Duplicate Effort Part 6

"Ick," Talia said. They could just as easily be talking about her. "Who would do that?" Her dad gave her a flat look. It was almost cold. He didn't answer her. Probably because she didn't need the answer. She had it. Her mother would have.

Did, in fact. If her dad hadn't shown up and hired all those lawyers, Talia's legal guardian would have been Aleyd Corporation. A condition of employment was that kids whose parents died while working for Aleyd could become wards of the company.

Maybe it wasn't her mom's carelessness that put Talia in that position like everyone a.s.sumed. They just figured Mom hadn't done the paperwork to protect Talia. Maybe Mom had done that intentionally. Or maybe that had been a condition of Talia's creation.

A headache rose from her shoulders, through the back of her neck, and into the base of her skull. Her eyes stung.

"What are we going to do?" she asked.

"You're going to walk me through everything you found on the public links," he said. "And then I'm going to see if anyone Tracked your trail."

"If they did?" Her voice shook just a little.

"Then I'll see if I can figure out who the Tracker was, and see how much danger the two are in." "And if no one Tracked it?" Talia asked.

"I'm going to wipe out the records as best I can. They can't go away completely, but I can make them invisible to the casual scan."

Talia swallowed hard. The headache was getting worse. "Will that solve the problem?" He looked at her again, and this time his gaze softened. She had the sense he felt sorry for her. "All we can do," he said, "is hope."

7.

Nyquist walked down the freshly raked path, feeling a frustration deeper than any he'd felt in years. DeRicci had probably been right to be cautious-her job was all about balancing politics with safety, and if someone else had been attacked in the Hunting Club while the security was off, then she would have been blamed.

But the problem was that someone had been attacked on the Hunting Club grounds while security was on on. And no one seemed to care except him.

He wasn't media savvy enough to know what the reaction would be when the press found out that the security hadn't worked right. He didn't know whether they'd belatedly come to Ki Bowles's defense or they would argue that the exclusive club wasn't so exclusive after all.

It really wasn't his concern, unless it hampered his investigation. Like the d.a.m.n security procedures did.

The air in the fake forest smelled of real pine. He sneezed, wondering how much of the evidence he'd needed had already been recycled and recast as that lovely piney smell.

He tugged his coat tighter and stepped between the trees. All four techs were crouched over the two bodies. Apparently the search for more bodies had ended.

"You didn't find anyone else?" Nyquist asked without saying h.e.l.lo. "No." Adyson Owens was working around the face of the second victim, the man.

"We got a real problem here." Hada.s.sa Leidmann stood up. She peeled off her gloves and put them in her evidence kit. Then she removed two more gloves and held them while she stepped around Bowles's body to walk to Nyquist. "We're losing evidence by the second."

"I tried everything," he said. "We can't shut the system down without some kind of order from G.o.d."

"You'd better get it," she said, "or we're not going to be able to do a thorough investigation. And, provided we get enough that you can make a case against someone, you won't have enough to hold up in court."

He walked over to Bowles and crouched beside the body. It looked cleaner than it had when he arrived. "You've made recordings of the scene, right?"

"One of the team is recording everything, all the time. We have to show the deterioration of the evidence. Unfortunately, that's not going to help convict anyone. That'll just help with the defense." He nodded. He understood. But he wasn't so much interested in a conviction at the moment as he was in catching whoever did this.

"We're not going to get this shut down in time to do any good," he said. "So do what you can." Leidmann nodded and crouched beside him.

"We have a few things," she said. "We know that she died before he did, but not much before. We figure from the angle of the wounds on her stomach and on his arm that he was holding her against him when those wounds happened. It was almost simultaneous."

"Her back against his stomach?" Nyquist asked. "Yeah. It doesn't work any other way. And we did get enough trace off those wounds to show that they happened at about the same time with the same weapon."

"That's not a friendly position," Nyquist said. "You don't hold someone's back against your front with a hand around the waist very often."

"Oh," Leidmann said, "sometimes you do. You might both be listening to a concert or talking to someone. The person in front, the smaller person-in this case, Bowles-would lean against the taller person and that person would put his arm around her waist. Sure. I've seen it."

Nyquist had, too. He'd even done it once or twice, but that didn't make it something people usually did along a wooded path, with no entertainment in sight.

"You think these two knew each other?" he asked Leidmann. "Impossible to say from any evidence we've found here," she said. "I suspect that'll be your job." "Do you have an identification on the man?" "No," Owens said. "We've checked his ID chips. They're clean." "Clean?" Nyquist asked. He'd never heard of anything like that before.

"Yeah," Owens said. "I'll have to check in the lab, but right now the reading that I'm getting is that they're new. They're the kind of chips you'd find in a hospital, the kind you'd set just before you put it into a newborn."

"These haven't been set?" Nyquist asked. "Not that I can tell. But they might just be an upgrade that got erased. I'll be able to tell with the right equipment."

"Have you checked Bowles's ID chips?" Nyquist asked. "No," Owens said. "There's no need. We all know who she is." "Do it anyway," Nyquist said.

Owens shot him an irritated look and started to move toward Bowles's body. But Leidmann waved him away.

"I'll do it," she said. She took out a small handheld and ran it over Bowles's left hand. Then she frowned, and ran it over Bowles's right hand. Finally she ran it along Bowles's entire body.

"Nothing," she said. "Clean." "No identification?" Nyquist asked. "None." "Could something in this security system be wiping the identification chips?" Nyquist asked.

"That would be counterproductive," Owen said. "That would mean everyone who went to the Hunting Club would have to reset their identification chips."

"Most people don't lie on the ground for a long period of time," Nyquist said. "Not even during the so-called hunts. Both bodies have had prolonged contact with the same system that cleans up the dirt and smoothes the gra.s.s-"

"And absorbs small particles," Leidmann said. "It's possible," Owens said. "But why would it have that function?"

"Think about it," Nyquist said. "If you're some kind of Gossip reporter and you hide behind these fake trees or rig up a camera behind one of the expensive rocks, the security system would wipe it clean as a matter of course. The work you meticulously gathered over a prolonged period of time would vanish, and you wouldn't know until you went back to the studio."

Owens cursed. "I'll bet you're right."

"There are systems like that," Leidmann said. "Sometimes they erase, but sometimes they mine and store. Same with the security system itself. Our trace might show up in some kind of storage bag. The problem would be proving that it's the stuff from this crime scene and not from some other part of the so-called forest."

"I'm sure we can get a court order for all of that," Nyquist said, "and it'll be better coming from you guys. You're the ones who process the evidence. It won't look like you have a vendetta against the club. It'll just look like you're trying to get as much evidence as possible."

Leidmann raised an eyebrow. She looked amused. "Do you have a vendetta against the club?" "I'm sure I will by the time this investigation is over," he said. "Anything else you can tell me?"

"They died about the same time," Owens said. "They were killed with the laser knife that we found. It had Bowles's initials. It seemed to come from her bag. The bag itself didn't have much. A scarf, the laser knife, and a handheld, which I think is weird considering how many chips she has that link her to various systems. She has independent cameras on her hands, in the corners of her eyes, and dotting her tattoos. There are other chips on her that record sound, some that do entire holo imagery-she's a walking spy system."

"And all of that shuts down in the Hunting Club?" Nyquist asked.

"Yeah," Owens said. "It gets shut off just like the emergency links. That's automatic." "Which makes you wonder what she was doing here," Nyquist said.

"Probably being seen," Leidmann said. "She had that story run last night. It was a big comeback for her." "Story?" Nyquist asked. "I wasn't watching yesterday."

"Something about Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor," Leidmann said. "I didn't pay a lot of attention because I felt like it was just a rehashing of stuff anyone who paid attention already knew."

The hair rose on the back of Nyquist's neck. The case he'd nearly died working had involved Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor.

"That seems like a huge coincidence," he said.

"What?" Leidmann asked. "That she did a big story? She specializes in big stories."

"She hadn't had one for more than six months," Nyquist said. "Then her big story, her comeback story, is about WSX? And she dies the next day."

"It wasn't supposed to be one story," Leidmann said. "I remember that. It was the first in a series. You probably should watch it."

Nyquist couldn't suppress his shudder. "I probably should," he said.

8.

Justinian Wagner's office was as black as his mood-which, he knew, was normal. The place was designed to mirror his moods. But he'd never seen it this dark. His desk was black, the carpet had turned black, and even the skylight that opened to the dome was closed.

He supposed he could shut off the mood-matching feature, but that seemed like too much work. Besides, it would be a nice warning to any a.s.sistants who tried to contact him.

Now might not be the best time.

He smiled grimly at the understatement. There was no best time, not anymore. He'd watched Ki Bowles's piece on his law firm for the fifteenth time in the past twenty hours, and he still didn't know where she'd gotten the information.

He had a.s.sociates scrambling to find out who had given out confidential files. He had his best computer techs searching for a smooth backdoor hack into the firm's systems, and he was going to have to use another tech to sweep his own private systems.

The story was too good, the facts too accurate. Bowles clearly had had access to confidential materials. Her interviews with former employees seemed to back up her conclusions, but no one-not even the other partners-knew everything that she had brought up in that first five-minute segment.

Or they hadn't known it until six p.m. last night when the first installment ran.

Bowles was planning to run a dozen other installments or more, all on WSX, all about its practices and its misdeeds.

He was doing everything he could to stop her-an injunction on airing the piece further, a lawsuit alleging slander, and a third alleging fraud designed for personal gain. He didn't just file against her, he filed against Upstart Productions and the various networks that aired the first story, adding criminal conspiracy to their charges-although that would be difficult to make stick.

By the time that last charge went to court, he had to find proof or withdraw the charges. Because if he accused them of criminal conspiracy without actual proof of a theft or malicious intent, all he was doing was confirming what she had reported.

He'd worried about that from the moment he filed the charges, which was one reason why he hadn't filed the criminal charges against Bowles.

At least, not yet.

He clasped his well-manicured hands behind his back as he walked toward the center of the room. He'd frozen the image of Bowles as she sat behind some cheap desk. He'd left the image as a 3-D hologram, one that was slightly see-through as all net-provided holograms were, so that no one would confuse them with the real thing.

She seemed slight and a bit overdressed. The tattoos across her face were beautifully drawn for something that cheap, and her multicolored hair accented them perfectly. She wore no jewelry at all, which surprised him. She seemed very comfortable with her little truth-telling mission, as if she wasn't afraid of the consequences of her so-called investigative journalism.

He was afraid. He had made certain he was unavailable all day. The senior partners would meet in two hours, and he wasn't sure what he could tell them.

Wagner walked around her image, as if in studying the posture of something filmed hours, maybe days, ago could give him an insight into this woman.

This first story was mostly allegations and tantalizing tidbits, with just enough doc.u.mentation to show that Bowles was serious. The problem with the story was the promises Bowles made for future stories.

She had, in just a few words, outlined WSX's longstanding relationship with Ultre Corporation. Ultre had been one of the first businesses to work with Wagner's father, back when WSX was a new law firm. Most of the other clients had come from Wagner's mother. She'd been the prime breadwinner when the law firm was founded.

Bowles didn't mention that. She did talk about the solar arrays that Ultre had placed on Mina, the arrays that had ended up malfunctioning and costing the lives of two dozen Ultre employees. She mentioned the settlement that, considering the easy-to-prove liability for Ultre, had been more than fair to all concerned, the payouts to the families of the victims, and the legal fees that Ultre paid.

She also provided evidence-mostly testimony from forensic accountants who followed what she called "a clear doc.u.ment trail"-that the victims all had lawyers from a firm with tight connections to WSX. In fact, that firm, which advertised itself as the only privately owned, human-focused law firm on Mina, was a satellite company of WSX. The ties were so hidden that no one would ever have been able to find it, but the firm's partners knew. And they had consulted with WSX before any settlement had been made.

Which was illegal under Earth Alliance law.

Wagner stopped next to the image of Bowles. Illegal, but no longer prosecutable. His father had made the arrangement. The money from the Ultre deal had gone into building WSX into the firm it was now. When that deal had been completed, Wagner had been less than a year old.

His parents were dead. Xendor was no longer an active partner, although the name remained on the door. Wagner could easily defend himself and his firm against these charges. But they weren't the only ones. They were the beginning of a very, very long list.

The fact that Bowles listed several other names on that list frightened him.

And he didn't scare easily.

He had taken action, but he wasn't sure it was the right action. The allegations would remain. He had noticed that with the Bowles's story. Other networks had picked it up and folded it into a story on Bowles herself-her firing from InterDome Media six months ago, the ill-advised piece she had completed on Noelle DeRicci, which ran as DeRicci had saved the Moon from one of the worst disasters it had ever faced, the previous award-winning stories and triumphs that had marked Bowles's career before the DeRicci piece.

A few networks had even run stories on Bowles's past, how she hadn't come up through the normal channels. Her training had been in art history and that, the dumb reporter had maintained with an air of authority, had given her the ability to sift through details to find the one important piece of information hidden in plain sight.

The problem was that nothing about WSX was in plain sight. Wagner ruthlessly controlled his firm's image. He knew what information was out there on the public links about his firm.

He knew what former employees could say with authority and what they could suppose. He had worked very hard, first with his father and then after his father left, to make sure that no one knew as much about the firm as he did.

Not even the other partners knew which "privately owned, human-focused" firms throughout the known universe had ties to WSX. The more limited the knowledge, the more he could control it.

The files on the firm's business had layers upon layers. Some never left his private system at all. Others were buried in a code that only the most savvy could find-and then, only if they had months to sift through and the expertise to understand both computers and the law.

Bowles, for all her pretense at intelligence, didn't have either expertise. And even though she had been out of work for six months, she didn't have the patience or the kind of mind that would allow her to sift through those details and see the pattern, no matter what some stupid network talking head said.

Bowles had a.s.sistance. A lot of it. And she'd been smart enough to protect her sources. She had a raft of lawyers, some copyright and trademark lawyers, some business lawyers, some civil attorneys. She had started with Maxine Van Alen, who was one of the few attorneys in Armstrong smart enough-and courageous enough-to take on Justinian Wagner and win.

Van Alen had a grudge against him. She understood how he worked, too. She would have built the tightest firewall around the information in her firm that any firm could a.s.semble.

He'd tried to break through her firewalls before, first on a Disappeared case, and then when she represented Miles Flint, and he hadn't been able to.

If she had known that Bowles was taking on WSX, she would have built an even tighter firewall. Maxine Van Alen wasn't the doorway into Bowles's sources. But the other attorneys might be.

He would see what they knew. And he would see whether he could get an advance screening of the next two or three stories.

With the right amount of money and a few softly voiced threats, he should be able to see what he was up against.

Because if Bowles actually had what she said she did, she had the ability to destroy WSX. Not through negative public opinion or even through the courts.

But through the clients. They would believe-they would know know-that WSX sometimes (often) manipulated them into a deal that would work better for WSX than anyone else.