Surveillance (Ghost Targets Book 1) (7 page)

The judge nodded. "Have you ever seen a ninety that was wrong."

Katie laughed. She shook her head. "I...can't say that I have. Honestly, I've never seen anything over a seventy that I believed was wrong, but I'm not a judge."

He smiled, tight-lipped, and nodded for her to go on.

Eva led her with, "Tell us about this case."

"First, I'd like to address the 'ten percent innocent' angle." Katie said. She'd only learned this figure a few months ago, and as far as she was concerned it put the nail in the coffin on the entire appeal. "For you to find a population large enough to trigger a false positive—and by that I mean anything over a confidence of
seventy
, not ninety, because seventy is the general standard for an indictment. Anyway, for you to find one false positive for the most lenient of felonies, you would need more than two hundred million innocent people. Jurisprudence compiles massive quantities of relevant data, positive and negative, and weighs probative value of every element, correlated to every other element."

Eva turned to the judge. "The chance of a false positive in this system is lower than the margin of error on DNA evidence—considered one of the most accurate methods of identification prior to the Jurisprudence Project." She turned back to Katie, "As to the particulars of this case...."

Katie nodded, and pulled out her handheld more for show than anything else. She knew the details by heart, but it looked more convincing if she seemed to be reading them. "Immediately prior to his death, as recorded by Hippocrates, the victim made an aggravated outburst that triggered authority and emergency responses through Hathor." She met the judge's eyes. "Specifically, he said...well, it's rife with obscenity, but the essence of his outburst was, 'Oh, no. Oh...lord, no. You can't do this to me. Help! Help!' a string of expletives, and then the clear sound of a gunshot. This recording coincides with a spike and then rapid crash of the victim's monitored vitals. Emergency services were automatically dispatched through Hippocrates, but the victim was dead on arrival. Based on several key parameters, Jurisprudence flagged the incident for review as a probable homicide."

The judge nodded. Katie went on.

"Concerning the ninety-two percent confidence on the accused. During a window beginning seven minutes prior to the shooting and ending two minutes afterward, the accused was alone in a closed room with the victim. They carried on a conversation concerning illicit activities that was picked up in fragments and reconstructed from audio sources outside the room. Hathor has an unbroken positive identification on the accused that precedes the event by one thousand, one hundred, twenty-four days, and continues unbroken since. The victim is likewise positively identified, up to time of death." Ugh. She remembered this one. She had watched it in HaRRE like a scene in a movie. The guy was guilty as hell.

"The presence of the accused in the same room as the victim at the time of death earned him a confidence of twenty-six percent. No one else was in the room—we have video proof of it. That alone would have earned him a guilty verdict at a jury trial."

The defense attorney complained at that. "Your Honor!" But he waved her quiet. Katie continued.

"Hathor has archived seven separate incidents prior to the event in which the accused discussed the victim, always in a hostile fashion, and two of those included direct threats of violence—in one case, he assured a compatriot that he intended to murder the victim. These accusations, individually, do not even factor in Jurisprudence, but taken collectively increase his score by four percent. Following the time of death, the accused confessed the crime on three separate occasions—twice in prayer, while on public transportation away from the scene of the crime, and once in conversation with his priest, whom he spoke with by Hathor audio connection. The combined confidence from these three confessions adds up to seventeen, weighted. Hathor provided seven lines of social connections between the accused and the victim, six of which represented illicit or illegal endeavors. Jurisprudence recognized a trajectory of conflict in these relationships, and that accounted for another seven percent confidence."

The judge sighed heavily, and Katie stopped in her report. She met his eyes in a question, and he shrugged. "I know how to read a Jurisprudence confidence report."

She bit back her first sarcastic response, but the second one escaped. "Does the defense?"

Taylor bristled at that, and barked, "Your Honor!" in objection, but Katie knew it was all playacting. Taylor was here on a simple crap-shoot, and really she had lost it as soon as she'd been assigned this judge. He still pointed a finger at Katie in rebuke, though.

"I'm sorry," she said. "That was out of line." She glanced back at the confidence report on her handheld and shrugged. "The murder weapon was positively identified with ninety-nine plus confidence, and linked to the accused before, during, and after the incident. Means, motive, and opportunity, as they said in the old days." As she said it, she realized the judge was the only other person in the room old enough to remember the phrase in common use, but the lawyers had heard it often enough in their history classes. "There's other incidentals, which account for the infinitesimally small likelihood of a false positive, but before Jurisprudence reaches a seventy percent confidence it has firmly established means, motive, and opportunity. We placed the accused and victim in the same location, we found a trajectory of violence based on a failed, illicit financial enterprise, and we associated the accused with the murder weapon."

She took a deep breath. "There's a reason congress authorized bench judgments above the ninety percent threshold, Your Honor. Jurisprudence has access to more information than eyewitnesses and search warrants could ever provide. The system is not wrong." She looked across at Taylor. "I understand that the system allows appeals of Confidence, for reasons of fairness. I also understand that process is under review, because confidence is
not
 wrong. The report testifies to that, in this case."

She caught Eva's expression out of the corner of her eye, and realized she was stealing the prosecutor's lines. She'd been through it so often. She fell silent, and Eva delivered the punch line. "In this case, Your Honor, the accused is clearly guilty, and the bench judgment entirely warranted."

The judge looked at Taylor for a rebuttal, but before she could open her mouth, he shook his head. "I agree," he said Taylor sputtered, trying to voice an objection, but the judge shut her up with a look. "No, the prosecution has made its case. The court rejects this confidence appeal, with prejudice. I'll submit my remarks on the topic later today. Judge Grantham's judgment remains in force. Thank you."

Taylor didn't bother storming out or stomping off, but she didn't hang around to say hi to Katie, either. Under the circumstances, Katie supposed that was probably a good thing. Eva caught Katie's arm as they left the judge's office, though, and guided her to a quiet corner to talk. Katie watched the judge's door fall shut, then asked, "What the hell was that?"

Eva laughed. "I was going to ask you the same thing. Federal expert witness? When did that happen?"

Katie shrugged. "I made Special Agent on Monday. They didn't have any work for me to do, so my boss let me come testify here. I don't know he would have if he'd known it was just chambers—"

Eva laughed again. "That's
why
 it was just chambers. I got a message from him at two this morning when your new credentials were posted. Apparently he was impressed."

Katie shook her head. "I guess that was the point. My boss did that, because he hates these appeals as much as you do." A shadow entered Eva's eye, and Katie said, "What?"

"Nothing," the lawyer said. "I mean, of course
he
 hates them." Katie only looked confused, and Eva became defensive. "I mean, his cases are the reason we have these appeals at all."

"Ghosts?"

"Yeah," Eva said. "I wasn't sure you'd be able to sell your certainty, with your new position. Have you thought about what ghosts mean, to Jurisprudence confidence? What if someone else had been in the room with Tyler and Jay? We got twenty-six off the fact those two were alone in the room. Without that, for this particular case, you don't have a bench judgment. If you consider the possibility of a ghost, of someone else in the room that Hathor can't even guess at...you've got no confidence at all. We're back to jury trials for everything."

Katie just stared. After a moment, she snorted, then raised her hands in defense at the look of irritation in Eva's eyes. "No, no, you're right. You're absolutely right. But the system's not so fragile as you think. Maybe I couldn't have sold
this
 argument before I became an agent, but I can tell you—Eva, there's thirteen agents in the FBI's
National
 Ghost Targets division. Fourteen counting me, but I don't count yet. Thirteen, and five of them are working on one case right now. I checked, and Ghost Targets has eleven unresolved case files, and all but two of those go back far enough that there's just not enough database information to clear them up. Probably long since resolved, but we can't positively connect the ghosts with the new identities. Other than that, we're working five active cases, one of which is over but for the paperwork, and another is just two days old and sitting on the desk of an absolute rookie." She took a deep breath, and shook her head. "No, ghosts account for less than the one-in-two-hundred-million lottery of coincidence. Hathor was never made to fight crime, but in the process of making money, they built a hell of a justice engine."

Eva still looked doubtful, just for a moment, then she shrugged and let it go. "Whatever," she said. "Hey, you rushing back to DC, or do you have time for lunch? A couple of us are meeting up with some of your boys from the precinct." She made the barest of hesitations, then added, "Marshall will be there."

One of the detectives from her old precinct, Marshall was seven years younger than Katie. She felt a flush of excitement at the thought of seeing him, and then immediately regretted it when she saw the grin in Eva's eye. Still, there was nothing for it. "Yeah," she said. "I think I can make time."

Of course she knew the place. As soon as Eva had invited her, she'd known where it would be. A busy bistro, squeezed into a narrow block between a musty, cramped antique book store and a sprawling Duane Reade. As soon as she stepped through the door she sighed at the familiar smell of fresh bread. Everything about the place was familiar. Keith was saving a place for them, six tables shoved together on the far wall. Half a dozen spindly chairs stood rejected an arm's length away, just waiting for a hungry copper to scoop one closer with a boot, sandwich in one hand and large drink in the other. Richard was over there with Keith, leaning close, chuckling thickly and telling him some disgusting story. The blonde waitress she hated would be working their table today, unless she was out sick. Kenny was working the counter, and all she would have to say is, "Give me my regular."

And there was Marshall, just turning away from the cash register. So handsome in his uniform, with short blond hair and sharp blue eyes. He flashed her a smile, for all the world like he'd known she was coming, and headed over to the table. She watched him go, until Kenny called to her from his place behind the counter. "Hey, lady! You look familiar somehow."

She stepped around a crowded table so she wouldn't have to shout back, and rolled her eyes theatrically. "It's been a week."

"I thought you were gone."

"I am," she said, and just saying it hurt. "But I'm back for a day. Can I have my usual."

"Always, Katie. Good to see you." He winked at her as he passed her a cup, then yelled her order back to the cooks. "Thirteen-fifty."

"Put it on my tab," she said, and headed over to join the guys.

Conversation stopped as she approached the table. Then Keith raised his chin at her, challenging. "What you doing back? We already threw you a going-away party. Now this is just awkward."

"Oh," she said, playing hurt. She batted her eyes, mock fragile, and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "I can just go. I didn't mean to—"

Several of them overwhelmed her with a groaned, "Whatever!" and friendly hands pulled her over to sit down at the center of the table, center of attention.

Marshall spoke through a mouthful of pastrami. "What's it like at the Bureau?"

She couldn't admit the truth to him, his eyes wide with interest, so she went on with the playacting. "Oh, you know, this and that," she said, all indifferent. "Their case files are a mess, and none of them know how to keep timesheets, but I'll get them whipped into shape." There were chuckles all around the table. She shrugged, and said earnestly, "I miss being here, though."

"Oh, go on," Keith said. "It hasn't been a week. You'll make it."

The sentiment was echoed, but Marshall cut through it. "Hey, seriously, what's it like chasing ghosts? I tried looking some up in HaRRE, but by the time the FBI case file hits the Register, all the ghosts are resolved."

She met Marshall's eyes, just for a moment, and her resolve failed her. He smiled as she leaned forward, elbows on the table, and launched into the story of the Cincinnati kids. She made the story as exciting as she could, then sat back afterward and just listened to the others talk. It was all mundane stuff, mostly concerning cases she was still familiar with. She reveled in it.

It turned into a long lunch, by virtue of her being there, but eventually everyone realized they had demands back at the office. They disappeared in ones and twos, and Marshall was one of the last stragglers, sitting across the table from Katie and joking about nothing. She finally, reluctantly, warned him that he was risking the chief's wrath if he stayed any longer, and his look of regret as he tore himself away was enough to make her day.

That left her with just Eva, who caught her watching Marshall's exit when she returned from the bathroom. "You are some kind of homesick, aren't you?" Katie tried to shrug it off, but something in her demeanor gave away the lie, and Eva's joking grin faded to concern. "Oh, gosh, Katie.
Are
 you going to make it?"