Kill Process (39 page)

Defeating the ultrasonic modem is decidedly low-tech. Although the ideal solution would be a frequency limiter on the speaker and microphone, the phone’s electronics are smaller than I’m capable of manipulating. Luckily, a layer of electrical tape over each is sufficient to attenuate the higher frequencies. It makes everything I say muffled, which is a bother, but I still feel clever for solving the problem.

I drive into work the next morning trying to put all that behind me and renew my focus on the work challenges ahead: finding some way to launch the company and bring in revenue in days rather than months. I’m mentally primed to deal with our employees’ doubts and questions around the offer I turned down and the board of director’s plan to cut off our funding.

As I pass the building to park at my reserved spot, what I’m not expecting is a little crowd of people standing in front of the office. Is that a . . . cameraman? At Tapestry?

Suddenly the hundreds of notifications on my phone I decided to ignore when I got up this morning seem a lot more ominous. I keep going, and pull over on the next block.

I swipe at my phone and expand the notifications to find the socialsphere has hundreds of broadcasts and mentions coalescing around one headline:

Tapestry CEO Killed Husband

Hacker Angie Benenati’s New Company to Exploit User Data

The links all point to an article on TechnoWord, the blog that covers Portland startups. My hand trembles as I click on the link. What do they know?

Angie Benenati was one of Repard’s White Knights, the hot-shot white hat hacker group he fostered at nineties powerhouse accounting firm Palmer-Cooper. The White Knights disbanded after Repard was charged in two indictments for breaking into a business newswire to steal unpublished press releases containing financial information used to make trades yielding an estimated $120 million in illegal profits.

Benenati resurfaced as employee number forty-eight at then-exploding Tomo. Benenati became chief database architect for Tomo from 2003 to 2009 when she left the company after marrying Jeremy Pearson. Three years later, Jeremy Pearson was dead.

An anonymous Wikileaks contribution contains previously sealed police records about the case. Until now, no one knew Benenati was the subject of an investigation by the Menlo Park Police Department on Pearson’s death. An internal memo by the lead investigator says “There is no doubt whatsoever Benenati premeditated the vehicular accident [that killed Pearson] when she disabled the airbag system.”

Two weeks after the accident, the District Attorney and lead investigator, citing extenuating circumstances, jointly agreed not to prosecute and sealed all records.

Benenati, who lost her right arm in the accident, was rehired in Tomo’s Portland office in 2012 as a data analyst. Former colleagues claim she was involved in everything from database architecture to deployment infrastructure, far outreaching her official responsibilities.

She left Tomo last year to found Tapestry, a stealth mode company, self-funding operations for six months. According to emails exchanged with her accountant, Benenati paid all expenses and salaries in cash until she later secured angel funding led by local investor Owen Mitchell.

Tapestry was set to complete a new funding round on Tuesday of nearly $8MM on a post-investment $50MM valuation. The funding round was aborted without warning, leaving would-be investors literally waiting at the table to sign with Benenati a no-show.

Benenati leaves us with more questions than answers.

My blood pounds in my temples and my vision narrows. People are prying into my very private life, my history. Add this to all the other unsolvable problems I’m grappling with, and suicide sounds like a good option.

But, God, how many years of my marriage did I spend wanting to kill myself? I can’t go back to that darkness. If I must, I will disappear and start a new life, or go live in Emily’s basement and never come out. I have those options at least.

Still, my rage fades away and I’m left only with despair. I fought for so long to keep my past secret. The life I created for myself seems over now. I wanted to create something positive and the universe destroyed my dream.

I call Emily, and she miraculously picks up on the first ring. In my panic, it’s hard for me to explain at first, but eventually I make myself understood well enough that she goes to TechnoWord’s site to read the article.

“I don’t see it,” she says. “There’s a post saying their site was compromised, they’re investigating, and they’ll update when they know more.”

“What?” I hit refresh on my phone, the page updates, and the article is gone. I try to puzzle out what this means. The article was not legit. TechnoWord never found the information they claimed to uncover. Someone else published the article, knowing once it was released, the damage would be done. Whether TechnoWord retracts or not, you can’t ever kill a meme, and
startup founder/hacker/murderer
is too much to take back. Worse, now that the truth is out, it’s inevitable people will search for evidence to support it.

Somebody will pay. Maybe I won’t be able to save Tapestry, but whatever bastard did this is surely going to rot in hell.

“I have to go, Em.”

“You sure? You sound upset. I can come over.”

“No. This is a smear campaign. I’ll fight it.”

I hang up and make a U-turn and head back toward the office. A half dozen or more people are still loitering around the building. Fortunately, there’s no one blocking the parking lot, because in my current state I’d probably plow right through them.

Unfortunately, they see me pull in and gather around my car while I’m parked. I grab my shoulder bag and prepare to push my way through them. They’re shouting questions at me through the glass. The cameraman is lining up for a shot through my windshield.

“Did you really kill your husband?”

“Where did the seed money for Tapestry come from?”

“Is it true Tapestry is a front for the Russian mob, that your real purpose is to steal financial data from Americans?”

“Do your employees know what you’ve done?”

I grit my teeth and open the car door.

I knew they were there before I got out of the car, knew I needed to push my way through them, but I’m not prepared for how closely they crowd me. They’re all staring, yelling, touching me at the same time. My legs go weak with the office door a mere twenty feet away. I should be able to push my way through a tiny crowd of people, but I can’t. One of the reporters shoves a smartphone in front of my face, and I flinch away. Someone else touches my shoulder, and I cower back. I want to push forward, but find myself involuntarily retreating back up against my car.

“Leave her alone!” someone screams over the din.

Igloo runs toward the assembly carrying a mic stand from her band’s practice equipment. She slams it into the ground. The resulting metal ringing captures everyone’s attention. She picks the stand back up and swings the heavy base in a wide arc. Everyone falls back, stumbling over each other in a panicked rush to escape Igloo’s reach.

I’m distantly aware that if a photo of that makes it out on the news, it’s not going to be good PR.

“What the fuck is wrong with you people?” Igloo yells. She grabs me by one shoulder and drags me toward the building.

I stumble along as best I can, my legs wooden, sights and sounds coming through a long, thin tunnel.

*     *     *

Inside the office, what little strength I have fades and I sink to the floor, slipping out of Igloo’s grasp.

My vision has narrowed to a little window. Igloo’s mouth moves, but I can’t hear anything over the roar of static in my ears.

Later, when I come to, I find myself lying on the floor in the lunch room. There’s a female firefighter tending me, and two male firefighters on the other side of the room, one of whom is treating a nosebleed on the other. The woman next to me sees my eyes focus on her.

“You have a good left hook.”

I don’t know what she’s talking about, but I’ve had enough dissociative episodes to know I’ve lost time. It usually makes everyone feel better and go away sooner if I pretend to have some idea what they’re talking about, so I manage a little smile.

She helps me to a sitting position, then makes the other firefighters leave the room. For the next ten minutes, she asks me the usual domestic and workplace violence questions. Am I in danger? Am I safe at home? Am I safe at work? Is anyone harassing or threatening me?

Am I safe? What can I say? That the world’s largest social media company is in cahoots with the government to discredit me and take my company away? If they don’t succeed, there are agencies in the government that could make me disappear? I’d be in the psych ward in time to get lunch. Or dinner. Whatever time it is.

Instead I make excuses about PTSD from past abuse triggered by the stress of the morning and promise I’ll call my therapist and take it easy. She lets Igloo back in the room and instructs her to keep me calm, and not to let me leave by myself. Then the firefighters go with all their gear, except the blanket they leave me wrapped up in.

Igloo kneels next to me. I ask for tea and honey, which she brings. I drink half the cup in silence.

“What’s happened?” I eventually say.

“I’m not sure we should talk about it,” Igloo says.

“I can’t afford to not know. I promise not to faint or anything.”

“Well, Amber is pretty pissed about the article.”

“She believes the stuff they printed?”

Igloo shrugs. “I’m not sure. She saw they retracted it. I don’t think she cares about that so much as the impact on the company. She believes you’re to blame somehow.”

“What else?”

“You gave Harry a bag of money yesterday.”

I nod.

“He read the article, thought you had stolen it, and turned it all in to the police.”

“What? The idiot.” I try to force myself up.

Igloo pushes me back down. “I said we shouldn’t talk about it.”

“Why did he do that?” I realize I’m whining. “That’s all the money we have. I borrowed it. I sold my stock for it.”

“He thought he was doing the right thing,” Igloo said. “You purposely hired people who would do the right thing, remember?”

“Help me up,” I say.

I climb to my feet with Igloo’s assistance and lean against a table for a while.

“Anything else I should know?”

“Everyone was distracted with the press and everything else, so most folks went home.”

I look Igloo in the eyes.

“
You
haven’t asked me if it’s true.”

“You were the one who took care of my sister’s problem,” she says.

I nod once.

“That’s all I need to know.”

I clasp her shoulder. “Thanks. Only some of it was true.”

“That’s the way it is. When they’re not hiding the stuff that matters, they’re making the stuff that doesn’t matter sound worse than it is. It’s the man trying to distract us.”

My brain’s functioning again, and I try to gather my thoughts. Tomo wants to stop me and the government is investigating me. Occam’s Razor says the simplest explanation is the most likely one: these things are connected. The odds of both happening independently at the same time is unlikely, especially since I haven’t gone after any domestic abusers in a long time. I guess the government doesn’t yet have any idea of all the bastards I’ve murdered, because they didn’t even hint at it in the fake article. Yet they discovered my involvement in the hacking community because they mentioned that. If I don’t do something to level the playing field, this war will go on forever, and they’re better situated to outlast me.

The main thing I need to know now is who in the government is pursuing me. Is it really this black agency that Nathan9 believes he discovered, or is it a legit investigation? How are they connected to Tomo?

It’s far beyond my ability to figure this out, but I know one person who can.

“Help me back to my office.”

*     *     *

I’m running out of options to hide my network traffic. TOR is compromised, my own onion network is suspect, and sending packets through Tomo, when I know they’re actively looking for ways to stop me, seems foolish. VPN only goes so far.

I find the most secure VPN host I can, install the software to connect to the darkest darknet there appears to be this month, and find a host that will packet forward for me. Then I connect to Dead Channel, half suspecting my account will be revoked, and ready to use one of the two backdoors I know of.

But my login still works, and I immediately ping Nathan9.

SysOp> I left your login as a measure of goodwill. Your problem didn’t go away in two days. Unless you fixed it, you’re putting me and Dead Channel at risk.

I want to brag that I don’t need the login, but I must weigh the value of bravado against the likelihood of Nathan hunting for and closing the backdoors. I decide against mentioning it.

Angel> I can’t fix my problem without knowing specifically who’s leading the investigation into me. I want to know who.

SysOp> Ha. I would like to sit in the Oval Office. Some things cannot be obtained.

Angel> The name of the agent would be nothing. It’s somewhere, on paperwork. Somebody had to sign off on the investigation.

SysOp> It’s a dark agency, one that no one has ever even mentioned. I’m not sure those assumptions hold true.

Angel> You could pull in favors to find out.

SysOp> Not likely.

I hate that it comes to this next step, I really do. I have to assess the continued value of our thirty-year relationship against the immediate dangers, and right now, the present trumps the future.