Matt shuddered. “Okay. You’ve got a point there.” He turned troubled eyes toward Leif. “But you were at the last meeting—the last regular meeting—where Captain Winters asked us to lay off.”
“He asked us to lay off McGuffin, and not to mess around with Steve the Bull Alcista.” Leif spread his hands, the picture of innocence. “And I will observe those requests. I’m not going near either of them. Neither are you.”
Matt had to laugh. “When the time comes for you to decide what you’re going to be when you grow up, you should consider being a lawyer.” He shook his head. “Or, as my Irish grandmother pronounces it, a liar.”
Leif gave him a thin-lipped smile. “It’s a possibility,” he said. “Do you have any ideas on what we as a group can do to tell Winters we all still love him?”
“Nothing very definite—or very helpful,” Matt admitted. “A picket line with a couple of cardboard signs would look more pathetic than supportive. And where would we go? The HoloNews office here in D.C.? Their headquarters in your town?” He managed a sour smile. “Or maybe Jay Gridley’s office?”
“Hangman Hank Steadman’s office.” Leif’s grin was wicked. “He’d love the media coverage.” Then he got more serious. “I’ll bet it’s not just the kids here who’d want to help. We’ll want to do something national—something on the Net.”
“You think I can get David to hack in and stick a message of support on all of America’s phone bills?” Matt suggested.
Leif laughed. “A little extreme, maybe, but I think you’re heading in the right direction.”
The humorous glint in Matt’s eyes faded. “Watching that meeting last night—it was like being told that Captain Winters had contracted some terrible disease. I just want to send him a giant get-well card.”
“Why don’t you?” Leif said. “Draft up a petition, something like that, and send it out to all the chapters. See if you can get every member to sign on.” He shrugged. “It shouldn’t be too hard. Look how quickly you guys got things rolling when you began banging the drums to roast Jay-Jay McGuffin’s tail.”
Matt slowly nodded. “You may have something there. Not exactly a petition, but a statement of support from all the Net Force Explorers, individually and together.”
Leif shrugged. “I’d sign it.”
Matt looked at him. “And to tell the truth, that sort of surprises me. The captain has roasted your tail from time to time over some of the stuff you’ve pulled. He trusts you only about as far as he can throw you.”
Leif wasn’t smiling at all as he leaned forward. “Look, I really like Captain Winters. Maybe it’s because of that suspicion, that continuous back and forth when we talk. I respect him for it. He’s usually right, too. I almost always am up to something when he thinks I am. Or maybe it’s something more than that. Remember what Daniel said? How he likes Captain Winters because the captain believes in him? Well, you’ve got to believe in something in this life. Me, I believe in James Winters.”
Leif looked a little embarrassed, as if he’d said something he shouldn’t. “Do me a favor and don’t spread that around, okay? It would ruin my rep as a cool, cynical playboy-in-training.”
“Yeah, right,” Matt muttered as his friend finally blinked out of his space. “That rep fits you to a T.”
Matt’s “giant get-well card” project succeeded far beyond anything he’d expected. All the local chapters enthusiastically jumped on board when he contacted them. Signatures began pouring in for his statement of support. Even kids who hadn’t been reporting in for meetings lately—including a few kids who’d been in the hospital—signed on to help Captain Winters. In days Matt had the signatures of every recorded Net Force Explorer.
That was the good part. Then he realized he had to get these signatures organized somehow and get them to Net Force and James Winters. Sorting the names against membership data, he got the signatures organized into local groups. Once he had the presentation problem licked, then there was the problem of delivery.
Jay Gridley’s office was easy. All it took was a phone call to Mark to get that Net address. But Captain Winters was a tougher nut to crack. With the captain suspended, it didn’t seem very likely he’d be checking his office e-mail. And when Matt tracked down a personal Net address for a J. Winters that looked promising, he got no response. The captain didn’t answer his home phone, either.
Matt couldn’t say he was exactly surprised. Since Tori Rush’s piece on Once Around the Clock, there had been a steadily growing media circus focused on the car bombings, both the recent one and the older ones. And the center ring of that circus was the alleged Alcista-Winters murder case. With reporters asking him repeatedly for comments and answers to questions, the captain probably had good reasons not to pick up when his phone bleated.
But it also meant that Matt couldn’t warn Winters that a special message was on the way from the Explorers. And that meant he couldn’t depend on sending off the petition electronically.
No, he would have to resort to a hard copy or a datascrip, delivered by hand. Matt spent a day reworking his document, decided how he wanted the final document to look, then tracked down a service bureau to print it out. The message was too massive to manage on his home system. He wanted the statement and signatures to appear in full color all on one piece of paper, and that meant finding a company that still used printers with paper rolls.
David Gray helped in the search, and Matt finally found a place that could handle the job. A few hours later he headed off with the result of his efforts—a very bulky roll of paper—under his arm. As he came out of a suburban Metro station, Matt hailed a cab in the parking lot and gave the driver James Winters’s home address. He winced when he heard the fare. This hand-delivery stuff didn’t just take time out of his day. It meant shelling out some serious money, too. But Captain Winters was worth it. Besides, if costs got out of hand, Matt knew he could get Leif to foot some of the bill.
He looked out the window as he rolled along en route to the captain’s house. It was a pleasant neighborhood, with good-sized houses spaced well apart. There was lots of room for front and back yards. Young kids were playing in several of those yards. Matt passed a little girl riding on a bicycle, and some guys shooting hoops on a backboard attached over a garage.
Matt blinked. He hadn’t really given much thought to how the captain lived outside of work. Maybe it was Winters’s military facade. But Matt somehow thought of his mentor in relation to offices or barracks, not as a suburb-dweller.
When he pulled up at the appropriate address, Matt didn’t expect to see the paneled Colonial-style house overlooking a good stretch of woods. But there was no mistaking the place. This was Captain Winters’s home, all right. The media vans parked across the street were a dead giveaway. Several vaguely official-looking vans were parked in the driveway. And James Winters stood in the driveway with Captain Hank Steadman of Net Force Internal Affairs.
They both turned suspicious eyes on the cab as it pulled up to the place.
They’re probably expecting some idiot reporter to pop out, Matt thought. He wished again he’d been able to call ahead. No way did he want to intrude on the investigation.
But Captain Winters smiled in welcome when Matt emerged from his cab.
“Matt!” he said in surprise. Then he turned to Steadman. “This is one of my Net Force Explorers, Matt Hunter. What brings you out here, Matt?”
Steadman excused himself and headed for the garage as Matt presented his printout. Winters read the statement of support with his usual quiet, serious expression. But Matt thought there was a hint of mist in the captain’s eyes as he partially unrolled the paper to see the beginning of the list of signatures in three neat rows, then hefted the weight of the scroll in his hand to get some idea of how very long the list was.
“Every current Net Force Explorer signed,” Matt said with pride, “as well as some kids who aren’t with the group anymore, either because they graduated from the program or went on
to pursue other interests.”
“Matt—” Winters had to clear his throat before he went on. “Thank you. This couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s not a pleasant experience to have your colleagues execute a search warrant on your house.”
“It’s a nice-looking place,” Matt said.
Winters glanced at him, a hint of a smile quirking his lips. “What? You were expecting a cave? Or maybe a bunker? What a disappointment! The captain lives in a house!” Winters shrugged. “I try to keep it neat. And I know it’s clean.”
Matt sensed immediately that Winters wasn’t referring to his housekeeping skills.
Hangman Hank Steadman came back out of the garage, his eyes hooded. “Captain,” he said formally, “you told us you hadn’t used the workshop back there for quite some time.”
“It’s been months,” Winters replied. “I was cutting some wood during the summer to make repairs on the deck out back.”
Steadman gave him a brief, almost ironic, nod. “In that case, can you explain why there’s no dust on any of the tools in there?” The IA man pressed on. “And why we found traces of plastic explosive on your workbench?”
5
Matt stepped into Captain Winters’s office—he still couldn’t think of it in any other way—and shook hands with Agent Dorpff.
“Matt Hunter?” The youthful-looking agent smiled. “Good to start meeting some of the guys—and girls—in the organization,” he quickly added, obviously remembering his disastrous introduction to the Net Force Explorers. “Captain Winters specifically mentioned you as part of what he called ‘the local organizational cadre,’” Dorpff went on.
“Really?” Matt said, a little flattered.
Agent Dorpff nodded. “Looks like the captain was right,” he said. “Considering the job you did on that petition. A nationwide response in less than a week!”
He gave an embarrassed shrug at Matt’s look of surprise. “Hey, it’s part of my job, checking out what’s happening on the Net Force Explorer Net.”
Dorpff looked concerned. “I hope you weren’t too upset by what happened when you went to deliver the printout.”
Matt couldn’t help himself. “How did you—”
His answer was another shrug. “I may be the guy on the bottom of the organizational totem pole, but even I hear things,” Dorpff said.
“And is this part of the job, too?” Matt asked. “Consoling the upset teenagers?”
“It’s probably in the job description somewhere,” Dorpff said. “But even though I’m just starting out, I’m not stupid enough to think that you’ll forget Captain Winters.” He hesitated for a second. “I do want you to know that I’ll be there…if you need me.”
“In case I’ve scarred my poor psyche?” Matt said. “Hey, all I did was see a bunch of lab nerds running around in the captain’s garage.”
“So you actually got to see the workshop?” Dorpff said.
“From the garage door,” Matt said. “It looked clean.”
“Clean as a whistle, from what I heard.” The young agent frowned. “I always wondered, why would anyone consider a whistle particularly clean? It would be full of spit and germs—”
Matt didn’t let him change the subject. “Maybe Winters has the world’s most fanatical cleaning lady.”
“A suspicious mind would think in terms of an attempt to destroy evidence,” Dorpff replied. “Even so, those lab nerds found indications of Semtec, a fine, old-fashioned plastic explosive still used in some military munitions. And from the trace chemicals they put in the stuff—taggants, they’re called—it was linked to a batch of the stuff involved in one of the captain’s old cases.” Dorpff shrugged. “You hear about people taking their work home, but even so—”
“Very funny,” Matt said.
“Here’s something not so funny,” the young agent went on. “The same chemical tracers were found in the bomb that blew up Stefano Alcista.”
Matt stared as if Dorpff had just punched him in the gut.
“The captain said he hadn’t been in the workshop in months,” Matt said. “And knowing how busy the job keeps him, I have no problem believing that’s true. There’ve been times when kids have called this office late, or even on the weekend, and found him in—”
“But, oddly, he wasn’t in the office most of the afternoon before the Alcista bombing,” Dorpff interrupted almost gently. “He claimed he’d gotten a call to meet an informant who never showed. But there’s no record of such a call. Captain Winters left at two P.M. and didn’t get back until four forty-five. Less than an hour later Steve the Bull decides to go for a car ride, and…boom!”
“It’s not that much time,” Matt argued desperately. “In some companies that would be considered a long lunch hour.”
Dorpff nodded. “And street informants have a pretty elastic sense of time—when they even bother to show. But there was no phone call on record here, either to the captain’s desk or to his foilpack.”
The agent looked at Matt for a long moment. “Do you know about the MOM theory of crime?”
“Um—what?” Matt said, expecting some bizarre psychological mumbo-jumbo about mother fixations. Frankly, he had a harder time imagining Winters with a mother than he did thinking of the captain as being married. The captain was so emotionally mature it was hard to think of him as a drooling toddler.
“It’s an old acronym for the main elements in investigating a crime,” Dorpff explained. “Motive, Opportunity, and Means. M-O-M. Put your feelings for Captain Winters aside for a moment and consider how the elements line up in this case.”
He ticked off one finger. “Motive—that’s pretty obvious. Alcista is believed to be behind the death of Captain Winters’s wife. And half the world has seen that news segment, showing the look on Winters’s face when he heard about Alcista getting out. I think we can take motive for granted.”
Matt gave a stiff-necked nod.
Dorpff held up a second finger. “Opportunity. Winters disappears from his office for several hours the day Alcista dies. The captain doesn’t have a satisfactory reason why he was missing. And the part of the story we can check out—the phone call from the informant—doesn’t check out.”
“I bet a lot of people were out of the office,” Matt said. “And the call could have come in on a line other than the direct one to Winters’s desk and been forwarded. That happens all the time. Are they checking on that?”
“Yes, but there’s no denying the captain had the opportunity to commit the crime. That’s where MOM comes in,” Dorpff pointed out. “We’re interested right now only in the people who have a motive for hurting Alcista.”
He hesitated, then put up a third finger. “Finally—means. Steve the Bull was nailed by a Semtec bomb. Traces of the same batch of Semtec turn up in Captain Winters’s home workshop.”
The young agent hesitated again. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but it will undoubtedly leak out soon enough. Internal Affairs ran a Net search of suspicious occurrences near the captain’s home. They found a police report in the next township. Somebody had complained about an explosion in a patch of woods two days before Alcista went to meet his maker. When Steadman’s techs checked the site, they found a crater—and the remains of a Semtec bomb. Sort of a trial run, you might say. Working out the bugs. And the bomb had definite problems. There were large fragments that hadn’t been vaporized. The lab boys think they can get fingerprints—”
Dorpff broke off, giving Matt a look of what could only be interpreted as pity. “I know you admire Captain Winters, Matt. You and the other Net Force Explorers have shown a hundred-percent loyalty to the man. You’re all outraged that this should be happening to your friend and mentor.”
The agent’s face looked even younger as he leaned across Captain Winters’s desk, his expression pained and earnest. “I didn’t know the man—we only had a brief meeting while he brought me up to speed on the Net Force Explorers. But I could see he thought the world of you kids.”<
br />
Dorpff took a deep breath, then let it out as a sigh. “There’s a definite case against Captain Winters. Maybe it would be best for both sides if you at least considered the possibility that he might be guilty of the things he’s being accused of.”
“Can you believe it?” Matt stormed. His figure went in and out of Leif Anderson’s sight as Matt strode back and forth in front of his holo pickup. “That jug-eared idiot was trying to break it to me gently that Captain Winters was guilty! Based on a case that’s completely—completely—” He broke off, searching for a word.
“Circumstantial?” Leif suggested.
“‘Lame’ is closer to an honest description,” Matt replied in exasperation. “I mean, the captain is supposed to be a top Net Force agent, right? He was apparently a legendary field man—one of the best. But he seems to have packed his brains in deep storage while he was planning this crime he’s accused of.”
“You’d think the captain would know about this Motive, Opportunity, and Means stuff,” Leif agreed. “Dorpff isn’t bright enough to invent it on his own, so they must teach it at the Academy.”
“So, knowing how Net Force will investigate, of course the first thing the captain would do is build a bomb in his garage, where traces are sure to be found,” Matt said angrily. “And then he’d test it the next town over, because of course he’d forget about any Net searches for suspicious connections. Finally he’d openly leave the office to attach the new, improved bomb to Alcista’s car—and not bother to give himself a respectable alibi.”
“When you put it that way, it does sound pretty ridiculous,” Leif said. “But remember the look on the captain’s face. Could you be that angry and think clearly?”
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