Ghosts in the Machine (A David and Martin Yerxa Thriller - Book 3)

by Ed Markham

  “At this time we have no evidence to suggest ties to any terrorist organization, either in the United States or overseas,” Blanchard replied.

  “What about the NSA’s involvement?” a reporter asked. “If this doesn’t involve foreign groups or terrorists, why are they part of the investigation?”

  Blanchard started nodding before the reporter had finished asking her question. “Because the incident yesterday involving Ketchy’s website affected users outside of the United States, the NSA is handling that part of the investigation—though I want to make it clear the FBI and other domestic agencies are working hand in hand with the NSA and that, at this time, we have no evidence of any foreign ties or involvement.”

  David looked at his father, who chuckled and shook his head.

  Both men were thinking of Ken Kresge, the NSA agent who had informed them his agency would be taking over the investigation of the Ketchy breach for the express reason that they suspected foreign entities might be involved.

  Another reporter asked, “Any explanation for that video yesterday? If that was Brad Ketchner, what might account for his behavior?”

  “At this time I don’t have an explanation for that,” Blanchard said. “It’s disturbing to us just as it’s disturbing to the public.”

  The next question came from a technology reporter for a large East Coast newspaper.

  “There’s a lot of buzz online that the download accompanying the Ketchy video yesterday didn’t contain any viruses, but that it did include Ketchy programming code. That code seemed to suggest the site’s search functionality was open to some forms of manipulation. That would make some sense, considering Brad Ketchner’s murder and the see again with your own eyes message that accompanied the video.”

  Blanchard seemed to be going out of his way to look bored by the question. “I can’t comment on wild theories that may be showing up on the Internet. Our joint assessment with the NSA was that a viral threat was present.”

  After this reply, Blanchard said he would not be answering further questions. But before concluding the press conference, he added, “I want to reiterate that the FBI, NSA, and local and state authorities are doing everything within our power to apprehend the person or persons responsible for these acts. Some here may be reassured to know that two of the same agents who successfully tracked and neutralized Edith Vereen and the threat posed by Speaker of the House Farnsworth are also taking the lead in this investigation.”

  David felt all the eyes in the room snap to him and his father.

  He ignored the looks. His mind was occupied working through the possible reasons the director might have made this comment.

  Though his and his father’s identities weren’t known to the public, the director’s statement made sense from a PR perspective. The so-called “Colony Killer” investigation had been a big win for the Bureau, and Blanchard may have thought to invoke it in order to garner favorable coverage from the press, who would no doubt be calling his agency to ask for updates every hour that passed without an arrest.

  David also considered other scenarios, some of which alarmed him greatly.

  “If anyone wants an autograph, it’ll have to wait,” Martin said, to the amusement of the other agents in the room. Having successfully broken up the tension, he went on, “We’ve got work to do, so let’s do it.”

  .

  Chapter 26

  Mark Weissman was desperate for sleep. He was tired, and his body and brain ached. But it was difficult to doze when his mouth was coated with the foul residue of the unspeakable poison—the noxious filth his captor had no doubt slipped into him as he had slept.

  He hadn’t seen who’d done it. But he had awoken hours earlier with a coating of the stuff all over his cheeks and teeth and palate and tongue. It was fetid and vile. He’d first wretched and then tried to spit, though this proved oddly difficult. The taste had lingered. It seemed to fill his whole mouth like some object he couldn’t remove. It seeped from between his teeth and pressed against the roof of his mouth and collected in his saliva, and he would cough and bark until the vile shit was briefly cleared away from his taste buds.

  It made him angry. It made him so fucking angry. The snake—the lowlife piece of shit who had strapped him to this godforsaken bed in this godforsaken room hadn’t been satisfied leaving him bound and isolated, marinating in his own piss and excrement. The son of a bitch had waited until he’d slept and then snuck in to feed him this poison that tasted as though it were made from the rotting flesh of diseased rats.

  He wanted to put his hands on whoever it was. Feeling the pain in his neck and left knee and the thickness in his mouth, and letting it feed his anger, he strained against his restraints and imagined breaking free of them. He would burst from the room to find the coward who had done this to him, and he would choke him. But not just choke; he would press his thumbs into his throat until it ripped open, and then he would chew the opening as the man screamed. He would let his captor’s blood wash his mouth of the poison, and he would spit it into the man’s eyes and shout until they were both deaf.

  He tried to shout now as he imagined it. He pulled on his restraints and felt the tendons in his neck bulge, but the only sound that escaped was a muffled moan that only made him cry out harder, albeit in vain.

  .

  Chapter 27

  As he pressed his phone to his head, David peered through the restaurant’s window.

  He saw his waitress return and set down a beer in front of his vacated seat. She also handed Martin his George Dickel on the rocks.

  David turned away from the window as a sleepy voice said into his ear, “I bet you’ve had one hell of a day.”

  Just hearing her, he felt some of the tension slide off his neck and shoulders. “It’s been a busy one,” he said to Lauren. “I’m sorry to call so late. I can tell you’ve been sleeping.”

  “It’s fine. I’m glad you called. I wanted to try you earlier, but I knew you’d call me when you could.” She paused to yawn. “I saw Blanchard’s press conference. How’re you holding up?”

  He took a moment to consider this. It was nearly eleven at night, and he and his father hadn’t stopped moving since they’d left their hotel to meet with Kirill Mozgov that morning. “It’s been a long day,” he said finally. “But I think we’re making progress.”

  “How’s your dad?”

  “He has his elixir now, so he’ll be fine.”

  “Where are you two?”

  “At some bar around the corner from our hotel.”

  “So tell me,” she said.

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  He meant it. He and his father, along with the rest of their team, had spent most of the evening taking up and examining the various threads of their investigation, which were so numerous and varied that David felt as though he couldn’t possibly hold onto them all.

  Stanford’s lab had called back to report that all their rabies samples were intact and accounted for. Also, regarding his calls with Pool and Ketchner following the ideas summit, Beatrice had told David and Martin he’d been calling Ketchner in part to patch things up but also to reiterate that his events were not forums for new product roll-outs or other marketing tactics. He’d made a similar call to Garrison Pool, who he knew was heavily invested in Ketchy’s success.

  “Don’t you worry these guys aren’t going to show up the next time you have a party?” Martin had asked him.

  “Agent Yerxa, men like Brad Ketchner and Garrison Pool attend these gatherings precisely because I restrict that sort of self-promotion. What we discuss is not supposed to go viral. It’s supposed to help us all see the big picture of what we’re doing—to keep a sense of perspective.”

  Their search of the event’s videos and transcripts—as well as their combing of Ketchner and Pool’s old email and phone records—had proved similarly fruitless.

  David said to Lauren, “A lot of questions right now. Not many answers.” Again, he glanced th
rough the glass at his father. “Pop and I both can’t figure out why we’re working this case.”

  “Yeah, I saw the director’s shout-out earlier. That was weird.”

  “Very.”

  “And Weissman disappearing today . . . any leads there?”

  “You heard about him?”

  “Word was going around the office this afternoon.”

  “We found video footage of him leaving his building through an alley. We kept track of him on street cams for a few blocks, then we lost him.”

  “He left his building through an alley?” she said, sounding perplexed.

  “He and all the others have personal security teams,” David said. “From what we’ve found so far, all of them have called off their watchers and become evasive just before disappearing.”

  They spent a few minutes discussing the case, which David found helpful. It was good to talk through everything with Lauren, who was unfamiliar with all the details. It allowed him to revisit and reorganize everything in his head.

  “So what are your next steps?” she asked him.

  “We’re keeping tabs on the Stanford professor, and working through a lot of old email and cell data. We’re looking for missing samples of the rabies virus.”

  As he spoke, David noticed a man looking at him from across the street. Catching the man’s eye, he expected the guy to turn away. But he didn’t.

  The man was young—late twenties. He was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a dark hooded sweatshirt. His hands were stuffed in the front pockets of his hoodie, and he blinked at David from behind thin-rimmed glasses.

  Speaking to Lauren, David said, “I have to call you back.”

  “Dinner’s arrived?”

  “No, something else.” He hung up and stood looking at the man, who continued to look back at him.

  “Can I help you?” he called across the street.

  It was a quiet evening. There were few other pedestrians in sight, and the city’s vehicle traffic was sparse.

  “I know who you are,” the man said.

  David waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, he said, “All right. Can I ask who you are?”

  The man made a face as though he had swallowed something sour. “I’m the person you just tried to have killed.” He shook his head. “I guess I trusted the wrong people, huh? Not all of them, of course. Someone sure got the message, unless it’s all just some elaborate game of tying up loose ends. That would make some sense, actually. You can’t just kill men like Brad Ketchner and Garrison Pool and expect no one to notice, right?”

  Keeping his eyes on the man’s sweatshirt pocket and the hands it concealed, David said, “I don’t know what we’re talking about here. I don’t know you, and I didn’t try to have you killed.”

  Again, the man made a face as though he were being fed something distasteful. “I know I’m a dead man, and that this is just prolonging the inevitable. But I had to look one of you people in the face so I could tell you you’re scum. You’re filth. You’re why the whole world is the shitty mess that it is.”

  “I’m not sure what you think you know about me,” David said, “but you’ve made a mistake. Why don’t—”

  He started to cross the street toward the young man, but as soon as he stepped off the sidewalk he saw the pistol come out. The man pointed it at him, and he froze.

  There was no place to hide, and no way to draw his own weapon without being shot half a dozen times first. So David stood still, his hands splayed at waist height, his heart hammering so loudly in his ears that he couldn’t hear himself think.

  It took him a moment to find words. When he did, he said, “Whatever you think you know, I promise you you’re making a mistake.”

  “Just tell me,” the man said. There were tears in his eyes now, and David could see his hand was shaking as he held his weapon. “Was it Vince Beatrice?”

  David squinted at him. “Was what Vince Beatrice?”

  The man’s face hardened and he raised the gun an inch. “WAS IT BEATRICE?” he shouted.

  David couldn’t answer. His throat had closed. He was certain that in another second, his life would end. And in that second, his mind leapt back to the dark night, almost two decades earlier, when he had been the one in the hooded sweatshirt pointing the pistol. A part of him felt the death that was coming for him was the death he deserved.

  Then the man brought the gun to his own temple. David watched helplessly as he pulled the trigger.

  .

  Chapter 28

  It was difficult for David to focus on the questions the woman was asking him. In his mind, he was still seeing the man’s eyes splay in unnatural directions as the bullet tore through his skull.

  He was also trying to recall exactly what the man had said to him before killing himself.

  “Sir, did you hear the question I just asked you?”

  The police department trauma counselor was looking at him with concern.

  “My name is David Yerxa,” he answered.

  “Can you tell me where you are and what day of the week it is?”

  “I’m in San Francisco, and it’s either very late Tuesday night or very early Wednesday morning.”

  She tried to ask him another question, but he excused himself and walked away from her and back toward the scene on the street.

  A half-dozen police and emergency response vehicles had gathered around the place where the man’s lifeless body lay half on the sidewalk and half in the street. Martin was also present, though he was looking at his son, not at the body.

  “You all right?” he asked, stepping away from the body and the assembled EMTs to stand at his son’s side.

  David nodded. “I just need a few quiet minutes to clear my head.”

  The two stood in silence until David asked his father, “Do we have an ID?”

  “Peter Newton, according to his driver’s license and his NSA credentials.”

  “NSA?” David pressed his fist to his forehead and closed his eyes. When his father started to speak, he held up a hand to quiet him.

  I trusted the wrong people . . . some elaborate game of tying up loose ends . . . I had to look one of you assholes in the face . . . Was it Beatrice?

  David could recall bits and pieces of the conversation, but he was struggling to reassemble them.

  “He told me someone was trying to kill him,” he said to his father. “He thought I had something to do with it.”

  “Just a nutcase then?”

  David shook his head. “He mentioned Ketchner and Pool, and he asked, ‘Was it Beatrice?’ ”

  “Was what Beatrice?”

  “I don’t know. He said something about trusting the wrong people.”

  The two men stood looking toward the area where forensic technicians were working around the body.

  David took out his phone and called Wes Harris’s number. Though it was nearly one in the morning, Harris picked up immediately.

  “Yeah I’m still here,” Harris said, replying to a question he hadn’t been asked. “Sleep is for the weak.”

  “I need you to look for a name,” David said.

  “Where?”

  “In Ketchner and Pool’s emails.”

  “I have Weissman’s too. I got the warrants I needed a couple hours ago. What name?”

  “Peter Newton.”

  “Who is he?”

  “NSA. He just shot himself in front of me outside of a restaurant on Polk Street.”

  “He what?”

  “Listen to me, Harris. I need you to do this right now and get back to me if you find something. Tell no one else. Not Dean. Not Walker.”

  Harris was quiet for a beat. “Understood.”

  When he got off the phone, David noticed his father looking at him warily.

  Martin said, “You spooked?”

  “I might be.” He looked around the scene. “There was already a lot about this case that bothered me. Now there’s this.” Again, he recalled the frightened eyes of
Peter Newton growing hard and resolute just before the bullet scattered them.

  David spent some time answering questions from the SFPD about what had transpired out on the street just before Newton had killed himself. He left out some of the specifics of the conversation he’d had with Newton—especially those parts that pertained to Vince Beatrice, Brad Ketchner, and Garrison Pool.

  When he had finished with the SFPD, he checked his phone and saw he had received a call back from Wes Harris.

  “Did you find something?” he asked Harris.

  “Maybe, but it wasn’t in the phone or email data for our victims or Weissman.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You said Newton was NSA. I have access to their analyst directory—low- to mid-level types, no one covert—so I looked Newton up. His full name is Peter Allan Newton, and he received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Washington back in 2009. I did some more digging. Guess who his thesis advisor was?”

  David waited, knowing what was coming.

  Harris said, “Vince Beatrice.”

  .

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 5

  Chapter 29

  When David answered the knock on his hotel room door, he found his father standing in the hallway.

  Martin was holding his travel mug and a second cup of coffee he had purchased from the shop in the lobby. “You sleep at all?” he asked as he handed David the coffee.

  “A few hours I think.”

  “I’m surprised you got that much.” He examined his son closely. “You look like hell, son. Why don’t you get some rest this morning and let me take the reins for a few hours.” He stared at his son over the rim of his coffee as he took a sip. “We both see our share of dead bodies, but watching someone check out is a different deal.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Martin made a face as though he had expected this reply, and didn’t care for it. But he knew better than to press his son.