Innocent Conspiracy

by David Archer

  “That won’t be a problem,” Sam said. “It could be a recording over a phone, right?”

  “Oh, yes, of course.”

  “I’ll have it for you in a few minutes.”

  25

  Sam called Morton and talked with him about simple things for a few minutes, with Indie recording the call on the computer. Ten minutes after he finished, Herman gave them his opinion.

  “Sorry, Sam,” Indie said. “Herman says that is definitely not John Morton. Less than a seventeen percent similarity in speech patterns or cadences. Even with the distortion, there’s no way to hide things like that. It’s not him.”

  Sam nodded. “I’m actually glad to hear it,” he said. “Summer spent some time with John the other night, and she came away convinced he’s clean. We’re looking for somebody else inside his company, but who else would benefit? I went over this with John yesterday, and there’s nobody who owns enough stock in the company for it to really make them any money.”

  Indie looked at him. “There is one other possibility,” she said. “We’ve just been going on the guess that this is a male voice. What if it’s Annie Porter?”

  Sam stared at her for a moment, then took out his phone and called Jade again. “Jade? Sam. Listen, we just checked the recording against Morton’s voice, and it is definitely not him. However, Indie just made a good point. We’ve been going on the assumption that whoever that voice belongs to is male, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be a woman. Could you give Annie a call and get a recording?”

  “Um, yeah, sure. I’ll give it a try now.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Sam’s phone rang again. “Hello?” He put the phone on speaker so Indie could hear.

  “It’s Jade. I just emailed you a recording of a phone conversation between me and Annie Porter. Did you get it yet?”

  “Oh, let me go to my computer,” Indie said. “Yep, there it is. Let me get it set up. Okay, I’ve fed it into Herman and told him to compare it to the distorted voice on the recording from the Starbright computer system.” She set a number of parameters for the comparison, then turned him loose.

  A box popped up on the screen that said it would take an estimated eleven minutes to complete the comparison. This was because Herman was taking each audio file apart in tiny little fragments, and looking for identical fragments in the other audio file. Finding a sufficient percentage of identical fragments would make it possible for him to generate a statistical probability of a match.

  “Okay, Herman says it’s going to take him eleven minutes,” Sam said. “I’ll give you a call back and let you know what he decides.”

  “Okay, Sam,” Jade said. “If I’m being honest, I’m really hoping it’s not Annie. I actually kind of like her.”

  “Well, we’ll know pretty soon.”

  A little more than ten minutes later, Herman had finished the comparison, and had concluded that there was slightly less than an eighty-nine percent probability that it was the same speaker.

  “Herman,” Indie said, “eighty-nine percent?” She looked at the screen for moment longer, then turned to Sam.

  “Okay,” she said. “He says it’s about an eighty-nine percent chance that is the same voice, but I need to qualify that for you a bit. At eighty-nine percent, about all he’s really saying is that the two voices are extremely similar, but probably not the same. They speak in much the same way, they probably even sound very similar, but anything less than a ninety-seven or ninety-eight percent similarity means that it’s highly unlikely that it’s the same person on both recordings. I’m not saying it absolutely isn’t, I’m saying this is simply not conclusive. It’s possible that similar speech patterns could be learned in school, or if they spent time in a similar environment, that sort of thing.”

  “Then, you’re saying this probably wouldn’t hold up in court?”

  “Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t,” Indie said. “Any halfway decent lawyer would be able to cast doubt on it, I’m sure of that. It just couldn’t be considered a definite match, Sam.”

  “Okay, sweetheart,” Sam said. “So it didn’t rule Annie out, but it doesn’t confirm that it is her, either.”

  “Right,” Indie said. “I wish I could give you something more definite, but I can’t. And my gut says it’s not her. Eighty-nine percent just isn’t close enough to believe it could be the same person speaking.”

  “Okay.” He called Jade back and told her that Herman didn’t believe it was Annie’s voice on the distorted recording.

  “I’m really kind of glad to hear that,” Jade said. “I just wish we could come up with someone else to compare it to.”

  “We’ll just add that to the things we’re going to talk about in the morning,” Sam said. “I’ll see you both then.”

  Sam hung up, then turned to his wife. “I really thought we were about to close this case out,” he said. “I wanted it over with. Now I’m not sure what’s really going on.”

  “Let’s talk it out,” Indie said. “There’s no longer any doubt that someone at Web Wide Awards is involved, right?”

  “No doubt at all,” Sam said. “The only problem is figuring out who it could be. The plot seems to have been intended to build up the company, make it more valuable. The only people who really benefit from that are the owners, John and Annie, or the advertisers, and Starbright in particular. We know that Starbright is involved, but even if we proved that, we don’t have anything on a motive for whoever is the inside man.”

  “Or woman,” Indie said. “So, what other ways could somebody benefit from this? Is there anybody who might end up with a better job out of it?”

  Sam shook his head. “Not likely,” he said. “And the way they do their compensation system, everybody ends up making more money when the company does, but not so much that it will make that big a difference. From what John told me, there’s nobody who would see their income go up enough that it would conceivably be a motive for this type of thing.”

  “Okay. And yet, we know that somebody inside the company is working with Starbright to make this happen. Maybe Starbright is paying them.”

  Sam looked at her for a moment. “That’s definitely conceivable,” he said. “Starbright is trying to expand their streaming service into the U.S.A., and the increase of traffic on Morton’s website means a lot more Americans are seeing Starbright advertising. Is there any way to find out whether they had a big increase in American subscribers?”

  Indie bit her bottom lip. “Well, I can try going into the connection that Denny set up in their computers, see if I can find their subscriber database. The only problem is that they may have figured out that I have a backdoor, and either put a stop to it or set a trap on it.”

  “What would that mean, if they set a trap on it?”

  “Well, they could conceivably backtrace to my computer, or even hit me with a virus. I don’t think it would really do me any harm, because Herman would automatically block any data packet that was pushed toward us. The only real risk is that they might figure out exactly who hacked into them. The last thing I want is Interpol showing up here to haul me off.”

  “No, that won’t happen,” Sam said. “Like I said, when we’re dealing with economic espionage, DHS has a lot of latitude in how we acquire information. Unless you think they could actually do some damage to Herman, I think it might be worth a try.”

  “Okay,” Indie said. “Wake up, Herman, you got work to do.”

  Herman got into the connection easily, and Indie was surprised to find that no one seemed to have even noticed it.

  “Okay, here we go,” she said. “I’m looking at their accounting section, and there has been—well, I have to say a moderate increase in American subscribers. Of course, all that new traffic has only been there for a few days, and most people see an ad many times before they actually click on it. While it doesn’t look like a huge increase right now, they’ll probably keep growing at a pretty steady rate for some time, now.”

  “Then that establi
shes a motive for Starbright,” Sam said. “Increase their American subscribership, and they increase their entire global revenue stream. The only question is what they would’ve paid somebody inside Web Wide Awards to do this, but then we have the additional question of the money that was sent out of Morton’s accounts to Starbright. This just isn’t adding up. You know, conventional wisdom for police is to follow the money, but in this case it’s going from victim to perpetrator.”

  Indie was staring at her monitor, clicking the keys so rapidly that it sounded like a rhythm of some sort. “Sam?” she said slowly. “What if the inside person stood to gain something a whole lot bigger than just money?”

  Sam’s eyebrows lowered as he looked at his wife. “Such as?”

  Indie turned to look at him. “Stock. Starbright has been privately held among a small group of investors until now, but it’s going public next month. Everything’s all set up for their IPO, and they even have arrangements made with Chase Manhattan so that they can trade on the American Stock Exchanges. They just split their stock so that there are five billion shares total, and it’s being predicted that they’ll open at almost 10 dollars a share. Benjamin Hickam owns ninety-two percent of all the stock, so what if he agreed to give a few million shares to whoever is helping him out?”

  The eyebrows suddenly shot upward. “Then somebody becomes a multimillionaire overnight, and they even stole money from Morton himself to do it. Indie, I think you may have just broken the case.”

  “But there’s nothing that says who,” Indie said. “All I see is that the stock was split, and there are a few blocks that appear to be earmarked for certain people, but it doesn’t say who.”

  “Then all we need to do is find out who inside Web Wide Awards is suddenly very interested in the stock market.”

  There was the sound of feet on the front porch, and Sam got up and went toward the door. A glance through the glass made him smile, as he saw his mother’s face, but then an aroma found him as he opened the door.

  “Samuel,” his mother said, “we brought something.” She held up a large serving dish, then waited for Kim to step inside and pushed the door shut with her butt as she went past him toward the kitchen. “Indie invited us over for dinner, so I wanted to surprise you.”

  Sam broke out into a smile of his own. “Mom,” he said, “you can’t surprise me when it smells that good. You made your beef stroganoff?”

  “Yes, just the way you like it, with rum and broccoli. Kim thought I was crazy when she saw me cooking the beef in rum, but when she tasted it, she understood.”

  “Oh, my goodness, that was good,” Kim said. “Come on, let’s get it into the oven before it gets cold.”

  Sam grinned and let the ladies precede him into the kitchen. His mother’s beef stroganoff was one of the things he loved to remember about growing up. It had been his father’s favorite dish, and became Sam’s during his teens. They set the oven on low and put it inside, to keep it warm while the rest of dinner was prepared.

  Twenty minutes later, with hastily made side dishes of instant mashed potatoes and cream style corn, they all sat down to the table. Indie had taken the stroganoff out of the oven last, and it was absolutely perfect as they began dishing it out.

  They chatted as they ate, and when it was finished, Indie broke out ice cream for dessert. She had just set a dish in front of everyone when Kim suddenly shook her head and turned to look at Sam.

  A chill went down Sam’s spine. He had seen that look too many times, and hated it. It meant that Beauregard had taken over his mother-in-law for a moment, and that always meant that he had a message for Sam.

  “You’re looking good, Sam,” he said. “I was sorry to hear about your friend’s uncle. I hope he did not suffer.”

  Sam swallowed, but looked directly into Kim’s eyes. “As far as I know,” he said, “the old man died instantly. I wish I had been able to interpret your warning, so that we might have saved him.”

  “I’m afraid he was not the one I was speaking of, Sam,” Beauregard said. “I regret that I must give you even more bad news, but Death has not struck yet. I know very little more than I did before, but that it will happen suddenly, without warning. Death is stalking someone close to you, and you will not be able to prevent what is to happen.”

  Sam bit back the anger that tried to swell up within him, and stared into his mother-in-law’s eyes. “Is there anything at all you can tell me that may let me avoid this? Any way in the world that I can stop it, prevent someone from dying?”

  “I am afraid not, Sam. However, I am somewhat confused about this, myself. I know that death will strike someone you care for, and yet I see a point beyond that moment with all of your friends and family gathered around you. I wish that I could tell you what this vision means, but I cannot.”

  “But if you see them all with me, doesn’t that mean they all survive?” Sam asked. “What else could it mean, Beauregard?”

  “I have not got an answer for you, Sam. Would that I did, but all I see are the visions. In my vision of death, I see the dark Angel hovering over everyone close to you, and reaching out a hand, but I am not able to see whom he touches. In my vision beyond that moment, I see only that all of your friends and family are gathered, and I cannot see anyone missing. Unfortunately, I have never had a vision of death that did not come true, so I do not understand the meaning of these conflicting visions.”

  “Then I’m going to cling to the second one,” Sam said. “I’m going to cling to the hope that everyone survives.”

  Kim nodded her head. “That is what you have to do, Sam,” she said, in Beauregard’s voice. “I have one more thing to tell you, and then I shall leave poor Kimberly alone for this evening. I told you before that you may arrest the wrong person for these crimes; I no longer see that problem, so I am quite certain that you will determine who is guilty and bring them to justice. I would urge you only to be certain that everyone involved be brought to justice, for there are more than one.”

  “How many?” Sam asked, but Kim was blinking. She looked at the way Sam was staring at her, and frowned.

  “Beauregard?”

  Sam nodded, but forced himself to grin. “Yes, but at least this time he gave me a bit of good news.”

  *

  Monday morning. As Sam walked into his office, he suddenly remembered how he used to dread Monday mornings on the police force. Monday always seemed to be the day that something would go wrong, but on this particular Monday he was feeling pretty confident.

  At eight thirty, Sam and the entire team were gathered around the conference table. He waited until everyone had coffee and settled in, then began speaking.

  “Jade has discovered that John Morton has been diverting money from his company, and keeping it hidden. She and Indie were able to track that money yesterday to an account in London that happens to belong to Starbright. The money had been transferred into that account, and then transferred out to a bank in the Cayman Islands. Needless to say, we are now working on the possibility that this money was involved in the arrangements to hire Reynard, which means that there is someone inside Web Wide Awards who was working with Hickam. What we’ve got so far is pretty solid evidence of collusion, but we are still looking for anything that can lead us to the person responsible. If any of you run across any information that might give us a lead, I want to know as soon as possible.”

  He paused to take a sip of coffee, then looked at them all again. “I’ve secured the backing of the DA’s office, who is filing charges against Benjamin Hickam today, charges that include attempted murder, murder, and economic espionage. Pemberton, the DA, will immediately start extradition proceedings, and we’re lucky enough that the U.K. is generally pretty cooperative about such things. When he gets here, I plan to question him pretty heavily about his involvement with Reynard.”

  “Speaking of Reynard,” Steve said, “what happens if one of us actually runs up against him? I mean, if he’s honestly involved in this thing, a
nd we’ve already taken out four of his people, there’s a pretty good chance he’s going to show up here. I want to know what to do if that happens.”

  “That’s a very good point,” Sam said. He reached over and pushed the button on the speakerphone in the middle of the table. “Jeremy? Could you come in here for a moment?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Jeremy Levins. Jeremy was Sam’s legal consultant. He came through the door just a few seconds later and took a seat at the table. “How can I help?”

  “We have reason to believe,” Sam said, “that Pierre Reynard, a known killer who has been active in political assassinations and has been classed as a terrorist in other countries, could show up in Denver and take some kind of action that may affect our client. If any of our investigators are able to come face to face with Reynard, what limitations would they be under regarding the use of deadly force?”

  Jeremy thought for a moment, then nodded to himself.

  “As private investigators, they would be limited to the use of deadly force only in the case of self defense, or to prevent immediate harm to others. However, as agents of the Department of Homeland Security, they would be fully justified in taking whatever action was necessary to kill Mr. Reynard. He is classed as a terrorist, and a presidential finding, equivalent to an executive order, made by President George W. Bush after the events of 9/11, authorizes the use of targeted killing against any terrorist suspect. That finding is still in effect today, and allows any agent of the United States government to use deadly force against any terrorist or terror suspect. It is not necessary to arrest or attempt to arrest the person first. It’s basically a shoot to kill order, and if you happen to get the opportunity to kill Mr. Reynard and do so, you would automatically be considered to be operating as DHS agents at the time.”