by Alex Siegel
Ipo and Hanley carried the unconscious police officers out the front door and placed them on the grassy lawn. Marina knew they would wake up confused but refreshed in a few hours. Her venom had no long-term side effects.
She looked around and found the wife in the kitchen where the architecture matched the rest of the house. Cheerfully painted tiles covered the countertops. Stained wooden cabinetry looked hand-carved. The windows had elegant arches on top, and beams crisscrossed the ceiling. Only the stainless steel appliances detracted from the traditional style.
"Mrs. Conway," Marina said softly, "we heard about your husband. I'm very sorry."
Ipo and Hanley came into the kitchen behind her.
Mrs. Conway just sobbed.
"You have no idea why he did this?" Marina said.
Mrs. Conway shook her head, and tears flew. "He was happy and successful. The CFO of a rapidly growing company. Everything was going well. He only said two words. 'I'm sorry.' He didn't even explain why."
"Mind if we just look around? Maybe we'll find a clue."
"Go ahead." Mrs. Conway waved her arm dismissively.
"Spread out," Marina told Ipo and Hanley.
She wandered through the home, admiring its elegance. Normally, strict adherence to a particular architectural style created an uncomfortable space suitable for magazines rather than people. The Conways had managed to blend form and function nicely though.
Marina found an office. Everything inside was made of wood, leather, or rough stone. Old books filled bookshelves which covered the walls. She tried to remember the last time she had read a book for pleasure, and she couldn't. Her job consumed every minute of her time.
The desk was a simple wooden table with drawers hung underneath. The top surface was made of thick planks stained dark brown, and it reminded her of a picnic table in a way. A sleek phone was sitting on the desk.
She grabbed it and took a close look. Only the basic icons were available, and when she checked the list of applications, she found very few. The email wasn't even configured.
Marina called Min Ho on her normal, gray phone.
"Ma'am?"
"Bill Conway is dead," she said. "He committed suicide in a suspicious manner. I have his phone, but it looks like he performed a factory reset before he offed himself. He was probably trying to wipe away incriminating data."
"The data might not be gone. A reset just overwrites the system configuration. Recovering the lost data will be a pain though."
"What do I do?"
"Go to the app store," Min Ho said. "Install a special app called 'sonic pickaxe'. You'll need a password..."
He walked Marina through a complex installation procedure.
"What am I installing?" she said anxiously.
"It's a tool written by the twins in Chicago. It's the last word in cracking phones. They're unbelievably smart, by the way. Every message I get from them blows my mind."
Finally, the installation was done. Min Ho established a connection from his end, and he could proceed without her help. Marina placed Conway's phone back on the desk.
"Be very careful," she said into her own phone. "You could find what caused Conway to commit suicide. I don't want the same thing happening to you. Tell everybody else in headquarters to keep a close eye on you and to intervene immediately if you start acting funny."
"Yes, ma'am," Min Ho said.
She hung up and searched the rest of the office carefully. She assumed there was a hidden safe because high-power executives always had one. She tapped on the walls with the butt of her knife and listened for a hollow sound.
There was a large oil painting of a nativity scene on the wall, and it looked like an authentic, historical piece. The frame was covered in real gold leaf. When she tried to check behind the painting, she discovered it was affixed solidly to the wall.
Hello, Marina thought.
She probed and prodded until she found a release concealed in the frame. The painting swung out to reveal a large safe with an electronic lock. She frowned. I could really use Aaron's acid spit now, she thought.
She tapped her foot as she considered what to do. Blowing the door off the safe might destroy the contents along with a good chunk of the house.
She went back to the kitchen. Mrs. Conway was still there, and she had stopped crying. She was making herself a pot of tea.
"I need to get into your husband's safe," Marina said. "It might contain an important clue. Do you happen to know the combination?"
Mrs. Conway sniffled. "Yes. He wrote it down on a little piece of paper for me. He was worried I might need to get into the safe in an emergency."
"I think this qualifies as an emergency. Where is this paper?"
The two women went back to the office together. Mrs. Conway pulled a book of poetry by Pablo Neruda off the shelf, and she flipped through the pages. She stopped on a poem entitled "Carnal Apple, Woman Filled, Burning Moon" where a scrap of paper was wedged between the pages. She gave the paper to Marina.
Marina chuckled. "So much for sophisticated, electronic locks."
A combination was written on the paper, and she used it to open the safe. She sighed with annoyance when she saw the contents. There were hundreds of folders stuffed with papers.
"Bill didn't like to throw important documents away," Mrs. Conway said.
Marina nodded. "I can see that."
She systematically took out folders and flipped through the papers inside. She didn't know what she was looking for but hoped it would be obvious when she saw it. The material seemed to be mostly legal contracts and tax filings. It was dull, dreary stuff. She couldn't imagine how accountants didn't go crazy with boredom.
"Should you be doing this?" Mrs. Conway said. "Those documents are confidential."
"Just trying to solve a mystery, ma'am," Marina said. "Trust me. I can keep a secret."
Ipo wandered into the office with a curious expression. He immediately started helping her search the safe.
Mrs. Conway just stood by and appeared uncomfortable.
Marina pulled away a stack of folders and discovered a small, locked compartment within the safe. "Do you have a key for this?"
"No." Mrs. Conway shook her head. "I didn't know it was there."
"Maybe you weren't supposed to know."
Marina always carried a set of lock picks. She took them out and went to work. It took her fifteen frustrating minutes to open the well-made and very secure lock.
"Damn," she muttered. "That was a bitch."
By this time, Hanley had joined the group. Both legionnaires watched with interest.
Marina opened the compartment and found it full of miniature cassette tapes. She recognized them as the type often used to secretly record conversations. She pulled one out, and it was helpfully labeled with a date.
"Bingo," she said. "Let's take all these tapes back with us."
Mrs. Conway shook her head. "No. I can't allow that. You'll need a subpoena or something first."
Marina reached over and put her to sleep. Ipo grabbed Mrs. Conway before she hit the floor, and he placed her gently on the couch.
"My venom glands are just about dry," Marina said. "That's a sign it's time to go home. We'll listen to these recordings in headquarters. Let's move."
Chapter Nineteen
Marina, Ipo, and Hanley arrived in headquarters. Marina was glad to see all her assistants still there even though it was getting late in the evening. Members of the Society didn't work specific hours, but they also weren't obligated to spend every waking minute in headquarters. Assistants in particular had the option of going home at a reasonable time.
"There you are, ma'am," Min Ho said. "We were getting a little nervous. We haven't had a legionnaire here all day, and now it's night."
He was wearing a red silk shirt with golden epaulets. His stylish, black leather pants had extra buckles. Marina thought he looked silly, but there was no point in saying that out loud and making him feel bad.
She walked over to him. "Sorry about that. It was one thing after another out there. Did you make any progress on Conway's phone?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Marina waved for Ipo and Hanley to join her, and she explained about the phone in Conway's office.
"I recovered the message that seemed to trigger the suicide," Min Ho said. "It was the last thing Conway read."
"Is it safe?" Marina said.
"I read it and didn't have a problem. I think it was very specific to him."
She braced herself. "OK. Let's hear it."
Min Ho faced his computer screen and read, "Maple leaves falling. A soft kiss under the arbor. Green wings gleaming in the sunlight. A rattle in the darkness. Linda Conway isn't forgotten, and a price must be paid."
"It's like a crazy poem." She furrowed her brow. "Who is Linda Conway?"
"Bill Conway's daughter-in-law. She died of a drug overdose five years ago. She swallowed a bottle of prescription sleeping pills."
"Suicide?"
"Apparently," he said, "but the circumstances were suspicious. She was pregnant at the time. Bill had several interviews with the police, but charges were never pressed."
"I bet he knew something about his daughter's death. This poem was a kind of blackmail."
"Or a psychological trigger," Hanley said.
Marina faced him. "What do you mean?"
"Maybe just thinking about her death drove him to suicide. If the note was simply blackmail, I don't think it would have the poetic flourishes. Who sent it?"
"Some guy called Ice Crusher," Min Ho said.
Hanley nodded. "Ice Crusher obviously didn't want us talking to Bill Conway. This was a very unusual way of preventing it."
Marina narrowed her eyes. She had never heard of words being used as a deadly weapon, but it wasn't impossible. Stranger things had occurred during her years in the Society.
"If that's true," she said, "then our adversary is even more dangerous than we thought. We need to listen to those tapes. I want you to go out and buy something that can play them."
"Yes, ma'am." Hanley quickly left headquarters.
She turned to Ipo. "And we can change out of these sweaty costumes."
He was carrying a cardboard box that contained the tapes. Both of them still wore the Santa Clara County deputy uniforms from earlier.
"Yes, ma'am," Ipo said.
Marina headed towards her bedroom in the south-west corner of headquarters. She didn't get far before noticing Corrie in the cage where high-voltage electrical experiments were performed. The scientist was staring at a beaker full of colored liquid with wires poking out. Suddenly curious, Marina walked over and joined her in the cage.
"What's that?" Marina said.
Corrie was wearing a jean shirt and green pants. Heavy, rubber gloves protected her hands. Her turquoise necklace was a token of her Native American heritage.
"It's a battery, ma'am," she said in a distant tone. She didn't even look at Marina.
"I thought you were analyzing samples," Marina said. "You believe the social disorder has an environmental cause."
"I still do, but I took a break from that. I found the specification for this type of battery in the notes Kamal sent me. I had to try it out. The underlying chemistry is totally different from anything I've seen before. It's a radical innovation."
"That's nice."
Corrie finally faced Marina. "It's more than nice. It has five times the energy density of any other battery on the market. It can be recharged an infinite number of times. The materials are cheap and safe. This battery could revolutionize the world, and it's exactly what I've spent the last five years of my life searching for."
"Great." Marina smiled. "Then you should be happy. Where did Kamal get the technology?"
"He came across it during a mission."
Marina was suddenly nervous. "What do you mean?"
"It was a component of a bomb."
"And who designed the bomb?"
"Supposedly, an enemy of God," Corrie said.
Marina grabbed the beaker and threw it into the nearest garbage can. Glass shattered and liquid sloshed. Blue sparks crackled for several seconds before dying down.
"That's forbidden technology!" she yelled.
Corrie cowered. "It was just a harmless experiment, ma'am."
"How do you know? You just told me you've never seen this design before. You had no idea what might happen. You could've blown up headquarters!"
"I didn't think..."
"No, you didn't!" Marina roared. "This isn't a high school chemistry class. We deal with shit that kills people in horrible ways. Some things are not meant to be in this world, and that battery is one of them."
"That doesn't make sense, ma'am," Corrie said in a timid voice. "God created the laws of physics. If something is forbidden, it should be impossible."
"The Lord didn't get everything right, or the Society wouldn't need to exist. I wouldn't need these poison claws." Marina held up her black fingernails. "Our job is to destroy what is forbidden, not mess with it. Keep your scientific curiosity on a tight leash. If you want to invent in your spare time, go for it, but the ideas need to come from you, not the opposition. Do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am," Corrie looked down.
"This will be the last time we have this conversation. You've been warned."
Marina walked off, fuming.
She went to her bedroom. Some of the furniture had arrived, enough that she was considering moving in. She had a king-size bed with a frame made of black wood. It was bigger than she needed, but she expected to share it with Aaron occasionally. He liked to stretch out when he slept. There were two black dressers and a long rack for hanging clothes. Unfortunately, the room didn't have a closet, so most of her clothes would be out in the open. It didn't matter. Her bedroom was private, and she wasn't planning to let anybody but Aaron see it.
She began to strip off her dirty deputy costume. We really need a clothes washer in this place, she thought.
* * *
Marina, Ipo, and Hanley were huddled around the table in the "living room" section of headquarters. They were listening to one of the tapes from Bill Conway's safe.
"We need another million dollars by the end of the week," Conway said. The poor recording made his voice muffled and distorted.
"Already?" another man said. "I gave you a million last week."
The team had listened to several complete tapes already, but the real name of the second man hadn't been spoken. Conway had just referred to him as "Ice" a few times. Clearly, he was the man who secretly controlled Soulfriends.
His voice was high, thin, and unpleasant, and it cracked sometimes like a pubescent boy. He spoke with total confidence though.
"We have a lot of expenses," Conway said. "Salary, facilities, equipment. You demanded explosive growth before we even had a revenue stream. Now you're surprised we need more cash?"
"I'm not surprised," Ice said. "I'm just angry. We should be spending money more efficiently. I see the waste in the office: lost pens, excessive use of paper towels, empty rooms with the lights still on. My employees chatter in the hallways about sports when they're being paid to work."
"They need to relax occasionally."
"They can relax at home. That's why they have homes."
"Is the money a problem?" Conway said. "You've never complained before. It seems like you just pull it out of a magic hat whenever you need more."
"No, money is never a problem for me. I just hate inefficiency. Maybe we should fire a few random employees just to send a message to the rest."
"That's rather cruel."
"But effective," Ice said. "Fear is a strong motivator. That's our problem. There isn't enough fear in the organization."
"I think there is plenty already. Your employees aren't happy about all your arbitrary rules and disciplinary actions. Word has gotten out in Silicon Valley that Soulfriends is a miserable place to work. It's making retention and recr
uiting difficult."
"Then recruit from outside Silicon Valley. It doesn't matter where employees come from. They're all incompetent anyway."
"That's a great attitude," Conway said.
"I'm not paying you for your opinion about my attitude. Your job is to manage the finances, and I'm not particularly satisfied with the results. Find ways to trim the fat from an increasingly bloated and sloppy company."
"Yes, sir."
Marina heard footsteps walking off.
The tape clicked. Another conversation began.
"What's the endgame?" Bill Conway said.
"What do you mean?" Ice said.
"You're clearly not interested in fame. Your own employees don't even know who you are. It seems like you already have access to all the money you need. What's the point of Soulfriends?"
"Why do you care?"
"I have concerns about the legality of this operation," Conway said. "So much of it seems sketchy."
"Legality is a poorly defined term. It depends on jurisdiction and locality. In some places, it's against the law for a woman to walk on the street with her face exposed. In other places and under specific circumstances, murder is permitted. I refuse to care about arbitrarily defined rules."
"You'll care if you go to prison."
"That's not going to happen," Ice said. "I've put myself in a position where the legal system can't touch me."
"I'm sure many criminals said that before, and they were wrong."
"They weren't as smart as me. I've engineered every detail of my plan down to the last decimal place."
"Perhaps," Conway said, "but you still haven't answered the question. What are you trying to accomplish?"
"The same thing as any great man. I want to change the world."
"How?"
"You'll find out when everybody else does," Ice said.
The tape clicked. Marina pulled it out of the player, popped in a new one, and pressed the "play" button.
"Terman had to tap dance his way through another interview today," Bill Conway said. "He's running out of dance moves."
"I don't understand," Ice said. "I give him scripts to read."
"You can't do an interview with a reporter by reading a script. It's a question and answer process."