Dust

25

“I’ll call her and she’ll tell me how bad she feels and what a terrible daughter I am.” I fill the water filter pitcher at the stainless-steel sink. “That’s what it was like over the weekend right after I got back.”

“Did she know what you were doing in Connecticut?”

“She saw it on the news.” I’m not going to get into what my mother said about it, almost blaming me while bemoaning the fact that I never save anybody’s life. I should work in a funeral home. She said what she’s said before.

“Tell me more about your work with Gail.” I pour water into the Keurig’s reservoir.

“All she was supposed to be doing at this stage was bench-testing, which has dragged on for a reason,” Lucy explains. “Months and months of troubleshooting while she’s secretly worked on copies of my apps, adding features and edits that I would never permit. She assumed I wouldn’t find out.” She takes a swallow of coffee and leans back in her chair. “Her programming is now nonexistent. Nobody should have it.”

“They will anyway. If you’re talking about biometric technology, specifically facial-recognition software that’s used by domestic drones, it won’t be you who stops that sort of scary progress.”

“And it won’t be me who puts digital eyes in the sky to target our own citizens or law enforcement or politicians. The problem is it won’t just be our government doing it. Imagine criminals having access to drone surveillance technology.” She brings that up again. “Something small enough to fly through an open window and hover at a thousand feet if you want to scout out where a target lives or follow people in their car or orchestrate a huge heist or a home invasion or assassinate someone. I’d rather be figuring out ways to combat nightmares like that. Which reminds me. The missing guy Benton’s told you about? The kid who disappeared seventeen years ago?”

I don’t respond one way or another.

“You don’t have to answer,” she says. “I know Benton would tell you because he has to tell someone he can trust besides me. Things aren’t good for him at the Bureau.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Age progression, facial recognition. Put it this way: Martin Lagos isn’t in any database anywhere on the damn planet. So the idea that he’s suddenly a serial killer leaving his DNA? Forget it. I can run a search like that from my phone.”

“Is yours identical to the one Gail was carrying? The one Marino has in his possession?”

Lucy unclips it from her flight suit’s waist belt and places it on the table. It looks like an everyday smartphone except for the black rubbery military case it’s in.

“Perfectly normal,” Lucy says. “It’s just a phone with the usual apps on the home screen.”

“So it appears.” I remove my second cup of coffee as the Keurig stops sputtering.

“You can’t see what’s running in the background. The good stuff.”

“Dangerous stuff?”

“As is true of everything, it’s all about how it’s used. I have the IP of the phone Gail had in her possession and would maneuver around her lame attempts at security. Everything on it also ended up on my phone, my tablet, my computer, so when she altered something I was developing with her I could see every keystroke.”

“You didn’t trust her in the least.” I return to my chair.

“Hell no. That ended about the time I got deposed.”

From where I’m seated I’m staring dead-on at Lucy’s massive matte black SUV, a stealth bomber on wheels with the ultra-luxury of a private jet.

“Did she trust you?” There’s so much I want to ask.

“I never gave her a reason not to.”

“You stopped trusting her last summer and obviously didn’t end the relationship then because you decided against it.”

“I was going to do it very soon.”

“Is what was going on with her why you’re driving an armored vehicle these days?”

She looks at her SUV as if it’s a child or a pet she loves. “I didn’t get it for any particular reason.”

“Who else have you pissed off besides pig farmers, Lucy?”

“Al-Qaeda doesn’t like me. The Aryans don’t. Gay bashers, male chauvinists, supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act, Jihadists, and pretty soon Double S wasn’t going to want to be my friend anymore,” she says and the thought seems to please her. “And, yes, there’s a long list of pig farmers and most recently a foie gras farm in New York State. That hellhole should have been burned to the ground as long as the geese got out first. Marino’s probably not happy with me now that we’re going down the list. SUV envy. His new po-lice vehicle is a V-six, mostly plastic.” She says it cynically, angrily.

“Exactly what does he know?”

“Exactly nothing and I don’t intend to explain a damn thing. He has no idea I watched him in real time when he picked up her phone behind the Psi. He hasn’t got a clue and he never will, right?” Lucy looks at me.

“It won’t come from me. It should come from you.”

“It shouldn’t come from anyone,” she says with a bite. “This is Marino playing cops and robbers after years of feeling like a lackey.”

“I hope you never put it that way to him.”

“When I realized Gail was missing —”

“When was that? I didn’t text you until about five-thirty while Marino was driving me to Briggs Field. When did it occur to you to access her phone?” I sound like I’m interrogating her. I don’t try to disguise it.

“Midnight,” she confirms what Benton told me, “when my search engines were alerted about a posting on the Channel Five website. I immediately locked in the GPS location of her phone, which was the Psi, which I called and was told she’d left at least six hours ago. Right off I knew it was bad and I activated the video camera and left it in an auto mode. It has a motion-detection zooming lens with a speed dome pan that could pick up whatever was going on until I got here.”

“You were going to retrieve the phone as soon as you flew back.”

“Yes.”

“But Marino got there first.”

“I watched him.” Lucy seems angry with herself more than anything else. “I wish I’d thought to turn the video camera on when I was talking to her late yesterday afternoon but I had no reason to suspect anything was wrong.”

She gets up and pours her coffee into the sink.

“If I’d had even the slightest reason to be concerned, I would have looked.” She leans her back against the sink. “I could have seen her and whatever happened when she was outside the bar. It was a blitz attack, I’m sure of that. Had she even a second or two warning, she could have activated the camera herself and whatever was going on would have live streamed on my phone instantly. An In Case of Emergency or ICE one-touch app was all she had to press but she didn’t. It was right there on her home screen and it didn’t enter her mind.”

“After your conversation with her she called Carin Hegel and the connection was lost,” I encourage her to tell me what she knows about it.

“Within twenty-four seconds.” Lucy drops her cup into the trash and sits back down.

“That’s the part I don’t understand,” I reply. “One might have expected Gail would have said something, indicated someone came up to her, that perhaps she was interrupted or startled. According to Carin, the call was dropped. She continued talking and didn’t realize Gail wasn’t there.”

“It wasn’t dropped.” Lucy picks up her phone from the table. “The call wasn’t ended until Carin did it and by then Gail had been separated from her phone.” She enters a password on the touch screen.

“How could that happen without Carin hearing something? A protest, a scream, people talking or arguing?”

Lucy clicks on an audio file.

“Carin Hegel,” the lawyer’s familiar voice answers on a recording Lucy must have made secretly.

“Hey. Anything new since I just saw you? Let me guess. They’ve filed another twenty motions to waste our time and run up my bills.” Gail Shipton’s voice is softly modulated, high-pitched, and girlish.

I don’t detect the anger running deep that I would expect to be there. She should have despised Double S and been chronically resentful and stressed, especially when she’s referencing the expenses they’ve been deliberately causing.

“Replay that, please,” I say to Lucy and she does.

Gail Shipton sounds too calm. I detect a note of artificiality, like a pedestrian actor reciting a line woodenly. I notice because I’m listening for anything off. Lucy starts the recording again.

“Carin Hegel.”

“Hey. Anything new since I just saw you? Let me guess. They’ve filed another twenty motions to waste our time and run up my bills.”

“Unfortunately you’re not completely wrong,” Hegel says.

“I’m at the Psi Bar and stepped outside but it’s still kind of loud,” Gail Shipton says. “I’m sorry? What can I help you with?”

“I wanted to give you a heads-up about your latest bill that just crossed my desk,” Hegel’s recorded voice continues.

A pause and there’s no response.

“It’s considerable, as you might expect this close to trial.”

Another pause.

“Gail? Are you there? Damn,” Hegel sounds impatient. “I’m going to hang up and try you back.”

“And she did,” Lucy says to me. “But Gail didn’t answer.”

She replays the first part of the recording.

“I’m sorry?” Gail’s voice says. “What can I help you with?”

“She’s not talking to Carin.” Lucy replays the same sound byte, turning up the volume.

“I’m sorry? Can I help you?”

I listen for background noise and can hear the distant rhythm of music from inside the bar. If Gail was talking to someone in the parking lot, I can’t tell. I don’t hear anything except the faint music, New Age, which is what the Psi Bar typically plays when I’ve been there.

“How long have you been recording Gail’s phone conversations?” I ask.

“Easy to do when it’s my device she’s talking on. Now listen,” Lucy says. “I’ve cleaned it up, separated any background noise from the music in the bar and enhanced what’s there, pinpointing the timing and sequence of precisely when it was introduced. Which was before she called Carin.”

She plays the enhanced recording, an earlier one, and I hear the distinct noise of a car engine idling. Then I hear something else. I hear my niece.

“…We’ll get something drafted when I get back from D.C.,” Lucy’s recorded voice says. “Now’s not the time to start a problem, in light of the trial, even if you don’t think it’s going to happen. You don’t need even the appearance of a problem with me.”

“Why would there be? They’ll settle. Don’t you worry and everything will be fair,” Gail says sweetly, what sounds insincere to me, and I hear what else is there.

The rumble of an engine. A car idling nearby in the dark behind the bar and if Gail notices, she doesn’t seem concerned, not even slightly nervous.