Surveillance (Ghost Targets Book 1) (12 page)

Katie feared her stomach would rumble as she said, "No, I'm fine, thank you." It stayed quiet. "Ms. Hein, unless my technician can learn something from your local access points, we're finding your Hathor archive unreliable. Can you think of anything going on with Ms. Linson in the days before her death that might be useful?"

Penelope bit her lower lip, staring downward in a pose clearly intended to show her deep consideration. Katie knew almost instantly she was going to get nothing informative from this one, but she waited politely. Finally the other woman shook her head. "No, dear. I'm sorry, but no. Janey has always been a good worker. She's quiet, and she keeps her nose clean. That's what was so terrible about it. No one could have wanted her dead."

"In what way, exactly, did she 'keep her nose clean'? Do you know of any financial or legal troubles?" She saw some hesitation in Penelope's eyes, and pressed on. "We're not looking to slander her name, Ms. Hein. If we're going to get her any kind of justice, I need you to tell me what you know."

"Well..." she rubbed her hands together nervously, and glanced toward a potted plant in the corner which almost certainly hid a courtesy recorder. Katie had spotted four others in the room, too.

"Please, Ms. Hein," she said. "We have no other angles on this."

"Fine." She took a deep breath and let it out. "It's just, Janey getting the job here
might
 have been just a little...questionable. I mean," her voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, "she was
single
. And she wasn't even all that pretty."

Katie didn't answer at first. Her mind went back to Ghoster's comments in the elevator, but the girl had been working in a secretarial capacity. Katie didn't know how her appearance was supposed to affect things. Finally she shook her head. "I'm sorry, I don't understand—"

"Look," Penelope said, "far be it from me to speak ill of the dead, but that girl was the
worst
 administrative officer I've ever met. She couldn't keep her mind on the job. Terribly slow learner. She was always asking
questions
. How hard is it to approve paperwork? God. Err...God rest her soul. Poor girl."

"Do you know if anyone else on the staff felt the same way?"

Penelope shrugged. "None of them had to work with her. It was just me and Dee—the Senior Administrative Officer at Headquarters. Janey was always bugging one of us, wanting us to hold her hand—"

"And how long had she been with the company?"

Penelope snorted. "Weeks. I've got girls on the sales floor who've been here years—who are getting on, if you know what I mean—and if I have any say one of them is getting the position. Ms. Linson walked in off the street...." She kept on, complaining, but all Katie really got out of it was that the suspicious hole in the victim's employment history seemed to be entirely accurate. Hathor didn't usually make placement errors, though.

She waited for the other woman to run out of steam, then said, "You said Ms. Linson was single? Is that right?" Penelope nodded, and that was another bit of Hathor data Katie had doubted. She frowned. She glanced toward the hidden recorder, and sighed. "Ms. Hein, I know you're trying to be polite, but I need your honesty here. What are your suspicions concerning the victim?"

"I think she's a
hussy
," Penelope said. She shook her head, "I don't know who she could have got to, but she must've got to someone, to land that job. I don't care if they hear it. She was awful, kept poking her nose where it didn't belong. We need someone with a level head to replace her, I don't care what Hathor says."

That last sent up red flags for Katie. She leaned forward. "What do you mean? What was she poking her nose in?"

Penelope huffed, still irritated at the deceased. Then when she realized Katie wanted a real answer, she looked flustered. "Oh, you know.
Details
. Things that didn't matter, I mean. It's not like she was ever going to be a system admin. Girl's a secretary, no matter what they call her. She didn't
get
 that, though. She wanted to know how our program worked. She wanted to see the code. She kept asking us to give her access to all the tools our technicians use, when she should have been working on
her
 job."

Katie sat back. After a moment she said, "Did she have any friends here?"

"Becca," Penelope said after a moment. "She was the only one, really. But they talked sometimes. Becca made it worse."

"Becca's a...."

"Sys admin," she said, and then nodded. "She probably put the idea in Janey's head. Of course Janey wanted to be like Becca. Becca's one of my best girls."

"Could I speak with her?"

Penelope spoke into her headset. "Marco, send Becca to my office." She smiled across at Katie. "You're lucky. If Janey had been any prettier, she could have made friends with one of the sales staff, and they're all out of the office this time of day."

Katie smiled, her lips tight. "Lucky break," she said. When Penelope remained in her seat, Katie said, "Maybe I could meet with Becca at her desk—"

"Nonsense," Penelope said, waving it away with a smile.

"Then perhaps you would be willing to leave us some privacy," Katie said, and dropped the smile.

Penelope blinked at her twice before she finally rose. "Oh," she said. "Well, yes, fine. I'll go see how your gentleman friend is getting along." She left the room, brushing past Becca in the doorway.

Becca came on in and threw a curious look at Katie. Katie rose and met her halfway, extending a hand. "Hi," she said. "I'm Katie Pratt, Special Agent with the FBI. I'm here about Ms. Linson's death."

"Oh," Becca said, and Katie could hear the numbness of grief in her voice. "Of course," she said. "What do you need?"

"Ms. Hein tells me you two were close." Becca shrugged, noncommittal, and Katie pressed on. "I'm sorry for your loss. I really am. I want to sort out just what happened, but we're having some trouble with the system."

"I know," Becca said. "I heard that guy talking to Diane. But I, uh..." she looked away, nervous. "I knew before. I've got a boyfriend in the PD. He asked me all kinds of questions."

Katie made a mental note to dig up that conversation, but didn't let it show in her eyes. "Ms. Hein gave me the impression Ms. Linson might have been snooping where she wasn't supposed to—"

Becca growled, cutting Katie off. "That..." she said, and then looked around, smart enough not to finish her sentence. "She hated Janeane. She always did. But, no, she's wrong. Janey wasn't involved in antyhing. That was just a hobby."

Katie frowned. "Your boss thought Ms. Linson might have had some thoughts of promotion."

"No," Becca said. "Nothing like that at all. Ugh." She sighed, then looked up to meet Katie's eyes, tears in her own. "Janeane never even wanted to work in Aggregators. But she grew up with it, so she was always a little curious."

"I understand," Katie said. She hesitated. "Ms. Hein told me Janeane was...single." Becca nodded, and Katie hesitated again. "I only ask because there has been some connection to a..." she pretended to check her handheld, trying to take the accusation out of the question, "Martin Door."

Becca laughed. "Martin Door? The system architect. You do know who that is, right?"

Katie fought down her irritation at the girl's tone. "I do," she said. "We suspect the name is an alias of a David Linson...."

"David?" Becca's mouth dropped open. "Martin Door is Uncle Dave?" She shook her head. "That's absurd."

"You know him?"

"Hmm?" She met Katie's eyes again, and frowned. "Oh, no. I knew Janeane in elementary school. I've known her forever. She...." Suddenly there were tears in her eyes again. "Her sixth birthday, her uncle Dave died." Her voice rose, dangerously close to breaking, at the recollection. "I remember everyone crying at the party, when they got the call. I remember her crying for a month. She wouldn't do anything. She loved him." She stopped and shook her head, tears flying from her eyes, then reached up daintily as she sniffled. "I'm sorry," she said, fighting to catch her breath. "I'm sorry. It's been—"

"I know," Katie said. She looked around and found a box of tissues on a bookshelf, and brought it to Becca. "I'm sorry, but I need to know what you know."

Becca dabbed at her eyes, then blew her nose noisily. When she looked back to Katie, her eyes were already swimming again. "I'm sorry. I don't know. That was fifteen years ago. I was five. I never met him, I just know how sad she was when he was gone." She took a deep breath, and a fierceness burned in her eyes. "He was a programmer." She chuckled, darkly, and shook her head. "No, I'm sorry, he wasn't Martin Door. You've got some bad information somewhere. But he
was
 a programmer, and the way she talked about him was what made me want to become one in the first place. She never even considered it, though."

"Until she came here."

Becca teared up again, and Katie grabbed another tissue for her. Becca dabbed her eyes, then nodded. "She needed some money, and Hathor placed her here, and I kept telling her she could be sys admin if she just tried, but she wouldn't commit to it. She was... she was building up her courage to ask Penny for some training, I think, when...."

Katie nodded, and patted her reassuringly on the shoulder, but after that Becca was inconsolable. Katie finally left her to her grief, pulling the office door shut behind her as she stepped out onto the sales floor. Penelope Hein bustled up a moment later.

"Well?" she demanded. "What did you learn?"

"I can't say," Katie said. She looked past Penelope to Ghoster, just approaching, and asked him a question with her eyes. He shook his head, frustration clear on his face, and she nodded. "Ms. Hein, I think I have all I can get for now. Thank you for your cooperation, and keep a line open. We'll be in touch."

She turned toward the elevator, anxious to be out of there, but Penelope caught her elbow with a surprisingly strong grip. "Honey, sweetie, don't rush out of here." She smiled that sickly-sweet smile. "I looked you up, you know. I can find you someone perfect. It's not about confidences or numbers. It's about
love
. I can find you magic, dear."

Katie met her eyes for some time, incredulous, speechless. Finally she blinked, and her lips curled in something like a smile. "No," she said. "No, thank you. I can take care of myself."

Before Ms. Hein could renew her sales pitch, Katie turned her back and strode purposefully to the elevator doors. Ghoster followed a step behind, saving his smirk until the closing doors separated them from the office. "You could have had magic," he said.

"I don't want her kind," Katie said, stifling a shudder. "What did you find?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Katie turned to him, finally really paying attention. "What do you mean?"

Ghoster frowned. "I mean I don't believe it. I found the cloud. I got into the local access point hoping it had a cache of real data. You never know how far back the logs go on these things, but this is a first-class operation. Brand new machines, local solid state storage, and honestly enough capacity to run every recorder in downtown Little Rock, even though they're just running this building."

"And?"

"And they're full." They left the elevator, and Katie had no time to be creeped out by the experience this time, because her attention was all on Ghoster. He shook his head, "I was worried the cache would be cleared out, or overwritten—and it's overwritten all right. Your blackout starts here. It starts in the recorders themselves. I never imagined that. I thought it had to be injected into the database after the fact." He stopped curbside, a moment before a cab pulled up to carry them to their next destination. When Katie reached for the door, he blocked her hand and caught her eyes.

"Katie," he said. "I'm out of my league here. Those were my two best ideas, dashed to pieces. I thought we could maybe get something incriminating out of the caches, but they give us what we've already got. And I thought maybe, somehow, with the right leverage and the right warrants, the FBI might be able to figure out where the database injection was coming from. But I just found it, right up there, and it's no help at all."

"Well, the recorders have to be getting the data from somewhere—"

"Nope." He shook his head, frustration clear in his eyes. "It's in the interpretation. The code in the cameras is interpreting...nothing...as hundreds of people. Hundreds of thousands. The cameras believe they're seeing it—"

"Then we should shut them down!"

He shook his head again. "No good. Hathor uses predictive algorithms to fill in blind spots in the database, so if we took away the recorders, it would go on assuming the same things were there, the same people, except for minute movements, until it received some information indicating otherwise. Our only shot would be to replace these recorders with new ones, but I fully verified the code base on these. It's all handed down from the server, completely homogenous, and any new recorders we got in here would do the same thing these are doing."

"We can wipe the slate clean," she said. "Clear out all identities making the blackout, and then put in new cameras—"

"Which are already reaching backward in time to create the cloud," he said. "You're right, actually. That's what we have to do, to slow down the problem. That, and get in touch with Hathor headquarters, but there's a bigger problem here." He drew a deep breath, and let it all out in a puff. "I don't know anyone who can fix it. All of Hathor's coders probably couldn't solve this. We can throw up some patches, but if the recorders are capable of doing this...." He shook his head. "Katie,
all
 of the recorders are capable of doing this. I don't know what triggered this one, here, but I'm guessing it was some stupid mistake Martin made when he ghosted himself. It's just a byproduct of that, which triggered some bug in the recorder software."

"Okay...."

He shook his head. "Katie, if this can happen, it can happen anywhere. It could happen everywhere. There's a flaw in the source code for the recorders, and...what if it hadn't been this quiet office building late on a Thursday night in Little Rock? What if it had been the subway security cameras in DC, Monday afternoon at five? What if it had been
any
 of the high res game cams at a professional football game, blanking a hundred-thousand identities in a flash. This is good equipment upstairs, or it would have died before the cloud filled the back office, but we have some real systems out there in the world that could cripple Hathor with a glitch like this."