The Dyson File, page 27
“Any reason why?”
“Well . . . it’s more a matter of where and how we found him.”
“Why? What’s wrong? Is he injured?”
“No, nothing like that. A team from the 98th took him in without so much as a scuffle.”
“Did he have that rifle on him?”
“Yes, sir. But he didn’t use it. Not even as a threat.”
“That’s a relief.” Isaac thought for a moment, the fog from his slumber dissipating. “Then, if not an injury, what’s the problem?”
“Well . . . you see, sir, we found Fike in a dodger encampment down in the underthruster maze.”
“Okay, but I’m still not clear on why we shouldn’t head straight over.”
“It’s more a matter of the state we found him in. He was cowering in a makeshift toilet, and he crapped his pants when they went in for the collar. He also vomited all over the squad car on the way back.”
“I see. Yes, I believe I understand now.”
“Why don’t you give us some time to hose him down for you? Maybe give us an hour to clean him up and process him?”
“Understood. Agent Cantrell and I will see you at the station in one hour.”
* * *
“Finally.” Susan smiled at Isaac. “Ready to wring some answers out of him?”
“Something tells me ‘wringing’ won’t be necessary.”
An abstract window provided Isaac with a view of Fike sitting in the interrogation room, slouched with a sullen, defeated expression on his round face. He wore a carrot-colored jumpsuit with thick smart fabric that could stiffen on command, disabling a prisoner’s ability to move about.
“He strikes me as . . . pliant,” Isaac added.
“Yeah. His adventures in waste management seem to have whipped the fight out of him.”
“Let’s hope so. We still have several open points, and I suspect Fike can shed light on all of them. We know someone’s still active over at Atlas, and there are the Byte Pyrates and the whereabouts of Ruckman’s copy to trace down.” He took a deep breath and straightened his posture. “Ready?”
“Let’s do this.”
Isaac palmed the door open and stepped in. Fike’s gaze rose at their entrance, and he began chewing on his bottom lip. Isaac and Susan took their seats opposite him, and Isaac deployed his notes in a pair of screens blurred by privacy filters from Fike’s perspective.
He knitted his fingers, set them on the table, and leaned forward.
“Hello again, Fike.”
“Detective,” Fike replied weakly.
“Not to state the obvious, but you would have saved us both a heap of trouble if you’d simply met with me the first time.”
“Yeah.” Fike lowered his head and sighed, “Yeah . . . ”
“Obviously, we had enough evidence on hand to issue the arrest warrant, and I expect more to come as various forensics reviews file in. We also have a stack of lesser charges to throw at you, such as evading arrest, disobeying a lawful command, and possession of a restricted firearm. Put simply, you’re not slipping out of this one.”
“I figured as much,” he moaned, not making eye contact.
“Cooperate fully with our investigation, and it will be noted in my report. If your confession proves useful, I’ll pass on a recommendation for reduced sentencing.”
“Ask away, then. I’ve had my fill of running.”
“That’s good to hear.” Isaac tabbed over to a fresh screen. “Let’s start at the beginning.”
“The beginning, huh?” Fike blew out a long, sputtering exhale. “I suppose it started when I began chairing the chapter. I was working as an advertising consultant at the time, and the chapter contacted me about improving their outreach. One thing led to another, and in half a year, I ended up running the whole chapter. I quit my consulting gig and started working for the Society full-time. That was around three years ago.”
“Quite the ascent.”
“It’s not like I had much competition. Fake a little interest, apply some managerial aptitude, and suddenly I was being ‘volunteered’ to chair the whole chapter. Those rubes can’t run anything larger than a cupcake social without me.” He shook his head. “God, I never thought I’d say this, but I can’t stand cupcakes anymore. Every time bad news floats in, the first response is always, ‘Who’s printing the cupcakes?’”
“Let’s stay focused on your own activities.”
“Sure. Whatever you say, boss.” Fike raked a hand back through his hair. “It started small enough. Just a bit of Esteem skimmed off the top. A drop in the bucket compared to the fat donations rolling in thanks to my ad campaigns. It’s money they wouldn’t have had without me, so I figured I was owed a little extra. No harm there, right? Just a bonus I gave to myself for high performance. I was the only one handling the finances, and they liked it that way. Saved them the headaches so they could focus on coming up with catchy chants or”—he shrugged with an indifferent frown—“whatever the hell those idiots do on weekdays.”
“And then?”
“I pushed my luck a little more. And then a bit more beyond that. I bought a car with Society money, then a second one. No one noticed. No one cared. It was just that easy, so I went bigger. I bought a yacht and purchased a warehouse out on the Ridge to store it. Eventually, I renovated the whole place and moved out there. Even set up a fake residence in a capsule apartment, just to make the truth that much harder to sniff out. I lumped everything under business expenses.”
“Did you ever use it for legitimate purposes?”
“Sometimes.” He blew out another tired breath. “Occasionally, I’d take a potential donor out and show them a good time. More often than not, those activities brought in even more Esteem. Which, in my head at least, justified my behavior.”
“And then?”
“You called. I couldn’t be sure why a SysPol detective would ask to speak to me in person, but what else could it be? So, I bolted. I know it was a dumb thing to do, but you scared me. I was up at a place called Cretaceous Safari at the time, and I left for home. Being caught had crossed my mind before, and I had a rough plan in mind in case the police came knocking.”
“Which was?”
“I’d take my yacht and fly it out to an Oortan dirigible. Maybe the Icarus Wing or the Atomic Resort. Someplace outside your jurisdiction. I had ample funds to my name, so I could conceivably hang out there for years.”
“Why didn’t you leave, then?”
“Because my car’s stupid software got me stuck in a construction zone!” he growled. “By the time it drove me home, SSP had already shown up. I couldn’t go in like that, so I kept on driving.”
“That’s all very interesting,” Isaac said, “and we’ll come back to your days as a fugitive in a moment, but I believe you’re leaving out some important details.”
“Sorry. It’s not like I’ve made a confession before.” Fike let out a long exhale. “Not like this. I’m not hiding anything on purpose. What do you want to know?”
“Tell us how you became involved with the Byte Pyrates.”
“The Byte . . . ?”
“Pyrates.”
“The . . . ” Fike scratched his head. “The who now?”
“The gang you hired to kidnap Antoni Ruckman.”
“I’m sorry, but what?!” Fike blurted. “When did this turn into a discussion about kidnapping?”
Isaac leaned back, a sinking feeling in his stomach, but he pressed forward.
“We have evidence you directed the Byte Pyrates to make an illegal copy of Ruckman’s connectome.”
“Who the hell is Ruckman?”
“A senior engineer at SourceCode.”
“Look, I know what I did and why I did it. I stole from people who trusted me. Hell, I embezzled the shit out of that chapter, and you know what? I don’t feel all that sorry about it. Those idiots don’t have a clue. You know what those kooks do in their free time? They marry themselves off to rocks, for God’s sake! Rocks! I was doing the worlds a favor by stealing their money! Under different circumstances, I’d be on the receiving end of a medal for great contributions to society!
“So yeah. I know exactly what I did. I stole, and I lied, and I deserve whatever’s coming to me. But kidnapping?” He shook his head vehemently. “You’ve got the wrong man!”
* * *
“Well,” Susan said once they were outside the interrogation room, “that could have gone better.”
Isaac walked into the empty interrogation room across from Fike’s, and Susan palmed the door closed behind them.
“There goes the theory of Fike the criminal mastermind,” Isaac grumbled. “I should have known it was too good to be true.”
“You sure he’s not lying to us?”
“It’s impossible to be certain, but consider what we just put him through. We spent the last two hours tearing through his account of the last few days in excruciating detail, and throughout all of that, he’s been remarkably consistent. Either he’s one of the most gifted liars I’ve ever met, somehow privy to the full slate of information in our possession, able to expertly weave a fictional story together on the fly and under sustained scrutiny . . . or he’s not the Ghost. And remember, this is the same person who failed to check which reclamation line he sawed into.”
“Yeah. Looking back, maybe we should have realized this wasn’t our guy. Most criminals don’t crap their pants at the sight of the police, either.”
The door opened, and the LENS floated in, bearing a steaming cup of coffee. The drone set it down next to Isaac.
“Thanks, Cephalie. You’re the best.” He picked up the mug and took a sip.
“Don’t mention it. I know how you meat sacks can get when you haven’t had your beauty sleep.”
“Too true.”
“But if it’s not Fike,” Susan continued, “then what made the Pyrates connect him with the Ghost? Do you think Zapf was feeding us a tale?”
“Possibly, but I don’t think so. Zapf seemed genuinely interested in using the incident at the logistics center as his ticket out of the Pyrates. We could question him again, but I’m not sure what that would gain us. The problem is he’s too removed from the source of the information. According to him, Bao was the one who made the connection, but Bao’s not talking, though I suppose that troublemaker could have made a mistake.”
“But isn’t this the kind of work the Pyrates are good at?”
“I know, but let’s consider what we know about the Ghost. We know the Ghost was in contact with both Velasco and the Byte Pyrates. We also know the Ghost or a fellow conspirator purged Velasco’s work area of anything Ghost-related. The same fate befell the infostructure image Nina received, which indicates at least one active party still at Atlas.”
“But not Velasco’s home infosystems,” Susan noted. “Those contained mentions of the Ghost.”
“Which tells us the Ghost or related parties couldn’t access them. Not before we did, at least.”
“This Ghost sure doesn’t leave a lot of evidence behind.”
“And yet”—Isaac raised a finger—“at the same time, we’re supposed to believe this individual was so incredibly sloppy ‘he’ revealed ‘his’ identity to a gang of criminals? The leader of which keeps a stash of blackmail information in case her customers cause trouble. Those two sides don’t belong to the same coin.”
“What are you thinking, then?” Susan asked. “That the Fike-as-the-Ghost angle is a deliberate false lead?”
“That’s where I’m leaning. Consider for a moment how quickly we bought into it. And not just us. SSP mobilized a citywide search on what, when you think about it, was nothing more than hearsay from a single gangster. The Society members make for convincing bad guys, given their reputation. Whether they deserve it or not is a question for another day. But consider how they appear from the perspective of the Ghost. A cautious individual who’s neck-deep in Dyson Project subterfuge might consider them useful distractions.”
“Then where does that leave our case?”
“In a bad state, I’m afraid. Fike and the Society are dead ends, which leaves us with very few avenues left to explore.”
“Not complete dead ends,” Susan corrected. “We did bring in an embezzler.”
“Which the Ghost wanted us to do. That’s still a loss in my book, and I do not like to lose.”
“Not a total loss. Glass half full, right?”
“I prefer my glasses filled to the brim. Cephalie?”
“Another coffee, good sir?” Her miniature avatar appeared on the LENS.
“No thanks. What’s the latest from Nina?”
“She’s still out at JIT Deliveries, taking the slow and methodical approach. I spoke to her a couple hours ago. She’s determined to find Ruckman’s trail.”
Isaac opened his mouth, but Cephalie cut in.
“And before you ask, no, I have no idea when she’s been sleeping either.”
“Wasn’t what I was going to say, but okay. In any case, we’ll leave her be. She’ll call in when she has something to share.”
“What about us, then?” Susan asked.
“The way I see it, there’s only one place left for us to dig. Atlas HQ.”
“Right back where we started.” Susan sagged against the back of her chair.
“Can’t be helped. Someone over there is covering the Ghost’s tracks. Whether it’s the actual Ghost or a coconspirator is hard to say, but someone over there is up to no good. We just need to smoke them out.”
“Easier said than done. Any thoughts on where we should look first?”
“Boaz,” Isaac said simply.
“The CEO? You really think so?”
“He’s the one who fought our search warrant. Whether legal or not is beside the point. His actions gave the Ghost time to expand the cover-up, which means he could be involved. We start with him and see where that takes us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Their second interview with Julian Boaz took place in his Atlas office. Third Engine Block’s thrusters cast a bright glow through the wide window while the big, bald, well-dressed man sat behind his sprawling desk, face cold and unreadable, almost unrecognizable from the smiling, congenial persona he’d presented the first time.
Dorothea Alvaro stood to his immediate right, her demeanor pleasant if carefully neutral. She was one of the Atlas lawyers who’d fought the search warrant in court, and her presence here meant Isaac needed to tread carefully. More carefully than usual.
Alvaro possessed a stick-thin body and a fresh, oval face framed by long chestnut hair. She wore a tan business suit with a static green neck scarf and a pair of thick, green glasses with rectangular lenses. Isaac had read the Themis legal team’s profile on the lawyer, which gave him some insight on what he was up against.
Her synthoid made her look about twenty-five years old, but her true age was closer to two hundred and fifty. She’d bounced her way through a variety of careers over her impressive lifespan, switching jobs every few decades, which meant she’d “only” been practicing law about as long as Isaac had been alive.
“Thank you for agreeing to speak with us again,” Isaac began.
“Detective,” was all Boaz said in reply.
“I’d like to start by discussing your objections to our search warrant.”
“Objections that were perfectly within our legal rights.”
“I don’t dispute that. However, I would still like to better understand what’s behind your objections.”
“It’s quite simple. The original warrant was broad. Far too broad. So wide satisfying it would have placed our business model at risk.”
“How so?”
“You would have needed access to proprietary information. Data that gives us an edge on our competitors. Technical knowledge that led to us securing the Dyson contract. Secrets our competitors would love to get their grubby hands on, which means I need to protect them.”
“Any such information would have remained confidential.”
“Detective, please.” Boaz smirked at him. “Let’s be honest with each other. You can’t say that for certain. You can profess all you want about how discreet you and your team would be, but at the end of the day, SysPol leaks like any other organization. I wasn’t about to place this company’s future at risk because of some fishing expedition.”
“Are you claiming our investigation into Velasco’s suicide is unjustified?”
“No, but I am saying it’s becoming a nuisance. Yes, the man killed himself, and we’re all deeply saddened by his loss, but life goes on. This company goes on. We’ll miss the expertise he brought to the project, but the truth is no one’s indispensable. We can all be replaced, Velasco included.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that criminal elements found the legal delay useful.”
“Careful, Detective. That almost sounds like an accusation.”
“I’m simply stating a fact. We believe someone with access to your systems used the delay to alter the data we received, by editing either the infostructure image or the source files used to create it.”
“Excuse me, but—”
“It’s true, sir,” Alvaro interrupted. “Themis Legal contacted us, and it does appear the data we sent was corrupted.”
Boaz twisted in his seat to face her. “And you’re telling me this now?”
“Sir?”
“You wait until SysPol is right here in the room before you drop this turd on my lap?”
“I’m handling the problem.”
“By doing what?”
“We’re negotiating a revised warrant with Themis Legal.”
“Which will mean more delays,” Isaac pointed out. “And more time for evidence to be destroyed.”
“Good grief!” Boaz rubbed his temples. “What do I even pay you people for?”
“You pay me to protect our company’s interests, which is exactly what I’m doing.”
“Okay, look.” Boaz turned back to Isaac and pointed at Alvaro with his thumb. “These legal decisions are in her wheelhouse, not mine. If you have a problem with them, fight it out with her.”
“I’m not here to fight your legal counsel,” Isaac said. “I’m here because I want to know how the data was corrupted.”
