The Demands of the Dead (4 page)

“Sorry,” I said to Hoffman, as Maria came out of the bathroom. “Professor Hoffman, this is Maria Alvarez. She is a doctoral student in criminology, but also does research at the firm. I believe you may have met.”

Hoffman looked at Maria in a completely professional appraisal, apparently completely immune to the fact that she was a gorgeous woman in her twenties.
I have to learn how to do that
, I thought.

“Alvarez? You're a student of Dr. Murdoch, right? You co-authored the paper on alternatives to Broken Windows theory?”

Maria moved forward to shake his hand. “I am very flattered that you know the paper, Dr. Hoffman.”

“If I remember, you argued that the reductions in crime over the past two administrations were not due to the policy reforms of the police commissioners and the mayor in developing the Compstat system and cracking down on quality-of-life crimes, but to the leveling off of the crack epidemic, the economic upswing, and demographic considerations.”

Maria replied in a completely different language than the one I knew her to speak. I watched, impressed. “We considered a range of alternative explanations, but I believe that the peaking of crack addiction is the primary factor. My primary contention, which I am also pursuing in my dissertation, is that patterns of crime should be understood as outcomes of public health, which itself is an outcome of the broader political and economic context.”

“I'll make coffee,” I said. Maria flashed me a smile to thank me. Hoffman ignored me completely.

“So you do not believe that the improved computer and statistical analysis and the other policing innovations made any difference at all?”

Maria shrugged as I went to the stove. “The reduction in crime, especially homicide, is too dramatic to be explained by any police innovations. If anything, they played a minor role. Mark was working in homicide and on the computer systems during the whole period. What do you think, Mark?”

“I don't know,” I said over my shoulder as I filled the stove-top coffee maker with water. “I think we made some difference, but probably minor.”

“Well you're in a minority in the NYPD, Mr. Brown,” Hoffman said.
You have no idea,
I thought. But I said: “Maybe that's why I'm not in it any more.” Then I said, “Please, sit down.” My apartment was slightly crowded with three people in it, but it would suffice for this meeting.

“With your permission, I would like to get back to our business. Perhaps you would be interested in getting involved as well, Ms. Alvarez. I suspect from your last name and your features that you from the Latin American region?”

“Mexican, actually.”

“Do you follow events there as well?”

“I do.”

“The Mexican government wants an international nongovernmental organization, specifically a US-based one, involved in the investigation because the murders took place in a conflict zone where the government's is accused of partiality.”

“Chiapas,” Maria said.

“Chiapas,” Hoffman repeated, “Where the rebels are smart, wear masks, speak in poems, and are on the web. In fact, one of their leaders, a guy named Subcommander Marcos, was a literature professor before becoming a guerrilla. The whole world, and especially Mexico, loves these rebels. They are indigenous people fighting for their land, they have virtually never killed any non-combatants, and the Mexican government has consequent political difficulties cracking down on them. Since 1994 they have controlled large sections of territory in the state and they have filled the state with foreigners, foreign eyes and ears and voices that make a great deal of noise at every government encroachment on rebel territory.”

A picture was beginning to form of what Walter was doing there. “Did they ever have a meeting called... the Intergalactic meeting?”

“I'll come to that,” Hoffman said. “On New Year’s Eve 1994, the Zapatistas took over the central city of Chiapas, San Cristobal de las Casas. They took it and six other towns, and waited for the army to counter attack. They waited, and then retreated. They haven’t fought at all since. Instead they've held ‘encuentros’, big parties with hundreds of foreigners, including your
Intergalactica
in 1996, and marches. They wrote clever missives. They built health clinics and schools that taught the indigenous languages of the people of the state. They were just too nice for the government to kill.

“Fighting bloodthirsty guerrillas out to take over the country made a government look heroic. Fighting poets out to build schools and health clinics was a different proposition.”

“But now,” I said, “two Chiapas state police officers are dead. Were they attacking a village at the time?”

“Patrolling, from what I was told. Just a pure ambush, in the context of a de facto ceasefire. So if the Zapatistas did it, that could change what people think of them—and the government they are fighting. If the Mexican police investigate, and find the Zapatistas did it, that could easily be dismissed as fabrication—more lies and attempts to discredit the heroes. But if independent, foreign investigators found it, it might be credible. Foreigners believe each other.”

“So we’re being used as a weapon against the rebels.”

“That’s the Mexican Government’s hope, yes, probably.”

“What if the Zapatistas didn’t do it?”

“We’re not going to falsify our investigation. We’ll find what we find. That’s why they’re hiring us. Because we’re objective.”

“But what if we objectively don’t get the results they want?”

“Then we don’t get what they want.” He changed the subject. “So, I know your Spanish is good. Can you read and write as well as speak?”

“Perfectamente, si.”

“The first question, then,” he said, reaching into a small pocket of his case and pulling out a 3 1/2 inch disk. “Are you familiar with public key encryption?”

Maria and I exchanged glances.

“Hmm. Yes, actually. Maria and I have both used it in the past.”

“Well, we're going to make you some new keys.”

Hoffman was properly paranoid, and I liked him for it. He insisted on making new keys, much longer keys, and made me create a password using a random password generator, and memorize all 16 random numbers and letters of it. There were to be two channels of communication. I was going to use a mix of encrypted and clear-text messages to email him. Anything more sensitive would go to a separate email address, just created, with a public key we'd just made, that Maria would be checking – just in case Hoffman's computers were being monitored.

If they were watching my computers in Mexico, they would see me sending encrypted messages to Hoffman and some other email address. If they were watching his end, they would see him getting encrypted messages from Mexico. If they were watching Maria's machine too, they might be able to tell that she was logging into a remote server to check encrypted email. There were plenty of ways to beat our security. I would have to install the encryption software from disk on whatever computer I used, and if that computer had a keylogger they would get my passphrase, and if they then stole or copied the disk, they would have what they needed; or, if they were monitoring my computer already from somewhere nearby (I was offline when we made the keys), they would have gotten the passphrases from when I generated them. But all of these methods needed energy, expertise, and time, and seemed unlikely, acceptable risk for what we were facing.

“You and Maria know each other very well,” Hoffman said.

I nodded.

“If you do need to communicate using that channel, maybe you can do so in a way that is subtle.”

“Hide the real information in personal information, I get it.” We looked at each other again as I answered.

“Then there is just one remaining question. Do you want to do it?”

Maria signaled me hard with her eyes.

“Yes Professor Hoffman, let's do it,” I said. "But, I have a few questions too. Like, why meet here?"

"I got impatient. I need you in the field, in front of them, tomorrow, or there's no point."

"Why not call?"

Hoffman looked around, shrugged. "If you weren't home tonight, we would have lost the job anyway." It seemed to me there was more to the story. Hoffman may have sold his company, but maybe he liked his independence. That was fine with me.

Hoffman gave me the rest of the night to get myself organized so that I could fly in the morning. The door had barely closed behind him when Maria was already in my closet getting my backpack out, practically jumping up and down.

“In a hurry to get rid of me?”

“Oh Mark, you idiot,” she said. Then, when she had my attention, she mouthed the words, rather than saying them out loud. “Walter is alive.” Then she whispered, in Spanish: “And he's in Chiapas.”

Chapter 2

She was right. The only other possibility was that someone had obtained my key from Walter somehow, and used it to send a multi-layered coded message, including heavy hints about the Zapatistas and Chiapas, where Walter had spent a lot of the past four years. The numbness wouldn't budge yet. I wouldn't let myself believe it until I saw him. Maria continued to pack my things, already completely convinced.

“Do you want to go downstairs for a while?” I said.

I grabbed my keys and we went down to the street. Precautions. We walked around the block.

“Maria, if it's him, I'll find him, but there's something else I need you to do while I'm here.”

“The case files,” she said.

“You know?”

“Mark, you haven't exactly kept it a secret from me. Every time we talk you have new information about Salant, Brewer, Carr, Rossi. I know you're not reading about them in the
Times
. So, what, you want me to keep a copy safe?”

I said nothing.

“You want me to keep up your surveillance?”

“Just on the... electronic side. Just tell me if you see anything in their accounts.”

“You're in their --”

“-- Yep. Not in Salant's though. But I just had an idea about what his email password might be.” I told her my idea, that it might be some variant of his bank account PIN, and that she should slowly try some variations of that out. If she could get into that, there might be communications with people worth following. She knew the principles as well as I did, so she just needed a primer on the new software I was using to keep my tracks covered. Mr. Manley didn't have to file his suit – if one of his sons was alive, we would need to know even more urgently who killed the other one.

She left at 1am, with my car keys, both of us feeling silly that she wasn't spending the night. My kit prepared and my apartment packed up, I napped until Hoffman came in the early morning to drive me to the airport.

In my economy-class American Airlines window seat, I formed the plan in my head: go straight to Chiapas, work with the local police to solve Hoffman's double murder in a couple of days, then stay on for an extra few days to find Walter. Once I found him, the plan would have to be revised, depending on exactly what he was doing there and why.

He left me prepared for a short flight with a big stack of briefing papers, so I didn’t have time to enjoy the view. I did look out the window in the moments before landing, though. The last time I’d landed in Mexico City not even Maria beside me could distract me from the view when the plane came from under the clouds and into the smog to reveal, carved into the mountains, a city that was bigger and more chaotic than mine. If Maria couldn’t distract me from that view those years ago, a stack of papers wasn’t going to distract me from it today.

I divided the notes into four piles: the state, which I knew only a small amount about, the country, which I knew slightly more, a thick pile on the political situation, and a thin pile on the case itself. At the very end, Hoffman left me a detailed, printed itinerary for me - where I’d be, who I’d see, and when, for the next two weeks.

On the one hand were government and party officials and power brokers, police and military officers, and US advisors. On the other side were rebels and rebel supporters, their foreign supporters, and the human rights community. Hoffman had pulled strings to get me military access and had given me letters from friends in Amnesty International to get me in with the other side. Somewhere on that side was Walter. Getting both sides to actually talk to me, though, was left to me, not Hoffman.

I dug through to the case notes. Two police out on a patrol in the Lacondon jungle region. Pablo Gonzalez, 25 years old, from Tuxtla Gutierrez. Hernan Diaz, 24, from Ocosingo. Died of wounds from an automatic rifle at long range. Public security itself was conducting the investigation, but Hoffman predicted that by the time I landed, the office of the Procurador-General (their equivalent of our Federal Attorney General's Office) would be involved as well. Seguridad Publica had removed the bodies and conducted the autopsy. The ballistics were not finished. The police officers were found dead four hours after not reporting in, about sixty hours ago. By my count, it would be seventy-two by the time I got there. There were no witnesses known, but that wasn't necessarily going to slow me down. Forensics and ballistics both looked good, the local police were on the scene, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were witnesses to
something
. I would hardly be needed at all – it would be resolved in a few days and I would be able to get to finding Walter.