Alien in the House (46 page)

“W
E DON'T WANT TO
kill the assassin?” Jeff asked. “Why not?”

“Because right now the person who's most likely able to identify who the Mastermind is would be Raul,” Gower explained.

We enjoyed a long moment of silence. “I'll let Mossad know,” Tim said as he went back to his texting frenzy.

“Good catch, Paul. No killing Raul until we get who took over for Reid out of him. Okay, so Mossad's confirmed what we suspected there. What about a girl? There was a female Dier serving, or not serving, water at our party, too.”

“There's no female relative that they can find, for either Reid or Raul, other than the mother who's dead,” Tim reported. “And Bernie, who Buchanan killed.”

“So was she legit and just has a weird spelling of the name?” Christopher asked.

“That seems like too much of a coinkydink to me.”

Vance shrugged. “What's hard about this? Dude's found a new woman.”

Chuckie nodded. “Sound theory and it makes sense. He was used to working with his wife.”

Tim continued to text. “They'll look into new known female associates. Raul's not on radar a lot. If he was, he'd be dead. He was released from custody a lot sooner than any of us knew, by the way, and right before Mossad could take him out.”

“Well, we know the Mastermind has a ton of pull. So, can we prove that Raul killed all the reps?”

“Doubtful,” Oliver said. “In part because I doubt that he killed all of them.”

The entire room stared at Oliver. Tim even stopped texting for a few seconds again. “Excuse me?” Jeff asked finally.

Oliver shrugged. “Raul the Assassin probably did not kill all of the people whose deaths we're investigating. I'm sure he killed his fair share, mind you. He killed Eugene Montgomery, of course, but I believe we already knew that.”

“Right, he was disguised as SWAT. But what about Edmund Brewer? We think it was Clarence, but he could have had help.”

As I thought about it, the man who'd pointedly held the elevator for Brewer could have been Raul. I'd only seen him once, when he was in SWAT gear, and I'd been very distracted at that time. And I hadn't really paid any attention to the people at the Cairo.

“That death may be attributable, but we have no confirmation yet. Madame Olga has a theory. However, until Representative Reyes was killed, and then Eugene Montgomery was killed immediately thereafter, she'd no more put things together than anyone else.”

“I had,” Vance mentioned.

“Yes, I shared that with her. She said that you might be allowed inside the Romanian Embassy as a welcomed guest in the future.”

“I feel so honored.”

“You should.” Chose not to mention that the invitation probably didn't include Gadoire. “So, what did Olga deign to share?”

“Well, I must say that until the young gentlemen came back with their sad news, I believe Olga was as in the dark as the rest of us,” Oliver said. “But Representative Brewer's death triggered her feeling that Eugene Montgomery is the key.”

“And she thinks that we're not paying attention to the important things,” Kyle added. “And she realizes we have over twenty Congressmen dead but she means besides them.”

Mouths opened, mine included. “Olga knows Eugene wasn't a politician,” Len said quickly. Mouths closed. “And she's not discounting those deaths, just thinks they're not telling us what we need to know. She also likes your Sith Lord idea.”

“But she's not wild about the L name theory,” Kyle said.

“I believe her exact words were ‘even if those appointments were all with the same person, you have no proof that person is the one you seek,'” Oliver shared. “We're taking that to mean Olga feels we could better use our time elsewhere.”

“By figuring out who the Sith Lord is,” Kyle said.

“It's not Eugene,” Len added. “But, as Mister Joel Oliver said, he's the key.”

“Why?” Mom asked.

“Because he doesn't fit the pattern,” Amy answered. The hackers all nodded, but didn't speak. Got the impression they were at least as afraid of Amy as they were of me, possibly more.

“What do you mean?” Chuckie asked her.

“Every other death looks like it's natural or an accident, right?” The room gave its general consensus. “But Eugene killed Santiago very publicly.”

“And in such a way he was caught immediately,” Michael added. Abigail nodded, nudged Naomi, who was alternating between looking lovingly at Chuckie and glancing at her cell phone. Naomi nodded, too. Clearly we had at least three-quarters of Team Gower in agreement with Amy, if I pretended Naomi was paying attention.

“He was trying to kill Edmund Brewer,” I said. As the words left my mouth I could practically see Olga give me her Encouraging the Slow of Wit look. “Hang on. What're our thoughts about the whole robot theory thing? As in, do we think others got the same packet and sales pitch, or was that for Eugene, only?”

“Show of hands for who'd believe that if they'd been approached,” Amy said. Every hand in the room went up. “Okay, right, but we know more than the average person.”

“A good number of the representatives are in the know, too,” Mom said.

“Half the country would believe,” Stryker said. “Especially if you showed them the packet we saw.”

“So, anyone approached was likely to believe it, but good try, Ames. But, the next question is, would you, the bad guys at Gaultier who are working on the next level of robotic manipulations, share this randomly with a bunch of politicians? And if you did, why? It would potentially expose that you had androids out there already that were really good at passing for human.”

“You'd show to recruit,” Chuckie said. “But why would you want to? And recruit for what? If you've created robots who are passing as representatives, you don't show your next victims so they know you're going to kill and replace them.”

“You also don't take specific, detailed, accurate technical information and toss it around randomly,” Ravi said. “I'm not joking—I believe we can build a working robot from that information, and by ‘we' I don't mean Dulce. I mean we like Amy and Kitty.”

“I think I should resent that somehow.”

“Oh, I do resent that, no somehow,” Amy said.

“Point made,” Chuckie said, presumably to keep Ravi alive. “And I don't believe Pia was really trying to stop the robot makers, either.”

“Mossad agrees with you,” Tim said. “No way she was trying to stop these particular bad guys. My bet, and they'll research it, is that she was connected to Antony Marling in some way. And because we're all tense, I'm not going to make a French Connection joke.”

“Your self-restraint is impressive, Megalomaniac Lad.”

“Okay, so what was Eugene doing with the full packet of schematics?” Amy asked. “Do you think he stole it from Gaultier? He wasn't working on that project, we've confirmed that both with his supervisor and our own research.”

“Why did he take the job at Gaultier?” I asked. “He was freelancing. Maybe he was trying to find information for Pia.”

“Or confirm the information she gave him,” Naomi said, proving she was at least listening with one ear.

“I'd want confirmation,” Abigail added. “You know, before I tried to murder someone and all.”

“Maybe, but I don't know that we'll ever know,” Reader said. “And if we do figure it out, I don't think it'll be today, because Eugene and Pia are both dead.”

“If we're disregarding the letter L theory,” Raj said, “then perhaps we should also assume that there is no group of Stop the Robot Representatives people forming, either.”

“Raj . . . you complete me.” Raj grinned while Jeff and Reader both glared. Felt all special for a minute.

“If we assume that Eugene was the only one shown the information by Pia, then that begs certain other questions,” White said. “To Olga's point, why Eugene Montgomery?”

“Can I ask a question or two before we try to answer that?” Michael asked.

“Certainly,” White said with a smile. “We're all on the same team.”

“Okay. I understand the Master and Apprentice thing, at least I think that's what you mean by the Sith Lord theory, right?”

“Yes,” Henry said. He looked like he was going to keep going, but Amy shot him a glare almost worthy of her husband and he shut up.

“Okay. But why do we think there's only one Apprentice?” Michael asked.

“Because that's how it is in the movies,” Stryker and I said in unison. We looked at each other. “Eddy, does that reply seem as totally lame to you, now that we said it out loud, as it does to me?”

Stryker grimaced. “Yeah. Sort of.”

“Totally, dude. Totally. And, come to think of it, before we went to brunch, Raj had already posited the idea of more than one. Sorry, Chuckie and Mom, I forgot.”

“Me too,” Raj said quickly.

“And he's a loyal suck-up, too. I love that in Embassy staff.”

Tim snorted. “You like that in everyone.”

“What's your point? Anyway, sorry, where are you going with this, Michael?”

He shrugged. “I get why you'd only have a few people in the know, but when we're choosing who gets to go into space and who doesn't we start with a select group and we whittle them down via a variety of trials. Sometimes you don't go for a simple reason—you caught the flu. Sometimes you don't go for a more complex reason—you underperformed in key stress tests and scenarios. That's done so that the team that does go into space is the very best it can be, and that includes being able to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses.”

“You firmly believe there's more than one Apprentice, don't you?”

“Yeah, I do. Let's face it, twenty people is a lot. Sure, we have a professional assassin out there who's working for the C.I.A. But I can't think of a better way to make someone prove loyalty to me than to have them kill someone on my order.”

“The Mob's been using that philosophy for decades,” Chuckie said. “And it's been working for them for decades, too. So, you think Eugene was trying to be an Apprentice?”

Michael's example made things seem so much clearer that I could answer this question. “No, not Eugene. Pia. Pia was in training to be an Apprentice. She has all the aspects you'd want—security clearance, job with the C.I.A., already a double agent.”

“She's dead,” Christopher pointed out.

“Because she failed,” Jeff said. “She had Eugene set up to kill Ed Brewer. But he killed Santiago instead. And he told Kitty about her and the robotics packet she'd given him.”

“So, either someone at Gaultier killed her for leaking that, or the Master killed her.” Wasn't sure if I preferred Master versus Mastermind versus Sith Lord. Decided I could worry about this later. “But if we take Michael's theory to the farthest reaches, I think that begs two important questions.”

“Who are the others vying to be the next Sith Apprentice?” Reader suggested.

“That's one. And the other is this—why is there competition for this slot in the first place? Or, phrased another way, which Apprentice, or Master, did we take out during Operation Destruction?”

“W
ELL,
my bitch of a stepmother's dead,” Amy said. “So was it her?”

“No, and Ronaldo al Dejahl is out, too, and before you all tell me he's dead I point to Clarence Valentino and say that there's a good chance al Dejahl also got better. However, they were out of this part of the galaxy for too long. And I don't see either one of them as willing to be an Apprentice to anyone other than good ol' Mephistopheles.”

Chuckie jerked. “That's the original Mastermind, Yates, or the Yates-Mephistopheles superbeing combination.”

“That makes so much sense it makes me sick to think about it,” Jeff said. “But does it work from a timeline perspective?”

Stryker nodded. “Yeah, definitely. Chuck's had us research all we could on Ronald Yates. He was old, but he was active all the way through until his death.”

“And he's influenced every plan already, and we know that, too.” Looked at White. “Richard, what do you think?”

“I'm in complete agreement with Jeffrey, including the nausea.”

“How about Reid fitting into that scenario?”

“Works for sure,” Big George said. “He received several campaign donations from different divisions of Yates Enterprises.”

“Did you memorize the file?” Abigail asked. She didn't sound appalled—she sounded impressed.

“No, but I could have,” Big George said, flexing his mind muscle for the pretty girl. “We've been spending a lot of time on Leventhal Reid.”

“Flirt later, we have other questions that need answering. Can we all agree that Reid was the Apprentice to Mephistopheles?” Everyone nodded. “Super. Then let's get back to the question of who the Apprentice was we got rid of during Operation Destruction.”

“All the options are dead or not Apprentice material,” Christopher said.

“Well, if Clarence and al Dejahl are still alive, what about that heinous bitch?” Amy asked.

“LaRue's definitely dead, I watched Esteban Cantu shoot her in the head instead of me. Oh. Wow. Chuckie?”

“Yes, it would fit. He was involved in everything and it took catching him trying to kill you while the world was being invaded for us to be able to arrest him.”

“So, does that make him the Master or the Apprentice?”

“It makes him someone we need to question again,” Mom said.

“Do we have time for that?” I still had time before I had to go meet the Dingo, but probably not enough to question Cantu unless he was close and we used hyperspeed.

“Maybe. He's not that far away.”

“In some hole in the ground type of not far away or in some official prison not far away? I'm asking because if he's accessible he could be the Mastermind.”

“Yes to both. He's not accessible. Other than to me and a handful of other people. And if one of them is the Mastermind or the Apprentice we're all screwed anyway.”

Heaved a sigh. “Thanks for that, Mom. So let's presume Cantu was the eager Apprentice. And he got caught, and so the New Mastermind is having an open recruitment period. Start by killing off a few congressmen.”

“But why?” Abigail asked. “It makes no sense.”

“Well, we know the why—they have all these bills with anti-alien stuff hidden in them about to go through the House.”

“Bills get shot down all the time,” Vance said. “Why kill people over something like that?”

Jeff straightened up. “I need to see a list of the dead representatives.”

“It's upstairs,” Raj said. “I'll get it.” He zipped off and was back quickly. He handed a sheet to Jeff.

“What is it?” I asked, speaking for the whole room based on everyone's confused expressions.

“When Ed and I were working after brunch, I told him about what we'd found, the anti-alien lines in the bills. He said he was already planning to fight them. And that Wendell had been planning to help him. He meant Wendell Holmes. Who died in the hospital from pneumonia right before our party.”

Chuckie went and looked at the list along with Jeff. “There are only a few staunchly pro-alien supporters on this list. And a few staunch anti-alien supporters, too. Both definitely cross party lines and the pro and anti factions tend to be nonpartisan.”

“Ed said that as long as he was around to sway the undecided voters, none of these would pass,” Jeff said. “And now he's not around. Wendell Holmes isn't around. Some others aren't around. And we have two dozen new reps getting sworn in two days from now and voting on these bills in just over a week from now.”

“I'm still not seeing the point,” Mom said. “And we need to see the point of all these murders in order to stop whatever's going on.”

“The Mastermind moves in murky ways.” Hey, it was all I had at the moment.

Len cleared his throat. “I think we're forgetting something. And that's what Olga wanted us to focus on—Eugene Montgomery. We're not sure if she wanted us focused on his incompetence in killing the wrong target or something else, by the way.”

“Wait . . . no one say anything for a minute.” It was there, right there. The answer was simple—it was us who were making it complex. “Eugene was supposed to kill Edmund Brewer, right?”

“Can I speak?” Tim said. “Because if I can, the answer is ‘right.'”

“Okay . . . let's ask ourselves this question: What would have happened if he'd succeeded?”

“Well, Ed's dead, so does it matter?” Jeff asked with more than a trace of bitterness.

“Yes, it matters. What would we have done?”

Chuckie closed his eyes. “I think the better question is, what would
you
have done, Kitty? You drove every reaction we had.”

It was easy to extrapolate. “I wouldn't have gone down to the bathroom with Edmund, Nathalie would have. And while she might have come for help, we would have reacted differently. Slower, maybe.” After all I hadn't liked them all that much until after Reyes was killed. “And if Nathalie had reacted the same as she did today, which I'm sure she would have, we'd have been taking care of her.”

Shoved aside the wish that I'd listened to Jeff months ago and had let the Brewers in sooner. Now I'd never have the chance to really get to know Brewer, any more than I would Reyes.

“There's no way anyone could have expected Eugene Montgomery to murder anyone at that party and get away,” Mom said. “Maybe Kitty would have been too busy handling Nathalie Brewer's reaction to question Eugene. But I locked us down the moment we knew something was very wrong, and the police absolutely would have found what Charles and the dog found. It might have taken them
longer
, but they'd have found the incriminating evidence.”

“So Eugene was supposed to be caught.”

“Let's say you're on the right track with this,” Chuckie said. “Why?”

“Because they wanted Edmund Brewer dead, not Santiago Reyes.”

“Santiago wasn't hiding that paper for no reason,” Mom reminded me.

“Then let's rephrase as they wanted Edmund Brewer publicly murdered by Eugene,” Amy said. “And they wanted Eugene caught for it. But why?”

“Good question, Ames. Let's go back to our very early theory from when Vance first tossed out the whole Serial Killer of Representatives idea. Somewhere along the line, someone was going to wake up and notice that all these people were dead. Because Eugene screwed up, we're all really aware of it now. But let's say he hadn't screwed up. He kills Edmund. He's caught. He tells the police about robots. They put him in a padded cell. Then they put the whole mistress thing together, in about an hour, tops, and Eugene's on death row without a problem. No one's going to believe him because no one will find the paperwork.”

“He had it at his desk at work,” Amy said. “Not exactly hidden.”

“He didn't have it at his house or real office. And I'd bet he told Pia he'd destroyed it.”

“I still go back to why,” Mom said. “And I also still go back to the fact that Santiago was worried that he was being spied on, and as near as we can tell, it was because he'd found those anti-alien lines in the bills. His last line about there being more going on isn't enough for us to extrapolate anything.”

“Wait,” Chuckie said, and I could see his Conspiracy Wheels turning. “Hang on one moment. If we take Jeff's view, that Pia orchestrated Brewer's murder today, then they were trying again, right?” Everyone nodded. “So they definitely wanted Brewer killed. She was allowed to set up the second attempt, and this time they used Clarence.”

“And I think they may have used Raul.”

“How?” Jeff asked.

“Man who held the elevator for Edmund, did you look at him?”

Jeff cursed. “No. And that makes sense. Have Clarence do it, because you needed someone strong to get Ed up onto that ledge. But have your professional oversee, just in case things go badly this time.”

“Logical and efficient, and a good follow up,” Mom said. “However, still more public than any of the others.”

“The police are investigating as a suicide. I don't think it'll hold up, but Nathalie is with us. If Raul was in the building, and I'm now really sure he was, then he's already broken into their home and planted proof of Edmund's hidden despair.”

“Wow, Kitty, are you psychic?” Tim asked. “Because Mossad just confirmed police have found a suicide note.”

“Thank God we took Nathalie with us,” Jeff said. “Or it might have been a murder-suicide the police think they're investigating.”

“Oh, Jeff, like, in that sense, where your head's at. And Tim, since when did you become best friends forever with the Mossad team at the Israeli Embassy?” Tim, Reader, and Mom all contrived to look innocent. “Oh, great. It's classified. Well, at least we all like them. Anyway, the Conspiracy King has more for us.”

Chuckie nodded slowly. “I think we need to answer this question. Why is Pia Ryan dead?”