Terminal Value Part 29

Dylan stared at Rob, unable to respond to his lies about Heather, angry enough to kill Rob. "You can't give me what I want." Dylan's words were slow and precise. "And the funny thing is I think I'd be better off if Tony really had just died in a stupid, idiotic accident. I could have grieved, and healed, and maybe after a decade or two had the satisfaction of knowing it was so like Tony to die like that."

"I think the police are wrong about that," Rob spoke in a rush of words. "I'm sure it wasn't murder. How could it be?"

"You tell me. You were there." He watched Rob's handsome face stiffen, his blue eyes flicker. But there was no telltale tick or sudden flush. He did not move at all. "No comment?" he demanded.

Rob licked his lips. "I'm not sure what to say. Are you asking me what I think?"

"No. I'm telling you I know you did it."

"Okay." Rob held up his hands. "Dylan. I know you're upset. And I know you have every right to be. But I was at the office at the time, remember?"

"No you weren't."

"Dylan, we conferenced that afternoon. You know where I was. We've been over this."

"I know, and I missed it. I a.s.sumed you were in your office, the way I always a.s.sume whoever I'm conferencing with on the VPN is where I think they should be, where they were the last time I talked to them, where they tell me they are. The way you thought I was in New York when actually I was here, in Christine's office."

"Dylan, I really was in my office. But even if I wasn't, even if I was at home, at an Internet cafe, or anywhere else, I was talking to you on the VPN at four. Didn't you tell me the time of death had been established between 3:30 and 4:30?"

"Yeah."

"So how could I be both on the VPN and killing Tony at four o'clock?"

"You joined the conference from Tony's computer. It was on when you got to his place. It was on when you left. It was on when I got there. You killed him, logged out of his account, and logged into yours. My G.o.d, when I think I was talking with you-what? Ten minutes after you killed him? With him lying there on the floor?"

Rob brushed a shaking hand through his disheveled hair. "That's-no. Dylan, really, I think you're being delusional." Rob searched for words, tried to sound confident.

"How could you do it, Rob? How could you be capable of such a thing?" Dylan grabbed Rob by the front of his shirt and pulled him forward until Rob's face was within inches of his own. "Tony was our friend!" He smelled the scent of fear on Rob's stale breath.

Rob's eyes flashed, but he did not resist. "I'm not going to fight you."

"Tony was on to you, wasn't he? He asked Heather's advice about how to handle a sticky problem. And I thought he was talking about Art when he said he had evidence about something big, but it was you. You selling out Hyperfn. How did he find out?"

Panic continued to build; Rob grasped for an answer that didn't come. "I don't know. I found him there. He was already dead."

Dylan's eyes flashed in disbelief. "Right. And for some bizarre reason you didn't call the police."

"I panicked. I had a guilty conscience. I thought they'd think it was me."

"I'm sure you did. Did he ask you to come over to talk to you? I bet he did. That was Tony. He always believed people had their reasons for what they did. I bet he even offered to help."

Rob looked away, breathing heavily. He said nothing but scanned the walls, searching for some sc.r.a.p that would convince Dylan of his innocence.

"Let me guess. He made the mistake of telling you he hadn't told anyone yet. And you saw that as your way out. You saw a way you wouldn't have to lose everything. Once you saw how easy it was to make millions without losing your job or your reputation-without earning it-you just couldn't stop, could you? And the only person who stood in your way was Tony!" Rob turned his face away, but not before Dylan saw the spasm of anger cross his face. Dylan released him and stepped back. "How did it go down, Rob?"

Rob turned slowly, his demeanor changed. "One day he said he knew something was wrong, something he wanted to talk to me about. There was something in the way he looked at me, the way he spoke, that told me he knew it all. I knew then I had to find out more, that I had to do something to convince him not to say anything. I stopped by to find out what he knew."

"And? Come on! Don't f.u.c.k with me, Rob!" Dylan demanded.

Rob stood up straight. "We were supposed to meet at a restaurant, but I didn't want to talk about it in public, so I went to his house early. As soon as he answered the door, I saw by the look on his face he knew why I was there. He told me about looking at the Hyperfn account, and it took him no time at all to put two and two together. He knew I was living beyond my means, and when he told me I had to tell you about this-Dylan-I got angry. I was tired of being the one person in the group who had to hang onto everyone else's shirttails. I wanted out of this group, and Hyperfn was my ticket. I shoved him and he fell, hitting his head. He was unconscious, so I stripped an electric cord from his workroom, wrapped it around him, and plugged it in. The bare end of the wire electrocuted him. I thought it would look like an accident." Rob, bereft of all emotion, turned and stared at Dylan. "You just don't understand, Dylan. He was in the way."

Dylan stepped back from Rob, unable to speak for several moments, and then he turned his head and called. "Did you get it all?" he asked.

"What?" Rob said.

Heather stepped through the slightly opened door with an mp3 recorder in her hand. "Yes, absolutely everything." She walked over to Rob and just stared at him.

"What are you doing here?" Rob asked.

"Getting to the truth." She drew back her open hand and struck him across the face, forcing him backward into the wall. She turned back to Dylan. "We need to call the police. Right now."

Chapter 33.

June 15, 8:30 a.m. Boston An early summer storm had raged up the Atlantic coast, bringing showers quickly followed by intense heat and oppressive humidity. Small pools of water shimmered on the road below.

Dylan and Heather sat on Dylan's rooftop deck, their feet propped up on the railings. Heather, her hair in a ponytail, was dressed in a flowing brown cotton skirt and a peach-colored top that left her arms and most of her shoulders bare against the blazing heat. She looked a lot like the college girl who had caught Dylan's attention several years earlier. Dylan wore his favorite khaki shorts, an old MIT T-shirt, and Top-Siders without socks.

Every once in a while, a slight breeze wafted across the roof, causing just a hint of relief from the heat, but little more than that. Sweat trickled down the back of Heather's shirt. She focused her attention on a man walking a dog on the brick sidewalk below.

Dylan took a long sip from a large gla.s.s of iced coffee. A cold drop of sweat from the gla.s.s wandered down his hand and meandered in a crooked path further down his arm to his elbow. He wiped his arm on his shirt, opened up his iPad, and started reading the business section of Boston.com.

"Hey, listen to this one. 'Mantric's stock sc.r.a.ped along for the last week at pennies a share due to the frantic efforts of a host of mid-level managers as they attempted to salvage what little remains of the company. Yesterday, Art Williams and Christine Rohnmann, once the darlings of the technology world, were formally charged with fraud, causing the once proud MNTR symbol to quietly disappear from the list of public companies trading on the NASDAQ.'" He closed the cover of his iPad and adjusted his sungla.s.ses.

Heather turned to him. "I feel sorry for Stephanie and Sandeep and those left behind, but they really need to just give it up and move on."

"At least one person is never going to be allowed to move on," he said, his voice edgy and angry.

Heather nodded slowly, knowing he was talking about Rob. The betrayal was still raw for both of them. She decided to change the subject and s.n.a.t.c.hed Dylan's iPad. She flipped through various news sites and scanned the financial pages. "Wow! The press really has whipped itself into a frenzy over this. It's amazing how they've filled their pages with self-righteous claims of the inevitability of something like this. They're so angry, they're blaming Mantric for the NASDAQ's seven consecutive days of decline."

Dylan nodded. "Yep. And in another week, Mantric will become old news when some new scandal feeds their insatiable appet.i.tes."

Dylan had spent the first few days of the collapse being interviewed by an a.s.sistant U.S. Attorney named Morgan Banion. Her interest in the story peaked when he provided details on the information in Schedule B, but waned when she deemed that any other information was not pertinent to the case, or more accurately, to her success.

He watched Heather out of the corner of his eye. She was engrossed in the iPad. He reached up and caught an errant curl that had skittered across her face, and moved it behind her ear. She smiled.

Dylan thought about the world of things that had happened in the past few weeks. He'd lost almost everything except for his condo, which luckily he had enough cash to cover. Heather lost her own condo in Cambridge and ended up collecting unemployment. Dylan offered her his extra room. She agreed, with absolutely no interest in the "extra" room. Their future was uncertain, and they both agreed to take life as it came, clinging to that understanding.

He realized their relationship would never really go back to what it was just a few months earlier, especially when the two other people they had been closest to were now gone from their lives. So much of what they thought they had known about the world had been completely overturned. At least their shared experience had bonded them together; moreover, Dylan knew he wanted to be with her. He grinned as that errant tress wriggled away from her ear and blew across her face again.

"Did you see where Art and Christine failed to post bond of one million each?" said Dylan.

"Frankly, I'm surprised. I thought for sure Christine or Art or both of them would be able to s.n.a.t.c.h such a small amount out of one of their 'off-sh.o.r.e' accounts!" She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and laughed. She pulled the hair away from her face and attempted to, once again, anchor it behind her ear.

He laughed too and topped off their gla.s.ses. They turned their attention to well-dressed men and women six stories below, who had places to go and money to make. "It seems odd not to be part of that bustling crowd," he said, leaning his arms on the railing and staring down at the activity below. "To have nowhere to go and nothing to do."

"You give any thought to doing another start-up?"

"I don't know. Guess I'd need to find another catchy name."

A warm breeze wafted across his arms.

"It was Tony's idea. MobiCelus."

"So it was." He half-smiled, remembering.

She flashed him a dazzling smile, placed the iPad on the deck, and stretched. "I'm going to have to do something soon. I'm running out of all the money I don't have."

"Me too. I can't plan on living on my savings and investments forever." He took a sip of his cold drink. "Joe Ferrano called me Sat.u.r.day. I filled him in on the details I could talk about. He's pretty shook up. He liked Rob." Dylan stopped and shook his head. It was still all so hard to believe.

Heather nodded, a sad look in her eyes.

Dylan continued. "So anyway, I told him what our lawyer is doing to try to keep us from being sucked any further into this mess. I told Joe we were beached. And get this-he said he wanted to help out somehow. As a favor."

"Really! What's he thinking?"

"He wondered if we had any new projects that he might be able to invest in. He might be able to recoup a lot of money, since LC is now in such hot water over the Hyperfn situation."

Heather sat forward, an expression of interest on her face. "Us? He wants to partner with us?"

"Yeah. You're the one he really wants, but he figures he can use me somehow," Dylan smirked.

"Very funny. Tell me more."

"Joe's itching to figure out his next move. He called to ask if I had any ideas."

Heather raised an eyebrow. "A very good man."

"Yeah."

"So what did you tell him?"

"That we might have something. I was thinking about Tony's wireless electricity device. Mr. Caruso has inherited all of Tony's patents and, believe it or not, Tony had actually already filed one on it. What do you think about approaching Tony's dad and suggesting we try to commercialize it? He'll have a rough time without the money Tony used to send him, not to mention the evaporation of the Mantric stock. This could make his life a lot easier. Plus give him the satisfaction of watching his son's work see the light of day."

"So," Heather said, scrunching her nose. "Remind me of what this thing is?"

"Well, as Brandon Wist explained it to me, it's not totally complete, but it looks like it can transmit power over short distances. But over long distances, the problem is that the power must be sent in a manner identical to the shape of the receiver."

"I'm sorry-you lost me."

"Well, basically the challenge is that the antenna receiving power via radio waves has to be perfectly matched to the correct frequency of the source transmission, or else all devices have to adapt one standard. Not exactly easy to do. I can tell by his sketch that Tony was still trying to figure out a way around this. But if we can finish what he started and make it work, it would really be huge!"

Heather remained silent for several moments, and Dylan knew her mind was throwing ideas around. Finally, she leaned in close to him and placed her hands on his knees.

"I won't claim to understand this stuff, but I like the idea of taking Tony's work to the next stage. But how do we do that?"

A small smile crossed Dylan's lips and quickly grew into a big grin. "I bet I know just the person who would have a clear understanding of how to crack this." Dylan got up and began pacing rapidly back and forth as a plan hatched in his mind.

"Who?" she asked.

He put his thoughts in order and rushed back to where she sat. "Brandon! He would be perfect."

"Are you serious?" Heather moved next to him. "From what you said about your meeting with him, he seemed pretty squirrely."

"Yes, he was that, but when I left that meeting in New Jersey, I was certain his friendship and respect for Tony were genuine. And he has a double-major in computer science and electrical engineering, not to mention the fact that he's got the curious mind of a madman!" Dylan laughed and threw his arms around Heather. "Brandon will do it. I just know he will."

Heather nestled into Dylan's arms. She looked up at him and nodded in agreement. "Let's not forget the rest of the team. Matt and Rich would be ideal team players, and I'm sure they would jump at the chance to work on this project."

Dylan caught her enthusiasm. "We could work together. With our combined skills, we can make anything succeed."

"I'm in, and we should s.n.a.t.c.h up Matt and Rich right away! I was very impressed with the way Rich understood the infamous Schedule B. Let's call Joe and see what he thinks."

Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper folded over several times. "I think you should see this. I got an e-mail this morning. The reply address was a fake, but-well, there's no mistaking who it's from." He handed her the paper. "Somehow, when I read this, I realized it was truly over." He took a deep breath. "Go ahead. Read it."

Heather unfolded the paper and read: "I started monitoring Tony's e-mails after April 1st. I pulled this one, intending to delay it until we could take steps to circ.u.mvent the problem. I didn't realize he was talking about Rob. And then Tony was gone, and if I'd shown it to you, you would have thought I had done it. I didn't show it to anyone. I did my job until I couldn't stand to anymore."

She looked up at Dylan and said one word, "Ivan?" then continued reading.

"Date: May 2.

"To: [email protected]

"From:

"Subject: FW: Our Ivy Boy.

"Hey Dylan. Look, man, this is hard to write, but we've got trouble. This is no time to beat around the bush, so I'll just say it. Looks like our Ivy boy has been making a mess of things. Turns out he's been spending money before he has it and never manages to get out from under. Jerk. Or poor guy. Maybe both. Anyway, I heard from a guy who's a pretty bright dude that somebody from Mantric was looking to sell some inside information, so I did a little snooping. Shh, don't worry, n.o.body'll ever know. Anyway, now I'm sure, so the question is what to do? I figured I'd better talk to you first. Of course we'll stand up for him, but this is gonna cause a h.e.l.l of a stink at Mantric. Well, I needed to get that off my chest so we can celebrate this afternoon when our stock goes through the roof. The sky's the limit, man! T."

Heather returned the paper to Dylan, who slowly ripped it into tiny pieces and threw them to the wind.

"Dylan!" she yelled, stunned he would destroy a message from his best friend.

"It's OK, Heather. Tony would approve. He was a big fan of Bertolt Brecht. One of his favorite quotes was 'Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life.'"

"That does sound like Tony." She hugged Dylan.

"Yes it does. So let's call everyone and see if we can't bring Tony back!" He smiled a sad smile, but he knew he would sleep well that night.

end.