Innocent Conspiracy

by David Archer

  “Yes, Mr. Prichard?” Jenna asked as she answered.

  “Find Jade Miller and ask her to come to my office, please,” Sam said. “Tell her I said to look as computer geeky as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She’ll be here shortly,” Sam said, putting the handset back in its cradle. “Is there anything you can think of that I need to know before we get into this meeting?”

  Ron and Jeff looked at each other and grinned, then turned back to look at Sam. “Just that solving this case will get a huge bonus for you and your team,” Ron said. “And I do mean huge, like, really huge.”

  Sam grinned. “Then I can assure you that we are going to solve it,” he said.

  There was a tap on the door a moment later, and Sam called out for Jade to come in. A very pretty Asian woman, she was a highly skilled investigator who was very capable with just about any kind of computers. In a former life as a Dallas police detective, she had specialized in cybercrime, and she was extremely knowledgeable about it. She stepped inside and saw the three of them, and her eyebrows rose slightly behind the fake horn-rimmed glasses she was wearing.

  “Either there’s something special about to happen,” she said, “or I’m in some really big kind of trouble.”

  “Or possibly both,” Sam said with a grin. “Is that what you call geeky?”

  Jade almost crossed her eyes trying to look at her glasses. “What? Computer nerds wear glasses, right?”

  “I guess it’ll pass,” Sam said. “Come on in and have a seat.” They moved to the conference table and sat around it, and Sam began to fill her in about the new case with help from Ron and Jeff.

  “It sounds incredibly intriguing,” she said. “I take it you’re going to want me undercover inside their company?”

  “That’s the idea I had in mind,” Sam replied. “I want you to get into their computer system and see if you can find anything out of the ordinary. I can’t say that anyone inside is involved, but something like this could easily destroy a company like this. If someone wanted them out of the way, maybe a competitor, they’d almost certainly want to have someone on the inside.”

  “You don’t think Max Petrelli was the actual target?” Jade asked.

  “I suppose it’s possible, but he’s a kid. Unless his little web TV show was actually interfering with someone else’s, I have to think that the motive was more about Web Wide Awards. Having their brand new superstar shot and killed on stage, just as he is about to receive his big award, could make it look like the company didn’t take reasonable precautions for his safety.”

  Jade nodded, then turned to Ron and Jeff. “Did they have any security there at the program?”

  Ron nodded. “They did, but they just hired the usual security guards that work for the venue. Most of them are minimum wage high school dropouts. I’m not saying they didn’t do what they could, but they were far from professionals. There is already a small amount of backlash against them on social media for not providing better security.”

  “That’s why,” Jeff added, “they just arranged to hire us to safeguard their winners on the tour that begins next month. Eight of their award recipients are going out on a bus tour around the country for three months. Five of them are musicians who will be performing, and the others are comedians. We’re putting three full security teams on them, so they’ll be covered at all times, and each one will have their own personal bodyguard, twenty-four-seven.”

  “That’s good,” Sam said. “Who are you putting in charge?”

  Ron grinned. “Who else? Rob Feinstein. He’s a highly respected former Navy SEAL, and the men don’t bat an eye at taking orders from him. He’s also got the brains necessary to run an operation like that, and he can think for himself when he has to.”

  Sam was nodding his head. “I agree completely. I watched him when we were in San Francisco, and the guy knows his stuff.”

  Ron’s cell phone vibrated and he touched the Bluetooth earpiece on his ear. “Go ahead,” he said. “Okay, send them back to Sam’s office.” He tapped it again and looked at Sam. “They’re here.”

  A moment later, Jenna ushered John Morton and Annie Porter into the office. Jenna asked if anyone would like something to drink, but everyone declined and she disappeared into the foyer.

  “John, it’s good to meet you face to face,” Ron said. “I’m Ron Thomas, we spoke on the phone yesterday afternoon. This fellow to my right is Jeff Donaldson, my partner; that’s Sam Prichard at the head of the table, and Jade Miller is one of our investigators. Sam, Jade, this is John Morton and Annie Porter. They own Web Wide Awards, and they’ve built it from the ground up.”

  They shook hands all around and then were seated.

  “John, Annie, we’ve been talking a bit about your case,” Ron said, “sort of getting Sam in the loop. He’ll be taking lead in the whole investigation, and using our assets as he sees fit. We’ll let him take over from here, if that’s all right.”

  John and Annie both nodded and smiled, looking to Sam. “We heard a lot about you, Mr. Prichard,” John said. “We’re really hoping you can find out who did this and why.”

  “So am I,” Sam said with a grin. “As it happens, my wife and I were both watching your program when the shooting took place. We’re both very glad the young man seems to be improving.”

  “Aren’t we all,” Annie said. “I was right there in the front row, I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”

  “I can imagine,” Sam said. “Let’s talk about this for moment. The first thing I’d like to ask you is whether you have any idea who might want to harm your company. I understand there’s a lot of talk about how you could have done better at providing for the safety of your contestants. Something like this could easily damage your reputation, even cause your company to start losing revenue.”

  “That’s absolutely true,” John said. “Obviously, that’s precisely why we’re here right now. As for who might want to see us suffer? Just about any of the major video streaming companies, they would come to mind first. Some of them offer their own awards, so it’s possible they can see us as some sort of competition that they needed to eliminate. There are also other award companies, some of them even older than we are. They just didn’t have the marketing skills that propelled us to the top. They might feel that bringing us down would leave a vacuum they could move into. I know that a few of them have already posted articles about our failure in the security area, pointing out that they would naturally have done better.”

  “Even though it never would’ve occurred to them,” Annie said, “before this happened.”

  “That’s probably right,” Sam said. “Hindsight can make wise men of us all.” He paused for a couple of seconds. “What about Max Petrelli? Do you know of anyone, or any organization, that might have wanted to harm him?”

  John looked mildly shocked at the quest. “Max? If you look on social media, absolutely everybody loves that kid. Freaktown High is one of the most popular shows online, and the production quality is absolutely amazing for a teenage amateur. Even before we recognized him, he had offers from three major studios to buy the show, but he didn’t want to sell. He wants to stay independent and do his own thing without worrying about what corporate sponsors might think. He’s making a small fortune on every episode, but he controls just what he decides to advertise.”

  “But what about rival shows?” Jade asked. “Because of the nature of your business, you’ve got your finger on the pulse of internet video. What other shows might become more successful if Freaktown High were to suddenly go off the air?”

  John and Annie looked at one another. “Probably the closest rival he’s got,” John said, “would be Tim Wilson’s Lucidar. That’s a show about a demon who possesses the body of a teenage boy who was in a coma, brain dead. He takes over that kid’s life, but then he starts to like being human, so he ends up fighting against evil to protect his new human teenager friends. It’s a pretty good show, to be honest, b
ut it just doesn’t have the pizzazz of Freaktown High. It can’t even compare on special effects, and Max deals with lots of different otherworldly creatures while Tim has to fight the same devil and demons every week. If Max was gone, Tim still wouldn’t be able to get much bigger.”

  “All right, that makes sense,” Sam said. “What about your sponsors? Would any of your sponsors be in danger over what happened? Is there any backlash against them?”

  “Well, not that we’ve heard,” Annie said. “I deal with the sponsors, and I haven’t seen anything online or heard anything from them to indicate that they have any concerns about themselves. We got a couple that may pull their support for our program, but just about any kind of bad publicity can cause that to happen.”

  “Who are they?” Jade asked. “The ones that are talking about dropping you?”

  “Canterbury Soft Drinks,” Annie said. “They’re actually our biggest sponsor, so that could definitely hurt us. There is also Mama O’Malley’s Snack Cakes. They’re both afraid that sticking with us might cause a problem for them down the road, but we’re hoping they’ll stay on board. To be honest, we told them we were meeting with you today about taking over all our security in the future, and that seemed to calm them down quite a bit.”

  “I’m glad,” Sam said. “When we’re finished here, Ron and Jeff will talk to you about the security arrangements. My area is strictly investigating the current situation. Now, I understand that the two of you own the majority of the stock in your company. How many employees do you have?”

  “Well, quite a few,” John said. “We have to keep track of literally hundreds of thousands of videos each year, including movies, series, and music and comedy standalone videos. We’ve got twenty people that do nothing but scan social media looking for what’s likely to go viral next, and another twenty who just handle the databases that record each video’s popularity. As the popularity numbers go up, we focus more attention on them. If they go down, they may fall completely off our radar. We’ve got interviewers and video crews that go all over the world to talk to potential breakout stars, and a lot of people who do nothing but work on our annual presentation show. Altogether, we probably have around two hundred employees.”

  “Jade is highly skilled with computers,” Sam said, “and I’m planning to have her go undercover inside your organization to look for anything that might help us solve this.

  Is anyone going to think it strange if someone new comes in today or tomorrow?”

  “I don’t think so,” Annie said. “We have a couple of openings right now, anyway. Where do you want to put her?”

  “She’s going to need access to your entire computer network, and she should be able to interact with as many people as possible. What she’s looking for is the possibility that whoever did this had someone inside your organization helping them to plan it. See, there are two distinct possibilities. First, the target was Max Petrelli. I understand that seems farfetched, but it’s not unthinkable. The other is the possibility that the target was whoever won that final big award, and that’s the more likely scenario. It wouldn’t have mattered which of the nominees you chose, the winner would have been the one who got shot. Now, in either case, the shooter had to have had some kind of advance knowledge about those last few minutes of the program. He almost certainly had somebody, either inside your organization or at the venue end, who could provide that kind of information.”

  John and Annie looked at each other again, and Annie shook her head. “I don’t want to believe that,” she said. “I don’t want to believe that anyone in our company would willingly participate in something like this.”

  “We understand that,” Sam said, “but unfortunately, human nature is such that there can be many reasons why someone will betray another human being. Money, power, jealousy—if we can figure out why this happened, it will probably lead us directly to who actually pulled the trigger and who helped them to do it.”

  “We’ll do whatever you need us to do,” John said. “How about this? What if we say Ms. Miller is Annie’s new executive assistant? She’d have access to everything, and full run of the headquarters building. Nobody would even think to question what she was doing in any department, because they’d see her as representing Annie.”

  Sam looked at Jade, who nodded and smiled. “That sounds perfect,” she said. “When do I start?”

  “First thing tomorrow morning,” Sam said. “The rest of the team will be working from the outside. Some of them will work with the police, and others will be working in the dark. Even you won’t know about them unless it becomes necessary, but trust me when I tell you that they are the best I’ve ever seen at what they do.”

  Annie looked at Sam with a sad smile. “Thank you, Mr. Prichard,” she said.

  *

  Harvey Reilly was going to be late for his first day at work, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. His car, the old faithful friend that had carried him all through high school and college, had just shot off its last backfire, and he knew it. Unfortunately, it chose to do so more than three miles from the TV station where he was starting work that day as a mobile cameraman, and he’d been warned that Mr. Lenox, the station manager, had no tolerance for tardiness. According to the stories he’d been told, more than one new employee had been fired on their very first day for showing up late.

  He had managed to make the old Durango coast to the side of the road, but there was no way he was going to get it to go any further. That loud “bang” had sounded like more than a normal backfire, and when he got out and looked behind the car, the trail of oil confirmed his worst suspicions. The engine had blown, and there was no fixing it with something as simple as an oil change this time!

  He stood there beside the car and wished he’d left his apartment an hour earlier, but wishing wouldn’t get him to the station, so he just started walking, holding his thumb out to every car that passed. He was still walking fifteen minutes later, with only five minutes left to make the final two miles, when a nice new Toyota sports car pulled up beside him and stopped.

  For a split second, he thought he must be imagining it, but then the passenger window rolled down and a pretty girl smiled at him. “Aren’t you the new cameraman? You need a ride? Hop in.”

  Harvey climbed in as quickly as he could, and the girl smiled again. “Buckle up, I don’t need any seat belt tickets. I’m Wendy Dawson. I’m the reporter you’ll be assigned to. I saw you when you came for your interview the other day.” She put the car in gear and they were on the way.

  “I’m Harvey,” he said, “and I can’t thank you enough! My car just blew its engine, and I thought I was gonna be late and get fired! I’ve heard stories about Mr. Lenox.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, he can be a bear. You just gotta know how to handle him, but yeah, being late the first day wouldn’t be it. Good thing I saw you, huh?”

  Harvey smiled and leaned back in the seat in a sigh of relief. “Best thing ever! I can’t thank you enough!”

  “No problem,” she said. “Besides, Lester in personnel said you were gonna be my cameraman, so I need you! If you didn’t make it, I’d have to keep working with Stewart, and he’s an ass!”

  “You’re sure I’m being assigned to you? I mean, you’re pretty big at the station.”

  She giggled again. “Yep, starting today. I’ve been waiting months to get my own cameraman, but they said I had to wait till they hired somebody new, because everyone else was already assigned; or I could keep using Stewart, and nobody wants to work with him. Mr. Lenox likes to put teams together, and then not mess with ’em, and Stewart is just the backup guy. If we do okay together, we’ll be working together for years. As I get promoted to bigger and better stories, you’ll go with me, and if I ever make anchor, you’ll be in the studio with me, then, too.”

  Harvey grinned. “Then I guess my job is to make you look good, right?”

  Wendy looked at him coquettishly. “Hey, he’s not only cute, he’s g
ot a brain! Yeah, the better you make me look, the better we do as a team.”

  Harvey caught it; she’d actually said he was cute. He’d already come to the conclusion that he would be working with the prettiest reporter he’d ever seen, so her comment gave him a bit of a thrill. He dug down deep for courage—girls always sort of scared him, ever since he misunderstood June Dungy in the third grade and thought her offer to trade lunches with him was a ploy to make him her boyfriend—and said, “Well, making you look good is gonna be pretty easy. You look awfully good already.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. You look awfully good already? What kind of line was that?

  Wendy smiled, though. “Aw, thanks,” she said. “I think we’re gonna get along great!”

  2

  Everyone but Walter and Steve were present in the building, so Sam sent Jenna to round them all up and bring them to his office. They arrived one at a time, taking the seats they had been accustomed to around the conference table.

  John and Annie had already left the office, going to Ron’s office to finalize the financial arrangements involved in hiring Windlass. They would be meeting Rob Feinstein and the security detail shortly, but Sam wanted to get busy on the investigation.

  Jade was already present, so Summer took her usual seat beside her friend. Summer was a petite blonde who could only be described as “stunningly beautiful.” She referred to herself as a specialist in information acquisition, which was her way of saying she was a skilled interrogator. She was ex-military and proficient with many weapons and martial arts. Her looks, she often said, were nothing but a tool that she could use to accomplish her mission. With only a very few exceptions, she could wrap just about any man around her finger.

  The next to arrive was Denny Cortlandt, the former SAS commando. Sam often referred to Denny as “the chameleon,” because he could transform instantly from one persona to another. The Liverpool native could become, in a split second, somebody from the Bronx, from Texas, a Brazilian, an Australian, German, French, Italian, or any of a dozen other different personalities. He kept multiple fake identities and was a master at infiltration, whether overt or covert.