by Drew Murray
“Did he leave the room?” asks Dana. “How do we know he didn’t just open the door to let someone in?”
“Because Wi-Fi has the phone on the move again.”
“When he gets back on the elevator, is he alone?” she asks.
“This time he doesn’t take the elevator,” I say, holding up a finger. “He takes the stairs.”
“I thought there are no cameras in the stairwells.”
“There aren’t. The third Wi-Fi access point on each floor is located by the stairs. ‘Roger’s iPhone’ connects with each one, in order, from the fifth floor all the way down to the main floor, where he goes out a side door, avoiding the lobby. That’s where we get our last shot.”
I start the last video clip. The screen shows a small surface parking lot next to the building. A door opens, blocking the view. Whoever installed the camera put it on the wrong side. When it closes, you can see the back of someone that looks like Caplan walking off into the dark.
“Well, that’s interesting,” says Dana.
“I know, right?” I say, nodding my head.
“What is?” asks Decker. “He left the building.”
“First, he left alone,” she says. “That guy with the newspaper—I don’t even know where he got a newspaper—is gone. Second, he’s wearing a jacket.”
“So?” says Decker.
“It was ninety-five degrees last night,” says Dana. “Way too hot to wear a jacket.”
“Unless?” I say, rolling my hand in front of me.
“Unless you need to hide something under it,” she says, “like a Fukushima Unicorn.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dwayne leads us to the same door Caplan used. If he had the Unicorn with him when he left, retracing his last steps is our best chance of finding a clue to where it is now. Dwayne stands awkwardly in the door behind me, blocking the way, to ask Decker for his contact info. Having left Miller behind to finish processing the hotel room, Dana’s following somewhere behind them. Tapping commands into my watch, I take off down the street. Well, the maps app calls it a street, but it’s more like a wide alley, closed in by towering buildings on both sides.
“Where are you going?” Decker shouts after me.
I glance back to see Dwayne with a big smile on his face, cheerily waving around a business card.
“Comic Con!”
“How do you know where to go?”
“Technology!” I wave my arm in the air. My watch is already vibrating in a specific pattern to tell me I need to make a turn at the end of the alley.
The Convention Center is a short walk away, and the nav takes me by the most direct route. That’s how Caplan would have gone. Unlikely that he’d dawdle while carrying something radioactive under his jacket.
At the entrance to the alley, I look down at my watch to confirm the direction I’m supposed to go. The high-pitched whine of a sport bike engine revving up tears into the quiet morning. I jerk my head up, just in time to see a red motorcycle bearing down on me. Jumping back to the safety of the curb, I get a glimpse of the rider, dressed head to toe in red leathers with white accents. They turn to face me as the bike passes so close, I can feel the heat of the exhaust. The reflective film on their visor catches the rising sun, blinding me.
As the bike zooms off up the road, I hear footsteps behind me. Two sets. Storm Decker’s heavy marching is easy to pick out. The other must be Detective Lopez. Tighter, but quick, and in a perfect rhythmic cadence. Athletic.
“Are you all right?” Decker asks.
“I’m fine,” I say, rubbing my eyes.
“Sorry about that. We have a problem with those crotch rockets every time the weather gets hot. This way,” says Dana, turning left.
Restaurants with sidewalk patios are all over the busy street. There would have been a lot of people here last night, despite the late hour. A glance at the watch tells me it’s almost a straight shot to the Convention Center from here. If he knew or suspected he was being followed, Caplan would have felt safer in a crowd.
A block away, Decker points at an older couple walking down the street wearing brown hoop skirts with gold balls glued to them, flashlights bolted to brown army surplus helmets on their heads. In their right hands they carry bathroom plungers and in their left, paint rollers.
“You’ve got some strange folks in this town, Detective Lopez. What’s up with them?”
“They’re cosplayers, Decker,” I answer.
“Cos what now?”
“People that dress up in costume for the Comic Con. That’s all hand-crafted.”
“Costumes? What are they supposed to be?”
“Daleks,” I say. “A robot race from Doctor Who.”
“It’s weird.”
“It’s interpretive.”
What else can I expect from Decker? A lifetime of living within rigid rules. No imagination.
“Over here,” says Dana. She’s found a clutch of uniformed officers by an entrance.
“They won’t let us in the front, Detective,” says one of them as she approaches.
“What do you mean they won’t let you in? It’s a fucking crime scene.” Dana transforms before my eyes, raising her voice and waving her arms around. “What bullshit is this? Since when do we need permission to investigate a goddamn crime?”
The uniformed officer responds to her frustration with a smile, immediately at ease.
“I know, I know, Detective Lopez. Crazy, right? But he’s insisting that if we’re in uniform, we have to wait outside, now that the doors are open. Said he’s already talked to the mayor and if I had a problem with that, I could take it up with him.”
“He who?”
“The guy in charge of this thing, Charles Farber.”
“For fuck’s sake. Wait here, I’ll take care of it,” she says, and then to Decker and me, “FBI, you’re with me.”
She pivots and makes a beeline for the nearest door, but Decker is closer and gets there first. A security guard checks the wristbands of convention goers as they enter, “Leroy” embroidered on the front of his yellow shirt. A line of people twenty deep, some in costume, some not, are politely waiting their turn. Storm Decker walks to the front of the line, chin up, back straight.
“FBI,” he says, flashing his badge and moving to cut around the guard.
“Yeah, right,” he says stepping in front of Decker. This guy’s even bigger. “Nice costume, bro, but you’ll have to wait your turn like everyone else.”
“What?” stutters Decker. His jaw bounces up and down but no more words come out. His eyes are wide as he tries to process what just happened. This is definitely a first for him.
“X-Files, right? Looks good. But I have to ask you to go to the back of the line,” he says, pointing.
Before Decker can recover, Dana’s maneuvering around him. “No cosplay here, Leroy,” she says with a tight smile, lifting her badge. “Police. And these two are real-deal FBI. We’re here on business, and I’m sure your boss doesn’t want a scene. So, step aside.”
“No, ma’am, he does not,” agrees Leroy. “I wasn’t expecting the FBI. My instructions are to send uniformed officers around the back, but you can come in here.” He steps aside and waves us through, lifting a handheld radio to his face. Decker shoots him a glare.
“This guy in charge of the event, Farber? He’s got some real juice to flirt with obstruction like this,” says Decker disapprovingly.
I’d never seen anything like it before. Then again, I’ve never been called in the middle of the night by an Assistant Director of the FBI either. A strange day keeps getting stranger.
“Farber’s a local developer. Owns half of the buildings in the downtown. Big money, even bigger ego,” says Dana.
Decker snorts.
Inside the main hall, white marble floors glisten under a soaring glass wall and ceiling. A set of escalators in the middle leads up to a mezzanine. Pretty decent for a small city.
A harried-looking young woman with a clip
board runs toward us, waving her free hand to get our attention.
“Please, Mr. Farber sent me to meet you. You are police, yes?” she says as she reaches us. I recognize her accent right away. Korean.
Decker and Dana reach into their blazers for their IDs.
“No, no. Please. No need to show identification,” she says, waving at them to keep the badges hidden. “I am Sally Park, Mr. Farber’s assistant.”
Dana introduces us without showing our IDs. Ms. Park nods politely at each of our names.
“Please, follow me,” she says, leading us away into the crowd.
“I don’t see why you couldn’t just open late,” says Decker.
“I’m sure Mr. Farber will answer all your questions,” she says.
Decker looks unimpressed and I get the feeling he’s about to go aggressive on her, so I head it off at the pass. I’ve been up for too many hours, without enough caffeine, to watch a full Storm Decker assault. Wait, caffeine, there’s a thought. I look around for a food court while answering Decker’s question.
“Because people were already lining up for hours before the doors opened, weren’t they, Ms. Park?”
“Yes, Agent Parker.”
“A lot of them will have taken the day off work,” I continue. “They’ve been planning on being here for weeks.”
“So, let them wait,” says Decker. “Murder takes priority.”
Sally Park looks pained when Decker says the word “murder” out loud.
“Does it? The big studios spend millions promoting product in the pipeline for the coming year. A superhero movie that costs two hundred million to make could earn a billion in worldwide ticket sales if it’s a hit. And these are the people that determine if it’s a hit,” I say opening my arms wide at the crowds around me. “Ms. Park, what’s the expected attendance this weekend?”
“Forty thousand,” she says immediately. “We are sold out at capacity. We could sell more, but this is the largest venue in city.”
“And how much is a ticket?” I say.
“It depends on the type of ticket. One-day pass. Weekend pass. VIP pass. Plus, there are special tickets for special events.”
“On average,” says Dana, a frown on her face.
“Average entrance revenue per guest is seventy-five dollars for the weekend.”
“So, there you go,” I say, waving at Decker. “Three million in three days, direct revenue.”
“Plus, sales of photos and autographs. And vendor fees,” Park adds.
“Probably another million there?” I look at Park who nods.
Decker lets out a low whistle. Commerce is everywhere. Throughout the hallways people pull purchases out of plastic bags to show off newly acquired treasures. A clutch of girls looks at a picture in a large glass frame and giggles.
Some guys dressed up as characters from one of my favorite shows, The Double Limit, are holding up glossy 8x10s of Jerry Oldham, the time-traveling-cop star of the series, and comparing what he wrote when he autographed them.
“Everything here costs money, Decker. Every photograph, autograph, and, of course, collectible has a price tag on it. Ms. Park, including tourism, what’s the total economic impact to the city?”
“Ten million dollars,” she says without hesitation. I bet Farber drilled her on that number when it got political early this morning. “It’s very important for our city. A big deal.”
“I’ll be damned,” says Decker.
“Mr. Farber is very concerned about disruption,” says Ms. Park. “He doesn’t want to lose attendance. We are telling people only that an accident happened. A slip and fall. Here we are.”
We’ve followed her past the main entrance, down a side hallway to a set of double doors near the back of the building. She opens them wide, ushering us into the main vendor hall. The typical wide-open space of a Convention Center, stretching the length of a couple of football fields, is filled with thousands of people. Chattering away, they create a roar of white noise like the rush of a river cascading over a waterfall. Painted white cinder-block walls around the perimeter support the steel beams of a ceiling thirty feet overhead.
Lined up in the huge space are row upon row of vendor booths in neat, rigid aisles. Throngs of people shuffle along in all directions, occasionally bumping together in traffic jams. Standing two stories tall in the middle of the hall is a wire-frame tower, every square inch covered with t-shirts celebrating all things geeky.
I feel a familiar thrill. An anticipation of what new things there are to find, and celebrities to see. I wonder if I’ll get to see Jerry Oldham. I’m not here for fun, but the sights and sounds bring back memories of better times.
“Holy shit,” says Decker, raising his voice above the cacophony.
“This is a slow day,” I shout in response. “Twice as busy on Saturday.”
“You think somewhere in here is the person that took out Caplan?” Dana shouts.
“And the most powerful new technology since the atomic bomb,” I add.
“This is bad,” says Decker, scanning the crowd with a grim expression.
I know what he’s thinking. There’s a lot of people here, sharing a large and yet confined space with something dangerously radioactive. Plus, someone who’s already killed once to get it.
I lean in close to Decker’s ear so only he can hear me. “And we’ve got fifty-two hours to find them.”
The crowd thins out as Ms. Park leads us to a row of tables on a long platform backed by fabric-covered scaffolding at the back of the vendor hall. Hung on the curtain behind each table is a sign with a celebrity’s name in huge letters next to their photo. Autograph alley.
As Park points out a sign for the washrooms, I notice that nobody’s here, except for a few of the handlers. Each one sells glossy 8x10 photos to fans, writing down their names on a Post-it note so it gets spelled correctly. In between signings, they let fans know when the object of their adoration will be returning.
“Will Parker, is that you?”
I don’t expect to find many admirers this far from the Valley, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Our products had a loyal following.
Turning around, I find it’s not an admirer. Not at all.
A middle-aged guy with wavy gray hair and a neatly trimmed beard that’s nearly white holds out his hand. Martin Hicks. He’s wearing the standard uniform of corporate IT workers: tan khakis and a golf shirt, royal blue this time, with a corporate logo on it. Stretching wide above his head is a banner with the same logo on it. Pyntel, the chip manufacturer. Behind him is an open-corner display space, covered with plush carpet and a forest of slick black towers displaying an array of desktop and mobile devices powered by their processors.
Last time I checked, Hicks was a senior vice president of something or other. I knew him back in the Valley days. A smarmy corporate Yes-Man begging and pleading his way up the ladder.
“Martin,” I say, breaking out in a wide smile. “What are you doing here? So good to see you, man.” I take his hand and shake it warmly.
“Good to see you too, Will. I never thought I’d run into you here, not in a million years. How have you been? Didn’t I hear you left the life?”
“Yeah, I did. Totally. Whole new gig now.”
Gross. Two seconds in front of someone from the Valley and it’s like I never left. The whole thing’s an act, of course, but that’s how the game is played. Hollywood celebrities and their petty backstabbing have nothing on tech workers when it comes to frenemies. Everyone in Silicon Valley is an ally, an asset, or an enemy.
“You’re a cop or something, right?” Martin asks, cocking his head to the side.
I nod, putting on a serious face to match my serious role. “FBI as a matter of fact. Special Agent.”
“No way! That’s terrific, I mean, to be able to follow your passion like that. I admire you, man, taking that bold step. Chasing your dreams. Do you ever miss it? Think about coming back?”
“Well, you never know, M
artin.”
The only dreams that motivated me to join the FBI were nightmares, but Hicks doesn’t know that. People I worked side by side with for years, like Ace Prior, don’t know. Only Jack knew the full story, and he’s gone now.
The memory of Jack triggers a pain in my side. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve what happened. I’d take one Jack Walton over a room full of Martin Hickses, wide-eyed and grasping my upper arm in a phony gesture of encouragement.
What a farce.
“Right now, I’m living the dream,” I say. The words are sour on my tongue. Time to change the topic. “What about you? Still at Pyntel, I see.”
“You know it. I’m a lifer.”
“What are you doing at a Con?”
“Well, I’ve got marketing under me now,” he says with a sigh, suggesting that the burden of increased responsibility is a noble sacrifice he’s taken on. “Co-COO with Jordan Grant. You remember Jordan, yes? Well, I like to get out here on the front lines from time to time. Meet our customers. Get some feedback on a new product coming out, you know, hear their thoughts firsthand.”
Complete and utter bullshit. It’s a job for a product manager.
“Of course, of course,” I say. “That’s where the real innovation happens, isn’t it? Well, listen, I’ve got to jet, but it was awesome catching up. Ping me sometime. Good luck with the show.”
“Thanks, Will, I’ll do that. Great to see you, man. It’s not the same in the Valley without you. But, onwards and upwards, right?”
I’m already walking backwards and I pivot to make my escape.
“What was that all about?” Decker asks when I catch up with the group outside the bathroom entrance.
“Someone I used to know from back in the day.”
“From back in the day? You mean when you were ‘considered one of the hottest young tech CEOs?’” Dana asks, waving her phone at me. I see my own face. My Wikipedia page. “Good photo.”
I hate that picture. Taken when I was younger and launching CastorNet, you can just make out the corner of our old cheesy banner in the background. The clear glasses I’d affected at the time made me look older rather than smarter. Terrible. For a while I tried replacing it, but another editor kept putting it back. I gave up.