Every Last Fear

by Alex Finlay

  Now she’d distract herself with a project. She thought of her father, the feverish look in his eyes. His unwavering confidence in her. You’ll figure it out. You always do.

  She reached for her phone again and scrolled through her contacts. She clicked on the number for the call. A phone call. When was the last time she’d made one of those to someone other than her parents? Such an antiquated method of communication. But it’s what you did if you didn’t want to write something down—if you didn’t want a written record—if you were going to do something illegal.

  CHAPTER 27

  Maggie banged on the door to the garage. Toby peeked out from the sheet covering the window, saw it was her, and opened the door.

  “Hey,” Toby said. “You got here fast.”

  Maggie couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to Toby’s poor man’s Batcave. She looked around. Toby’s fortress had expanded. He had a large L-shaped desk with six monitors. Computer hardware was stacked in four-foot cabinets, a tangle of cords and flashing lights. To complete the cliché, crushed energy drink cans and grease-stained pizza boxes were piled in a trash can. Steve Jobs in training.

  They’d been friends since the sixth-grade science club. In middle school they’d been inseparable, prompting jokes about them being a couple. But it was never like that. Toby showed no interest in her—or any girls, for that matter. Some speculated that he was gay, but that wasn’t it. The truth was that the older Toby got, the less use he had for humans. By the time they’d reached high school, he’d retreated into his computers and his mission to create the next Big Thing. Not some silly app. The next PC or iPhone or idea that would change the world. Though they’d grown apart, Toby answered her call on the first ring, and didn’t hesitate when she’d asked to come over.

  “Welcome to my lair,” Toby said with his infectious smile. He still had the same hairstyle that looked like his mom cut it, the same skinny torso and pasty complexion.

  “Wow.” Maggie made an exaggerated show of scanning the room. “This has gotten…”

  “Out of hand? Unabomber-like?” Toby deadpanned.

  “What are you working on?” Maggie said.

  Toby smiled. “I can’t talk about it. You could be a corporate spy from MIT.”

  Maggie punched him in the arm.

  “Ow,” he said, rubbing the red spot on his bony upper arm. He stared at her for several seconds. “Are you, like, okay?”

  Why would he ask her that? Because she hadn’t been to the Batcave in so long? Or had he heard gossip about the party?

  “I mean, on Snapchat some kids were saying—”

  “I’m fine,” Maggie said, not making eye contact. She composed herself, forced her eyes to look up at his. “I need your help with something.”

  “I figured,” he said, collapsing into a worn couch that was pushed against the garage wall.

  “It may require you talking to some of your sketchy web friends,” Maggie said.

  “Hey, they’re not sketchy. Unkempt. And weird. But not sketchy.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  He shrugged. “What do you need?”

  “I need to know how to track someone through their cell phone.”

  Toby kicked his feet up on the coffee table, which was just some boards on top of cinder blocks. “Easy, get the phone and download a tracking app. Don’t you watch TV?”

  “But I don’t know whose phone it is. All I have is the number.”

  Toby scratched his chin, then stood and moved to the computer workstation. He put on a headset mic. Maggie tried not to smirk. He started typing, then said something into the mic. He laughed, pecked at the keys some more. Then: “Thanks, bro.”

  Unlike when she’d see him in the hallway at school—stoop-shouldered, fast-walking, eyes on the floor—here Toby was the most confident man alive.

  He yanked off the headset. “Well, that was easy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You got two hundred bucks?”

  Maggie narrowed her eyes. “What for?”

  “You want the location of the phone or not?”

  “You want me to send someone two hundred bucks? Is he a Nigerian prince?”

  “You want to track the phone? Then yeah. Two hundred and they can give you the coordinates for any phone for the past month. My friend said it’s legit. Bounty hunters use this service all the time.”

  “It doesn’t sound legit.”

  Toby threw up his hands.

  Maggie thought about her options. Two hundred dollars was a lot of money. She’d been tutoring and babysitting like crazy to earn enough for a new laptop for college. But she didn’t want to disappoint her father. “You sure?”

  “He sent me a brochure. It’s, like, a real company.”

  Toby pulled up the link and Maggie read over his shoulder. It was called location aggregation. The cell phone companies sold massive amounts of cellular location data to other companies that resold it to still other companies, which packaged the service to banks and others who used the data to verify what people put down on forms. The brochure said that banks could quickly cross-check an applicant’s address by looking at the cellular records.

  “What’s to stop a stalker or abusive spouse from tracking their victims?” Maggie said.

  Toby let out a sigh. “You wanna change the world, or you wanna track the phone?”

  “They’ll take Venmo?”

  Toby nodded. “I need the phone number.”

  Maggie gave it to him.

  Toby made the transaction. Just a few keystrokes. “They’ll email the results within the next twenty-four hours,” Toby said. “Now, you wanna tell me what this is about?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then you wanna tell me what happened last night?”

  “No,” Maggie said. “But I could use your help with something else.” She batted her eyelashes. Toby let out a groan. He nodded for her to continue.

  “Is it possible to call someone using FaceTime or Skype but doctor it so it looks like someone else?”

  “You mean, like, I’d call you but could make it look like I was a different person?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know, you’re going to MIT,” Toby said. “You tell me.”

  Maggie swatted him. “Don’t be a dick.”

  Toby thought about it. “Sounds like a deepfake.”

  Maggie shook her head. She’d heard of deepfakes, but didn’t know much about them.

  “The Russians developed it to fuck around with our elections,” Toby said, tapping on his keyboard, his eyes trained on the giant monitor in front of him. “It’s software that can make images come to life. They use it to make politicians appear drunk or say or do things that make them look bad. They basically just put one person’s face on another’s body and can make it look super realistic.” Toby held up his iPhone and started videoing her. “I’ll show you.”

  Maggie suddenly felt self-conscious. Her face reddened. “I don’t want to be filmed. I haven’t—”

  “Shut up, and say something outrageous.” He continued to point the phone at her. “Say, ‘Toby is a super-sexy stud.’”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  He looked at her over the phone. “All right, just say anything.”

  “Okay,” Maggie said, “Eric Hutchinson is an asshole. A total asshole!”

  Toby lowered the phone. He nodded as if he agreed with that. How much he knew from the online rumor mill was hard to tell, and he mercifully didn’t probe.

  “There’s open-source code these porn freaks developed based on the Russian technology,” Toby said as he uploaded the video from his phone.

  Maggie made a face like he was messing with her.

  “Really. They developed it so they could put the faces of A-list actresses on existing porn clips. I can show you if—”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  He gave a suit yourself shrug and turned back to the computer. “Okay,” he sa
id, “now, who’s your favorite actress? Or singer, or whatever.”

  Maggie was at a loss for a few seconds. She wasn’t a big pop-culture person. “Try RBG,” Maggie said.

  Toby frowned, shook his head. “How about someone who isn’t, like, seventy years older than you.”

  “You said the software was good.…”

  Toby sighed, then pulled up images of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Maggie then saw the video clip he’d just recorded of her on the screen. No makeup, bags under her eyes, unbrushed hair. At the same time, she thought she looked more grown-up, tougher. Her mind skipped to her kneeing Eric in the balls. She was a badass, she told herself. And that prick wasn’t going to get the best of her.

  On another monitor, hundreds of RBG images flicked by.

  Toby said, “This is gonna take about twenty minutes. I can make some pizza rolls if you wanna hang?”

  “I’d love some pizza rolls,” Maggie said. She had a memory of the two of them in middle school, watching TV and eating a pile of the roof-of-the-mouth-burning snacks.

  Toby disappeared, then returned with a plate full of pizza rolls. While they ate, Toby told her his plans. He was taking a gap year to work on his secret project. His parents agreed on a one-year plan—if he wasn’t supporting himself by then, he was off to Cambridge.

  “Are you excited for MIT?” he asked.

  “Yeah, a little nervous leaving my dad behind.”

  He started to say something, but stopped himself. “How’s your brother’s case going? Does all this”—he pointed his chin to the computer monitor that was still flashing images of RBG at rapid speed—“have something to do with it?”

  Maggie was spared the explanation when Toby noticed that the program was complete.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Maggie nodded.

  Toby wiped his hands on his pants and went back to the workstation. On the screen was a frozen image of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But she was wearing Maggie’s clothes. Toby clicked the mouse and the video began. It was both amazing and troubling. The late RBG stood in Toby’s garage and said, “Eric Hutchinson is an asshole. A total asshole!”

  “How in the hell…?” Maggie said, impressed.

  Toby beamed, proud of himself. “Give me an hour to adjust the lighting and minimize the blurriness around the head”—he pointed at the screen—“and it would take an expert to tell it’s a fake.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Play it again.”

  He did. This time Maggie studied it closely. RBG’s mouth moved in sync to Maggie’s words. Her head was proportional to Maggie’s body. “You can do this for anyone if you have an image?”

  “Yep, though the more images of the person, the better the quality. But these porn dudes spent a lot of time on this, so the tech is solid.”

  Never underestimate the power of a creep with too much time on his hands.

  “You made a video. Could someone do this from a live call?”

  “Probably,” Toby said. “But if the caller didn’t talk much, they could also just make it look live and pump in a video feed.”

  “Can you make me one more?” Maggie asked.

  “Sure,” Toby said, biting into a pizza roll, red goo dripping down his chin.

  Maggie leaned over his shoulder and tapped on his computer, pulling up Netflix.

  “Whose image are you looking for?” Toby asked.

  Maggie didn’t reply. She just clicked the mouse, fast-forwarding until she found what she needed. She paused on the image. Charlotte’s pretty face looked back at the two of them.

  Maggie stood up tall, adjusted her hair. “I need you to film me again.”

  Excerpt from

  A Violent Nature

  Season 1/Episode 8

  “The Unknown Partygoer”

  INT. CAR – SUNRISE

  Lieutenant Governor NOAH BRAWN looks ahead at the sun casting highlights on cornfields lining the two-lane highway.

  NOAH

  I’ve known Detective Ron Sampson for years. I don’t believe he intended to coerce a false confession. The Adair force had never handled a homicide case, never had sophisticated interrogation training. And even good people, dedicated professionals in the system, make mistakes. It’s one of the awful truths of our supposedly foolproof justice system: innocent people aren’t just locked up because of odious wrongdoing, but also because of devastating human error.

  INTERVIEWER (O.S.)

  Interrogation experts we’ve talked to haven’t been so charitable to Detective Sampson or his partner.

  NOAH

  I understand. The interrogation is hard to watch. But I believe Ron had his doubts himself and wanted to keep investigating, but was shut down by the county prosecutor.

  INTERVIEWER (O.S.)

  You’re no fan of Rusty Halford?

  NOAH

  Don’t get me started.

  INTERVIEWER (O.S.)

  Did Danny’s case inspire all the work you’ve been doing for criminal justice reform?

  NOAH

  Absolutely. Fifteen percent of cases recorded in the National Registry of Exonerations included false confessions. Almost a third involve eyewitness identification, which we’ve learned is notoriously unreliable. Jailhouse informant testimony makes up another fifteen percent. We’re trying to fix that in Nebraska and nationwide.

  INTERVIEWER (O.S.)

  This sounds really personal to you.

  NOAH

  You’re damn right—forgive my language. I’ve known Danny’s mother since high school. And I knew Charlotte. After my wife passed, I used to eat at the diner a few times a week where she worked. My son went to school with all these kids. And it offends me that the prosecutor had a report about an unknown man at the party that night, and a separate report about eerily similar crimes in a neighboring state, and he doesn’t give this stuff to the defense. That’s not how a fair system operates.

  INTERVIEWER (O.S.)

  You believe the Unknown Partygoer and the Smasher are the same person?

  NOAH

  To paraphrase my son: “Duh.”

  CHAPTER 28

  OLIVIA PINE

  BEFORE

  Liv forced down another sip of the awful convenience store coffee as she parked at the lot next to the city center in Lincoln.

  She made her way up the steps to the State Capitol building, through security, and to the elevators leading to the interior offices of the ornate structure. She recalled making this same journey two years ago, just after the documentary came out. Back then she’d come to see if Noah could convince Governor Turner—a toad-faced sycophant who’d been in office for three decades—to support Danny’s petition for a pardon. A long shot, yes. But Noah had played an important role in ‘A Violent Nature’: the crusading politician out for justice. His handsome face was interspersed throughout the ten episodes. The documentarians were particularly fond of filming Noah driving from his home in Adair to the capital as he waxed poetic about criminal justice reform. His defense of Danny and condemnation of the system that convicted him were eloquent.

  It didn’t hurt that Noah was from Adair. He’d been the mayor before his election to lieutenant governor. His son was a classmate of Danny’s. But most of all, he had a very personal connection to that ugly night: Noah’s son had thrown the house party where Charlotte was last seen alive. Most politicians would have tried to distance themselves from the case, but Noah owned it. Liv never knew if it was out of loyalty to her, or guilt about the party where Danny had consumed so much alcohol that he couldn’t remember anything about that night.

  The documentary made Noah an internet heartthrob, the dashing widower-politician trying to free an innocent man. Women of a certain age made suggestive comments about him on Facebook. He’d participated in a speaking tour about the problem of wrongful convictions. He was even invited on Bill Maher and some of the political shows, a rarity for the lieutenant governor of a flyover state.

  Liv walked into Noah’s office. The recep
tionist, a pretty woman in her twenties, greeted her with a plastic smile.

  “Hi,” Liv said, “I’m Olivia Pine. I’m hoping to get a moment with Lieutenant Governor Brawn.”

  The young woman pecked at her computer. Her eyes searching the monitor, she said, “I don’t see an appointment.”

  “I don’t have one. We’re old friends. I’m visiting from out of town. Can you tell him Liv is here?”

  The receptionist smiled, not as friendly as before. “Please have a seat.”

  A few minutes later a young man came out from the interior offices, and Liv was taken aback.

  “Mrs. Pine?”

  He wore shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, and had his father’s gray-blue eyes.

  “Oh my goodness, Kyle. You’re so grown-up.”

  Liv felt a sudden ache in her chest. Seeing Noah’s son, a former classmate of Danny’s, flooded her thoughts with the what-ifs and what-could-have-beens.

  “How are you?” Kyle said as they exchanged an awkward hug. Noah had once told her that Kyle suffered a lot of guilt about throwing that party. Liv never held it against the boy; he was a kid. The class president engaging in his first act of rebellion, if only to impress the jocks. And the truth was that if Danny and Charlotte hadn’t been partying there, they would’ve been partying somewhere else. Liv and Evan had a recurring fight, blaming each other about the lax oversight of their son.

  “I’m well,” Liv said. “And you? You’re working for your father?”

  “Part-time. I’m in law school at UNL.”

  “That’s great, Kyle, just terrific.” Liv felt the ache again.

  Kyle didn’t ask why she was there, just led her through the door to the back of the suite and into his father’s office.