She’d set up in a conference room that had a program which assigned random pictures to the walls. If she wanted, she could set up the room to seem as if it overlooked the Grand Tetons on Earth. Or she could make it seem like it was part of a ship hurtling through the solar system.
After testing the picture system, she decided on the blank white walls. They were less distracting, even though, after an hour, they were driving her crazy.
Most of the employees hadn’t even met Roshdi Whitford. A few didn’t know his first name. Some had no idea what the company’s hierarchy was. Most simply knew that they were expected to do their job, which was as narrowly defined as a job could be, and then go home.
Half the employees she talked to weren’t even worried that their jobs might be in jeopardy now that the boss was dead. No one had bothered to reassure them that the job would remain. They just simply had no idea who was in charge or why.
All they knew was that money appeared in their accounts every pay period, so long as they showed up to work and performed within certain perimeters.
And all of that very sincere ignorance made Romey want to scream.
The junior detectives who were also conducting interviews were reporting the same problems. Not only were the employees isolated from each other, but the computer systems within the company itself were isolated.
It seemed that Whitford Security had two dozen different networks, and the single computer tech the department could spare for this part of the case couldn’t figure them out.
Someone needed to talk with Whitford’s computer security manager and he wasn’t going to say a word to the police, even with a warrant.
So Romey approached this next interview with more than the usual amount of discouragement. She wanted to go home. She wanted to see her sons.
And she had a hunch she wouldn’t get a chance to for hours, maybe days.
The door to the conference room opened and a very pretty twenty-something young woman walked in. She had hair that was so gold that it was clearly fake, and her delicate features were flecked with gold glitter. She looked almost like an android, but the way that her hands were shaking told Romey the woman was all too human.
“Medora Lenox? I’m Detective Romey. Please sit down.”
Romey indicated the chair next to hers, but like most of the other employees, Medora Lenox chose the seat farthest away. She folded her shaking hands together and set them on the fake wood tabletop.
“What is your job description, Medora?” Romey asked.
“I organize transmissions from security teams,” Lenox said, speaking so softly that Romey had to strain to hear her.
Romey felt her heart leap. For the first time, she was speaking to someone who monitored more than one group of people.
“Do you organize the transmissions from more than one team at a time?”
“I’m sorry,” Lenox said. “I don’t understand.”
Romey felt the hope she’d had a moment ago fade. “When the teams are out, how do you choose whose transmissions to organize?”
“I get assigned one team. I follow them through their assignment, until the security detail is over.”
Her shaking voice made her hands start shaking again. She clenched them tighter, then slid them under the table.
“So if a security team has permanent residency at someone’s business or house—”
“I don’t work permanent teams,” Lenox said. “That’s a whole different department.”
Of course it is, Romey thought. Then she sighed. “So what team were you running today?”
“I’m working on team B-One.”
“Which is?”
Lenox shrugged. “We only work by code.”
“But if you’re organizing the transmissions, you must know the name of the client.”
“I know the name of the subjects,” Lenox said. “The client is usually someone different.”
Romey frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The client is the person who pays. The subject is the person guarded. They’re not always the same.”
For the first time, Romey spoke to someone who had more than a passing knowledge of the firm. “Why not?”
“Mostly it’s parents, you know, hiring protection for their kids. But sometimes it’s more than that. Sometimes we do government contracts for alien ambassadors—you know, the kind of thing that the city or the United Domes doesn’t dare spend its money on for fear of having the security budget slashed.”
Romey didn’t know, but it was an interesting tidbit. She wondered how it fit into her investigation. “So who was the subject today?”
Lenox’s face had gone so pale that the glitter looked like color in an incomplete child’s drawing.
“Ki Bowles,” she whispered.
So that was why she was so nervous.
“Did you hear what happened on the grounds of the Hunting Club?”
“She’s dead, I know. It’s horrible.”
Romey suppressed a sigh. Clearly Lenox wasn’t much brighter than the rest of the staff. “I meant, did you get any transmissions from the grounds? Did you hear what happened to Bowles?”
“See, not hear,” Lenox said. “Our transmissions are audio and visual.”
Romey sent a message through her links immediately to Gumiela. We need a special warrant for Whitford Security. It appears they have transmission records on every surveillance detail they’ve run.
Romey signed off before she could get Gumiela’s answer.
“All right,” Romey said as she was finishing her message. “Did you see anything?”
“No,” Lenox said. “The Hunting Club jams our signals. We’ve protested in the past. It’s never done any good. They claim their security is good enough.”
“It obviously wasn’t.”
“I know.” Lenox sounded sad. She rubbed her thumbs together so hard that the skin around the knuckles turned red.
“Medora,” Romey said. “Are you all right?”
Lenox stopped rubbing her thumbs and pulled her hands apart. She put them on the edge of the table as if she were bracing herself.
“Can I ask you a question?” Lenox’s voice was soft, softer than it had been before.
Romey wasn’t quite sure how it managed to carry the length of the table. “Go ahead.”
“Has anyone found Gulliver?” Lenox swallowed hard. “I’ve been trying to reach him since this morning, and I’m not getting anything.”
Romey frowned. The staff wasn’t supposed to be able to communicate with the outside during lockdown.
“Not,” Lenox said quickly, “that I could do anything since we found out about Mr. Whitford. But you know what I mean.”
“No,” Romey said. “Explain it to me.”
“I mean, I tried from the time I came into work, and I couldn’t get him. And I didn’t get any transmissions from him. Then we heard about Mr. Whitford, and I tried again, and you know, Mr. Monteith was all panicked, and I’m just worried, that’s all.”
“Mr. Monteith?” Romey asked.
“He was heading the B-One detail. He was the one who let us know something was wrong, but he wouldn’t say what. He had me look for Mr. Whitford, but he hadn’t come into work today, so Mr. Monteith went to talk to him.” Lenox threaded her hands together again. “I thought you knew that.”
Romey didn’t. Or maybe Nyquist had mentioned something like that. There were too many details, and until now she hadn’t really thought of Bowles as her case, so she hadn’t concentrated on them.
“I prefer you tell me,” Romey said.
Lenox started rubbing her thumbs together. Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t say anything.
Romey waited for a moment, but the day had already been too long for her. She didn’t have her usual amount of patience.
“Was it unusual that you couldn’t reach Gulliver?” she finally asked.
A single tear ran down Lenox’s cheek, making the glitter sparkle, but not dislodging
it. Romey stared at that path. The stupid woman had had the glitter embedded into her skin. It was some kind of enhancement that made her sparkle like that, not something she’d added later.
“Medora? Was it—”
“Yes.” Lenox raised her chin slightly. “He would always contact me all day.”
“I thought you just monitored transmissions.”
“I did,” Lenox said. “But Gulliver…me and Gulliver…we…”
This time Romey did wait. She knew better than to fill in what some subject was trying to say. Often the subject would parrot what the interviewer said, trying to please the interviewer.
“Gulliver,” Lenox said, “he liked to talk to me.”
Romey nodded, knowing that wasn’t what Lenox initially planned to say. “When did he contact you last?”
“This morning.” Lenox swallowed hard. “He—we—you’re not going to tell, right?”
“Tell what?” Romey said.
“That he stays at my house. We could get fired.”
Interesting, Romey thought. “You could get fired for what?”
“Fraternizing.” The word seemed too big for Lenox. But she spoke it bitterly. “No one is supposed to socialize outside of work.”
“And you two socialized?” Romey understood what Lenox meant, but she wanted Lenox to tell her.
Lenox’s cheeks flushed a pale pink. It accented the gold beneath her skin.
“He’s gonna marry me,” she said proudly.
“Doesn’t that violate company policy?” Romey asked.
“One of us will quit. We don’t know who yet. When we have enough money. He gave me a ring, but I can’t wear it at work because people will ask.”
Romey nodded. “But they don’t ask about the time you spend together?”
“They don’t know.” Lenox whispered this last. “He comes to my house after midnight, leaves before dawn.”
“Do you go to his place?” Romey asked.
Lenox shook her head. “He shares with some friends. We can’t let anyone know.”
Something about this bothered Romey. It seemed too cautious even for employees who might lose their jobs if they “fraternized.”
“Has anyone seen you together?” Romey asked.
Lenox kept shaking her head. “We don’t dare risk it.”
“The job is that important,” Romey said.
“Until we save up enough money.”
“Hmmm.” Romey wasn’t sure how to ask this next part. But she decided to give it a try. “Is your employer worried that you’d talk about work?”
“I don’t know,” Lenox said. “I don’t see how it would matter.”
This felt like something Lennox had said many times before, probably to Gulliver.
“Why wouldn’t it matter?” Romey asked.
“In our case, anyway,” Lenox said. “I mean, I monitor his transmissions. I know what’s going on with his case.”
“I see,” Romey said.
And she did—a little. She asked a few more questions about transmission procedure, things that held no surprises at all. She didn’t want Lenox to know that the questions she’d asked about Gulliver and the questions she was about to ask were connected.
“I assume,” Romey said as she finished the basic transmission questions, “that each member of the team is privy to what the other members of the team are doing?”
“They have a plan,” Lenox said. “But the transmissions are separate.”
Romey nodded. Her heart was pounding. Finally something useful. “So if one team member is monitoring, say, the subject’s home, and another is monitoring, say, the subject’s office, the team members don’t communicate about what they see?”
“Through me they do,” Lenox said. “They tell me if something is suspicious and I relay it to the other.”
“Why can’t they do it directly?”
“I don’t know,” Lenox said. “Too much information, I guess.”
“Too much information?” Romey asked.
“It’s like the employee motto. It’s posted all over our break rooms. Too much information is dangerous in the wrong hands.”
“So information must be secured as well as the subject herself.”
“Yeah,” Lenox said. “Everything has channels.”
“Do you think team members should talk to each other more?”
“Not me,” Lenox said.
“But Gulliver?”
Lenox looked down. “He says it handicaps him, not knowing what the others are doing.”
“Have you ever told him what they’re doing?”
Lenox swallowed hard again. Those thumbs were rubbing each other raw.
“It’s okay, Medora,” Romey said. “I’m not going to get you in trouble with your employer. All I care about are the things that might pertain to the death of Mr. Whitford.”
“How does this pertain?” Lenox asked softly.
“We think his death and Ki Bowles’s death might be linked.”
“Because Enzio died?”
Enzio Lamfier, the other bodyguard.
“Yes,” Romey said.
“Gulliver was supposed to be with him,” Lenox said. “That’s why I asked if you’d heard from him.”
Romey frowned just a little. “I do know that our people searched the entire Hunting Club grounds and didn’t find anyone else who was hurt.”
She almost said “dead,” but knew better.
But Lenox didn’t look relieved. Apparently she knew that much.
“So,” Romey asked, “did you ever tell Gulliver what the others were doing?”
“On which case?” Lenox asked.
“On the Bowles case.”
“He said she was difficult. He said she was hard to guard. She didn’t listen to them. He had to know where the others were all the time or she might die.” Lenox wiped at her face. “She died anyway, didn’t she?”
Romey nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
“He was right then,” Lenox said.
He might have been right or he might have been using Lenox to find out where the other bodyguards were at all times.
“It would seem so,” Romey said.
“Promise me you’ll tell me when you find him,” Lenox said.
Such a small request from such a desperate woman.
“I promise,” Romey said.
But she had a hunch she wouldn’t find Gulliver—at least not easily. And maybe not even alive.
Thirty-nine
The computer tech stood three meters away from Van Alen’s desk, shifting nervously from foot to foot. The tech was a heavyset woman whose expensive clothing didn’t quite fit—either she ate more than her weight-loss enhancements could keep up with or she didn’t have weight-loss enhancements.
She certainly never exercised. Even the skin on her face jiggled as she moved from side to side.
Van Alen had only seen aliens that had jiggling skin. She found herself staring at it, hoping that the woman—named Fifine (“Don’t call me Fifi, please”) Ito — wouldn’t notice.
“I found an encroachment.” Ito threaded her hands together. Her fingers were startlingly small given the size of the rest of her.
Van Alen placed her own hands on her desk and leaned forward. It was a position she used to intimidate. She hoped that intimidation might get this woman to speak quicker, since she’d already been in the office five minutes before she admitted to the “encroachment.”
Van Alen had called her because the maintenance team had been stumped. The power had cut to Van Alen’s building, but something had kept the computer systems’ separate line up. The maintenance team thought it could be that the “something” was built into the separate line (they would have to check and that would take time) or because someone had deliberately maintained the power to the separate line.
They didn’t know yet. They wouldn’t know for hours.
So Van Alen figured a computer tech might know.
Well, she hadn’t figured it exa
ctly. That had been one of Flint’s suggestions.
If the maintenance team has no idea what happened, call in computer experts. And have them look for these things…
“What do you mean, an encroachment?” Van Alen asked.
“Something—something rather sophisticated—used that momentary glitch to search our network.” Ito licked her lips as if she were afraid of Van Alen’s response.
“Search our systems?” Van Alen felt cold.
Ito nodded.
“Did it take anything off our systems?”
“Not that I can tell,” Ito said. “It was looking for something very specific.”
“What, exactly?” Van Alen asked.
“I don’t know. It’s like—a net came into the system and tried to catch something, then disappeared. I have evidence of the net, but not evidence of what it was trying to catch.”
“Can you tell if it caught anything?” Van Alen stood up. Her back hurt when she leaned forward too long.
“I don’t think so,” Ito said. “The sophisticated something remained the same size going in as it did coming out. If you think of the net analogy again, a net full of, say, fish would make a bigger wave in the water than a net that didn’t catch any.”
Van Alen’s understanding of water and fish and nets was almost as poor as her understanding of computer networks. But she did get water displacement images.
“Can you be sure nothing left the system?” Van Alen asked.
“I can’t be sure. I can be reasonably certain. Honestly, though, ma’am, this thing was beyond my capacity. That’s why I’m calling it sophisticated. We don’t have anything in Armstrong that I know of that can run into a full computer network filled with so much data, pinpoint one area, and then remove it without leaving so much as a trace.”
“But you just said there was a trace.”
“Of the search. And only because I was looking for it in those two seconds. Whatever it was, it was looking for something very specific. When it didn’t get that something, it vanished. Or…”
Ito’s voice trailed off. She continued her back and forth shifting.
“Or?” Van Alen asked, not liking that she had to continually prompt this woman.
“It left something.”
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