Digital Divide (Rachel Peng) (38 page)

“Probably because of my position against OACET,” he replied.

“Why do you think that would make you a target?”

“I don’t know. I suppose if they were looking to attack you, they might have thought I could have helped.”

She flipped her implant to reading mode and made sure Edwards noticed as she carefully wrote that statement out in longhand, then asked: “Has anyone approached you in the last six months to take a stand against OACET?”

“Yes. Every day. My office can put together a list if you need names.”

“I mean someone with the power to make this happen. Trucks, kidnapping, manipulating security systems… This is big-ticket stuff.  Your garden-variety conspiracy nutjob doesn’t have the pull.” Rachel counted to three, then stuck an innocently quizzical expression to her face and looked up from her notepad to Edwards. “Are you involved with anyone like that?”

“It’s Washington,” he evaded. “I’m involved with a lot of people like that.”

“I’m asking about specific people who might be too interested in OACET,” she said, and started feeding him hints from her conversation with Charley Brazee in the First District Station parking garage. “Say, for example, someone willing to fund a potential political campaign in exchange for an anti-cyborg platform.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not campaigning yet. I can’t take donations.”

Rachel watched his shoulders for any sign of dimpling. “As you said, this is Washington. We all know how the system really works. Has anyone offered you any incentives of any kind?”

“No,” he said. “Nothing beyond a few rounds of golf at the Congressional Country Club.”

Edwards still hadn’t lied.
What the hell was Charley talking about when he mentioned a payoff?
Rachel growled to herself. 

“Who took you to play golf?” she asked. The Congressional Country Club was where the President played. It had a ten-year waiting list and a membership fee somewhere upwards of a hundred thousand dollars. She knew Hanlon’s biography better than her own; he sat on the Club’s Board of Directors.

“Is that relevant?”

“Maybe,” she said as she jotted three entwined Cs on her notepad. 

“Two senators, a congressman, and a lobbyist. I went to Yale Law.  Two of them had kids who wanted to apply. I said I’d see what I could do.”

“What about the others?”

“I suppose they might have been putting out feelers,” Edwards said cautiously.

“Can you be more specific?”

“No. I’m not comfortable giving out their names.”

“You’re positive you’ve never received any type of payout from these people?” Rachel pushed. Edwards used to be a lawyer; he could tell the truth without telling everything he knew.

“I said no.” He was growing red again, but his shoulders stayed clean. 

“Okay.” She thought back to what Charley had told her. Charley had never specifically claimed it was Edwards who had accepted the payout. “Is there anyone in your office who would accept money in exchange for influencing you?”

Edwards laughed. “I like my staff, but they don’t have much influence they have over me.”

“We had a tip.”
Sorry, Charley.
“There’s evidence that someone in your office received a payout, and that it was linked to a prominent politician.”

He was suddenly wary. “What evidence?”

A sticky pile of ash,
she thought. “It was from a confidential informant.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, and was sincere. 

Rachel pushed her pen around the pad in a circle, sweeping over and under the note to check out the country club.
What the hell. Go for broke.
“Our informant linked you to a senator. I will,” she said, tapping her pad, “be calling the Congressional Country Club and asking for the names of those members who invited you to play. 

“I am very persuasive.” She cut him off before he could interrupt. “I will know those names before the day is out. If they confirm the tip, I will keep chasing this until I learn how it goes back to Glazer. It’ll better for you if you save me the effort.”

Edwards flashed red; he knew there was only one reason she would pursue this line of the investigation. “Why are you treating me like a suspect?”

“Why aren’t you giving me those names? And don’t,” she added when he took a breath, “argue the personal privacy angle. You can’t come down here and ask for my help, then shut me down when you don’t like my methods.”

He paused, then gave a tight nod. “Randy Summerville was the lobbyist.”

“The telecommunications guy?” She wasn’t surprised. The Agents enjoyed free crystal-clear wireless networking, rain or shine. The telecommunications industry was paranoid that the technology could be adapted to household use. 

“Yes. He implied that I could count on his support.”

“Nice coup,” she admitted. 

“Yeah.” His colors took on a silent purple-gray sigh as he watched all of that money slip through his fingers. “The senator is Richard Hanlon.”

Rachel didn’t bother to write Hanlon’s name down.

Edwards noticed. “You already knew.”

“I told you, we received a tip. The source implied you were working with him directly to overthrow OACET. If you hadn’t come down here this morning, I would have been knocking on your door this afternoon.” She was exaggerating; it probably would have taken her a few days to get around to it.

“I didn’t know anything about this.”
Truth.
“I played a round of golf with Hanlon, had a few drinks with him a week later to follow up…Agent Peng, I’m ambitious, I’m driven, but I’m not a bad guy. Whoever claimed I was a part of a conspiracy against you was wrong.”

“Uh-huh.” Rachel let her eyes drift over Edwards’ shoulder towards the entrance with its carved wooden owl doorstop, then back to her notepad. “Sure.”

“Listen…”

“You nearly got me killed,” she said tersely. “You let three gun-toting men attack me. Forgive me if I don’t believe you. Now,” she said as she reached out to the community server and started recording. “Tell me what Hanlon wanted from you. Be specific.”

Edwards sat back in frustration. “There are no specifics,” he said. “That’s not how politics works. We had a golf game, and later we had drinks. He never mentioned OACET, or cyborgs, or anything related to your agency.”

“What was implied?” Rachel asked. 

“That he approved of my opinions on law enforcement and technology.” Edwards thought it over, then added: “And that if some cases ever appeared on my docket that might allow me to apply those opinions, I should hear them out.”

“Instead of recusing yourself?”

The judge shrugged. “I suppose so. As I said, there are no specifics.”

Interesting. She had assumed Hanlon was courting Edwards because of Edwards’ political ambitions, but Hanlon might be laying the groundwork for a hearing or a trial. 

Rachel scribbled notes as quickly as the ideas came to her. If Glazer had tried to frame OACET and succeeded... If the crime was local, an Agent would be brought to trial in D.C....
It wouldn’t be the first time a docket had been rearranged,
she thought.
Hanlon could have put Edwards into play and locked the verdict.

“What are you thinking?” Edwards asked. 

“Things might be falling into place,” she said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Tell me,” he insisted. 

“Give me a few days,” Rachel told him. “It’s nothing but guesswork right now.”

Edwards reached out and ripped her notepad out from under her hand. Rachel was so surprised she didn’t bother to pick her pen up. It left a long black streak across the paper, cutting through her loose loopy script.

“Wow,” she heard herself say, then bit down on her next comment. She was still recording and Mulcahy did not need to see her go after the judge. “Please give that back,” she said instead.

He held up a finger as he flipped the pages. “Your handwriting is the worst I’ve ever seen.”

I’m blind, asshole.
She rarely bothered to flip frequencies when taking notes during an interview; she’d be able to make sense of them, even if no one else could. 

“This,” he said, and pointed to the scrawl underneath the bold heading, GLAZER. “Tell me what this says.”

“Thank you for coming!” Rachel snapped at him, and started packing up her stuff. She found a plastic evidence bag in her purse, shook it out, and dropped the cupcake into it. The cappuccino was still too hot for anything but tiny sips, so she reluctantly pushed it away as she stood to leave.

Edwards called her bluff. “Tell me what this says,” he repeated, waving the notepad at her.

“Keep it,” she said. Most of the relevant case notes had already been transposed to the new notepad in her jacket pocket. “Consider it an early birthday present.”

“Tell me,” he insisted, and he reached across the table and grabbed her wrist. 

Rachel didn’t bother to twist away. Instead, she spun towards the counter where the baristas were watching the confrontation with open mouths. “Call the police,” she said. “Right now.”

“Don’t.” Edwards released her as the pretty barista reached for the store phone. “It’s just a misunderstanding.”

“I have a lot of those with you,” Rachel said, rubbing her wrist. It was the same one that Jason had grabbed the day before. She might need to start wearing thicker shirts.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he slid her old notepad across the marble tabletop. “The last few days have been stressful.”

Lie,
she noticed. The last few days had no doubt been stressful for him, but Edwards was anything but sorry. Rachel leaned down and plucked her notepad off of the table. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Agent Peng? I am sorry.”

Nope.
She nodded curtly and pulled her purse strap over her shoulder, then dropped her connection to the OACET server. 

“Is there anything you need from me?”

“That owl,” she said on a whim. The door was closed against the afternoon heat but the carved antique wooden owl was pushed to the side, waiting for its opportunity to prop open the door and let in the evening air.

“What?”

“I’m walking out of here with it,” Rachel said. She stood and shoved her old notepad into her purse. “Put it right.”

She waved goodbye to the baristas as she crossed the coffee shop, scooping up the wooden owl on her way out.

The owl was heavier than she had expected, roughly twenty pounds of old weathered oak. It was tall enough to rest its head against her shoulder as she cradled it in the crook of her right arm. Once upon a time, it had been painted; there were flecks of blue and gray stuck in the deeper cracks. The golden rims around its eyes suggested these had been bright yellow.

Well, Madeline,
she thought, the owl’s new name coming to her for no obvious reason,
I sure hope you aren’t someone’s family heirloom.

Mulcahy would pitch a quiet fit if he learned about her petty theft, or that she had put Edwards in the position of accomplice, but Rachel was tired of playing nice. The judge needed to learn that every time he tried to coerce her, she would respond in kind.

Although Edwards seemed a slow learner… Half a block behind her, Edwards had his checkbook out and was laughing with the baristas. It wasn’t a real problem for him if he could make it go away by hurling money at it. Rachel shifted Madeline to her other arm and wondered what should come next. Vandalism? Creating a public nuisance? Indecent exposure, perhaps? So many options. She’d just have to wait for the next opportunity to present itself.

She caught a cab back to First District Station and returned to the fishbowl. The room was empty, the other members of the task force off on their own lunchtime errands. Rachel positioned Madeline on the folding table within the organized tangle of Santino’s shiny new computer system. The owl peered out at her from between the two oversized monitors. She inspected the setup, then pulled a potted orchid forward to give Madeline a dapper floral hat. Perfect.

Rachel dropped down on the couch and pulled out the two notepads. Her run-in with Edwards was nagging at her, and not just because she could still feel his hand around her wrist. She flipped her implant to reading mode and struggled to read her own notes, trying to make sense of how Charley’s tip and Edwards’ generally honest responses might fit together.

There was a fast tapping on the glass door, and Rachel looked up, blinking. Santino jumped into focus as he entered the room. “Hey, how was lunch?”

“Unexpectedly productive,” she replied, and outlined her brief encounter with Edwards. 

“Huh.” Santino sat down at his workstation. “Seems wrong, somehow. A judge taking the time out of his work day to track you down?”

“He’s a bully,” she said, shaking her head. “This wasn’t the first time he’s tried to get me alone to push or coerce me. I don’t even think he realizes that’s what he’s doing.”

“But you don’t think he’s involved?”

She mulled it over. “No,” she finally said. “He’s like the rest of us. Someone’s been pulling his strings and he wants it to stop.”