by Draker, Paul
“Oh, hello, look who just woke up,” Kate said, more cautious now. “For a while there, I was wondering who I was talking to.”
“Why were you skulking in your lab the night McNulty died?” I asked. “Bars close early?”
“Asshole.” Kate glanced away. “Here comes your little slut. Try not to kill her, too.” Transforming her features into a polite smile, she nodded a welcome to Cassie before I could say anything in reply.
“Any news?” Cassie asked, joining us.
Kate shook her head, then touched Cassie’s forearm. “Listen, it doesn’t look like they’ll be letting anyone back inside anytime soon. Want to catch some lunch together? Just us girls?”
I knew that Cassie could handle Kate, so I moved a few steps away to think through what Bennett’s absence might mean. But glancing back at the two amiably chatting women, I couldn’t help but marvel at the contrast between them.
Cassie was six inches taller than Kate and leaner. Her black, asymmetrical emo hairstyle, with its one side-streak of pale blond-green, was shorter than Kate’s dark-red tresses, now pulled back in a tight ponytail. Kate’s complexion was milk pale, while Cassie’s mixed Native American ancestry gave her skin a nice, soft bronze sheen.
But the real contrast between the two women was in their personalities. Compared to Cassie’s gentle, thoughtful, compassionate nature, Kate was like something that had crawled out from under a rock.
I had once gotten a taste of who Kate really was, after last year’s Christmas party. And once was definitely enough for me. She was stronger than you would expect just from looking at her. She had managed to give me quite a struggle, that one time—leaving me with bruises that lasted into the New Year. I figured she could easily have done the damage to McNulty’s face, using a hammer or crowbar or something similar. I was also pretty sure that she had used her flying OctoRotor cameras to spy on me the night McNulty died. But had she murdered him?
I looked at Roger. I really had no idea what went on in his head, either. There had always been something a little off about the way he acted around me—an ambivalence I could never quite figure out.
And what about Blake? I wanted to let the old guy know I didn’t hold his little PETMAN joke against him, but why wasn’t he at work today? Setting me up that way revealed a streak of cold-blooded deviousness I never would have thought him capable of.
I needed to get all of them in front of Frankenstein as soon as possible and find out who was hiding what, before this blew up in my face and derailed everything I was trying to accomplish.
Pacing back and forth, I glanced up at the three plumes of steam rising from the geothermal plant up into the blue sky. My steps faltered, then halted, as I suddenly realized where Bennett was. Even worse, I wouldn’t be able to hide what I now knew, and just let someone else find him.
Ronald Bennett was about to become a big problem for me.
Walking to the corner of the building, I got out my phone and dialed Ricky in Engineering. He picked up right away. “‘Sup, Trev—”
“Where are you?” I asked him.
“B-one. Electrical. What’s up?”
“Head down to B-two—cooling level—right now. But stay on the phone. I need you to check something for me.”
I heard his footsteps banging down metal stairs and echoing in the enclosed stairwell. “Vegas was awesome, bro! You shoulda’ come with.”
“Yeah, next time,” I said. “Listen, check the supercomputer’s main coolant lines. Look at the junction where they enter the building, and tell me exactly what you see.”
A moment later, I heard him grunt. “I see a big problem. The main pipes have little ice crystals forming on their outsides—the water temp is way too low. I’ll grab the guys and head over to the plant, because we gotta get on top of this right away. Shit, Trev, this is really bad! If those coolant lines freeze solid—”
“Do NOT let that happen. I’ll meet you at the plant.”
“But… how did you know?”
I hung up on Ricky and jogged back to rejoin the others. I waved at the MPs in front of our building and beckoned them over.
They headed in our direction.
I shouldered in front of Kate, who was still yapping in her fake-friendly voice at Cassie. “Come on,” I said to Cassie. “I think we just found Bennett.”
• • •
Forming a tight crowd around the base of the geothermal plant’s smallest cooling tower, next to the administrative wing, we watched Ricky and his guys unscrew the bolts on the door-size panel that gave access to the geothermal heat pump’s condenser coils. Those coils were a critical part of the heat exchanger, drawing heat away from Frankenstein’s closed-loop water-cooling system. The colder the circulating water, the better—so long as it continued to flow. But if the water in the pipes froze solid and circulation stopped, then Frankenstein’s densely packed CPUs and GPUs would overheat and melt down.
With frost visible on the water pipes all the way over in the lab building, I was afraid we were very close to the freezing point now.
I couldn’t let that happen to Frankenstein. Overheating would damage and destroy his millions of sensitive processor cores, quite literally frying his brain. Even if we managed to avert that disaster by doing an emergency shutdown, Frankenstein’s newfound sentience might not survive the reboot.
Ricky bore down on his wrench, and the last bolt came loose. The other engineering guys slid the panel aside, and he peered through the gap. Then he grunted and took a fast step backward, holding his forearm over his mouth.
The sunlight fell through the widening opening, glistening on ice crystals and shiny coils of three-inch stainless-steel piping—and on the shadowed figure that stood upright in the doorway, covered with white frost, blocking access to the interior.
Bennett’s spread-eagled body bridged the narrow gap between two massive spring-like coils of water pipe that spiraled from floor to ceiling on each side of the opening. A horizontal connecting pipe ran between them at head height, and the corpse’s ice-stubbled jaws were clamped around it, stretching his mouth wider than should be possible. His eyes were wide, their sclerae glazed with a rime of ice, frozen in a terrified cataract stare.
The whispers and choking sounds from the crowd behind me sounded like a replay of when they dragged McNulty out of the geyser, but I didn’t have time to worry about that now.
“Where are the controls?” I asked Ricky.
Doubled over with his hands on his knees, he didn’t answer. I grabbed the shoulder of his coveralls and hauled him upright. “Temperature controls, Ricky. Where?”
He waved a shaky hand at the doorway. “Inside. Behind… him.”
One of the MPs was on his radio. The other grabbed my arm. “How’d you know where to find the victim?”
I shook him off and pointed toward the top of the cooling tower above us, where only blue sky showed. “Three steam plumes instead of four. Now, help me get him out of the way.”
“Sir, no one should move the body or contaminate the scene until NCIS—”
I shoved the MP aside. “Hey, Ricky, get over here.”
Ricky had his hands on his knees again. He raised one hand palm-out in a gesture of surrender. Useless.
“Sir…” The MP kept harassing me.
I ignored him and stepped up to Bennett’s frozen body. Looking over its white-frosted shoulder, I could imagine the ice crystals forming inside the pipes now, the water flow slowing. We didn’t have much time. I spotted the control panel on the back wall, ten feet beyond Bennett.
Unreachable.
The phone in my pocket vibrated: the quick triple buzz that meant it was from Frankenstein. And again, and again—he had something urgent to tell me. Seeing the frost on the pipes, I was afraid I already knew what it was.
Turning to face the crowd again, I saw no help there, either. Cassie waved me toward her with a frightened look on her face.
I feel safe because you’ll protect me, Frankenstei
n had said. I trust you, Trevor. I felt my throat tighten. I was about to fail him, too.
The MP laid a hand on my arm once more. His other hand was on the butt of his gun now.
“You idiot,” I said. “A hundred twenty million dollars of taxpayer money are about to melt themselves into the floor unless Engineering gets in there ASAP.”
“Sir, that decision isn’t mine to make,” the MP said.
In my head, I could hear Frankenstein’s terrified voice from last night again. Asking me to help him. Begging me.
“You’re right, it’s not your decision to make,” I told the MP as I spun around. “It’s mine.”
My kick struck the upright corpse in the sternum, driven by my full body weight. I expected a jarring impact, like hitting a frozen side of beef, but instead there was actually some give. Bennett’s trunk hadn’t frozen all the way through yet. With a nasty crackle and crunch of breaking ice, he tumbled backward and thudded onto the floor inside as I stumbled after him.
Ignoring the loud gasps and gagging noises erupting from the crowd behind me, I quickly crouched, grabbed an icy ankle, and hauled the rigid body feetfirst into the sunlight. I dragged it out of the doorway and off to the side.
Arms grabbed me and roughly yanked me upright—both MPs now, one on each side. I shook them off and stared down at Bennett’s body. Something seemed different about him now. He looked very wrong to me, all of a sudden.
“Oh, Christ,” one of the MPs said, and bent suddenly at the waist, turning away to vomit. The other one’s hand tightened on my biceps. I could feel him trembling through his grip.
“Ricky, get in there,” I said without looking up. “Get the fuck in there right now!” I blinked down at Bennett’s corpse, still trying to figure out why he looked so strange to me.
Now weird, breathy sounds—half giggle, half sob—were coming from Ricky, too. I glanced at him, seeing him shaking his head as he stared past me at the opening between the coils.
“I can’t,” he said, and then another of those sobbing giggles burst from his throat. “Come on, Trev, there’s just no way, bro. I can’t.”
I frowned at him, but he wasn’t even looking at me. Ignoring the icy corpse at my feet, I turned and followed Ricky’s gaze toward at the entrance I had cleared for him.
Bennett’s unblinking, frost-encrusted eyes continued to stare back at me from above the opening.
The top half of Bennett’s head, from his upper teeth to the crown of his iron-grey scalp, was still frozen to the cross pipe.
CHAPTER 56
I closed my eyes for a second and steeled myself, realizing that what I was about to do would alienate everyone watching me now. But I had no choice at all. If Ricky didn’t fix the temperature right away, Frankenstein would die.
Ignoring another chorus of cries from behind me—louder and more horrified this time—I seized Bennett’s skull with both hands and yanked it free from the cross pipe with an icy ripping sound. Not liking the cold, nasty way it felt against my fingers—like a bowling ball made of hard, lumpy snow—I sidestepped and knelt to set it alongside Bennett’s body, like a Waverunner helmet next to a wetsuit.
“Right NOW, Ricky!” I shouted. “Don’t make me ask you again.”
Ricky stumbled past, ducking through the gap between the condenser coils to reach the control panel, and I almost sobbed with relief.
Breathing hard, I stood up slowly with my back to everyone else, spreading my hands out to my sides to indicate that I was done. I didn’t want to turn around and see the expressions of disgust and horror that I knew would be on all their faces. I didn’t think I could handle seeing Cassie look at me that way right now.
“Kneel down and put your hands on top of your head.” One of the MPs—the puker—had found his voice again.
I had done all I could, and I didn’t want to get shot. But there was absolutely no way I was going to kneel or put my hands on my head, like some kind of criminal. Seeing was believing, and I had enough of an image problem already. If I let an MP treat me like that in front of everyone, the assumption of my guilt would be impossible to undo. Instead, I eased around to face him. His handgun—a 9mm Smith & Wesson M&P—was out and aimed at my chest.
“I just saved your job, you dipshit,” I said. “Put that away.”
“On the ground now, sir!”
Ricky’s shout from inside interrupted us. “Temperature’s normalizing now. I think we’re okay. We caught it just in time.”
I felt my legs go weak and wobbly with relief and locked my knees before I stumbled or fell.
“Let’s be reasonable,” I said to the MP with the gun as I put my hands in my pockets. “This guy doesn’t care anymore—he’s a meatsicle. But the base commander would’ve nailed your ass to a wall if I had to tell him your little panic attack made us lose the Pyramid Lake supercomputer.”
Composing my features into the most rational, patient expression I could muster, I raised my eyebrows at him. At the same time, I slid my finger onto the home button of my phone and pressed it five times in rapid succession, triggering a remote wipe of all the phone’s data.
“Hands on your head, right now!” he shouted. The other MP drew his gun also.
Six more MPs jogged around the corner of the building and joined the pair I was speaking with. All eight formed up in a semicircle around me. Over their shoulders, I saw Cassie’s frightened face in the crowd, silently mouthing something at me. I couldn’t make it out.
With a shrug, I slid my hands out of my pockets again. “Come on,” I said to the MPs. “Let’s go talk to whoever we need to. Let’s get this over with.”
I had saved Frankenstein from certain death, but now I had to make sure I stayed free to act. I would have a hard time helping Amy or anyone else from behind bars, and whoever had tried to hurt Frankenstein was bound to try again. But I was confident the MPs couldn’t hold me for long. After all, I hadn’t killed Bennett, no matter how it might look right now.
I could do this. I just had to keep my emotions under firm control, and avoid thinking too hard about the big picture. Instead, I would focus on the next steps in front of me and deal with them one by one—just like a computer.
Even the most complex software programs were built up from a series of trivially simple steps, executed one at a time, without making mistakes or stopping. That was all I had to do, no matter what nasty surprises came my way next.
As the MPs marched me away a gleam of metal from between the corpse’s clenched fingers caught my eye. I glanced down at Bennett’s ice-encrusted fist, and a hard lump formed in the pit of my stomach.
I had just found my missing keys.
CHAPTER 57
Walter Garmin, the NCIS special agent in charge, stood in front of my chair, arms crossed and feet apart, looking down at me. “Your co-lead has been phoning up a storm on your behalf,” he said. “Not that it’s going to do you any good. Ronald Bennett was killed on base. This time, the tribal council can’t make a stink about jurisdiction and throw its weight around again.”
I was sorry to hear that Cassie had involved herself.
“Dr. Lennox, we know you killed Ronald Bennett,” Garmin said. “The only thing I’m asking you right now is why.”
The MPs had brought me to the base brig, which was little more than a glorified drunk tank. The dust on my chair—and, now, on my clothes—told me the brig was rarely used. Garmin was a big, fit guy of indeterminate age with a bull neck and shaved head, wearing a blue suit. He had skin so dark, it made his palms look strangely pink. His posture and the way the MPs deferred to him told me he had come up through the ranks.
Old scars creased his knuckles—a fighter, too. I let him stew. While my gaze wandered the walls of the interview room around us, I thought about what I needed him to do for me.
The contents of my pockets—cell phone, wallet, spare keys, and rubber mouth guard—were spread across a nearby table. The phone, with its blank call and text logs and empty contact list, had p
uzzled Garmin, earning me a suspicious look when I told him it was brand-new.
My old friends from the Sheriff’s Department, Evan Peterson and Ken Zajicek, were there, too. They had arrived a few minutes ago to watch Garmin question me. I figured it was a law-enforcement courtesy, even though Bennett’s death had happened on base.
The FBI also wanted to speak with me, separately, afterward. But I didn’t really plan on talking with them. I turned back to Garmin and gave him my full attention.
“You’re not this dumb,” I said. “Think it through.”
“I don’t have to think anything through,” he said. “We have hard evidence.”
“What do we have so far?” I asked.
“You don’t have anything. We, on the other hand, have key-card records that narrow things down considerably. Last night, the only person who passed through the administrative wing’s entrance was Bennett. That means you came across the access corridor from the DARPA lab building to get at him. There’s only one type of key card that opens both interior doors…”
“A white keycard,” I said. “So we’re looking at one of the research leads, then.”
“Yeah. You.”
“Wrong,” I said. “And Bennett was on ice for hours before Cassie arrived. So that leaves Blake, Roger, or Kate. Which of them actually were here last night, during our time window?”
“All the DARPA leads were on base at some point, but that’s immaterial. We know you did it, because this time you got sloppy. You left evidence behind.”
“I want my keys back as soon as you’re done with them,” I said. “That’s not evidence, it’s someone’s idea of a bad joke.”
“I’m not laughing,” he said. “A judge won’t, either.”
I gave him a hard stare. “I’m being patient with you right now, Garmin, because I don’t envy the position your base commander is in. I’m trying not to make it any worse.”
“And what position might that be?” he asked.
“Running a Navy facility that doesn’t seem capable of guaranteeing the safety of civilian employees such as myself and my DARPA coworkers. A Navy facility that can’t even keep high-ranking visitors from D.C. safe while they’re on base. That can’t look good to anyone. It sure doesn’t to me.”