Dust by Patricia Cornwell
“Compromised?” She pulls out a plastic chair.
“I don’t want to know anything illegal.” I’m that blunt.
“There’s nothing to know.”
“By whose definition?” I carry my coffee to the table and sit across from her. “I have some idea what you’ve been doing. Marino is aware that whatever was on Gail Shipton’s phone isn’t on it now. He’s told me that and maybe told other people.”
“It’s not her phone.” Lucy props an elbow on the table and rests her chin in her hand and the table rocks because the plastic legs aren’t even. “I should say it wasn’t. And what happened to her has nothing to do with what in fact is an extremely unique device and Marino has no right to it because it wasn’t hers,” she repeats.
“Then whose?”
“The technology’s mine but I’d gotten to the point I didn’t care anymore.” She wraps her hands around the coffee.
“You don’t sound like someone who doesn’t care.”
“I didn’t care about what the technology should be worth because I wanted to end the partnership and it was one of the things Gail and I talked about yesterday, not that it was the first time or all that friendly. She wins her lawsuit and buys me out.”
“There’s never a certainty anyone will win a lawsuit.” It surprises me Lucy would be that naïve. “Juries can be unpredictable. Mistrials happen. Anything can.”
“She felt sure it would settle at the last minute.”
“I can’t imagine Carin Hegel would assure her of such a thing.”
“She didn’t. She was ready for court and still is. But there won’t be a trial.”
“It would be difficult with the plaintiff dead.”
“There’s no case and there hasn’t been one for a while. That’s why there won’t be a trial.”
“Does Carin Hegel know she doesn’t have a case?” I’m baffled and disconcerted by what Lucy is saying.
“I was going to tell her when I could prove it, which would have been soon. Gail was sure she’d get money from Double S and her mistake was telling me that and promising to buy me out. I wasn’t asking for much but I had to ask something or it would have looked suspicious,” Lucy says dispassionately, coldly. “It was important to extricate myself from her with surgical precision in a way that didn’t draw attention. I was almost ready and now she’s dead.”
“It’s a good thing you were out of town when she disappeared.”
“I’m sure they’d say I had something to do with it.”
“With the way you’re talking right now I’m sure they would.”
Lucy has a reputation and Marino knows it all too well. He knows her history and capabilities in exquisite detail. While I’ve never known her to hurt someone gratuitously or because she has a grudge, she’ll do things other people won’t.
“The fact is I wasn’t here when she disappeared. I wasn’t here when she was killed,” Lucy says. “I’d just landed at Dulles and then was at a hotel and that can be proven.”
“You certainly don’t have to prove it to me.”
“You worry too much,” Lucy says. “I didn’t like Gail and ultimately had no respect for her but I certainly didn’t hurt her. But I would have eventually.”
“At the very least you sound more like a witness for the defense.”
“I didn’t want to be a witness for anyone but in a case like this it’s all about manipulation and big money. They found out we’d started working on a project together and next thing I was subpoenaed to be deposed.”
“That’s interesting. What you do isn’t exactly public information. Even I didn’t know about your relationship with Gail, professional or otherwise. So how did Double S’s attorneys find out?”
“That’s what lawyers do. They find things out.”
“Someone had to have given them information,” I reply. “Is it possible Gail did without intending to?”
“No. She didn’t do it without intending to. It was deliberate,” Lucy says.
“What did Double S want from you?”
“To be my friend.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Rage makes her hard and Lucy has no trouble hating if she decides it’s earned.
When she trusts there’s no limit to what she’ll do for someone, but once crossed she won’t stop until she’s annihilated whoever it is. She has to because she can’t go after the worst offender in her life, her mother, who has sovereign immunity. Lucy would never harm the person who has damaged her the most, my ungrateful, loveless sister who sinks her teeth into the hand that feeds her and does so without warning or provocation. I’ve watched the syndrome for years and it makes me rather crazy. Dorothy commits her petty acts of cruelty because it gives her pleasure.
“When I was deposed I was asked a lot of personal questions about my work in computers and my law enforcement background, why I left the FBI and ATF and what I wanted in life,” Lucy is saying. “Their attorneys were kidding around with me, being nice. I played into it because I had a sense about what was really going on.”
“Does Carin have this same sense?”
“She thought they were being manipulative assholes.”
“Maybe they were hoping you’d take their side against Gail.”
“That’s what Carin said.”
I ask Lucy why she ever trusted Gail Shipton. “Because it doesn’t sound like it lasted long,” I add.
“In the beginning I thought she was one of these smart people who’s stupid in business and got screwed because she got tangled up with the wrong people, which I didn’t completely understand,” she says. “But I figured she was a techie with poor judgment, someone naïve as hell about the real world. If you really dig, the stories about Double S should give you pause although someone must be full-time PR for them, making sure anything negative is buried, and I suspect they pay freelancers to write fluff and spin whatever comes out.”
“You suspect it or you know?”
“It’s obvious they do. I don’t know it for a fact.”
I’m reminded of Lambant and Associates, of Haley Swanson.
“She didn’t check them out before she turned over everything, some fifty million, and then they supposedly lost all of it on bad investments,” Lucy says. “Unlike their other former clients, Gail decided to fight. She wasn’t a brave person or remotely confrontational, yet she didn’t back down when everybody else had in the past. You have to ask why.”
Lucy has gotten more animated as she talks, gesturing with her hands, light winking from the rose-gold signet ring she wears on her left index finger. Oversized, with a flying eagle and nature scenes, the vintage heirloom has been in her partner Janet’s family for more than a century, from what I understand.
“How long was Gail with Double S?” I ask.
“About the time she started grad school. She’s always worked since she was a kid, not just R-and-D but basic programming, engineering, and database design. Double S hired her two and a half years ago to build a new database management system for them and that’s how it started. During the course of things they convinced her to let them take care of her money, and in hardly any time at all?” She wiggles the table, testing which leg is the problem. “She fired them and hired Carin Hegel.”
“They lost fifty million dollars that fast?”
“Yes, almost all of it, and Carin didn’t take the case on contingency. So you also have to ask how someone who’s lost almost everything could afford the legal fees. Maybe at first but not for long. By now the fees are well into the millions.” Lucy folds her paper towel into a small square, leans down and wedges it under the offending table leg. “Did it ever occur to you that in the world of white-collar crime technology is a valuable commodity? Take drones, for example. Imagine sophisticated surveillance devices in the wrong hands.”
“I can’t verify it yet but I believe Gail was murdered. You’ve probably already figured that out but I want to make sure you understand she likely was targe
Lucy wiggles the table and it’s more stable.
“I wish I’d activated the video camera when it would have mattered,” she says as if that’s what bothers her most about what I just said.
Beneath her flat calm she’s agitated. She’s upset. I can tell.
“You had a way to control her phone remotely.” I remember to take off my coat and I place it in my lap.
“Her phone?” Lucy’s green eyes flash. “The chip stacking, the camera capabilities, the connectivity, the range of operating bands, everything’s mine and I have the tech specs, invoices, and copyrights to prove it.”
“Then what was it Gail had to offer?” I realize how badly I need coffee. It warms my throat and gets my blood flowing.
“Multimedia subsystems, packet data, fiber-optics with upstream speeds about ten times what can be done today, and search engines that match intent not just keywords. All the same stuff I’ve been really interested in and working on. Her promises sounded good over a couple of drinks.”
“I see. It sounds like at the end of the day she proved totally useless.”
“Not useless but weak, and then she turned. I didn’t let on that I was aware of it. I had one particular app and to give her credit she had some pretty ingenious ideas about it. Then she got other ideas that were fucking scary,” she says as I think of Benton’s remark about biometric software and its potential use with drones.
“You met her casually. Since when do you trust strangers?” I ask.
“About eight months ago.” Lucy sips her coffee and makes a face. “Generic Kenya that tastes like Kmart. Why the hell does Bryce have to be so cheap? Janet and I ran into her at the Psi Bar and we started talking. We run into a lot of MIT people and talk. They’re the kind of people I’m most comfortable with.”
“And you decided to work on a project together just like that.” Caffeine dulls the edges of a headache that’s lingered since Marino woke me up. I realize I need a lot of coffee badly and I push my chair back.
“I don’t know why.” She toys with her cheap cup, turning it in slow circles on the table. “Sometimes I’m stupid, Aunt Kay.”
“You’re never stupid but all of us have trusted people we shouldn’t.”
“I felt bad for her at first because it was a terrible story she told, growing up poor in California, her father an alcoholic who killed himself when she was ten. Her mother has early Alzheimer’s and is taken care of by a sister who’s mentally challenged. Then Gail trusted people to manage everything she has and next thing it’s gone.”
I get up to start a refill of generic stuff that right now tastes wonderful.
“I thought her areas of expertise could be helpful,” Lucy says. “Unfortunately I was basing my assessment on her having made a lot of money from really cool phone apps when she was a teenager.”
“You related because it sounded like you. A kid, a prodigy, who’s suddenly incredibly wealthy with everyone trying to take advantage including your own mother who was never there until you had money. You support her, and the more you do, the worse she is.”
“Who? My mother?” Lucy says sarcastically.
“That’s a lonely place to be.”
“She’s dating some rich Venezuelan twice her age. Did I mention that? Lucio something or other, owns a lot of Miami real estate, South Beach, Golden Beach, Bal Harbour, hosted some TV show when he was young, recently got a Lap-Band so he’ll look good for his new mujer fatal. It’s confusing. She calls both of us Luce.”
“The misfortune of having my sister as your mother.” It has left Lucy with a vulnerability that I don’t think will ever heal. She trusts completely, and when she’s hurt she goes after the enemy with an energy that’s dazzling.
“She’s not making much of a living anymore after putting a vampire in the children’s book before last and more recently a kid with magical powers who constantly recites these clunky rhyming spells,” Lucy says.
“I haven’t read them.”
“I do out of self-defense. She should write her autobiography. Fifty Shades of Dorothy. That would sell.”
“One of these days you’re going to give up hating her.”
“I think Grans is really getting old.”
“My mother’s been old for quite a while.”
“Seriously. She shouldn’t be driving. She goes to Publix with that huge white Chanel pocketbook that’s a hand-me-down from Mom and then can’t find her car so she walks around pushing her grocery cart and clicking her key until headlights go on. It’s a miracle she hasn’t been mugged.”
“I need to call her.”
“The word need is never good. I hope you never use it when you’re talking about me,” Lucy says.
25
“I’ll call her and she’ll tell me how bad she feels and what a terrible daughter I am.” I fill the water filter pitcher at the stainless-steel sink. “That’s what it was like over the weekend right after I got back.”
“Did she know what you were doing in Connecticut?”
“She saw it on the news.” I’m not going to get into what my mother said about it, almost blaming me while bemoaning the fact that I never save anybody’s life. I should work in a funeral home. She said what she’s said before.
“Tell me more about your work with Gail.” I pour water into the Keurig’s reservoir.
“All she was supposed to be doing at this stage was bench-testing, which has dragged on for a reason,” Lucy explains. “Months and months of troubleshooting while she’s secretly worked on copies of my apps, adding features and edits that I would never permit. She assumed I wouldn’t find out.” She takes a swallow of coffee and leans back in her chair. “Her programming is now nonexistent. Nobody should have it.”
“They will anyway. If you’re talking about biometric technology, specifically facial-recognition software that’s used by domestic drones, it won’t be you who stops that sort of scary progress.”
“And it won’t be me who puts digital eyes in the sky to target our own citizens or law enforcement or politicians. The problem is it won’t just be our government doing it. Imagine criminals having access to drone surveillance technology.” She brings that up again. “Something small enough to fly through an open window and hover at a thousand feet if you want to scout out where a target lives or follow people in their car or orchestrate a huge heist or a home invasion or assassinate someone. I’d rather be figuring out ways to combat nightmares like that. Which reminds me. The missing guy Benton’s told you about? The kid who disappeared seventeen years ago?”
I don’t respond one way or another.
“You don’t have to answer,” she says. “I know Benton would tell you because he has to tell someone he can trust besides me. Things aren’t good for him at the Bureau.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Age progression, facial recognition. Put it this way: Martin Lagos isn’t in any database anywhere on the damn planet. So the idea that he’s suddenly a serial killer leaving his DNA? Forget it. I can run a search like that from my phone.”
“Is yours identical to the one Gail was carrying? The one Marino has in his possession?”
Lucy unclips it from her flight suit’s waist belt and places it on the table. It looks like an everyday smartphone except for the black rubbery military case it’s in.
“Perfectly normal,” Lucy says. “It’s just a phone with the usual apps on the home screen.”
“So it appears.” I remove my second cup of coffee as the Keurig stops sputtering.
“You can’t see what’s running in the background. The good stuff.”
“Dangerous stuff?”
“As is true of everything, it’s all about how it’s used. I have the IP of the phone Gail had in her possession and would maneuver around her lame attempts at security. Everything on it also ended up on my phone, my tablet, my computer, so when she altered something I was developing with her I could see every keystroke.”
“Y
“Hell no. That ended about the time I got deposed.”
From where I’m seated I’m staring dead-on at Lucy’s massive matte black SUV, a stealth bomber on wheels with the ultra-luxury of a private jet.
“Did she trust you?” There’s so much I want to ask.
“I never gave her a reason not to.”
“You stopped trusting her last summer and obviously didn’t end the relationship then because you decided against it.”
“I was going to do it very soon.”
“Is what was going on with her why you’re driving an armored vehicle these days?”
She looks at her SUV as if it’s a child or a pet she loves. “I didn’t get it for any particular reason.”
“Who else have you pissed off besides pig farmers, Lucy?”
“Al-Qaeda doesn’t like me. The Aryans don’t. Gay bashers, male chauvinists, supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act, Jihadists, and pretty soon Double S wasn’t going to want to be my friend anymore,” she says and the thought seems to please her. “And, yes, there’s a long list of pig farmers and most recently a foie gras farm in New York State. That hellhole should have been burned to the ground as long as the geese got out first. Marino’s probably not happy with me now that we’re going down the list. SUV envy. His new po-lice vehicle is a V-six, mostly plastic.” She says it cynically, angrily.
“Exactly what does he know?”
“Exactly nothing and I don’t intend to explain a damn thing. He has no idea I watched him in real time when he picked up her phone behind the Psi. He hasn’t got a clue and he never will, right?” Lucy looks at me.
“It won’t come from me. It should come from you.”
“It shouldn’t come from anyone,” she says with a bite. “This is Marino playing cops and robbers after years of feeling like a lackey.”
“I hope you never put it that way to him.”
“When I realized Gail was missing —”
“When was that? I didn’t text you until about five-thirty while Marino was driving me to Briggs Field. When did it occur to you to access her phone?” I sound like I’m interrogating her. I don’t try to disguise it.