Quinn knocked.
“It’s open!”
He pushed the door with his foot. His hands were full of takeout bags. There was a small consumer electronics box under his arm.
“Lunch,” he said.
Nio turned to the alarm clock beside the bed. “Shit, is it time already?”
Quinn set everything on the table and looked at his phone. “About ten minutes.”
“Trouble with the boss?” she asked, looking at his hand.
He looked down. He was white-knuckling his phone. He loosened his grip and set the bags on the table.
“She’s being a good sport, but she’s tired of being cooped up.”
“Must be hard.”
He made a face—like there wasn’t much to say.
“Any word on how long?”
“Long enough to make it look like we took the bait. We have to assume the house is being watched. If we let her go home before we’ve even made any headway on the Arneson case... But hey, I got something for you.”
“Extra meat?”
Quinn smiled. “Besides that.” He set the box in plain view on the table.
“That’s a pre-paid cell phone.”
“You’re not approved for internet. But I’m working on it.”
“Do they realize there’s been internet in every room we’ve stayed?”
He raised his hands. “You’re dealing with a federal bureaucracy. This is what you get.”
“Thanks,” she said earnestly. “I mean it.”
“You’re welcome.”
“How’s your son doing?”
“Kids are resilient,” he said, as if he expected that to be the end.
“He’s autistic, isn’t he?” Nio asked.
Quinn stopped unpacking the food. “How’d you get that one? Because I knew about Gerry’s assistance device?”
She shrugged. “Just a guess.”
He resumed again. “What’d you think of him?”
“Gerry?” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Hard to say. I don’t think he’s lying. He believed what he told us.”
“That what your psychic voodoo powers said?”
“Something like that. What about you?”
Quinn shrugged noncommittally.
“Whatever Sol was working on,” Nio said pointedly, “it’s on that network.”
“You really think he was killed because of some science project?”
“Don’t you?”
Quinn took a long, deep breath. “To be honest...” He looked away. “Conspiracies are your thing. In my experience—” He stopped.
“Have much experience with conspiracies?”
“Come on, you know the math. Most people are murdered by someone they know. Family member. Lover. Jealous rival. And that’s assuming Sol was even murdered. We have no hard evidence of foul play. No murder weapon. No motive.” He saw her face. “Don’t even act like I’m being the unreasonable one. We deal in facts.”
“What about the guys who broke into your house?”
“We still don’t know for sure that it wasn’t your guy on the internet.”
“Now who’s being unreasonable?”
“I get the argument.” Quinn raised his hands. “Okay? I do. But isn’t it possible all of that was a smokescreen?”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. But look at the big picture. All we have is a gaggle of creepy coincidences. We have no real evidence. Nothing we could take to the US Attorney. Zero. And the crazy thing is” —he laughed once— “we can’t even get some. We can’t investigate the woman with the kid, because if there is a conspiracy, we’ll give away that we’re onto it and the conspirators will hide, which leaves us no choice but to act like there is a conspiracy—whether there is one or not.”
Nio looked at the pattern on the bed cover. She got up and unwrapped her gyro and sat at the table eating.
Quinn sighed again. “I asked the team to pull info on your sister. Her bank records look pretty clean, at least at first blush, but her company’s been in the news lately.”
“I’m not surprised. Chancery loves publicity.”
“Not about her, actually. Some Chinese tech guru invested like $400 million or something like that. But get this. After he makes the investment, a story leaks in the Journal saying it was fake. And then he ends up deported.”
“Deported?” she asked without looking.
“For spying. Homeland packed him off without trial.”
“So, it was Chinese government money.” Nio was chewing. “I don’t get the connection to Sol.”
“Kind of a coincidence, though.”
He saw the pictures spread over the bed. It was Sol’s possessions: the infrared thermometer, the EMF detector, and the rest.
“Looking for Gerry’s missing box?”
“The data is still our strongest lead. We know somebody was after it. They tried to access the box when he was out giving his talk. When that failed, they went to Plan B and took it.”
“You think killing him was a distraction?”
“Not necessarily. But think about it. Assassination is risky. If I was them, I would want to confirm that he really did have incriminating evidence—or whatever it is they’re worried about—before I took that chance. But if Gerry’s people are really building their own devices on a whole separate track, that means they’ll have a different chip logic. The NSA’s standard decryption tools won’t work. The point at which they realized that, they had no risk-free option.”
“We don’t know for sure that Gerry was telling the truth,” Quinn countered. “He might’ve said that stuff about his machines to hide vulnerabilities—or even just to get rid of us.”
Nio made a face. “Kind of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, well, good luck. There’s no way we’re getting a warrant. We’d only piss off the judge by asking. And we’re about out of time. Top brass is gonna shut us down any day now.”
“Sounds like you agree with them,” Nio accused.
“I didn’t have an opinion before. But now... my family’s getting turned inside out. I gotta ask why.”
“Sol wasn’t defective. He didn’t break like some faulty machine. Someone killed him.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know!”
“Please don’t tell me it’s ghosts.”
Nio got up and walked to the sink.
Quinn sighed and looked at the awful brown carpet. “What about the family angle?”
“I know you don’t think I’ve been trying—”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. That’s what the cell phone is for, isn’t it? So I can make phone calls in the car?”
Quinn rubbed his neck.
“I’ve left about 50 messages for Mutiny. She has a bout the day after tomorrow, so she’s totally unplugged. Manager’s giving me the runaround. After the funeral, Max went on a vision quest in the Australian outback. No word on when he’ll be back.”
“Vision quest?”
“Yeah. Spiritual walkabout.”
“What is it he does?”
“He’s a monk. Ed is AWOL, maybe back in rehab. Sol’s death would’ve certainly been a big enough trigger. I got a hold of Leo. He’s busy at his restaurant. Hasn’t seen or spoken to anyone since the funeral. Didn’t want to believe Sol was murdered. Practically hung up on me for suggesting Chaz might’ve been holding back.”
“What’s your read on him?”
Nio took a long breath. “I can’t say definitively of course, but a flat denial’s not his style. He’d come up with some very artistic lie.”
“Which one is he?”
“Leo,” she said flatly.
“Shit.” Quinn’s head dropped. He raised his hands. “Sorry.”
“You wanted to know who his alter was because you were going to judge the perceived honesty of the one by the perceived honesty of the other, right?”
“Something like that.”
“I’m not an inventor. Ed isn’t a poet. Flow isn’t a politician. Chancery isn’t—”
“I know, I know. You all are not your alters. You’re different people. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
“Leo is Leopard Vulcan da Vinci, as in the name of the project.”
“Ah. He’s the chef, right?”
“He is. Back in Taiwan. I’m still working on the others. Got an email from Manda, though. She said she got my message and Luke was with her. I was hoping she’d call me back.” Nio stopped when she saw Quinn’s face. He was lost in thought, but not about her family. About his. His frequency was off the charts. “Jeez, she really put you through the ringer, didn’t she?”
“Ah, it’s not her fault.”
“I hope you’re not suggesting it’s yours.”
“It’s nothing.” He waved it off. “She was at the grocery store and—”
The video conference device droned and he walked to it.
“Show time.”
He hit the button and the screen split into six boxes. The first was the conference room at the FBI office in New York. Seven agents, including Special Agent Erving, sat around a table. A pair of agents in Minneapolis sat close to each other awkwardly in the next feed. The third was a lone agent in a sparse room. The label said “Dallas.” The fourth was Nio’s motel room. The fifth was a conference room at Quantico labeled “Behavioral Analysis.” The last was Dr. Chang, who sat at a large mahogany desk. Behind him was a cabinet full of hardbound legal texts.
“Let’s get started,” Erving said.
“Your audio’s a bit weak, sir,” Quinn noted.
“Roger that.”
The agents in the room moved the microphone closer.
“How was your family leave?” Erving asked Quinn.
“It was good, sir. Thank you.”
“You sure you don’t need more time?”
“If it’s all the same to you, sir, let’s catch this guy.”
“Ms. Tesla,” Erving said, “I trust you’re relaxed and ready to go.”
“As much as I’ll ever be.”
“I’m sure all of you know Dr. Hamilton Chang, the president’s science adviser. He’s asked to be updated on this case. He’s joining from his office in DC. I suppose we should start with the bad news. We have another victim.”
Nio shot up. “What?”
A female agent sitting next to Erving took over the briefing. “82-year-old Millicent Sands and her husband Harold were found by Fort Worth PD this morning.”
She lifted a small remote from the table and pressed it. The screen changed to a static picture of an elderly black man with sparse but wild white hair. Bloody bandages were taped over his forehead. His eyes were crazy.
“Mr. Sands apparently removed part of his own forebrain and... fed it to his wife of 37 years, who is suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s.”
“Jesus...” someone whispered.
“It gets worse,” Erving warned.
Nio and Quinn looked for each other’s reaction as the screen changed.
“This is the crime scene as it was found this morning.”
An elderly woman in a nightgown was chained to an old bed. Her lips were stained red-brown and frozen in a wail. A pair of symmetrical burn marks radiated from the sides of her forehead. There was a cluster of ruptured cysts on her neck.
Nio leaned forward when she saw them. They had all hatched.
“Mr. Sands was led to believe that the brain tissue, in conjunction with transcranial stimulation, would abate his wife’s symptoms. Or so he informed police when they took him into custody.”
“Agent Jindal,” Erving said to the microphone, “have you had a chance to interview the suspect?”
The video changed to the officer in Dallas. “Not yet, sir. He’s still in surgery.”
“What’s the word?”
“Touch and go. Even if he survives, he has virtually no chance of a normal life. The part of the brain he removed is the...” Agent Jindal started skimming through his notes.
“Ventral prefrontal cortex,” Nio blurted at the same time as Dr. Chang.
“Yeah,” Agent Jindal confirmed. “Docs said it’s involved in decision-making.”
Everyone paused.
Dr. Chang was reviewing papers while he listened. He looked up. “Don’t wait for me, Ms. Tesla. Please.”
“It controls response inhibition,” she explained. “Damaging or removing it would make him less likely to stop what he was doing. It’s also one of the few parts of the brain you could remove yourself by looking in a mirror.”
“So, with that part gone,” Erving clarified, “Mr. Sands would be more likely to stick with the plan even if his wife resisted.”
“Basically. It was a way of making sure he’d go through with it.”
“Where did the burns come from?” one of the agents in Minneapolis asked.
“That’s the transcranial stimulation,” Agent Jindal said. “Someone sent him an antique electroshock device. Damn thing is made of brass.”
“That’s good,” someone off-camera suggested. “Antique like that might be traceable.”
“Please tell me you found the box it came in,” Erving added.
“Local PD are going through his trash. There’s a lot of it, sir. The couple were basically hoarders. Stuff stacked to the ceiling. And—”
“What are you not telling me?” Nio interrupted. She was staring at the carpet.
There was another pause. Dr. Chang looked up from his papers again, suddenly very interested.
Special Agent Erving leaned over the mic. “Excuse me?”
“He wouldn’t pick a mentally ill elderly couple. It’s no challenge for him. Tricking competent people into hurting each other is how he proves he’s better than them. A couple of elderly hoarders isn’t his style.”
“Are you saying this isn’t our guy?”
“No, it’s definitely him. Everything fits. Those cysts are identical. Which means there’s some reason he broke the pattern. So, what is it I’m not supposed to hear?”
Erving sat back, clearly frustrated. Then he gave up. “Tell her.”
The agent to his right, a stocky, muscular man in a gray suit, took the remote control and pressed it.
“We pulled the household internet history. These videos had been watched repeatedly over the last several days.”
The screen switched to footage of Dr. Quest, a charismatic TV physician, on the set of his show. He was describing, with a smile on his face, how to use the electroshock machine.
“Deep fake,” Nio said.
“Yes,” the agent answered. “We think Mr. Sands thought he was communicating with the real Dr. Q. This is the part.” The agent turned the volume up.
This particular process was developed by Nikola Tesla himself and stimulates immediate regeneration of nerve tissue. The reason no one knows about it is because Edison’s men kept it secret and destroyed most of the working prototypes. Because your wife qualifies for our study, we’re providing this device—
The video stopped.
Quinn filled the silence. “He’s calling her out.”
“We believe so, yes.”
Dr. Chang removed his glasses and sat back. Everyone was looking at Nio, who sat on the edge of the bed staring at the floor, barely keeping it in.
“What else?” she asked without looking at the screen.
“He recorded the whole thing,” Agent Jindal said. “Through the home’s digital assistant, which was looping an old country song when local PD arrived. Indian Love Call. By Slim Whitman.”
“So we’d be sure to find it,” Quinn said.
“Probably.”
“Have you listened to the recording?” Quinn asked.
“I started. I—” Agent Jindal stopped. He cleared his throat. “I apologize, sir.” He was talking to Erving. “I’m having a little trouble making it to the end. The wife—” Agent Jindal’s voice broke.
Everyone was quiet.
“It’s just that his wife is begging him to stop. It’s really hard to listen to, sir.”
“It’s all right,” Erving said. “I’d be worried about you if it wasn’t. Take your time, Prasad.”
Agent Jindal nodded. “Thank you, sir. I’ll upload it tonight with the rest.”
“I want to hear it,” Nio said.
“Nio...” Dr. Chang began. He sighed. He didn’t finish. He seemed to understand the futility.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Erving said.
“That man lobotomized himself and turned his wife into a cannibal before shocking her to death—as a message to me. I want to fucking hear it.”
Erving nodded to the screen.
“I’ll forward it to Agent Quinn,” Agent Jindal said.
“Thanks,” Quinn told him.
Nio stared at the floor.
“Quantico,” Erving said, “what the hell are we dealing with here?”
“Data suggests he’s probably a white male in his 40s or 50s. It would be hard for someone younger to amass the knowledge he’s demonstrated. He’s a narcissist and an overachiever. He has the time and resources to pull all this off, which suggests wealth. He’s extremely intelligent, so normal work wouldn’t be fulfilling for him. You’re probably looking for a senior executive at a tech company or maybe an investment bank.”
Nio let out a single laugh.
The team in Quantico bristled. They clearly didn’t like being contradicted.
“Why a bank?” Quinn asked.
“Investment banks use cutting edge math,” the lead psychologist suggested. “Both jobs are lucrative and skew heavy with psychopaths.”
Nio was shaking her head.
Erving leaned closer to the mic. “You have something to add, Ms. Tesla?”
“It’s not that he’s smart. It’s that somebody told him over and over that he was inferior, the worst kind of excrement. In his mind, the rest of society reinforced that, which is why he has no problems punishing strangers. It’s not the resources that are important. Nothing he’s done would’ve cost all that much. It’s the time. For as long as I’ve been tracking him, he’s had multiple irons in the fire—and that’s assuming we even know about them all. People like Maureen and Mr. Sands don’t do the things they did on a whim. They need to be led to it. Groomed. That takes a lot of patience. He’s unemployed or on disability or an insomniac. He might re-experience his trauma every time he shuts his eyes. Or maybe—” She stopped. “Shit.”
“Maybe?” Erving asked.
“Maybe he’s not a person.”
The exclamations from the team were immediate.
Erving calmed them down. “Hold on! Hold on! At this point, all theories are on the table. What do you mean, Ms. Tesla?”
“He’s multitasking.”
“You’re saying our killer is an AI?”
“It’s possible. Or a group. Any kind of networked intelligence would explain it: the resources, the diversity of skills, why the semantic styles across his posts never seem to match. I thought he changed his name a couple times, but what if it’s different guys? Terrorists and hackers and pedophiles gather in cells on the dark web. Why not psychopaths?”
“Quantico?” Erving asked.
“Psychopaths tend to be narcissistic. Their traumas, their compulsions, their dark desires are all unique. They almost never work together.”
“Manson did,” Quinn said.
Silence.
“All right. Share your report with the team.” Erving raised a finger in warning. “I expect everyone to read it. No exceptions. What about updates on the other victims?”
A woman in the New York conference room spoke. “Lab guys finally got back to us on the sequence recovered from Beckham Carter.”
“And?”
“They said it was a kind of cytoplasm, a protein matrix wrapped around strands of mRNA. They think the proteins were just there to keep the RNA from degrading, but they have no idea what it’s for. It’s apparently very complex, thousands of times longer than normal.”
Quinn looked to Nio, but she only shook her head. His laptop dinged then and she got up without a word and took it outside.
The agent went on. “Lab said based on the end sequences, it might be able to cross the blood-brain barrier, if that’s significant.”
“Anything else?” Erving asked the wider team.
No one spoke.
“Okay, that’s enough for now. I expect updates from each of you by the end of the day. Agent Quinn, would you hang on the line?”
“Yes, sir.”
It took a minute or so for all the feeds go dark. Special Agent Erving stood right next to the camera. He was alone in the conference room.
“I’m not gonna ask what you two were arguing about.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t shine me, son. You two barely looked at each other. I doubt I could’ve cut the space between you with a chainsaw. I don’t care what happened. Fix it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Orlando.” Erving looked like he was choosing his next words carefully. “I know what I’m asking,” was all he said.
The screen went dead and Quinn sighed and rubbed his face. He had to pee and went into Nio’s bathroom. He washed his hands and face and still didn’t know what he was going to say. He wandered into the parking lot, where a cool breeze carried the scent of the nearby lake. Gray clouds had moved in and a few drops fell in warning. Quinn didn’t feel them but he could see the tiny dark circles they left on the asphalt. He found Nio sitting in a grassy ditch by the road. She was clutching her knees. His laptop was closed and resting on the ground next to her. She had listened to the recording—or as much of it as she could anyway.
Quinn lowered himself next to her on the slope. Neither spoke for a long time. More drops fell.
“Khora was at the grocery store and the card was declined,” he said. “There were people in line. She was embarrassed. She thought it was a mistake—that maybe my using it out of state triggered a security warning or something—so she called. Seems our credit changed. Large increases in utilized credit signal a potential crisis. Not only are we carrying a large balance from the rental car company, but our insurance denied that little visit to the hospital.”
Quinn reached back to check his wound instinctively. It was still a little stiff to the touch but healing well.
“How can they do that?”
“It wasn’t in the line of duty.”
“Erving won’t cover for you?”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet. We might be able to work it out. We might eventually get reimbursed for the car, too. Maybe.”
“I’m sorry,” she breathed.
“That’s not even really the problem. The problem is that this isn’t the first time. My argument with Khora, I mean. It goes back. I didn’t just lose my legs in the fire.” He paused. “I lost my older brother.”
Nio looked up, eyes red.
“After JJ died, I promised her no more cowboy stuff. She saw what my sister-in-law went through and... I said I’d be safe. The FBI counts my legs as a disability, and I went in on the understanding that it would all be desk work. White collar stuff, which was fine with me. Then, last year, we were investigating this guy. Total prick. God’s gift. All that. I interviewed him, pushed all the right buttons, like I’d been taught. Guys like that, they can’t keep their mouth shut. I tripped him up, caught him in a lie, which was sufficient grounds for a warrant. He knew if he’d just kept his mouth shut, we wouldn’t’ve had anything. So, he blamed me. While we were executing it, I get a call. Khora says our son was approached at day care. Guess who?”
“Was he hurt?”
“No, but he was terrified. He already doesn’t do well with people. An adult man comes at him like that saying shit about his dad...”
“Of course.”
“Guy saw the ring on my finger during the interview, bought my info.”
“I thought there were protections for law enforcement.”
“There are. Still, all the pieces are out there. You just have to put them together. All it does it deter the petty criminal, who can’t easily look you up on an app on his phone like he can the dude banging his wife. This guy found my name and then Gregory’s school and waited outside...”
Nio waited.
“Later that night, I made sure he knew to leave my family alone.” Quinn leaned back on the grass. “The official line—well, you saw how it works. The Bureau protects itself. The inquiry called it self-defense. Wasn’t hard for people to believe. The guy had already accosted an autistic kid. Internally, though, I effectively got busted down. They made it clear I was going nowhere.”
“They wanted you to quit.”
“Saves face. If I quit, they can keep up the lie. Plus, then I can’t sue. And I wanted to quit. But I’m running outta career changes, ya know? I got a wife. A kid that needs a lot of attention.” He felt a drop on his face. He sat up and wiped it.
They were both quiet as the wind kicked up waves on the lake.
“So they assigned you to South Dakota,” Nio said.
He nodded. “My first case back. The Minneapolis regional office covers the Dakotas. Away from home for three months. They knew my family situation.” He shook his head. “Assholes. They didn’t think I’d last. But Khora stuck with me. She’s been at home, by herself, taking care of Greg like a single mom.” He stopped. “And then our home gets invaded. Not only am I not there, she’s gotta go live in a strange place with a two-year-old who survives on routine. And now she can’t even buy groceries. So maybe you can understand why I’m not my wife’s favorite person right now.”
“I can’t imagine what she thinks of me,” Nio whispered.
“You stir the pot. It’s what you do. It’s damned frustrating for the rest of us. But if I’m honest, I kinda admire it. No one solves crimes by playing nice. But then, that’s not what the Bureau does. We don’t solve crime. We manage the status quo. You’ve seen what Erving is like. Once upon a time, I fancied myself a rebel. Now look at me.” He pulled on his collared shirt, which was lightly checkered in rain drops. “I got upset at Gerry yesterday because he saw me differently than I see myself. I didn’t like that.”
An epiphany broke like rolling clouds over Nio’s face.
“What?” Quinn asked.
“After I got out of jail, you were like a different person. I thought you were just playing a cover. Or trying to be tough. But it’s because you were a firefighter. Isn’t it?”
“I read the eyewitness statements,” Quinn admitted reluctantly, “and the fire marshal’s report. You ran back into that house and knew exactly what to do. No hesitation.”
“You think I’m an arsonist.”
“Regular people think starting fires is easy. They hear about accidents on the news and think all it takes is some lighter fluid or something. But you knew better. You poured the oil down the center wall so it would work out, versus dumping it on the floor and hoping for the best.”
“I’m not an arsonist, Quinn.”
“But you learned it somewhere.”
Nio stared at the horizon. He’d been honest with her. This was how friendships were supposed to work.
“The truth?” she asked.
“Only if you want to tell it.”
“Fire makes a good diversion.”
“What do you mean?”
Nio looked at her hands, which she had pressed together. “You can’t teach every permutation of everything, so you recruit people who have the knowledge. Chemistry. Physics. Biology. Psychology. Then you give them examples. You show them ways they can make the world work to their advantage—diversions, theft, subterfuge.”
“Like the salt thing.”
“Right. But it’s up to them to put the pieces together. Not all of them do. Not all of them can.”
“So, you were some kind of recruiter?”
“We all were.”
“For who?”
“A group of people who saw a lot of the same things Gerry did. But rather than turning away, we wanted to do something about it. Change it.”
“Terrorists?”
Nio didn’t immediately answer. “There are seven emotional pathways in the mammalian brain, each with its own distinct circuit and neurotransmitters. Fear is one of them. It’s efficient because it’s easy to exploit. Cheap, basically. We tried to use the more ‘expensive’ ones. Play. Care. We thought of ourselves as pranksters.”
“Jesus...” Quinn sat back as if in slow motion. “Shit like the rubber duck on the London Stock Exchange?”
Nio nodded. “Among other things.”
“People got hurt.”
“They weren’t supposed to.”
“So, this is what you went to prison for.”
“No. I turned myself in. I took a plea.”
They were both quiet a long time. Nio tried to read Quinn’s face, to gauge his reaction, but he was looking blankly into the distance. His bioelectrics were throbbing, like a pumping heart. After a while, it began to rain in earnest and Nio grabbed the laptop and went inside. When she closed the door to her room, Quinn was still sitting in the wind.