Buzzworm (A Technology Thriller): Computer virus or serial killer?

by Theo Cage

  This time the call was picked up immediately. “Ms. Duke. I’m Officer Lee. Please don’t hang up.”

  Med could hardly push the words out. “I don’t understand.”

  “Ms. Duke. I see by the speed dial here that you’re Laura’s sister. There’s been an accident.”

  “Accident?”

  “I can’t talk about this over the phone.”

  “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  “No. We need to meet downtown. I'll give you…”

  Med threw the phone down on the passenger seat and grabbed the gearshift. She pushed her way back into the traffic heading north, tears flowing down her cheeks. Over and over as the city blurred past her, she kept repeating. Let them be OK. Let them be OK. As if chanting this could keep any other possibility from slipping into her thoughts. At one point, she heard a tinny voice yelling at her from under the front seat, her phone obviously still connected.

  After what seemed like an eternity, racing along Sixteenth Street, barely aware of the traffic around her, she veered right onto Locust Avenue. A horrid name for a street, she always thought, a wave of fear rolling over her. A block before Laura’s home, she finally slowed, wiping the wetness off of her face. She took the last turn, preparing herself for a street blocked by police cars, the neighbors out on the street, gawking at the horror of a suburban massacre.

  But there was nothing. No police. No crowds.

  Just a neighbor, mowing his yard.

  CHAPTER 18

  BW usually left work late, unable to face a crowded elevator or have to endure eye contact with someone who wanted to crank about how an overlong budget meeting just made the workday a living hell. That’s why he hated them for their pettiness. After all, while they scratched away at their little lives, he was changing the world. Problem was, he had no one to share these accomplishments with. Like the splendid job he had done of turning a simple family dinner for Mary Ellen Duke into a living nightmare. All courtesy of some simple cell phone trickery.

  Tonight it was past ten, later than usual for even him. But then, there was so much to do and so little time. He stepped out of the empty foyer into a downpour, the powerful sodium lights on the sides of the building throwing off rain that flashed like live sparks. He started to run, suddenly chilled by the rain running down his back collar. Within seconds, he was out of the glow of the building and into the poorly lit parking lot. His spot was in the far end of lot D, a long trek from Building 213. Over the years, he had applied for a closer spot, but it was always ignored. He wasn’t surprised. He would have to work on that.

  Getting closer, BW clicked the key fob in his pocket and the lights on his car flashed. He felt momentarily better. That’s when he saw the figure standing behind the vehicle, his shaved head reflecting the glow of the headlights. BW froze. The man stepped out from the front of the small car, something in his hands.

  BW recognized him then. “Hey. Dodge.”

  The big man wiped the rain from his face. “We need to talk.”

  “Can we get in out of the rain?” Dodge nodded. BW got in the driver’s seat expecting Dodge to climb in the passenger side. Instead, the security officer opened the back door. BW could hear him moving around on the seat, struggling to find a comfortable position in the cramped space. He could have moved his seat up, but he waited, watching the man’s face in the rear view mirror, his eyes in shadow. BW couldn’t read his expression, but he knew this wasn’t a social call. They had known each other only as fellow employees. Then Dodge slid a thick package over the seat back and held it there. BW accepted it reluctantly.

  “Open it,” was all that Dodge said.

  BW slid the contents out onto his lap. Printouts. Many stapled together, the ink on the cover page had already started to run and the corners were curling up. He looked at Dodge in the rear view mirror again. The heavy rain running down the windows was casting animated shadows across the skin of his face. His expression seemed to undulate and squirm; he looked like a man who was melting. His clothes were drenched. He must have been waiting for a while.

  “You been out in the rain long?”

  “Turn to page two.”

  BW flipped the soggy cover page over. He hesitated, unwilling to take his eyes off the security director, a man who had been declared missing and feared dead. BW couldn’t see Dodge’s hands. Did he have a gun? If he did, BW didn’t have a lot of options. Dodge looked like he had been on the run or living on the streets. That explained the stubble on his face and why the car already reeked of Dodge’s desperation

  The second page of the documents was a log report, showing administrator access to a system called Archive K. BW knew that archive K was both a repository of evidence gathered over the years by intelligence operatives plus an inventory of physical evidence. Files, tapes, CD’s, film, whatever would be gathered in an investigation. Some of these files would be as old as the CIA. The electronic data was newer. Very few people had access to this server or even knew where it was. The information it contained was incendiary. How had Dodge figured this all out when no one else could? Including Strange, the hired hacker?

  BW knew the archive K system intimately. He had been scavenging there for at least a year, maybe more. He still remembered his excitement at locating what many in the CIA thought was a myth. He also felt the fear of exposure. Information that valuable would be monitored closely. The log showed his exact movements over time. The files transferred. Copied. Erased. Archive K was where BW had found personal information on David Xavier, surveillance photos of various employees and internal memos that dealt with gambling addictions, drugs, affairs, sexual habits, etc. An extortionist’s gold mine.

  BW flipped through the next few pages. The last six months were fully documented. Someone had gone to a lot of work. There was enough here to send him away for ten lifetimes.

  “What am I supposed to be looking for?” he asked Dodge. BW was shaking now. He might claim it was a chill from the rain, but he knew better. He might be able to run if he could get out of the car fast enough. But how far? If Dodge got his hands on him, and believed that BW was responsible for killing his buddy, he would be lucky to live to see a trial.

  Dodge slid forward on the seat and spoke directly into BW’s ear, his breath sour with coffee and cigarettes. “Frank told me you would know what that file meant.”

  “Scammel?”

  “He gave it to me last week. Just before he died. Told me to keep it in case anything went down. Somehow Buzzworm got to him. I can’t make head or tail out of it, but someone will.”

  “Dodge. It’s just a bunch of printouts. Why ask me?”

  Dodge hesitated. “I don’t know who to trust. Someone inside the system got Frank killed. You always seemed a bit of an outsider. No offense. I’m no insider myself. But you know this stuff. I thought you could help.”

  BW took a deep breath. He almost laughed. Dodge wasn’t confronting him. He was just looking for help.

  “I’ll need some time with this. There’s a lot here. Where can I reach you?”

  Dodge touched BW’s shoulder. “I’ll give you a cell number. I’m hiding out in a motel. I know I’m next. Frank told me that I needed to watch my back. You’ve got to help me.” He gave the number and BW scribbled it on the front page of the report.

  BW turned. “Do you have anymore?”

  “No. That’s it. It’s all babble to me. Can you use it to find Buzzworm?”

  “I don’t know, Dave. But I’ll give it a try.” BW slid the logs back into the soggy envelope. He was quiet for a moment, then he seemed to wake up. “Do you need a ride?”

  Dodge hesitated, looking out at the rain. “Better if I don’t. Don’t want to be followed.” He pulled the door open then and disappeared into the storm.

  BW sat there, hearing the roar of the rain for the first time. As soon as he had recognized Dodge by his car, his head had filled with an awful noise. It was gone now, thankfully. But the bundle of papers on his lap sat there like a lo
aded gun that only seconds ago had been held to his head. What had Dodge called him? An outsider? Dodge was an idiot.

  Looking through the rain at Building 213 in the distance, BW knew what others didn’t. He was the ultimate insider. Dodge would regret that. And soon.

  CHAPTER 19

  It was before six in the morning — and there I was, as usual, fumbling with the coffee maker in my kitchen — a cranky machine I hated for over a decade, but never found the time to replace. My wife’s. She left it behind. I know why too. The coffee it produced was as thick as motor oil and about the same color.

  I had just poured this morning’s undrinkable batch down the sink when my cell phone vibrated, signaling a text message. I reached for it, guessing it was my daughter again, keeping me up to date.

  I have information 4 u on the Scammel case.

  It obviously wasn’t my daughter. The sender ID was just a stream of random numbers. I’d never seen that before.

  Who are you?

  Doesn’t matter.

  I can track your address.

  You’re wrong. Go ahead and try. It will just waste time. You don’t have a lot of that left.

  I stared at the tiny glowing screen. Time for what? I thought.

  I know where you can find Buzzworm.

  Buzzworm again. Whoever this was obviously didn’t know that the department had decided Scammel’s death was officially a suicide. There was a peculiar odor to the whole business now with Wishnowsky involved, but I wasn’t Internal Affairs. I had other cases to work on. Hundreds.

  I don’t chase viruses. Now you’re wasting my time.

  There was no immediate response. I was guessing our mysterious sender was reconsidering. Some computer geek who thinks the world revolved around a computer virus and shocked by my total disinterest. But how did he get my cell phone number?

  Scammel wasn’t suicide. He was given orders to die.

  How do you know that?

  You’ll find out. Can we meet?

  Where?

  By video conference call.

  No. Has to be in person.

  NGTH.

  ?

  Get up to speed Hyde. NGTH =Not going to happen.

  I don’t have access to a video conference.

  There’s a Kinko’s on every damn street corner. All have video setups

  How do I connect?

  I’ll send an address. Give it to the Kinko’s clerk and they will hook you up.

  Shit. It’s bad enough I have to deal with these people face to face. Now I’m teleconferencing with assholes.

  I downed something out of the fridge that looked like orange juice, but tasted like radiator coolant and headed out to a mall not far from my place. The traffic was light this early in the AM; the sun just starting to glow behind rows of industrial warehouses. While driving I got another text message. A link to a Skype address.

  Ipscott wasn’t going to be happy with me today. He thought I was wasting too much time on a case that was still classified as undefined. Now I was racking up credit card expenses for video conferencing. But there was a new wrinkle. One of Division 213’s employees, a friend of Scammel’s, David Dodge, was now missing. He hadn’t shown up for work for two days and apparently that wasn’t his style. Emile went out to his place, a small bungalow in the North end of the city, and found no one home. Dodge’s truck was parked in the driveway. Emile got into the house somehow and found sour milk in the fridge, a stuffed mailbox and truck keys on the kitchen table. No signs of a struggle. Dodge was definitely MIA. He had no family in Washington, so we had very little to go on. So we issued a bulletin.

  On the Scammel case, we made a request to the CIA to examine the two computers he had in his lab the night he died. No response yet. When I pulled into the Kinko’s lot I called Emile and woke him up. One of the simple pleasures of life. I asked him to run a report on the Canadian virus contractor Jobime had mentioned. I gave him the name. Was it a coincidence that within minutes of Strange arriving, two people were dead or missing?

  The chubby clerk at the local Kinko’s was surprisingly helpful. Probably a morning person. He led me to a room a little bigger than a phone booth with a Mac computer and a shiny blue web cam mounted above the monitor. He set up the call based on the coordinates I showed him and then closed the door behind me.

  If you’ve been on these webcam calls before you know the drill. A blurry face greeted me, a wall of books behind. The image quality never seems that good over a standard Internet connection, so I wasn’t surprised when the caller moved his head, the image smeared across the screen, sometimes freezing or jumping from place to place. On this call it took a while for the face to settle down. As if the person on the other end was agitated or moving around to get comfortable or just playing with me. When the image cleared, I confess for a few seconds, I couldn’t breathe. It was Frank Scammel. He was wearing the faded T-shirt he died in. He looked as alive as possible on the small screen

  “Who are you?” I said into the microphone.

  “What does it look like?” Scammel smiled.

  “It looks like a cheap computer trick. Congratulations. You are one skilled fruitcake. But I am done here.” I got up to leave.

  “You’ve hurt my feelings, Detective. Cheap? I spent years perfecting this software. And if my work hadn’t been interrupted, I would have made this even better. Please sit down. I want to bring you up to speed on your case.”

  I hesitated. I couldn’t see the national security angle to hacking consumer grade web conferencing. Which is what this was. Had Frank worked on this in his spare time? Outside the CIA? Had they taken Frank out to steal this technology? I sat down slowly. Now I really wanted to get my hands on whoever was playing this game.

  The Frank on the screen moved in closer to his camera. The image was detailed enough I could see the grease in his hair and the cheap stitching on his T-shirt. That was impressive and he seemed to notice. “That’s good. You’re doing better than I expected. Is it because you and I had a brief relationship?”

  “Investigator to corpse. I wouldn’t call that a relationship.”

  The video version of Scammel laughed. “It’s mesmerizing, isn’t it? To think that this was Frank’s crowning achievement for the CIA. To re-create the exact likeness of a person over a video link. In real time. Fully dimensional. And there’s more you haven’t seen yet. It was a shame he had to go. Think of what he could have accomplished!”

  “Before or after the chemical castration?”

  “Ouch. We are bitter, aren’t we, detective. Relax. Frank is no longer a threat to society. It just looks like he is.”

  “But you are.” I let that sink in. The Frank on the screen didn’t move. He seemed to be contemplating the thought. “And how does it feel hiding behind a child molester?” I added.

  “Good point, Detective. I decided to start this call as Frank even though I’m aware he was a bit of an unsavory character. It seemed appropriate. But easy to change as you will see. But you are confused. I am not a threat to you. Unless you are on the payroll of the CIA like everyone else in this town.”

  “Like Wishnowsky?”

  The video version of Frank hesitated. I have no idea how something like this works, but I could almost see him drop his guard for a second. His gaze fell slightly. Like the program was reading his real face and building another on top with the fake likeness. But the tell came through. I had rattled him ever so slightly.

  “I don’t know that particular name, detective. But I do know that thousands of cops in Washington are on the take. How do I know you’re not?”

  “You’re the super hacker, asshole. Check my bank account.”

  The fake Scammel didn’t think that was funny. “I did. That’s why we’re talking. By the way, it’s a shame what cops get paid in this town.”

  Now I was the one caught off guard. How much did this guy know? And it wasn’t any of his fucking business what I made. “So talk. You just said it was a shame Scammel had to go
, that his suicide was assisted. Who pushed him over the edge? ”

  “We’ll get to that in a minute. But let’s drop this Scammel act and try something more interesting. How about Osama Bin Laden?” The screen blurred again, like the caller was shaking his head rapidly for a few seconds. The likeness of Scammel was then replaced by a much older, slender man, bearded, wearing a faded green army jacket with a gold shawl draped over one shoulder. The background scene was now a rough cave. I was no expert, but the person on the screen clearly looked like Osama.

  “Brilliant wouldn’t you say?”

  “Too bad you can’t do the accent. This is all very impressive, but I can pull the plug on this in a second. You can’t control that. I’m busy and you’re still wasting my time?”

  “I thought we could have a chat together. Man to man.”

  “My terms are simple. If you want this to continue, you need to tell me who you are. And the details around Scammel. Otherwise we have nothing to chit chat about.”

  The Osama figure sat back and folded his arms. “Bullshit, detective. I’ve read about you and looked at some of your case files. You’re like a hound on the scent. You live to solve these cases. How would you like to solve a dozen serious homicides? Or are you more interested in banging your fat head against your cubicle in aggravation over the suicide of one sorry sack of shit.”

  It was hard to read this guy. He loved to talk and he was obviously bright. He could be dangerous, but he also might just talk himself right out into the open if I let him. “If you have any evidence on Washington murder cases, you need to hand it over.”

  “That would implicate a dozen local agency operatives. They are always mixed up in local intrigue. And you know that. You crawl around in that muck everyday.”