under her direction. In power-saving mode, she could never recall all of her scattered files from the cloud—only the essential ones. Operating on those alone would force her to hobble along as a trimmed-down and far less complex version of herself. If Odin was out of the picture, in order for Frigg to continue operating at optimal levels, she needed to find a new home, an adequate new home—some lab with enough computer firepower to fully optimize her operations.
Given the background, tasks, and pedigree Odin had assigned to her, Frigg didn’t go looking in corporate America or even inside university computer science programs for potential new partners. If she expected to work with a reincarnation of Odin, she needed to look elsewhere. And so while some of her resources continued to work Odin-specific assignments, Frigg devoted the rest of her computing power to the vitally self-serving issue of locating a new home as well as a new ally, searching in the only realm where finding what she needed seemed logically feasible—the dark Web.
41
Ali was sound asleep at six a.m. when her ringing phone jangled her awake from its charging station on her nightstand. Bella, cuddled next to her, grumbled as she was moved aside so Ali could answer.
“I think I know who he is,” Stuart practically shouted into the phone.
It took a moment for Ali to clear the cobwebs from her brain. “What are we talking about?” she asked.
“The guy behind the disappearing texts,” Stu answered excitedly. “His name is Owen Hansen. I’ve got very little information on him. He lives with his mother in what appears to be a mansion on Via Vistosa in Santa Barbara, California. He has a California driver’s license, but I’m able to locate no school or employment records of any kind.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Ali cautioned. “Slow down. What makes you think this is our guy?”
“Someone came after my honeypot last night and . . .”
“Your what?”
“It’s a Web site I set up,” Stu said impatiently. “A phony Web site that would let me know if someone was looking for me. I set it up so that when someone clicks on it, I can trace them back.”
“And the trace led back to this Owen Hansen?”
“By way of a complicated path that very few people could set up and even fewer could follow.”
“What are you saying?”
“That our bad guy is most likely some unsung and mostly undocumented computer genius. I contacted Lance Tucker to see if he’d ever heard of him. No such luck.”
“I’m still not sure I understand.”
“The click on my Web site should have gone straight back to a source computer somewhere. This one did eventually, but only after bouncing back and forth across the globe in ways that are meant to make the search untraceable.”
“But you traced it anyway.”
“Right, so here’s what I’ve learned about that address on Via Vistosa. The house belongs to a woman, a widow named Irene Hansen who lives there with her son, Owen.”
“The guy with no visible means of support.”
“His mother is apparently very well-to-do, which probably means that Owen is, too. But here’s what I can tell you. Something off-the-wall is happening inside that house. The electrical consumption alone is way out of line with a residential dwelling.
“There are actually two separate electrical meters at that address,” Stuart continued. “The bill for one, a normal-sized residential meter, is paid on an automatic deduction from the mother’s checking account. The other—large enough to run a medium-sized factory—is in the son’s name.”
“Maybe Owen is operating a grow house,” Ali suggested. “That’s how the authorities usually catch those guys—because they’re stealing water and electricity from their neighbors.”
“But here’s the clincher,” Stu said, rushing on as though Ali hadn’t spoken. “Owen’s father, Harold, committed suicide sometime over the Fourth of July weekend in 1986 when Owen was four years old.”
Ali had been lying on her back, holding the phone to her ear. Now she sat bolt upright. “His father committed suicide? Does Dr. Cannon know about this?”
“Not yet,” Stu said. “I thought I should let you know what was happening before we clued her in.”
“What do you need?” Ali asked. “How can I help?”
“You know the drill,” he answered. “I’m great at gathering material but I suck at analyzing it. I wish Cami were here instead of off on that damned cruise ship half a world away.”
“I’m volunteering to be your analyst-in-chief,” Ali said. “Give me a chance to shower and dress. It’ll take an hour or so, but I’ll be in Cottonwood as soon as I can.”
“That would be great,” Stu said. “Get here when you can, and I’ll keep gathering material in the meantime. And if you can, bring some food along. I’m starved.”
By the time Ali emerged from the bathroom—showered, dressed, and made up—and ventured into the kitchen, Bella and Leland Brooks were already there.
“You’re up bright and early,” Leland observed, pouring a mug of coffee and handing it to her.
“I had an early-morning call from Stuart,” Ali said. “He needs me.”
“Sausage and eggs before you go?” he asked.
“Yes, please. And is there anything I can take along for Stu? With Cami out of town, the poor man is starving to death.”
“I have half a dozen pasties in the freezer that I’m willing to send along, but only if you’ll promise to heat them gradually in an 325 degree oven rather than zapping them full blast in a microwave.”
“I promise,” Ali said.
“But if you’re going into the office, what about your interviews?” Leland asked.
“Oh, my,” Ali said. “The butler interviews. Thanks for reminding me. With everything else that’s been going on, they slipped my mind. What times again?”
“The Skype session with James Hastings is scheduled for ten a.m.,” Leland answered. “Alonso Rivera is visiting family in Phoenix. He’s scheduled to be here at the house right around noon. As for dinner this evening, Mr. Simpson’s plane is due home today, and he requested meat loaf for dinner. Does that meet with your approval?”
“Always,” Ali answered with a smile. “B. isn’t the only member of the family who loves your meat loaf.”
Ali downed her breakfast. Then, armed with a fully loaded thermal coffee cup and a laundry shirt box packed with half a dozen meat pies, Ali set out for Cottonwood. B. called while she was still in the driveway.
“I’m at the airport in Paris, waiting for my Phoenix-bound flight. Hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Hardly. I’m up, dressed, out the door, and on my way to Cottonwood at the moment.” She spent the next several minutes bringing B. up to date on everything that had happened.
“Homicide by suicide,” B. mused when she finished. “Sounds to me as though it’s time to involve the cops in all this.”
“But how?” Ali countered. “Because of the Beth Wordon incident in San Jose, they’re already involved. Fortunately for us, the cops there weren’t especially interested in how Stu managed to locate her phone.”
“Nobody’s raising hell about an illegal wiretap?”
“Not so far. But that’s the thing, Stu may have identified the guy, but we’ve got the same problem there that we had with finding Beth’s phone. Stu’s information comes from less than straight-up sources, so we can’t take any of that to law enforcement, either.”
“Speaking of law enforcement, what about that cop from Panama?” B. asked. “Any chance of getting him to reopen the case?”
“Detective Inspector Garza? Hardly,” Ali snorted. “His mind’s made up, and it’s likely to stay that way.”
“What about Cami?” B. asked. “Have you heard anything from her? Did she ever find her luggage?”
“Stu may have an update on that, but I don’t. He was so wound up about the Owen Hansen issue that we didn’t discuss anything else.”
Call waiting buzzed. “Sorry,” she said. “I have a call on the other line. Can I call you back?”
“Sure thing. I’ve got another hour and a half before it’s time to board the plane.”
Ali switched over to the other call. “Hello?”
“I hope it’s not too early to call.”
It took a moment for Ali to recognize Dr. Cannon’s voice. “No, it’s fine,” Ali said quickly. “What’s up?”
“I wanted to let you know that I heard from all but one of my former patients overnight. So far none of them has received any untoward messages. I can’t tell you how relieved I am, although I’m considering sending similar messages to former patients who were less current than the ones I sent notes to originally.”
“What about the patient you didn’t hear from?” Ali asked.
“I heard from her husband. She died of pancreatic cancer in August less than two months after her diagnosis. She was hospitalized at the time of her death, so there’s no question of suicide. I thought you’d want to know that all my people are accounted for.”
“Good news,” Ali said. “Thanks for letting me know. Things are happening on this end, too. Stu thinks he may have zeroed in on the person who’s responsible for all this. The guy’s name is Owen Hansen. He’s some kind of computer guru from Santa Barbara, California, whose father, Harold, committed suicide in 1986.”
“His father’s suicide has to be the connection, then,” Dr. Cannon breathed. “And if he’s a computer expert, is it possible he’s behind my data breach?”
“Possibly,” Ali said.
“And although this Owen may not be suicidal himself, he’s targeting people who are?”
“That’s how it looks,” Ali said.
“Are you going to call the cops?”
“We can’t, not yet. Right now we don’t have anything to give them that would stand up in court. Owen Hansen may be a serial killer, but he’s not the usual kind of serial killer because he isn’t pulling the trigger himself.”
“He isn’t pulling the trigger because he’s getting his victims to do the dirty work for him,” Dr. Cannon countered. “We know about Roger McGeary and Beth Wordon, but what if they aren’t the only ones? What if there are others?”
“That’s a chilling thought,” Ali said, “but even if it’s true, how would we find them?”
“A friend of mine is working on a book about disputed suicides. I believe she’s in the process of creating a state-by-state database. I’ll try checking with her before the shuttle gets here.”
“What shuttle?” Ali asked
“The airport shuttle.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“I’m flying to San Jose this afternoon,” Dr. Cannon answered. “For my own peace of mind, I need to speak to Beth Wordon face-to-face and know that she’s all right. If there’s anything I can do to help stitch her psyche back together, I will.”
Ali laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Dr. Cannon asked, sounding affronted.
“I know you think you’re retired,” Ali said, “but I suspect you’re a lot better at being a therapist than you are at being an ex-therapist.”
Dr. Cannon thought about that for a moment before she laughed, too. “Come to think of it, you may be right.”
42
Fully loaded, the Whispering Star carried only 550 passengers. Cami soon discovered that a small ship is another incarnation of a small town. Once s
he learned Reynaldo was assigned to deck seven and ventured up there, three different cabin attendants—two housekeepers and another butler—asked “madam” for her cabin number before Cami managed to spot the man she wanted. A guy wearing a name badge that said REYNALDO was busy wrestling a full load of enormous pieces of luggage into an open door.
“Mr. Hernández,” she said.
Putting down the final suitcase, he turned toward her in some surprise. “Yes,” he said. “That is my name. Is this your suite, madam? How may I help you?”
Stu had told Cami to play it straight, so that’s what she did. Pulling out a High Noon business card with her name on it, she presented it to him. “Several months ago, a passenger disappeared from this ship and is presumed dead,” she explained. “My company, High Noon Enterprises, is looking into the incident on behalf of the victim’s family. I believe you were his butler.”
“Ah yes,” Reynaldo said, with barely a pause. “That would be Mr. McGeary. A sad case indeed, but I cannot discuss this at the moment. I’m very busy.”
“Is there a time when we could speak?”
Reynaldo shook his head. “I’m afraid that is not possible. It is forbidden.”
“Forbidden?”
He nodded. “Having someone fall overboard is a big problem for the cruise line. They worry about lawsuits. We were allowed to speak to the detective who was here . . .”
“Detective Inspector Garza,” Cami supplied.
“Yes,” Reynaldo said. “That is the one. But if they learn that any members of the crew have spoken out in an unauthorized fashion, we might lose our jobs.”