Expectation (Ghost Targets, #2)

by Pogue, Aaron

  She closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. With a smile tugging at her lips, she whispered, "This is my job."

  2. Eric Barnes

  As Katie dug into the casefile, she found it mystifying. The victim, Eric Barnes, was only forty-two, and for the last twenty years he'd been a respected researcher in the field of Senescence. It was easy to see why, too, with his dedication. He spent ten to fifteen hours a day, six days a week, at his clinic—all of it time lost to history, because Hathor hit a brick wall half a mile from the clinic, showing nothing but a flat, gray background. A wide-angle overhead of the city showed rolling hills climbing toward the mountains, vibrant green and brown carved into blocks by the obsidian lines of the highways and shining silver roads. Right in the middle of it all, though, there was a sharp square of nothing, a 2-D gray block in the middle of 3-D reality. She'd seen that before, where the records ran thin, but nowhere in the United States for at least a decade.

  She tracked down the DoD order that had made the clinic a restricted area, some nineteen years ago, but when she rolled the HaRRE display back, she found nothing helpful. Back then, coverage had been pretty spotty, anyway, and if she remembered right, Colorado was one of the last holdouts on privacy rights.

  It sure seemed that way as she surveyed the state, pulling farther and farther back. There were a handful of households in Denver, flecks of color and texture on the flat background, but it wasn't until she drew back far enough to see the distant Kansas state line that she saw a real landscape. It glowed, gold and rolling to the horizon, but the rich detail stopped dead in a squiggly gray line right along Colorado's border.

  That was some foresight, she thought, for the army to restrict access to one clinic within a vast plane of nothingness. She sent the record into fast forward and counted two years before the state was well and truly textured, and another fifteen months before Boulder filled in, right up to the squared border around the De Grey Clinic. Foresight, indeed.

  She turned back to the case at hand, reading through the incident report. Eric Barnes had been discovered by a research assistant, Meg Ginney, three weeks ago, collapsed on his laboratory floor. At the time, he was breathing normally with some brain function, but entirely unresponsive. Katie's eyes widened as she read about his Hippocrates watch, which was exempted from the DoD restriction but never gave a word of warning. Somehow his total coma didn't trigger any alarms until just after he was found, when his blood sugar dropped too low after thirty to forty hours without eating.

  His medical condition was amazing—that he could have suffered an attack sufficient to put him into a persistent coma without triggering a medical alert through Hippocrates—but the real story in Barnes's casefile grew out of conversations between the army representatives and the local police chief, who had become increasingly incautious in the last ten days. There was a conversation with Reed from two days ago, Saturday morning. She played it back out of curiosity more than anything else.

  He started it off with a tired-sounding, "Hello?" She checked the timestamp, but the call had started at eleven fifteen.

  "Mister Reed," a chilly woman's voice answered. "This is Police Chief Dora Hart of the Boulder City Police Department. I understand your office has been looking into the De Grey case."

  "I've got an analyst on it," Reed said, noncommittal. "We haven't seen any real reason to doubt the army's medical evaluation—"

  "Mister Reed, with all due respect, that report is pure fiction, and I can tell you why." The woman on the line spoke with a surprising ferocity, every word hurled into the conversation, but there was a purr in her voice that tempered it. Katie paused the audio playback and opened up HaRRE. For a moment she considered checking in on Reed, to see what had him yawning at the crack of noon, but the case was more important. She found location details on Dora Hart at the time of the call, and resumed playback with audio.

  The police chief was in her office, a spacious cage in the heart of a sprawling police station, and she prowled back and forth like a lioness while she spoke with Reed. She had the army's medical report open on her desktop, and she waved to it angrily as she went on. "Barnes is a vegetable, Mr. Reed, because of his research on Gevia. I saw the scene before the army investigators came to lock the place down, and I can tell you the man was the victim of some violence."

  Reed answered with a little more vigor. "I've seen stills of the man in medical care, Miss Hart—"

  "Yes, after the army's doctors got to do their work on him." She growled and slammed a hand down on her desk. "I'm telling you, they will do anything to keep this quiet. This is a real problem for them," she said. "It's political. Gevia is important, and they don't want anyone to know what happened." Reed tried to answer, but she cut him off. "It's not safe, Mr. Reed. Everyone in the nation is either on Gevia or scheduled for an injection. This is too big for us to let them keep it secret. Something happened to that man, and we have to know what."

  Reed didn't seem to have an answer, and finally Katie's impulse got the better of her. She shut off the playback and pulled up his medical records. She'd had her Gevia shot eight months ago, back when it was still limited to military and police forces, but she hadn't ever really thought much about it. Reed had been scheduled for a shot in December, barely a month away, but she saw he'd put it on hold after his conversation with Dora Hart. She double checked that and grinned. It had been after his conversation with Dora Hart, followed by a brief call to Brian Dimms.

  She checked into the medical stills, too, to see what Reed was talking about. There was a wide shot of him on a hospital bed, naked from the waist up, pale and unconscious but otherwise looking fine. Then there were a handful of others—a close up on the back of his head showing a slight bruise beneath his thick brown hair, another one showing a bruise and abrasion on his right ring finger like someone had removed a ring forcibly, and a nick on his neck that could have happened while shaving. All of them seemed pretty inconsequential, and Reed had commented to that effect in the casefile.

  She looked up at a sudden motion and saw the door to Rick's old office fly open. Reed strode out into the bullpen ahead of the GAO investigators, and Katie quickly cleared away his details from her desktop. She got rid of the medical stills, too, and pulled up Eric Barnes's personal details to track down some footage of him at home, the evening before the incident.

  His location history showed him at the house at eight twenty-three, but nothing before that at all. It seemed odd, because his two-story Victorian was in a suburb west of town, well outside the clinic's restricted area. She opened up the playback at eight twenty-two, curious, and found the camera focused on the steps out front of his house. Cars rolled by on the busy residential street but there was no sign of the approaching researcher. She heard the front door open and panned the camera to find Mrs. Barnes opening the door with a warm smile, apron on, and then a moment later Eric appeared in front of her. He popped into existence on the top step, mid-stride, and Katie saw the wife give a friendly wave toward the street, but when she turned the camera back that way there was no one there.

  She followed Eric into the house. He was already on the couch, feet up on a plush ottoman and reading through something on his handheld. She tried to check out what it was, but that information was restricted. In HaRRE it showed up blank. She tried switching to source video, but an error screen informed her that the video feed for this location was flagged private and reserved for household and law enforcement purposes.

  That, at least, was perfectly normal. She figured half the families she knew still had their home recorders set to private. It took a simple command, run from a macro on the desktop, to request special access to the home video, but none of the cameras gave her a look at the victim's handheld screen. They were relatively low quality cameras, anyway, so she would have been very lucky to get even a guess at what he was reading. She did get a good look at his right hand, though, and she saw he was wearing a heavy gold class ring. By the time the medical examiners got to h
im that would be missing, but it didn't really mean much. For all she knew, they might have removed it as part of their investigation.

  Theresa returned with two plates full of food, and Eric tossed aside his handheld in favor of dinner. Katie watched them eat, listened to their idle conversation about her trip to the grocery store and the book her friend had recommended. It had been years since eavesdropping like that had made Katie feel uncomfortable. It was just part of the job, now, and she zoomed in close and watched the tiny facial expressions, listened to subtle clues in the voice, watching for any indication that something was amiss. He had two hours left in the evening, before he went to bed, and he would leave in the morning before she woke up. Then he disappeared into the void, and left his mind there when he came out again.

  She watched and listened, snooping for all she was worth, but there was nothing there. It seemed for all the world like a happy suburban dinner. Theresa finally heaved herself back up off the couch and held out a hand for his plate. "I could use some ice cream," she said lightly. "You want anything?"

  "Maybe some coffee," he said, "if we've got any." His attention drifted to the TV, and she slipped from the room. Before she came back, a shadow fell over Katie's desk.

  She looked up to meet Reed's eyes. There was something in them, sadness or pity, that took her by surprise. He said her name softly. "Katie." Before he could say more, the two investigators he'd been meeting with all morning stepped up behind him.

  The one on the left fixed her with a measuring gaze and spoke firmly. "Miss Pratt," he said, spitting the words at her, "we'd like to speak with you concerning your involvement in the Buenos Aires affair."

  She didn't answer right away. She didn't flinch away from his demanding gaze, either. She met it squarely, and after a heartbeat she shrugged. "I've already given a complete statement. Four complete statements, if it comes to it, and I've been interviewed on the record—"

  "Miss Pratt," he cut her off, sounding bored, "we've reviewed all of your statements, but it's our job to take a full accounting. If you would just humor us, we'll try to make this quick."

  She held his eyes for a moment longer, then cut her gaze to Reed. The sympathy was still there, but he shrugged. "We've got our orders, Katie. We do what they say."

  She glanced down at the clock on her desktop, and just then her stomach rumbled loudly enough to make the point. She looked up again and asked without much hope, "Any chance we could do it after lunch?"

  The same guy answered her with a tight smile. "This will only take a moment."

  On the way across the bullpen he introduced himself, giving her a name that her headset had whispered in her ear as soon as he first approached. "Steve Fredrik, Government Accountability Office." Syllable for syllable, the same as the computerized voice. "And this is Stephen Penn, Senate Oversight. He's observing."

  Katie smiled. "Watching the watcher." There was no humor in Fredrik's answering smile. "What's the focus of your investigation?"

  Steve's eyes flicked to Katie, but he didn't answer her. Instead he took a long step ahead of her and led the rest of the way across the bullpen. When the door was securely shut behind him, he turned to Katie and raised an eyebrow.

  "With regard to Executive Authority, this department is one of the most disorganized, haphazard, and entirely unaccountable entities in all of law enforcement. Do you understand that, Miss Pratt? Mr. Reed has been remarkably stubborn in his refusal to accept it." Reed nodded, like a dignitary graciously accepting a compliment. "But you're new here. You may not be quite so enchanted by the late Mr. Goodall's charm—"

  "Charm?" Katie snapped, searching the investigator's eyes for some hint of humor. "The man tried to kill me. He was a nutcase!" Reed stiffened, and Katie rounded on him in astonishment. "Really?" she thundered. "You object to that? Are you serious?"

  "Enough, Miss Pratt." Steve silenced her with a dispassionate tone. "While your objection to the late Mr. Goodall seems genuine, that in no way exonerates you from your involvement in that...fiasco in South America."

  She jabbed a finger under his nose. "Watch your tone," she said. "You said you had some questions for me, and I can understand that. But I'm not going to stand here and let you accuse me. If you don't know what happened—"

  The other agent, Stephen Penn, interjected smoothly, placating. "Miss Pratt," he said, "we're quite familiar with the record. Err...what there is of it."

  She shook her head. "I've watched it," she said. "You have everything. He left himself out of it, but you have every shred of my involvement—"

  "You'll forgive us for wanting more than your word on that." She felt fury rise up in her chest before she recognized the words. The condescending tone was clear enough. It was the same thing she'd said to Martin, accusing him of murdering his niece. Reed caught her elbow before she could hit the smug investigator, and she only struggled with him for a moment.

  Reed spoke up in her defense. "I've been over this with you," he said, "and I'm not going to let you bully her. I'm acting department head here, and that makes her one of mine. You understand that?" He held Fredrik's eyes for a long moment, then nodded. "You've got your authority and we're doing everything we can to cooperate, but you're not putting one of my agents through the ringer. Especially after what this one's already been through."

  Fredrik regarded Reed for a moment with one eyebrow raised, then spread his hands in a sign of surrender and took a long step back, ceding the floor to Stephen Penn. Penn smirked at him, then turned a smile to Katie.

  "Please forgive him," he said. "He's better at audits than interviews."

  His voice was smooth and his smile likable. Katie leaned back against the window with her arms crossed over her chest, chin raised. "That's an interesting game of Good Cop, Bad Cop. You boys been doing this long?"

  Penn shrugged. "As my associate mentioned, this office is in a unique position with regard to oversight. It requires special effort." He handed Katie his handheld, which bore a report on her personal details. The open tab was a list of her voice communications, spanning the last month. She glanced over it and concealed a curse at what the list showed, but she figured Penn knew he had her. She scrolled idly through the list to buy a moment's time, then passed him back his handheld.

  He smiled. "Anything seem odd about that to you?"

  "I'm no stranger to the one-sided conversation," she said. "I like the sound of my own voice."

  Fredrik spoke up from his place behind Rick's desk. "There's a pretty clear pattern there," he said. He was leaning against the wall, not sitting in the chair, but even so his position made Katie's hackles rise. The last time she'd been in here with Rick, he'd almost hit her. Fredrik leaned forward, white knuckles on the polished wood desktop, and pinned Katie with his eyes. "Why are you trying so hard to contact him? What information are you trying to pass to him?"

  She looked to Reed, pleading with him to intervene again, but this time she saw only confusion in his eyes. Penn handed him the handheld, and his eyes shot wide at that. He hadn't known.

  She shook her head. "It's just a stupid thing," she said. "It's nothing." Six eyes were on her now, demanding answers, and she couldn't find her voice. "It's nothing," she said again, almost stammering. "Since I was little, I like to leave messages to my dad when he can't answer the phone. It's my way of thinking. I know he won't answer, but I tell him what's on my mind, and it makes things easier."

  Fredrik bit off a sharp answer. "We're not concerned about the messages to your father—"

  "But it's the same thing!" She snapped at him, and knew immediately it was a mistake. The Good Cop, Bad Cop routine was working on her. She took a deep breath. "It's an old habit," she said. "I didn't really think about it. I...I've been alone. I've been trapped, first in the hospitals, and then in my apartment. You have no idea what it's like. Not after...not after what I went through. It's too much time to just sit and think." She took another deep breath and shook her head. "I have an old habit, when I need to think abo
ut something that's too close to me, and it involves making a phone call that I know won't get an answer. I just...when I was thinking about what happened in Buenos Aires, it made sense to call Martin."

  Penn answered her this time. "We know what happened in your hospital room, Miss Pratt." His tone was gentle but firm. "The bureau was on to Martin's tricks by that point, and they had dumb mics recording your room." From the corner of her eye she saw Reed's cheeks flush, but she didn't begrudge him that. She was just glad he hadn't shot her at the time. "The GAO's greatest concern here is Rick's corruption. Mr. Fredrik primarily wants to discover the precise depth and breadth of your old boss's impact, but we cannot complete that investigation with any sort of certainty until we understand what led you to let one of the most powerful criminals in the world walk out of police custody."

  Katie shook her head. "You think I could have stopped him?"

  "I know you let him go!" Fredrik snapped, and for the first time Katie thought maybe he wasn't just playing a part. His eyes were wide, his lips peeled back in a snarl. "And you've been trying to get in touch with him like some devoted fan ever since—"

  "It's not like that!" She kept her voice cool, but her breath came hot and fast. She closed her eyes, shutting out the image of his fury, and forced herself to think. Coming in today, she'd been prepared for rejection. She'd been prepared to lose her job, but she hadn't expected outright accusation. Not after so long. She'd spoken with police and federal agents, there in Buenos Aires and again at the hospital here in DC. They'd sent a representative of the court to her apartment to take a sworn deposition. It had been paperwork up until now.

  She'd been trying to contact Martin, and no one had called her on that. Nobody had even mentioned it, and she'd never considered how bad it looked. Now her mind raced, trying to recall just what she'd said in all those long voicemails, but it was all vapor. She took a calming breath that didn't work, and another, and then opened her eyes to meet Fredrik's. A heartbeat had passed, maybe two. She made herself bold, and answered him with confidence, "Martin Door has done no wrong, and neither have I."