Crack-Up (44 page)

Jeremy shrieked.
 
At the same time, he stumbled backwards, toppling into his chair, then tipping over in it, and crashing to the floor.
 
His black sneakers dangled in the air.
 
Fellows and Strecker and I soon hovered over him.
 
No one helped him up.
 
He didn’t try to get up.
 
He only stared at me—my face or my hands.
 
The shouting, or the crash, drew two co-workers of Jeremy’s to the door.
 
Strecker shooed them away with a flash of her badge.

Fellows smirked.
 
“Something the matter, Mister Crane?”

Jeremy labored for breath.
 
“This can’t be . . . can’t be happening.
 
It’s not . . . not possible.”

“The database project was the key for you,” Strecker said, casting her steely eyes downwards.
 
“We know all about that.
 
We know you knew all about the project from the beginning—including what John Helms was trying to do for
US
intelligence through the software design.
 
You knew, Jeremy, because you were on the original project team for a month, before being reassigned.”

“Don’t know,” Jeremy gasped, “what you’re talking about.”

Strecker ignored him.
 
“And as a computer scientist, and a very bright man, with a PhD from MIT, you would have no problem in grasping the science of predictive analytics—or ‘data mining’ as it’s often known—and what’s more, you would have no trouble in applying that science.
 
Expertly.”

“I said . . . I want a lawyer.”

Fellows kicked Jeremy in the ribs—or at least in the flab concealing them.
 
“Hey, we asking you any questions?
 
No!”

Strecker continued.
 
“Hacking into FDI’s database wouldn’t be a problem for you either, Mister Crane.
 
Even without the backdoor you built into the software, and that alarmed John Helms so much during the last days of his life.
 
You’re a hacker from way back.
 
As a freshman undergrad, you got yourself—along with a few buddies of yours—suspended for an entire semester for hacking into the dean’s office and changing grades.”

“Leave me alone,” he said.
 
“All of you.”

Instead, Strecker dropped into a catcher’s squat.
 
“We know you worked from home, not here.
 
I suppose the company intranet and back-up tapes made destroying evidence too problematic.
 
But it’s more than a bit suspicious—Wouldn’t you say, Jeremy?--doing all that digital shredding on your home computer shortly after Argus Ward’s arrest.
 
No, don’t answer that.
 
You want a lawyer.”

“You going to arrest me?” Jeremy said, his breathing improved.
 
No one spoke right away, so he added, “I thought not.
 
So get out.
 
Or I’ll call security.
 
You’re trespassing.”

“As I was saying,” Strecker said, “you did it all from home, and all by yourself too.
 
Running your fancy algorithms.
 
Sifting through the souls of millions.
 
Literally millions.
 
Just to identify a handful of specific individuals with weaknesses you could exploit.
 
To carry off the assassination.”

“Help!” Jeremy cried.
 
“Security!”

“We know about the flight attendant you hired to strip—Ms. Elizabeth Hardtack—and we’ve interviewed all the passengers you sent aboard that corporate jet, and they’ve confessed.
 
We know about Mister Bernard Simpson too, not to mention that woman in the gold dress you sent to Randolph House in
Alexandria
to warn Argus Ward against contacting his psychiatrist.
 
And we know about the man you had posing as Mister Ward’s long-lost father, to encourage Mister Ward’s mental breakdown, and to instill in him a violent obsession with John Helms.”

Jeremy struggled to get off his back.
 
Strecker stood and grabbed him by the arm.
 
Fellows took hold of the other one, and together they hoisted the heavy man to his feet.

“But there were even more,” Strecker said.
 
“Behind the scenes players you manipulated.
 
Some burglar, maybe, to break into houses and switch pills.
 
Someone to research your two potential assassins, Argus Ward and Sally Anne Bilchik.
 
Someone to tail them—monitor their mental disintegration.
 
Someone to leave that message on your own answering machine to support your ruse as victim.
 
There must be at least a dozen people in all.
 
You preyed on each of them, Mister Crane, preyed on their secrets and their failings like a digital age Satan, you did.”

Jeremy was on the telephone by now, standing by his desk, handset to his ear.
 
“Security, get up here.
 
I’ve got intruders in my office.
 
Trespassers.
 
And they won’t leave.
 
Hurry.”
 
He hung up and turned to us triumphantly.
 
I felt my first twinge of doubt that Jeremy was going to be shocked into a confession.

Strecker jumped back in his face.
 
“You wanted John Helms dead, no doubt, but apparently not enough to murder him yourself.
 
So I guess you’re aware of what happens to schizophrenics who murder, aware of what’s going to happen inevitably to Argus Ward.
 
They take the needle, like everyone else.
 
Or else spend the rest of their natural lives cooped up behind bars.”

Jeremy glanced at me.
 
His eyes, at least when trained in my direction, I thought, remained wary.

Fellows crowded Jeremy too.
 
“We know you faked complete psychosis down in
North Carolina
.
 
Why—I’ll give you two good reasons.
 
Maybe you set yourself up as the third assassin because you were willing to do the wet work yourself if the other two failed.
 
Or maybe it was only to help disguise your leading role in the assassination plot by playing victim.
 
Maybe it was both.
 
I think it was both.
 
But—“

“What’s going on in here?”
 
In the open doorway stood a trim, middle-aged man in a blue and white paramilitary uniform, a security guard from Helms Technology’s private security force.
 
He wore a badge.
 
He holstered a gun.

“We were just leaving,” Strecker said to him and immediately headed for the door.

Fellows followed on her heels, saying to Jeremy, “We’ll be in touch, Genius.”

I stayed put beside the overturned swivel chair.
 
Jeremy stared at me impatiently.

“Him too,” Jeremy said to the security guard, who had stepped inside and away from the door to allow Strecker and Fellows passage.

“Beg your pardon?” said the guard.

“He goes too.”
 
Jeremy pointed at me.

The guard looked straight at me.
 
“Who?”

“Him!”
 
Jeremy pointed now with a fully outstretched arm.

“I don’t understand,” said the guard.
 
“There’s no one there, where you’re pointing.
 
There’s only you and me in this room now.
 
Are you . . . are you alright, Sir?”

The guard’s name was Sam Dundy.
 
I know because he worked for me.
 
The wheels of a huge conglomerate sometimes turn slowly, and it would be another two weeks before Helms Technology would replace my soon-to-be-defunct firm’s security force with that of another, a competitor’s.
 
But with all the turmoil, Jeremy had failed to make the connection.
 
The color drained from his face.
 
He didn’t answer Sam.
 
He simply stared at me, and for a second time, fear—and fear alone—lit the lamps behind his eyes.

Sam said, “I’m—I’m . . . going for the doctor” and shut the door tight. (You were beautiful, Sam!)

Jeremy approached me, halting on the opposite side of his overturned chair.
 
He shut his eyes tightly and held them shut for a count of three, then opened them, only to be disappointed to still be seeing me.

I said to him, “I’m the one who figured it all out, you know.
 
Me, Argus Ward.
 
It all came together when I realized that you’d always intended for your murder plot to be discovered.
 
But you never counted on you being discovered as the party behind it all, that’s for sure.”

Jeremy sighed.
 
“Guess I need my little pills after all.”

“Two paranoid schizophrenics with designs on murdering the same person—that could be written off as coincidence.
 
Or, as it turned out in my case, as one mad person influencing another.
 
But three paranoid schizophrenics wanting the same man’s blood at the same time?
 
That’s another story entirely.
 
All you had to do to expose your own plot was to let the police know there was a third potential mad assassin.
 
You.

“That’s why, Jeremy, soon after I impersonated Detective Fellows while visiting you at the psychiatric institute in Bethesda—And you recognized me, don’t say you didn’t!—you took the opportunity to let the cops know about you—potential psycho assassin number three—by phoning DC Homicide and asking to speak to the real Detective Fellows.”

“You can’t tell me anything I don’t already know,” Jeremy said, “and if you do, it’s all made up nonsense.
 
So why don’t you just go away?
 
Just make yourself go, poof, or whatever.
 
You bore me now.”

I bitch-slapped Jeremy, leaving his cheeks smeared by my reddened palms, his expression dumbfounded.

“Ouch!” he said.
 
“That really hurt.”

“I know it’s the data mining project you hate, Jeremy—how it’s being used, by big business, by US Intelligence.
 
If you ever came to hate John Helms it was only for facilitating its development.
 
You’re counting on your fantastic murder to bring public pressure on Congress to halt the data mining.
 
You’ve sacrificed John—you’ve sacrificed me—in the service of what you perceive to be a larger good, isn’t that right?”

“ ‘Perceive,’ ” he spat, holding a sore cheek.
 
“There’s nothing perceived about it.
 
It’s a genuine, Big Brother-ish nightmare I’m ending.
 
No one—certainly not our government—should have the power to make such intrusive personal revelations, such uncanny predictions, about individual human beings, about any of hundreds of millions of American citizens.
 
We flesh and blood people need our privacy, oh, foul figment of my imagination, for without our little secrets and our personal mysteries, there is no freedom for us.
 
There is only the tyranny of the one in the know.
 
To predict is to control, to coerce, to corrupt.
 
Now off with you.
 
Poof!”

“Strecker,” I said directly into the microphone beneath my shirt, taped to my bare chest.
 
“Fellows.
 
Get in here fast.
 
Before I kill someone in a more or less sane state.”

Jeremy didn’t react, and he suddenly wasn’t looking at me anymore.
 
Having lifted his hand from his cheek, he’d taken to examining his wet, red fingers.
 
He sniffed them.
 
He tasted them.
 
Then he looked at me again as his right arm, shaking and hesitant, led a stubby forefinger into the center of my chest.

“You’re real,” he whispered.