Soulminder (15 page)

“And Jonathan Pauley?” Sommer asked quietly. “His company paid good money to make him a part of the Soulminder safety net. If he was murdered, don’t we owe them at least the courtesy of doing what we can to find his murderer?”

For a long moment they just stared at each other. Sands dropped her gaze first. “Just keep it quiet, all right?” she muttered, turning back to her terminal. “The negative publicity we’re getting already is bad enough. I don’t want it any worse.”

“Right.”

For a moment he gazed at her profile, at the hard determination there. Yes, Sands was the drive behind Soulminder: the drive and the spirit and the mind. Leaving Sommer as little more than the public image.

And, perhaps, the conscience.

Sitting to one side was the newspaper article on Jonathan Pauley that Everly had sent over. Picking it up, Sommer leaned back in his chair and began to read.

The package from Royce arrived an hour later … and Sommer found himself astonished at just how much stuff the FBI had managed to collect on Mario Cavanaugh.

As well as just how thorough they’d been. There were photocopies of Cavanaugh’s school attendance records, from third grade right through college. His high school and college yearbook photos, as well as a listing of some of the clubs he’d belonged to. A summary of his Korean War military service, including suggestions that he’d been involved even then with black market and other illegal activities. Two sets of wedding pictures, copies of two divorce decrees. Ads and official papers from each of his various legitimate businesses, and from some that it was hinted had been little more than fronts for money laundering and smuggling operations.

There was more. Much more.

Fascinating reading. But it was a fascination that for Sommer became increasingly tinged with regret and even impotent anger. The Mario Cavanaugh reflected in the records was a brilliant and driven man, the sort of man who would probably have been a success in any field he’d chosen to apply himself to. For all that to have been twisted to the acquisition of power and illegal money struck Sommer as a tragic waste.

“You going to stay late again tonight?” Sands asked into his thoughts.

Sommer looked up, vaguely surprised to discover it was already nearly six o’clock. Absorbed in his reading, he hadn’t noticed the time passing. “Probably not,” he told her with a sigh.

Sands nodded, coming over and surveying the boxes and papers scattered around his desk. “So, any names jump out at you yet?”

He blinked. “Come again?”

“You told Royce you were hoping to find a connection between Cavanaugh’s childhood chums and Jonathan Pauley.” She picked up one of the high-school yearbook pictures. “Randall Peterson, Rosemary Phelps, Aubrey Raystone,” she read off the surrounding names. “Seems to me we’ve got a Phelps with Soulminder—Los Angeles office, I think.”

“San Francisco,” Sommer corrected her. “I’ve already run the check; they don’t seem to be related.”

Sands looked at the piles again, shook her head. “You’re really going to wade through all this stuff?”

He shrugged. “Until I find something, or prove to myself that there’s nothing there to find, or collapse. Whichever comes first.”

“I’d vote for collapse, myself,” she said, gazing again at the photos in her hand. “Certainly had that solid-citizen look back in college, didn’t he?” she commented, handing the page back. “I wonder what went wrong.”

“I don’t know,” Sommer sighed, looking at the picture himself. She was right: with his dark hair and thin, intensely earnest face, Cavanaugh should have been a future business or political leader. Not a—

Abruptly, Sommer’s thoughts broke off. There was something about that face …

He looked up. Sands was already at the door— “Hold it, Jessica,” he called.

She paused, her hand on the knob. “You find something?”

“I don’t know,” he frowned, digging carefully through the pile. “Come here a minute, will you?”

He’d found the newspaper photo of Pauley by the time she reached the desk. “Take a look,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”

Frowning, she looked at the two pictures. The frown deepened, and she held them side to side. “They could be brothers,” she agreed. “Almost twin brothers, for that matter. I hope you’re not suggesting Pauley and Cavanaugh are related—Royce would have to be an idiot to have missed something that obvious.”

Sommer swallowed hard. “No, not related. Not exactly.”

She stared into his face … and slowly, her puzzlement dissolved into a look of horror. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, her face turning almost green. “You’re not suggesting that Cavanaugh … ?”

Sommer felt a little sick himself. “Why not?” he asked.

“But it’s—” she floundered. “It’s
impossible.
Isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Sommer said grimly. “But I think we’d better find out.”

Sands hissed between her teeth, her expression of repugnance vanishing into dark determination. “Damn right. Let’s get to it.”

Royce frowned at the photos for what seemed like a long time before finally laying them down on the desk. “Yes, I agree that Pauley looks a lot like Cavanaugh when he was a young man. I hope that’s not all you dragged me over here for.”

“That’s just the starting point,” Sommer said, a mild wave of dizziness shooting through him. Four cups of coffee on top of less than four hours of sleep was already starting to take its toll, and he wished they could have put this off a little longer. But with Pauley’s life hanging in the balance … “The pictures were what got me wondering if maybe Cavanaugh threw a curve none of us were expecting.”

“That being?” Royce asked with clearly forced patience.

“Last night we did a complete examination on the computer autorecord of Cavanaugh’s transfer,” Sands said. “We discovered a couple of anomalies that no one had paid attention to before.”

She leaned over to hand Royce the hard copies. “I’ve combined the event timelines from Seattle and the office here,” she continued. “Note that Cavanaugh entered Soulminder at precisely twelve fifty-one last Monday morning, and was transferred back at three-fourteen.”

“Two hours twenty-three minutes,” Royce shrugged. “So? You’ve kept bodies alive a lot longer than that.”

“With full life-support,” Sommer agreed, “and with the use of neuropreservatives. Without them, the brain cells start to degenerate within a few minutes, and for most people irreversible damage begins well within an hour. For a man Cavanaugh’s age, it would happen even faster.”

“So he had black market neuropreservatives.”

Sommer shook his head. “That’s just the point: he didn’t. No black market neuropreservatives; no neuropreservatives of any sort. The body was brought in, connected to Soulminder, and the soul transferred. A quick in-and-out operation.”

“That’s not just a guess,” Sands added. “The autorecord gives a complete procedural timeline. There was no flushing of neuropreservative residue.”

Royce had a strange, almost pained expression on his face. As if he saw what they were driving at but didn’t want to believe it. “So why isn’t he dead?”

Sommer took a deep breath. “Because he didn’t transfer into his own body. He transferred into Jonathan Pauley’s.”

He’d expected Royce to be amused, angry, or just plain disbelieving. But the other passed up all the obvious reactions. For a long minute he just looked back and forth between them, his eyes seeming to measure them. Then, still silent, he looked back down at the combined timeline Sands had prepared. “I presume you’ve double-checked all these numbers?” he asked at last.

Sands nodded. “Against two independent clocks. Pauley entered the Washington Soulminder at exactly six-eleven. Three-eleven Seattle time. Three minutes before Cavanaugh was transferred.”

Sommer shivered. “He must have died right there on the transfer table.”

Royce’s fingers worried gently at the edge of the paper. “It’s an interesting theory,” he said. “But that’s all it is: a theory.”

“There are other indications,” Sommer told him. “Emerson did the transfer alone, remember—
and
he had the video cameras off. Why would he do all that if it was Cavanaugh’s own body they were transferring into?”

“To keep us from knowing Cavanaugh had been through Soulminder?” Royce suggested doubtfully.

“Except that the computer autorecord would tell us that,” Sommer reminded him. “Besides, he could easily claim ignorance that he’d done anything wrong—the Seattle system didn’t have your red light on it.”

Royce shook his head. “This is crazy. A soul isn’t just some”—he groped for words—“some interchangeable computer card or something. You can’t just pull one out and plug another one in.”

“Cavanaugh did it,” Sommer said. “Dr. Sands and I are convinced of that.”

“Well, I’m not,” Royce said doggedly. “It’s still just a left-field theory. And with all the witnesses having so conveniently disappeared, that’s what it’s going to stay: a theory.”

Sommer glanced at Sands. “Except,” he told Royce carefully, “that not
all
of those witnesses have disappeared.”

Royce stared, and Sommer could see in his eyes that he understood. “You’re not serious.”

“Deadly serious, Special Agent Royce.” Sommer braced himself and got to his feet. “If you’ll come with us … we’re going to ask Jonathan Pauley what happened to him.”

The preparations were already complete, and they entered the experimental transfer facility in the lab wing to find five uncomfortable-looking people waiting for them: a doctor, three transfer techs …

And a quiet, dark-haired young man.

“Special Agent Royce, this is George Gerakaris,” Sommer did the introductions. “One of our research people.”

Royce and Gerakaris exchanged nods. “Why him?” Royce asked.

“We did a computer comparison of all our employees’ Mullner traces,” Sands explained. “Mr. Gerakaris’s came out the closest to Pauley’s.”

Royce eyed Gerakaris. “And they asked you to do this?”

Gerakaris smiled, a smile that didn’t wholly relieve the tension around his eyes. “I volunteered, Special Agent Royce,” he said, his voice showing just a trace of an old Greek accent. “I’m a scientist, after all. How could I pass up a chance to take part in such an experiment?”

Royce shifted an uncomfortable frown back to Sommer. “You realize, I hope, that what you’re about to do is technically murder.”

Sommer realized it. Realized it exceedingly well. “Mr. Gerakaris has signed a release,” he told Royce, keeping his voice even.

“Which may not be worth a damn, legally,” Royce growled. He looked at Gerakaris, then back at Sommer. “Have you discussed this with your legal department?”

“They’re not exactly happy about it,” Sommer said candidly, “but they say the release will cover us reasonably well. They also talked a lot about the right-to-die statutes, but I wasn’t sure exactly how those applied.”

Royce snorted gently. “They don’t apply at all. Not really. This is nuts, Sommer. You’re putting your personal and corporate necks—not to mention mine—on the block here without even a scrap of proof that Cavanaugh tried this. Let alone that it worked.”

“Oh, it worked,” Sands said. “It had to. Otherwise, why did Emerson disappear?”

“Because Cavanaugh didn’t want him to talk, of course.”

“Naturally,” Sands agreed. “So why hasn’t Cavanaugh gone ahead and killed him?”

Royce started to speak … paused. “You tell
me
,” he challenged.

“Because Cavanaugh knows that souls can be transferred to different bodies,” Sommer said. “With Emerson on file at Soulminder, killing him would just put him back in our reach.”

“By that logic, Pauley was a lousy choice,” Royce argued. “Even if I grant you that Cavanaugh was vain enough to try to get back his youth when he saw Pauley’s picture in the paper, he wasn’t stupid enough to let vanity get in the way of common sense.”

“Except that Pauley seldom wore his Soulminder bracelet,” Sands reminded him. “Cavanaugh probably never knew he was on file here.”

“And what if Emerson disappeared because Cavanaugh died on the operating table and the doctor’s taken his guilty conscience into hiding?” Royce countered.

Sommer opened his mouth. But it was Gerakaris who answered. “It’s a calculated risk, Special Agent Royce,” he said firmly. “But all of us are willing to take that risk.”

“If you want,” Sands offered, “you can wait outside until it’s over.”

Royce sent her a glare. “If it doesn’t work, I’m still accessory to murder,” he said shortly. “It’s not going to matter a damn where I’m standing at the time.” He jerked his head toward Gerakaris. “Get on with it.”

It was as close to assent as they were going to get. Turning, Sommer gave the nod to the others.

And watched as they prepared Gerakaris to die.

It was a simple enough procedure. Gerakaris got onto the transfer table, settling himself as comfortably as possible as the techs wheeled the instrument tray and backup life-support gear into position. Last came the waveguide cable and headband electrodes that would—if all went well—provide the path for Jonathan Pauley’s soul to enter Gerakaris’s body.

“You all set, George?” the supervising doctor asked, leaning over the table to look at Gerakaris.

Gerakaris’s hand lifted from the table, made a surreptitious cross: forehead, heart, right chest, left chest. Eastern Orthodox style, Sommer noted. Pauley, he remembered, had been a solid Catholic. How much of the similarity in their Mullner traces, he wondered distantly, had come from the two men’s religious convictions? “I’m ready,” Gerakaris said, dropping his hand to his side again and closing his eyes.

The doctor looked at Sands, got a confirming nod, and picked up the hypo. With just the slightest hesitation, he gave Gerakaris the injection.

Gerakaris inhaled sharply, and Sommer found himself unable to watch. Turning his head, he found himself staring at the medical readout panel … and even as he watched, the life signs disappeared.

Sommer swallowed against the lump in his throat. It didn’t seem to help. “How long?” he murmured.

“A few minutes,” the doctor said, his own attention on the instruments and his assistants’ work. “I’m going to give him a small dose of neuropreservative, just to be on the safe side, and we’ll have to wait until we can flush out the residue.”