Twisted Vine (7 page)

Sophie kept her hands folded in her lap and her eyes down as the conference room door closed behind the other agents. Her back was to the gorgeous view of a sunlit ocean dimmed by shaded glass. She wished she hadn’t sat with her back to the window. It might have calmed her racing heart to sneak a look at it now and then.

“Agent Ang.” Waxman waited a long beat until she looked up. “I’m disappointed in you.”

Hurt showed in the tightness at the corners of Waxman’s light blue eyes, the line of his mouth, the way he removed his glasses, tossing them down.

“I’m sorry, sir. I only ever have wanted to help the Bureau and our cases.”

He cut her off with a hand gesture. “I’m not disappointed that you used your considerable gifts to try to build something new to help the Bureau. That doesn’t surprise me at all. It surprises me that you didn’t tell me about it early on. It would have made this stage, when we tried it out on a case, so much easier.”

“I’m  . . .” Sophie opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, her fingers twisting in her lap. “I didn’t think you’d approve. I wanted to show you it could work.” She looked back down at her log-in screen. “I thought you’d shut me down if I didn’t prove DAVID’s worth first.”

Waxman shut his eyes, rubbed them with his forefinger and thumb. “I’m doing something wrong as special agent in charge that you don’t know how much I value you. How much confidence I’ve come to have in your skills and your integrity.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Sophie said again, feeling her face heat up. She didn’t know how to respond to Waxman’s praise, his personal disappointment. She’d misread him, and it wasn’t the first time she’d done that. Once again she wished she understood people half as well as computers.

The SAC sighed, replaced his glasses, sat forward. “From here on out, you get an idea, come to me. Right away. I promise I’ll hear you out and try my best to facilitate your project, whatever it is. The Bureau is getting hammered these days because we’ve created a bureaucratic culture where individual incentive isn’t rewarded. Our best people are leaving for other agencies or the private sector. I’ve tried hard not to be that kind of director, but I see I’ve failed, and that’s for me to correct.” He tapped his laptop. “Now, damage control. This program has to be submitted through the proper channels or defense attorneys will have a field day—we always have to keep the end in mind as we pursue a case, right?”

“Right,” Sophie agreed.

“So, if DAVID generated the original lead, what we need to do is come up with another reason we were ‘twigged’ to the Hale case, which is pretty easy—the senator’s high profile. And we need to submit DAVID to the review process. As to you
r working with confidential data off-site, that has to stop immediately.”

“But, sir. I often work at home late at night . . .”

“I can’t allow that. The premises of your building may not be secure, and if our data were stolen somehow, it’s an unconscionable security breach.”

Sophie couldn’t tell him she’d replicated her entire lab at home and that everything was networked together. She’d known it was against regulations, but to her mind the efficiency justified the risk, and she had a good alarm system in a high-security building. Sophie had long ago moved to a cloud computing mentality: Individual computers were merely outlets plugging in and out of a seamless information flow rather than individual repositories, which was how the Bureau still operated in many areas.

“Yes, sir.”

“So tell me how this program works. Walk me through what you did to come up with the Hale case.”

Sophie felt herself regaining confidence as she entered her password and broke open DAVID to her boss, explaining how it mined the other criminal databases, including local and state police. She demonstrated how DAVID searched out commonalities depending on variables entered in search parameters and how the confidence ratios worked. She walked Waxman through her process with the suicides, which she’d begun running in DAVID after a news report on an upswing in suicides caught her attention.

“So this program can basically go hunting for types of crimes nationwide, looking for common MOs and other variables such as weapons, et cetera?” Waxman clarified at last.

“Yes. But it can work only with what’s been inputted, so the more we digitize criminal records, the more effective DAVID is going to be.”

“What about DAVID’s unauthorized access to local and state police department records?”

“I’m sure that’s going to be something to be worked out, sir, but don’t you think the greater good justifies it?”

“Of course it does. That doesn’t mean we’ll all be able to sit down and play nice in the sandbox.” Waxman sighed, rubbed his eyes again. “Save a copy of the software and deliver it to my office by the end of the day. I’ve got to make some calls.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said again.

This time the look he shot her was hard. “One apology is enough. Never apologize more than once.”

“Yes, sir.” Sophie unplugged her laptop and fled as he reached for the triangular conference phone in the center of the table.

Ken pushed the doorhandle bar to open the hermetically sealed door of the morgue. Ever since Lei’s friend had died on the
Big Island, Lei had trouble with morgues. She’d begun her relaxation breathing in the hallway—in through the nose, out through the mouth, counting to three—but even with that and with a dab of Vicks under her nose, every muscle in her body tightened at the chemical-over-biology smell.

Several draped bodies decorated wheeled tables in the big, chilly room with its range of sinks and steel wall of closed box doors. Dr. Fukushima and her assistant were bent over the brightly lit chest cavity of some unfortunate as they entered. The medical examiner looked up, her gloved hands covered with gore. “I’ll be right with you.”

“We’ll be over here,” Ken said. They pulled back against her desk, an island of normality behind a transparent shoji. They sat on a couple of folding chairs until Fukushima arrived, her mask lifted onto the top of her head, snapping off the gloves and tossing them into a biohazard bin.

“We were able to get the posts done on your two suicides—luckily things haven’t been busy lately, though there was a big pileup on the H-3 and I’m backed up now. I sent your blood and tox results off; we should have them by tomorrow since you told me to put a rush on it.”

“Thanks, Dr. Fukushima,” Lei said as the doctor sat down in her wheeled chair.

“Well. I’m curious too. Suicides that look like suicides but just aren’t right.” The doctor picked up a file. “I’ll e-mail these to you, but so far it’s looking much as we suspected. Alfred Shimaoka died of carbon-monoxide poisoning. All the physical signs are there for that. And Corby Hale died of heart failure, no doubt due to a heroin injection. But what was interesting— and will be confirmed in his blood work—is this.” She passed Ken the file on the young man and opened it to a picture Lei wished she hadn’t had to see. “Lesions inside his mouth. The boy likely had AIDS. Signs just weren’t generally visible yet.”

“Ah,” Ken said. Lei noticed a slight tremble in his hands as they held the folder.

“Maybe that’s why he took his life. Didn’t want to go through that. Though people can live a normal life span now. It’s not the death sentence it once was,” Lei said.

“The point I’m making is that both of these men, while they might have been ill, died well before they would have naturally. Alfred had pancreatic cancer, and according to his records kept here at the hospital, he refused treatment. Wouldn’t do anything—chemo, radiation, nothing. By the state of his pancreas and the cancer I found elsewhere, I’d have said he had six months. Most people want every day they can get.” Dr. Fukushima set the folder down. “I’m ruling these deaths as assisted suicides.”

“That gives our case some momentum,” Lei said. “We think there’s some sort of online connection that they made. Our tech department’s looking into it.”

“Well, I’m glad you agree. I was really in two minds about this, but the amount of time both of them would have had left makes this a crime worth pursuing.”

Lei noticed Ken was still gazing down at the images of Corby Hale. His face was pale and rigid. She took the folder out of his hands and set it back on the desk. “Thanks, Doctor. We’ll look forward to the tox results.”

Ken followed her out into the shiny, fluorescent-lit linoleum hallway. The whoosh and click of the morgue door behind them felt like liberty to Lei. She turned to Ken and put a hand on his arm as they walked down the hall.

“Want to get some coffee?”

“Okay.” They turned in to the cafeteria, one floor up. Lei got a tray and loaded it with coffee as well as some Portuguese sausage, a scoop of rice, and scrambled eggs from behind the cafeteria counter. It was almost midday, but she hadn’t eaten yet today. She joined Ken with his lone Styrofoam cup of coffee in one of the vinyl booths.

She tore open packets of salt and pepper, sprinkled them over her breakfast.

“Something’s up. What’s going on with you?”

“Bugs me. That kid.” Ken stirred creamer into his coffee with a red-and-white-striped stir stick. He tapped the stick, lay it down, took a sip of the coffee, grimaced. He set the cup down. “So young. Shouldn’t be dead that way.”

“Or sick that way.”

“Or sick that way,” Ken agreed. “He should have known better.”

“He was so young.” Between them lay the awkward topic of Ken’s sexual orientation, the fact that he was in the closet about it. “Kids always think they’re going to be the exception.”

“Someone might have infected him on purpose. I’ve heard rumors of someone doing that. Here in
Honolulu.”

“That should be a crime we could investigate.”

“It should, but it’s not.” Ken took another sip of the coffee, winced. “Man. This stuff is really bad.”

Lei had made short work of her breakfast and now she sipped the coffee. It really was bad. “
Lot of us with our own side projects going on.” She’d never told Ken about her connection to the Kwon murder. “What do you think of Sophie’s DAVID program?”

“It’s going to be amazing when it gets okayed. Though I’m trying to imagine a world where DAVID gets to freely roam through all the criminal databases of all the states—I can’t see that getting approved. Everyone wants to guard their cases and data.”

“We should keep the bigger picture in mind, though. I think of one of my cases early on, before I was a detective. Serial rape case. The perp had been preying on girls on different islands. If we’d had that communication easily available, we could have seen it was all connected sooner.” Lei took a sip of the coffee for something to do, and regretted it.

“Well, it will be interesting to see how Waxman handles the DAVID thing.”

“I felt sorry for Sophie. Maybe I should call her, see how it went.”

Ken looked up. His face had lightened a bit. “She’d be shocked. You aren’t exactly the BFF type.”

“Hey.” Lei stood, picked up her empty tray. “Marcella’s teaching me some manners. I’m getting better.”

“Speaking of Marcella. Did you see who she’s dating?”

“I did. They seem pretty into each other.”

“Yeah. So when’s your boyfriend coming over from
Maui?”

Lei tossed her trash, stowed the tray, pushed the glass door open with her shoulder, Ken right behind her. “Don’t know. But I’m hoping soon. How about your boyfriend?”

Ken raised a brow at her, and she laughed. “Fine then. Back to work.”

Sophie arrived at her workstation and felt the dim coolness of the IT lab, her comfort zone, bring her heart rate down after the stress of the meeting with Waxman. She stowed the laptop in the slotted shelf she’d set aside for it. She liked to have her work area clear. She fired up her computers, and while they booted, she got out the big ball, lay facedown on it, rolled it down under her feet, and began doing push-ups.

“Everything okay?”

Sophie continued her push-ups without looking up. “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?” Sophie sped up, feeling the exertion discharge stress from the meeting. “Pull out another ball and join me.”

Bateman, a pudgy geek fresh out of Quantico, seemed to have developed a crush on her. He swung by her station way more often than she’d like, on one pretext or another.

“No, thanks.” Bateman watched her as she flipped back over and began her sit-up routine. “I don’t know how you make yourself do those all day.”

“Keeps me in shape for the gym.”

“What gym is this?”

“Fight Club down on Kalakaua.”

Bateman was silent. He had to have enough physicality to have made it through the Academy’s rigorous tests. She took pity on him. “You can come down sometime. It’s good for our tech skills for us to stay in shape, keep a balance.”

“I’d like that.”

Sophie resumed her sit-ups, and he drifted away to his station.

IT was like that. Everyone had their quirks—and now she’d challenged Bateman to something that he might even consider a date, which would be awful. Sophie felt a stab of loneliness. She’d definitely felt a tingle the other day as Alika demonstrated a hold, his steely arm around her waist . . . She suppressed the feeling by sitting on the ball in a V shape, carefully balancing, holding her legs straight out for a count of a hundred and fifty. Finally, trembling, she did some stretches, refilled her big water cup, and settled into her cockpit, all her screens humming.

She cracked her supple fingers and opened up the entry screen of DyingFriends.

Copying each piece of information as she developed it, she planted a dummy IP address in case the system admin was watching for law enforcement and began a profile: Shasta McGill, aged forty-three, sick with leukemia and not expected to live. Two children, divorced. Username ShastaM, password a transparent combination of numbers that were a fictional birth date. She imported a photo from the FBI stock photo archives of a wan-looking pretty blond woman.

All these details she saved into a text box and sent to Waxman per his request.

When her profile was complete, she hit Enter and was admitted to DyingFriends. Within the home screen were various topic areas, chat threads, and pages with links and resources. So far, nothing more than morbid, she thought, surfing a catalog of burial choices, featuring everything from caskets to crematoriums.

She supposed, for the dying, it must be comforting to be able to freely talk with other dying people. She cruised through the thread discussions: “When do I tell the kids I’m dying” to “I want out early.”

She zeroed in on that one. After all, their cases had involved suicide, and their two victims had met each other here.

The chat conversation started off lively, with a debate about the worth of such a choice and petered out with one respondent, CancerCurmudgeon, saying, “You have to live out the number of days God gives you.”

She typed in a response: “Hi, I’m Shasta, and I’ve got terminal leukemia. I’m sick and miserable and, frankly, I don’t see the point of many more days.”

She felt a twinge, the phantom pain of her own losses and the depression she battled with exercise. This wasn’t easy, imagining herself in this woman’s shoes.

CancerCurmudgeon responded. “Make your peace with God and accept his will. You’ll have more peace.”

“God has nothing to do with cancer, and if he does, I have a few words to say to him,” ShastaM typed back.

“God is sovereign, and we are eternal beings. It’s this life and cancer that are illusions.”

“I don’t buy that. I believe in reincarnation. This life is a revolving door, and I want out.” Sophie had to pause to consider what Shasta’s position was—and she realized she didn’t really know her own. It brought a hollowness to the pit of her stomach. She’d been so busy trying to live, she’d never really considered death.

“You’ll die, and it will be too late. You’ll burn in hell, and I’ll be laughing from heaven.”

“I get to believe what I believe,” ShastaM said, even as Sophie wondered how she’d so quickly locked horns with a “troll” on a forum. They were everywhere on the Internet, and dying or not, they were opinionated, rude, and hiding behind anonymity. Just as she was, she reminded herself.

Sophie abandoned that thread, hoping she’d planted some bread crumbs that would lure the system admin. She dropped other suicidal hints on a few more threads, then posted her e-mail in yet another chat room, asking for “emotional support.”

That done, she navigated around the site until she spotted “DyingFriends in Your Area.” She plugged in her zip code, and a list of identities popped up, along with how recently they had been active and their zip codes. She copied the zip codes and names into another window to track down. DyingFriends had at least twenty
Hawaii members.

Armed with that information, she logged back out of the site and then set to work tracking down the identities of the
Hawaii members. Their zip codes and fake names weren’t much to go on. She’d have to lure them into revealing more.

Sophie tracked the names to the e-mails listed and sent each of them a sweet introductory e-mail with a picture of the pale, smiling, pretty face of dying Shasta McGill, appealing for friendship outside the site in the big lonely town of Honolulu, where she’d moved to live her last days in paradise.

Sophie wondered how often that really happened. She felt her worldview shift just a tiny bit—lonely people, waiting to die, were all around and invisible. It made her wonder if she was just a few cancer cells away from being one of them.

The depression and loneliness Sophie’d battled on and off
squeezed at her from the edges of her mind, and she had to look down at the tattoos on her arms to remind herself she was living life on her own terms. In
freedom
, with
courage.

Setting up an online sting was like an elaborate form of cooking to Sophie, ending in a meal that brought her targets to the table. Cooking in
Thailand was a lengthy production she’d watched their servants perform: first, harvesting the food. From the garden, farm, or sea came the raw ingredients. Then washing, hulling, seasoning, marinating, and prepping. After that, individual mini cooking of elements of the dish, and then the collection of all the ingredients into a cohesive whole, and finally, the presentation.