Virtual Destruction

CHAPTER 24

“You could have met me at the VR building, you know, “ Paige Mitchell said, entering the badge office among the morning crowds. “You have access to the entire lab.”

Craig Kreident looked up from his second cup of coffee to see her. He had arrived early, as was his habit. He squinted, and the morning light filtered around Paige from the large badge office windows, giving her a soft, angelic appearance. Except for her stunningly bright outfit the color of sliced strawberries.

Craig’s eyes widened. Paige’s shoes, skirt, and jacket matched in stunning red, contrasted with a smart white blouse and au natural hose. She had tucked her blond hair back in a neat French braid that crowned the outfit perfectly.

Craig struggled to his feet from the deep cushioned couch, trying to keep the coffee from spilling as he extended a hand to her, but some of the black liquid slopped over the side of the styrofoam cup.

“Ouch.” He shifted the cup to his left hand and sucked the side of his finger.

Arms folded, Paige watched him with an amused smile. “See? If we had met in the T Program lobby, you wouldn’t have burned yourself.”

“And missed this great badge office coffee? It’s been simmering to perfection for a few hours, I’m sure.” Craig wiped his hands with a small white napkin, then tossed the coffee away without drinking any more.

She raised her eyebrows. “A joke from the FBI man? Very good — you’re starting to sound like an insider.”

Shifting to her curt business voice, she handed him a long printout that listed document titles. “This is Dr. Michaelson’s inventory of classified papers, everything the document custodians recorded. I wouldn’t bet money that Michaelson himself kept track of his work, but his administrative assistant, Tansy Beaumont, is like an old Attila the Hun in sensible shoes and a drab print dress. She wouldn’t have let him slack off.” She gestured to the door. “Let’s go — we’ve got an exciting morning looking at numbered memo after numbered memo.”

Craig stuffed the sheaf of papers into his leather briefcase, then snapped it closed. “Last night I watched the news and read the papers. Gave me a chance to read up on our friend Michaelson. He’s had quite an… interesting and varied career.”

Paige looked at him as they walked across the parking lot. “That’s an understatement.”

She directed him to a small forest-green MG sportscar. He glanced at her and smiled. “Nice. What happened to the government van?”

“No need to impress you anymore,” said Paige. “It’s either this or one of the clunky Lab bikes.”

Seeing that it wouldn’t fit on the floor between his legs, he swung his briefcase into the small area behind the passenger seat. He dug out his Visitor’s badge as Paige spun out of the badge office parking lot and approached the gate. “They provide bicycles here?”

“About two thousand of them scattered all over the site. This is a big place. It cuts down on traffic and pollution. You’ll also see a bunch of the little white Cushman carts.”

Paige drove past the fences after the guard touched their badges. “Don’t the bikes get stolen?” Craig asked.

She pointed to a bald and bearded man ahead of them, hunched over the handlebars and madly pedaling away. “Take a look at that bike.”

Craig turned to watch as they zoomed past the bike. Paige’s MG sounded like an overactive lawnmower. “Let’s see, a wobbly reflector, thick tires, rusty basket…” He turned back to Paige. “Looks like the kind I had as a kid.”

“Bingo. How many people would sneak past all this security just to steal a clunker like that?” She brushed back a few wisps of stray blond hair that the wind had whipped in front of her face.

“Can’t argue with that logic,” Craig said.

Paige’s car permit from the Director’s Office allowed her to drive the MG into the restricted area normally reserved for government vehicles. When they walked up to T Program’s main entrance, he saw that the yellow tape had been torn down and lay in a wadded ball in one of the bushes.

“Where’s the, uh, PSO? I thought you were going to have this place guarded.”

Paige looked embarrassed and smiled wanly at him. “Well, we had a little problem.”

Craig stopped, avoiding her gaze to dampen his own reaction. He felt a gradually sinking feeling in his gut. What kind of red-tape muckup had they run into? “Don’t make excuses, Paige. Just tell me what happened.”

She shrugged. “Security has to go by the book. They agreed to keep an eye on the building, random spot checks, but they wouldn’t station a guard here all night.”

He made a disgusted sound. “Didn’t you explain that this is a Federal investigation site? Good lord, they’ve got a possible murder on their hands and they can’t be bothered to enforce a little security?”

“We have plenty of security, Craig. We routinely keep stacks of highly classified material and enough plutonium to make a bunch of atomic bombs. Trust us to keep a crime scene intact, kay-o? We’ve been handling nuclear design information for decades.”

Still upset, Craig stood next to her, trying to maintain a neutral expression. “But any of the T Program people have access. They could have come in last night—”

She smiled. “Then we’ve got them. Anybody using their badge for access gets recorded. We’ll run a computer check for a list of everyone who entered the CAIN booth here and the times they came in.”

Craig slowly nodded. She had a point, and her comments placed things in perspective for him — in a way, this was like conducting an investigation in another country. “I’m sorry. I apologize.”

“No offense taken,” said Paige. “Well, not much.” She entered the T Program lobby and Craig took his turn in the CAIN booth, following her through.

Inside the trailer complex the programmers and electronics engineers worked intensely, shouting to each other and conversing in a mid-level drone that seemed amplified by the labyrinth of cubicles.

Just inside the main doors of the administrative offices Michaelson’s secretary — administrative assistant, Craig corrected himself — waited for them.

“Tansy,” Paige said, “this is Mr. Kreident, FBI agent in charge of the investigation into Dr. Michaelson’s death.”

Craig shook hands. Tansy Beaumont was a wisened, no-nonsense, dark-complected woman who looked like a gypsy grandmother. Her black eyes bored into him from a leathery face, and he saw an unyielding dynamo of personality, a dragon lady who could match wills with someone like Hal Michaelson.

“Dr. Michaelson was a good boss, Mr. Kreident,” Tansy said. “If somebody did this to him on purpose, I want you to find out who it was. Understand?”

Craig nodded. “First step will be to check over the contents of his document safe. How long will it take you to open it?”

“Thirty seconds,” she said with flat confidence. “Dr. Michaelson never remembered his own combo and had me do it for him all the time.”

She had peeled away the wide yellow tape that covered the door to Michaelson’s office. “I’ve been waiting right here since seven a.m. Never can tell when one of those clowns wants to stick his face in here and mess everything up.” She snorted in the direction of Gary Lesserec and his hacker teammates.

“I believe I share your opinion, Ms. Beaumont,” Craig said. “Do you have a copy of Michaelson’s schedule for his last couple of days? Where he was, who he met with?”

“We can get that out of his day planner,” Tansy said, moving expertly to the avalanche of clutter on the worktable and, without so much as digging around, yanked out the single volume she wanted. She flipped through calendar-marked pages. “He never would let me keep his schedule, no matter how many times he messed it up. Claimed that if he could manage to forget about something, then it wasn’t all that important anyway.”

She paused for a beat as she found the right pages and handed them to Craig. “What I’m trying to say is that just because he wrote a meeting down here doesn’t mean he actually went to it. And that doesn’t mean these places are the only meetings he attended either.”

Paige leaned over to look at the schedule. “I’ve got another way to verify it, though. Remember that computer badge check I told you we could run, Craig? I’ve already started another one to trace the CAIN booths Dr. Michaelson used in the last couple of days. I’m also getting a record of all phone calls originating from and coming to his office, and an affidavit from the people he visited since returning from Washington.”

He grinned at her. “Good work. I’m going to have to hire you over at the Bureau if you keep this up. Can you get that to me later this morning?”

“I’ll work on it,” Paige said, heading for the office door.

Tansy made a clucking sound to get their attention. “Meanwhile, Mr. Kreident — you’ve got your own work to do.” She indicated the open repository crammed with haphazardly filed documents. “Everything’s just the way he left it.”

The black four-drawered safe seemed to grow larger as he stared at it. The repository fairly overflowed with envelopes and folders, each bearing a thick red border around the side and stamped with the initials SRD. Secret Research Data. The folders bulged with reports, typed papers, handwritten notes, and scribbled drawings. Opening the other heavy drawers, he found more of the same.

“Your list might not help much,” Tansy said. “Dr. Michaelson’s favorite stamp was SECRET WORK PAPER. That way he didn’t have to document any of the classified memos or reports he wrote. He only needed a number assigned if he mailed them off site through classified mail channels… or when I caught him being sloppy and rapped him on the knuckles for it.” She sighed and turned away as her face seemed to crumple. “I’m going to miss him.”

With a resigned expression, Craig pulled out a stack of documents from the top drawer of the repository and glanced at the title of the top report: (S) A 500 MEGAJOULE DIRECT FUSION DEVICE and started flipping through the printout of classified document titles Paige had given him, checking off the number.

Slowly and tediously, he began to work his way through the folders.

“I think Tansy and I have reconstructed Dr. Michaelson’s last day,” Paige said, poking her head into the stuffy office.

Craig looked up from the pile of classified documents. Paige’s strawberry red outfit brought a much-needed brightness into the small room. Craig put down the folder filled with memos and notes describing something called “Rhoades-Malme diffusion” and rubbed his eyes. The inventory printout lay on his lap, dotted with checkmarks.

He glanced at the pile of documents on the floor next to his chair. “I’m about a third of the way through this top drawer and I can’t find anything that looks out of place.”

Paige picked her way through the clutter to the outside window on the far wall. “Why do you have the miniblinds closed? How about a little sun?”

Craig let out a sigh of relief when warm yellow light flooded the room, drowning the harsh white fluorescents. Glancing at the clock, he figured he’d been sitting for nearly two and a half hours. Craig stood up and stretched. “Let’s go over the schedule, then. I could use a break.”

“Kay-O. Tansy has cleared a table for us.”

They left Michaelson’s office to see where Tansy Beaumont had, literally, shoved papers on the floor to clear a narrow table in one of the cubicles. Tansy scuttled back to her office as the phone rang.

As Craig looked over her shoulder, Paige spread out a sheaf of papers. “Michaelson arrived at Livermore back from Washington at around noon on the day of his death. They’re having trouble downloading the CAIN booth records, but once we get that list we’ll be able to have an exact time he entered and left the T Program complex.

“We know that Michaelson showed up at the VR lab while everyone was gone for lunch. He wasn’t too happy about seeing the place deserted with all the new work he had just dumped on them.

“Michaelson then spent most of the afternoon in various meetings, making phone calls. He has something called a ‘boob tour’ written down for the late afternoon. I have no idea what that means — other than the crude implications.”

Tansy returned just in time to overhear. “Oh, that was a tour of the Plutonium Facility with Deputy AD Aragon. Dr. Michaelson always called him a ‘boob.’ From what I hear, they had quite an argument during the tour.”

“So Michaelson and this Aragon didn’t get along?” Craig picked up the sheet and studied the notes.

“I’m not privy to all the facts,” Paige said, “but I understand there was quite a bit of friction between them.”

“One-way friction,” Tansy interrupted. “Mr. Aragon was like a puppy-dog, always trying to make friends with Dr. Michaelson, but Hal couldn’t stand him.”

Paige added, “I’ve already tried to call Mr. Aragon, but he’s home on sick leave today.”

Craig put down the paper. “Nice coincidence. Let’s get back to that.” He nodded at her notes. “What happened after Michaelson left the plutonium building?”

“He had a late meeting with the Lab Director. Dr. Michaelson was apparently under quite a bit of pressure from the President to get this verification initiative off the ground, so he was pushing the Director for a substantial increase in manpower. The front office is willing to schedule you with the Director any time you want to talk to him, if you think that’s necessary.”

“What about after Michaelson left the Director’s office — did anybody keep track of him after that?”

“No, but once the CAIN records are available, we’ll have the exact time he entered the VR lab for the last time.”

“And the time that anyone else left the lab as well.”

Tansy held up a yellow message slip clutched in her gnarled fingers. “Sorry for interrupting, Mr. Kreident, but you’re supposed to call the FBI forensics lab.”

With a rush of adrenaline, he took the note from Tansy’s hand. “Can I use this phone?” He pointed to the phone beside the workstation in the cubicle.

“Dial 8 to get an outside line,” Tansy said.

Craig punched in the number. “This is Kreident. What do you have?”

The voice of the woman lab tech sounded bleached and brittle, as if she had seen it all. “First cut on Michaelson’s cause of death. We know he’s had some coronary problems in the past, but no evidence of a heart attack here. Something a lot weirder.”

Craig sat up in his chair, pulling out his notepad. “So what did they find?”

“Looks like HF poisoning. Hydrofluoric acid. Caused those severe burns on his hands and face. According to our chemical toxicologists, HF penetrates the skin and begins eating away the nerves until it permeates the bones. Bad thing is you don’t even know it until too late. A five-percent bodily exposure is usually a fatal dose. Michaelson got it over 14 % of his body. Pretty nasty way to go.”

Craig wheeled in his chair to look out the cubicle toward the VR chamber, its vault door yawning open. “Did the evidence techs find acid traces where the body was discovered?”

“No, but they weren’t looking for HF specifically. We’re sending a team back to Livermore to run a complete check.”

After Craig hung up, Paige and Tansy both watched him, eager for news. “They’ve got a preliminary cause of death,” he said. “HF exposure.” He watched them both closely to spot any reaction. If the term meant anything to the two, it didn’t show. “Hydrofluoric acid. You don’t know if Michaelson had access to hazardous substances, do you?”

“Not that I know of,” Tansy said. “They’re all just computer jockeys here. Nobody plays in a real chemistry lab, especially not Dr. Michaelson.”

Paige said, “If HF is a controlled or toxic chemical, we can get a list of all the places on site where it’s used.”

Craig nodded and stared at the VR chamber. The inside looked dark and foreboding. Fatal exposure to hydrofluoric acid. There seemed no further question about it — Hal Michaelson had been murdered.