Buzzworm (A Technology Thriller): Computer virus or serial killer? (5 page)

Police officers call Washington DC
‘the District’. But we still say it like we’re spitting out a mouthful of beer that’s gone punky. It’s not a feel-good word for politicians. Or for homicide detectives, of which I am the latter.

Washington used to be the murder capital of the free world. Over four hundred homicides a year. We’ve gotten better, but only marginally. I think we are now number three or four. Some consolation.

Angela, my ex, left me in 2001, the worst year for the city. And mine too. I can’t blame her though. Bullets were as common as houseflies and generous overtime easily paid the alimony payments. I think I ate dinner with her that last year maybe a dozen times. Even that may be an exaggeration. You’d have to ask my daughter Kyla. She was the only one counting.

Something happens to cops when they can no longer cope with the workload. The pressure of facing a fresh new homicide case every single day starts to eat into you, to hollow you out. You feel like a spent shell.

The only reason I drag myself to the job everyday is the hope that a case, any case, not even necessarily my case, will be solved. I’m not talking justice here. Just a solved friggin’ case. Because once you feel overwhelmed, it’s not simply a matter of changing careers.

The victims live in your head forever. So you take the files home with you on weekends, to bed with you at night, into your nightmares. They don’t disappear if you decide to take that cushy job as Security Director for Rothmans over the line in Reston, Virginia. Too much time on your hands just makes the hollowness ring in your ears — like a stomach-churning background noise that never seems to go away.

The caseload is better now. But a lot of good detectives ended up leaving for low-stress jobs in the burbs. But I can’t go there. Angela lives out in Arlington with her new husband and I don’t know what I would do if I bumped into him at the Piggly Wiggly parking lot.

Something I’d probably regret.

But nothing new there.

So I still live in the Palisades, where I grew up as a kid in Washington. My home is on a leafy street in a nondescript bungalow that I bought from a former homicide partner — who moved out to a better life in McLean.

McLean is the county where the famous CIA Headquarters sits behind locked gates. You can feel like you live at the center of the universe in McLean, but not have to face a shooting gallery every day of your life. How is that fair?

And that’s ironic, because this morning I am reporting to a homicide called in by that very same CIA, only this one is located in a little known building inside the city limits of Washington proper. They call it Building 213. You get there through the Washington Navy Yard at the south end of the city, next to the Potomac River.

Captain Ipscott gave me orders to report to Building 213, alone. A strange request. I’ve never been asked before to leave my partner behind, although sometimes I’ve got to admit, I’ve felt that way myself. Emile always has my back, but he’s not what you would call a people-person.

Maybe the CIA knows something I don’t.

I’ve heard rumors about 213 — everyone who lives in Washington has. We all know that this used to be the head office for NPIC, the National Photographic Interpretation Center, before it was absorbed by the Department of Defense in the nineties. NPIC used to interpret spy satellite imagery for the rest of the Intelligence community. They also had hundreds of interpreters on staff who watched foreign TV broadcasts, and monitor telephone and email traffic. Serious stuff even for the town that built the White House. What they do now is anyone’s guess.

I had never been to Building 213 before. It’s hard to believe I have spent all these years in Washington and within spitting distance of Langley, but have never had a run in with the spooks or their handlers. I count myself lucky.

The FBI was another matter. They were ever-present in this town, and I had good reason to believe I would again be sparring with
the dark side
before the week was over.

The Navy Yard is aptly named; a gravel parking lot filled with row upon row of red brick buildings separated by narrow lanes. Finding the building was easy — it was east of building number 212 and just west of 214. There was nothing about the appearance from the outside that would give a visitor any hint as to the building’s real purpose.

Once inside the out-of-place steel and glass entrance, I entered a lobby that looked out on a feature wall of the same red brick. I was surrounded by what was likely very thick bulletproof glass. Above the inner door was a camera and speaker. I was asked to provide ID. I purposefully took my time looking for my badge and then passed it quickly under the camera lens. There was a pause, then the voice at the other end got serious and asked for a longer look.

“Maybe you should send out your Security guy. A Mr. David Dodge. He’s expecting me. This is a police matter.”

I straightened my tie simply to give me something to do with my hands. I wanted to rip the video camera off the wall. I’m a big fan of surveillance technology. I also gave big brother a flash of my revolver, which was strapped to my shoulder harness. The chrome handle always looks impressive on a color monitor.

The door clicked ominously and a short woman stepped out into the enclosed lobby. I’m about six foot four and she might have been able to reach my chin with her hands — if she stretched and stood on tiptoes. Not quite a little person, if that’s politically correct. Just a very short woman with a very serious look on a face that hadn’t seen much sun this summer.

“Hyde”, I said, “D.C. Homicide.”

I don’t shake hands so I didn’t offer.

She introduced herself as the head of the Technology Group. Vienna Jobime. She pronounced it ‘how-beam’. She wore a light blue smock, like a scientist would wear in a laboratory.

Jobime led me through the lobby, down past the brick wall. A security guard asked for my ID again and passed a wand over me. I lifted my jacket and pointed to the gun. He waved me past. We stopped at a bank of modern elevators. Since the building was one floor, I had to guess we were going down. How far I couldn’t guess. I could only imagine the labyrinth below.

"What do they do here at Building 213?” Or even a better question, where were the brass? In a case like this, management was always hovering nearby like a bunch of male lions after a kill. At this particular time they were real conspicuous by their absence. Of course here, they probably just watched you on their monitors. Kept their hands clean that way.

"Jo," she said again, “Just call me Jo.” She looked up, meeting my eyes for the first time “Our jobs on 3B are pretty ordinary by anyone’s standards. We study satellite imagery. Computer enhance photos. Monitor telecommunications. The man who died? Frank Scammel? He was part of the photo enhancement team."

We stepped off the elevator into an industrial-like hallway.. "You'll have to wear this badge," she said, handing over a security card with a chrome clip.

She walked to her right and stopped at a large blue steel door. A black plate at eye level, which meant she had to stretch up to it, held a single camera lens. She faced the lens and passed her ID card through a slot on the plate. The door unlocked loudly. As they passed through into a large open space, I turned to her.

"Is that one of those systems that scans your eyes?"

That comment amused her. "No, it's much more sophisticated. The software actually recognizes my face."

We stepped into a larger workspace. Deserted. "What if I look exactly like someone else or I have a brother that looks a lot like me, only not so good looking?"

She was warming to me. I could see it in her face. "It's very accurate. If we took ten photos of you at different distances, under different light, added a mustache or a beard, even intentionally shot it out of focus, then asked the computer to match your face right now, against a million others - it would still find all ten in about 999 out of a thousand searches." I whistled. “You still need the card as a backup though. To fool our security you'd need an employees pass card
and
a nearly identical face. Pretty unlikely, I'd say."

We arrived in a large computer workroom lit largely by the glow of dozens of large color computer monitors. Still no humans in sight.

"Coffee break?" I asked.

"We asked most of our personnel to leave this area for a few hours. Partly due to security," she waved at the screens, "and partly to give you some elbow room."

"I'll need to ask them some questions."

"That can be arranged privately," she said, holding a side door open. This was a smaller room, the walls covered with large color photos — some old politicians, military equipment, airplanes and weapons, a shot of Beyonce in bed with George W. Bush. When Jobime saw me eye it she explained, "George was in on the joke."

I stepped up to the large framed photograph. "It's amazing how good they’ve gotten at this stuff. The shadows are perfect…"

"Scammel was one of our best. He'd been with us for over twenty years, almost back to the punch card days." She paused, then swallowed. “He is lying over there behind that desk. We haven’t touched anything or gone near the body.”

"Do you want to leave me here for awhile?" I asked her.

"It's OK. My father was a doctor. I saw lots of blood by the time I was twelve." I wasn’t convinced. I’d seen a lot of blood too, but that didn’t make it any easier.

We walked around a large desk unit, and there was Frank Scammel, the programmer/designer. There was more than a lot of blood. He was about forty-something, longish thinning hair. He wore a white Grateful Dead T-shirt, a laughing skull on the back leering up at me. He was lying on his face, blood surrounding him on all sides, one arm twisted underneath. He was a big guy, almost as big as me. Only more fat. Or at least I liked to think so. Soft and white around the middle too. I walked around the pool of congealing blood. He’d been here for a while.

“When was it reported?" I asked.

"Four this morning our shift supervisor rang in and found him. She called out one of our security people, David Dodge."

“
And Dodge. What did he do?"

"He cordoned off this room, and locked down the building. Then called Washington Homicide."

"Locked down?"

"No one leaves. No one enters. Standard stuff."

"You're saying since four o'clock no one has been allowed to leave?"

She nodded.

"Why didn't we get a call until 7:25 AM?"

She hesitated. "Lock-down takes a while. You can talk to Dodge about it. Internal security matters… "

"Excuse me?"

"The project he was working on?" she pointed to the body. "We had to remove the files and documents."

I scratched my head, my eyes narrowing. "That's evidence, Jo."

"It's also national security. The work we do is highly classified,” she said flatly.

"You move evidence, Ms. Vienna, you break the law. It may be national security, but it's still breaking the law."

"My orders come from the Director at Langley. That's our law around here. You can talk to him. He reports directly to the President."

I glared at her for a minute, then turned back to the body. She threw in the reference to the President like it should end the conversation. I was guessing I wouldn’t be talking to either the President or the Director of the CIA in this case. I would be buried in the basement along with all the other old files. Then I smiled, a big self-effacing grin that I hoped would be hard for her to resist.

I shook my head. The brass was always there. Sometimes you just couldn’t see them. But you could always smell them.

"You CIA types. National security. Covert operations. The problems of the world on your shoulders. Weighty matters. And then here lies Frank, valued employee, now dead. And I'm just a cop off the streets who can't do a damn thing to help you figure out why. Cause the evidence's gone." I closed my book and filed my pen away in an inside pocket. Then I turned for the door.

“Where are you going?" she asked.

"Gonna call the boys in blue to come pick up this mess. Not much more I can do here."

"But you haven't even looked at anything, done any investigation!"

I stopped, shoved my hands into my coat pockets. "I know a cleaned room when I see one. You people are good. Really good. All that's left is the blood. And I'm sure you have something in your bag of tricks to make that go away too."

I reached for the door, and then turned back to the color wall photo. "By the way, can I get you guys to do one of those with me in bed with Beyonce too? That would look great in the rec room." She stared at me. I stood there, my shoulders hunched over, trying to look as guileless as possible.

"I… can't believe that… "

"The Beyonce thing? Hey. It's no big deal. I know you're the CIA. You got bigger fish to fry."

"I don't have time for games, detective."

"Too busy re-writing all those rule books?"

Jo's complexion was turning pink. "The Washington Police tell us they're sending their best detective. You show up, take one look at the… "

I pointed. "Crime scene?"