Surveillance (Ghost Targets Book 1)

by Aaron Pogue

  Eva laughed again. "That's why it was just chambers. I got a message from him at two this morning when your new credentials were posted. Apparently he was impressed."

  Katie shook her head. "I guess that was the point. My boss did that, because he hates these appeals as much as you do." A shadow entered Eva's eye, and Katie said, "What?"

  "Nothing," the lawyer said. "I mean, of course he hates them." Katie only looked confused, and Eva became defensive. "I mean, his cases are the reason we have these appeals at all."

  "Ghosts?"

  "Yeah," Eva said. "I wasn't sure you'd be able to sell your certainty, with your new position. Have you thought about what ghosts mean, to Jurisprudence confidence? What if someone else had been in the room with Tyler and Jay? We got twenty-six off the fact those two were alone in the room. Without that, for this particular case, you don't have a bench judgment. If you consider the possibility of a ghost, of someone else in the room that Hathor can't even guess at...you've got no confidence at all. We're back to jury trials for everything."

  Katie just stared. After a moment, she snorted, then raised her hands in defense at the look of irritation in Eva's eyes. "No, no, you're right. You're absolutely right. But the system's not so fragile as you think. Maybe I couldn't have sold this argument before I became an agent, but I can tell you—Eva, there's thirteen agents in the FBI's National Ghost Targets division. Fourteen counting me, but I don't count yet. Thirteen, and five of them are working on one case right now. I checked, and Ghost Targets has eleven unresolved case files, and all but two of those go back far enough that there's just not enough database information to clear them up. Probably long since resolved, but we can't positively connect the ghosts with the new identities. Other than that, we're working five active cases, one of which is over but for the paperwork, and another is just two days old and sitting on the desk of an absolute rookie." She took a deep breath, and shook her head. "No, ghosts account for less than the one-in-two-hundred-million lottery of coincidence. Hathor was never made to fight crime, but in the process of making money, they built a hell of a justice engine."

  Eva still looked doubtful, just for a moment, then she shrugged and let it go. "Whatever," she said. "Hey, you rushing back to DC, or do you have time for lunch? A couple of us are meeting up with some of your boys from the precinct." She made the barest of hesitations, then added, "Marshall will be there."

  One of the detectives from her old precinct, Marshall was seven years younger than Katie. She felt a flush of excitement at the thought of seeing him, and then immediately regretted it when she saw the grin in Eva's eye. Still, there was nothing for it. "Yeah," she said. "I think I can make time."

  Of course she knew the place. As soon as Eva had invited her, she'd known where it would be. A busy bistro, squeezed into a narrow block between a musty, cramped antique book store and a sprawling Duane Reade. As soon as she stepped through the door she sighed at the familiar smell of fresh bread. Everything about the place was familiar. Keith was saving a place for them, six tables shoved together on the far wall. Half a dozen spindly chairs stood rejected an arm's length away, just waiting for a hungry copper to scoop one closer with a boot, sandwich in one hand and large drink in the other. Richard was over there with Keith, leaning close, chuckling thickly and telling him some disgusting story. The blonde waitress she hated would be working their table today, unless she was out sick. Kenny was working the counter, and all she would have to say is, "Give me my regular."

  And there was Marshall, just turning away from the cash register. So handsome in his uniform, with short blond hair and sharp blue eyes. He flashed her a smile, for all the world like he'd known she was coming, and headed over to the table. She watched him go, until Kenny called to her from his place behind the counter. "Hey, lady! You look familiar somehow."

  She stepped around a crowded table so she wouldn't have to shout back, and rolled her eyes theatrically. "It's been a week."

  "I thought you were gone."

  "I am," she said, and just saying it hurt. "But I'm back for a day. Can I have my usual."

  "Always, Katie. Good to see you." He winked at her as he passed her a cup, then yelled her order back to the cooks. "Thirteen-fifty."

  "Put it on my tab," she said, and headed over to join the guys.

  Conversation stopped as she approached the table. Then Keith raised his chin at her, challenging. "What you doing back? We already threw you a going-away party. Now this is just awkward."

  "Oh," she said, playing hurt. She batted her eyes, mock fragile, and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "I can just go. I didn't mean to—"

  Several of them overwhelmed her with a groaned, "Whatever!" and friendly hands pulled her over to sit down at the center of the table, center of attention.

  Marshall spoke through a mouthful of pastrami. "What's it like at the Bureau?"

  She couldn't admit the truth to him, his eyes wide with interest, so she went on with the playacting. "Oh, you know, this and that," she said, all indifferent. "Their case files are a mess, and none of them know how to keep timesheets, but I'll get them whipped into shape." There were chuckles all around the table. She shrugged, and said earnestly, "I miss being here, though."

  "Oh, go on," Keith said. "It hasn't been a week. You'll make it."

  The sentiment was echoed, but Marshall cut through it. "Hey, seriously, what's it like chasing ghosts? I tried looking some up in HaRRE, but by the time the FBI case file hits the Register, all the ghosts are resolved."

  She met Marshall's eyes, just for a moment, and her resolve failed her. He smiled as she leaned forward, elbows on the table, and launched into the story of the Cincinnati kids. She made the story as exciting as she could, then sat back afterward and just listened to the others talk. It was all mundane stuff, mostly concerning cases she was still familiar with. She reveled in it.

  It turned into a long lunch, by virtue of her being there, but eventually everyone realized they had demands back at the office. They disappeared in ones and twos, and Marshall was one of the last stragglers, sitting across the table from Katie and joking about nothing. She finally, reluctantly, warned him that he was risking the chief's wrath if he stayed any longer, and his look of regret as he tore himself away was enough to make her day.

  That left her with just Eva, who caught her watching Marshall's exit when she returned from the bathroom. "You are some kind of homesick, aren't you?" Katie tried to shrug it off, but something in her demeanor gave away the lie, and Eva's joking grin faded to concern. "Oh, gosh, Katie. Are you going to make it?"

  Katie shrugged, suddenly miserable. "I'll be fine," she said. "It's just tough making a start in a new town, a new job. And I've got this awful case...."

  Eva said, "Oh." She put her smile back on, and tugged Katie's hand to get her moving. "Well, we'll get it sorted out," she said. "Come on, let's walk and talk."

  "Yeah," Katie said. "Good plan." She leaned across the table to grab her jacket, then followed Eva out the door.

  They walked a couple blocks while Katie filled in the broad strokes for her, then she said, "You know what it's like? It's like the books I read when I was a kid. It's like...do you remember Law and Order? That old TV show? It's like that. I need to be hitting the beat. I need to be knocking on doors and asking the tough questions." She thought for a moment, and shook her head. "They always used to say, 'After three days, the trail's cold.' Maybe that doesn't matter when it's all in the database, but my new perps aren't. So all of a sudden it's like I'm an old-timey cop again, just like I used to dream about, and right now I'm looking at a trail that's gone cold. I'm spending day three hanging out with old friends and parroting back decade-old congressional talking points to a judge who already agrees with me. I need to be in hot pursuit, you know?"

  Eva chuckled, and when Katie turned she caught the other woman just watching her. She'd always been a good listener. Katie said, "What?"

  "Katie Pratt, Gumshoe," Eva said, and then laughed at Ka
tie's frown. "Fine," she said. "Tell me about it. I bet you've already got more than you think you do."

  So she laid it all out. She spent hours bringing Eva up to speed. Most of it they spent walking, strolling Katie's old beat, but after a while she summoned her car and they sat in its spacious interior while she pulled out her handheld to show Eva the HaRRE video.

  She pulled off her headset and turned up the volume to use it as a speaker, then she opened her notes while the video was loading so she could skip to the really creepy part. It took a while for the video to render on her handheld, so she narrated while they waited. "Okay, so she's standing in the office, the elevator dings, and everything goes black." Even as she said it, the HaRRE screen resolved, already black. An unbroken roar came from the speaker. She stopped the video and checked the time in the environment, then double-checked her notes. "Weird."

  "What?"

  "She should be...." Katie skipped backward in time five minutes, and there was the girl, staring at a painting on the wall. Katie said, "Ooh, there she is."

  "Pretty," Eva said in an analytical sort of way. "Shame."

  Katie said, "Okay, well, here she's listening to some music. She looks nervous to me, but not exactly scared."

  Eva nodded.

  Katie went on, "Now she moves around behind the desk and—oh." The screen went black.

  "Wow." Eva said. "That's spooky. It's not—"

  "No," she said, and switched back to her notes. "It has shifted. We've lost...almost three minutes off the record, since Monday." She turned to Eva, eyes wide. "It's growing."

  She shrugged. "So?"

  "So I was already stumped. This...I don't know what the blackout represents, but it's totally blind. I looked, and it covers the whole downtown building and halfway down the block. I can't get details on anyone or anything within it. We're already pushing half an hour. That means unbroken positive IDs are about to start popping. Anyone inside that blackout—whether it's janitors cleaning up the building or an executive working late on a proposal across the street—if they stay inside the blackout past half an hour, the confidence level on their IDs plummets. It could take weeks for them to repair that. This has ramifications way beyond my homicide."

  "How so? I mean, sure, maybe some bystanders can't get good credit for a couple weeks—"

  "No. Eva, think about it." Their earlier argument was still fresh on her mind. "That blackout is manufacturing ghosts. The murderer was already erased, but this is ghosting everyone. Anything they do is lost to history. Any voice notes they record on Hathor, any last, precious conversation with a dying friend, any violent comment that could have shown motive in some crime of passion weeks from now. And any crimes. If someone was mugged out on the street, we would have no more evidence against them than against my ghost. This is a nightmare. And it's growing."

  Eva opened her mouth, but she found herself at a loss for words. That was for the best. Katie said, "Hathor, connect me to Rick Goodall, high priority." He didn't answer, and instead of leaving a message Katie said, "Goodbye. Hathor, connect me to Craig, FBI. Craig, connect me to Rick, high priority."

  This time Rick took the call, and Katie immediately said, breathlessly, "Rick, we've got a problem."

  "What's wrong?" His concerned voice flooded the interior of the car.

  "It's the Little Rock case," Katie said, turning down the volume a little. "There's something very bad there. It's not just a regular ghost. There's some sort of blackout—"

  Rick cut her off, laughter in his voice. "Hey, slow down. Take a breath. I know how hard you're working on this case, so I took a look at your case file this morning and there's nothing to panic over. It's a little odd, but I can show you how to handle it as soon as I can get a minute free—"

  "Rick, it's growing. It's a real problem—"

  He chuckled. "We have ways of dealing with it, Katie. I appreciate your zeal, but this is nothing worth getting worked up over. How did your appeal go?"

  "I trashed them," she said, trying not to sound petulant. Her voice just came out flat. "It went great."

  "Great!" he said. "Take your time getting home. I'll see you in the morning. Goodbye."

  They sat in silence for a while, Katie fuming. Eva finally spoke up. "Look, Katie, I know you don't want to hear this—"

  "No," she said. "I know they're the experts. I know I'm just a rookie now. But there's no way this is routine. If it is—" She stopped, and took a deep breath. "If it is, the whole system is a lie. All our confidence...." She trailed off, furious and frustrated.

  Eva waited a moment, then said. "I know a guy." Katie looked up and met her eyes. Eva shrugged. "Look, if they're as busy as you say they are...if it's the president, Katie, and they only have a handful of agents, your case isn't changing priority in their eyes. You just have to accept that." Katie's eyes flashed, and Eva hurried on. "However, if you want to get to the bottom of this on your own, there's a few things you can do. You can go to Little Rock and knock on doors—"

  "I already have permission for that. I fly out Monday."

  Eva smiled, a tightening of her lips, and went on. "That's a start. Interview everyone involved, and see if anything turns up." She glanced back at Katie's handheld on the seat between them, the HaRRE screen still solid black. "If you want to figure that out, though, you're going to need an expert."

  "And you know a guy."

  She shrugged. "I know of a guy. Runs a company called Database Archive Management, Inc. The Times ran a feature on him a couple months back, and I knew you were looking into Ghost Targets so I shared it with you." Katie looked away, and Eva said, "I know, you were busy. But this guy sells a...service. He 'manages' the database archives of the rich and powerful. The database in question being Hathor's." Katie's eyes grew wide, and Eva said, "Yeah. Right out in the open. They call him Ghoster."

  She said, "Ghoster?"

  A silky smooth, unfamiliar voice answered her, unnaturally loud from the headset speaker. "Ghoster," it said. "Pleased to meet you, Katie."

  5. Ghoster

  Eva started, then covered her surprise with anger. "Who is this? How did you connect to this line?"

  "I thought we already covered that," the voice answered, sounding annoyed. "I'm Ghoster. Now, here's my question: why is a Federal Ghost Targets agent discussing me and my services with an officer of the court?"

  Katie's eyes narrowed, but her voice was level. "Do you have any idea how much trouble you could get in for hacking the communications of a federal agent?"

  He answered with a laugh in his voice. "I do. None. I'm walking away from this. Look, I know you're new to the department and all, and apparently you haven't gotten your orientation yet. So here's the most important bit of it. You forget about me. I don't exist, as far as you're concerned. In exchange, I'll throw you a bone now and then. That's the deal."

  She caught Eva's eye, and hers were as wide as Katie's. She shrugged, just as confused as Katie. Katie said, "Look, umm...Ghoster. I don't—"

  "That's all, Ms. Pratt. Leave me out of your plans. Goodbye."

  Silence fell in the car once more. Then Katie shook her head. "What the hell?"

  "Okay," Eva said. "I guess I don't know a guy. You're on your own."

  Katie said, "No. Hathor, connect me to Ghoster." Her headset played a tone to indicate the name couldn't be resolved. She said, "Hathor, reconnect the previous call." The same tone played, and she growled. Then she barked, "Ghoster! Ghoster, Ghoster, Ghoster! Database Archive Management. I'm talking about you!"

  He spoke from her headset once again. "Stop that. You trigger alarms when you do that."

  "I know," she said. "You weren't taking my calls."

  "I told you—"

  "I need your help," she said. "Apparently you know a thing or two about Hathor. Someone has found a way to blind her, and I need you to explain what's going on."

  "You couldn't afford me," Ghoster said. "Get your boss to show you how to track down ghosts. It's not as hard as you think."
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  "This is different," she said, and then her confidence wavered. "I think this is different. It's not just a blind spot. The whole scene is blacked out, in HaRRE. I've never seen anything like it. It's like the lights just go out."

  "There are no lights in HaRRE."

  He sounded patronizing, and she answered it with irritation. "I know," she said. "I'm trying to describe it. The murderer on my case is already a ghost, but somehow the entire office building goes black, just before the crime. Audio is just noise—a solid bar of noise."

  She got no answer from Ghoster. After a moment, she said, "Hello?"

  "I'm here," he said. "I'm thinking." Several seconds later he said, "Okay, that's weird. When do you get back from Brooklyn?"

  Eva shot her a warning look, but she ignored it. "I'm heading back this afternoon."

  "You'll be in the office tomorrow?"

  She nodded, "Bright and early."

  "Okay. I have a ten o'clock spot free. I'm going to meet you there."

  Her eyes shot wide. "Really?"

  "You've got me stumped," he said, then added quickly, "It's probably something stupid. No offense, but it usually is. But my Thursdays are usually slow, so I'll give it a look." Before she could thank him—before she really understood that he had volunteered to help—he cut off the conversation with a terse, "Goodbye."

  She looked at Eva. After a moment, her face split in a grin. She said, "Thank you, Eva."

  "I didn't really do anything," she said.

  Katie laughed. "You've given me some hope, for the first time since I started this thing. It's probably something stupid, like he said." She waved away Eva's protest. "No, I've known that from the start. But this is my first opportunity to find out what. I just want to know how to do my job."

  Eva smiled back at her. "You've got that, then. This guy sounded like a real jerk, though."

  She laughed. She glanced at her watch, "Ah. I've used up your whole day."