Lock In (13 page)

Janis and May both looked confused. “Johnny didn’t have anything in his head,” May said, finally.

“I apologize for asking, but are you completely sure?” I asked. “A neural network isn’t something that’s accidentally put into someone’s head. It’s there to either send brain signals or to receive them.”

“He lived with me his entire life,” May said. “He lived here with his mother and Janis, and then when his mother died I looked after him. No way this could happen to him here.”

“So it would have to have been put in after he left,” Redhouse said.

“About that,” I said. “Why would Johnny decide to leave here if he’d never gone anywhere in his life?”

“He got a job,” Janis said.

“What kind of job?” I asked.

“He said he was an executive assistant,” Janis said.

“For whom?”

“I don’t know,” Janis said.

“Johnny got a friend to take him down to that computer building in Window Rock,” May said. “He’d heard they had an opening for a janitor, and that was something he could do. He wanted to be able to help me out. He went down and asked about the job and then the next day they asked him to come down again. And then when he came back that night, he gave me a thousand dollars and told me it was half of his first paycheck from his new job.”

“The janitorial position,” Redhouse said.

“No, the other one,” May said. “He said when he got there they asked him if he would like a different job that would pay better and let him travel. All he’d have to do is help his boss do things. He said it was like being a butler.”

“So he left,” I said. “What then?”

“Every week I’d get a money order from Johnny, and he would call sometimes,” May said. “He told me to move someplace nice and get new things, so I moved here. Then a few months ago he stopped calling but the money orders still arrived, so I didn’t worry too much.”

“When did the last money order arrive?”

“It came two days ago,” Janis said. “I picked up my grandmother’s mail for her.”

“Do you mind if I look at it?” I asked.

They both looked dubious at this.

“Agent Shane isn’t going to take it as evidence,” Redhouse said. “But it might have something on it that’s important.”

Janis got up to get the money order.

“Johnny never said anything about who he worked for?” I asked May.

“He said that his boss liked to be private,” May said. “I didn’t want Johnny to lose his job, so I never asked more than that.”

“Did he like his job?” I asked. By this time Janis had walked over to me with the money order. I scanned it quickly on one side, flipped it over, and did the same to the other side, then handed it back to her. “Thank you,” I said.

“He seemed to like it,” May said. “He never said anything bad about it.”

“He was excited to travel,” Janis said, sitting down again. “The first couple of times he called he mentioned that he was in California and in Washington.”

“The state or the District?” Redhouse asked.

“The District,” Janis said. “I think.”

“But then he said his boss didn’t like him talking about where he’d been, so he didn’t say anymore.”

“The last time he called, did he say anything unusual or tell you anything unusual?” I asked.

“No,” May said. “He said he hadn’t been feeling well … no. He said he was worried about something.”

“Worried about what?” I asked.

“A test?” May ventured. “Something that he had to do that he was nervous about. I don’t remember.”

“Okay,” I said.

“When do we get him back?” Janis asked. “I mean, when does he get to come home?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can check.”

“He needs to be buried here,” May said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “That’s a promise.”

May and Janis looked at me expressionlessly.

“They handled it well,” I said, after Redhouse and I left the trailer and headed to the car.

“Some of us try not to show too much emotion about death,” Redhouse said. “The thinking is if you go on about it, you can keep a spirit from moving on.”

“Do you believe that?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter whether I believe it or not,” Redhouse said.

“Fair point,” I said.

“Anything on the money order?”

“Serial number and routing information,” I said. “You want it?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Redhouse said. “I don’t know if the FBI would be happy with you for sharing information.”

“I think my partner would tell me that sharing with the local police is the polite thing to do, unless you hate that cop in particular.”

“You have an interesting partner.”

“That I do,” I said, and got into the car. “Let’s go down to the server farm.”

*   *   *

“Johnny Sani,” Loren Begay said. He was the head of HR for the Window Rock Computational Facility, as well as the head of several other departments, including sales and janitorial. The staff at WRCF was as bare bones as Redhouse had advertised. “I went to school with him. For a while.”

“I’m asking about something a little closer in time than that,” I said. “His family said he applied for a job here last year. Is that right?”

“He did,” Begay said. “I had to fire a janitor for sleeping on the job. Needed someone who could take the overnight shift. He applied. So did sixty other people. I gave it to one of the other janitors’ sister.”

“Johnny Sani’s family says that you called him back for a follow-up and that’s when he got offered a different job,” Redhouse said.

“I never called him back,” Begay said.

“You didn’t?” I asked.

“Why would I call him back?” Begay asked. “The man’s slow as they come. He could barely fill out the application.”

“You don’t need much of an education to push a broom,” Redhouse said.

“No, but I want someone with enough sense not to touch any buttons he’s not supposed to,” Begay said. “This place isn’t to capacity, but we still have clients.”

“Who are your clients, Mr. Begay?” I asked.

Begay looked over to Redhouse.

“It’s okay,” Redhouse said.

Begay looked unconvinced about the okayness but spoke anyway. “All of the Nation’s governmental departments are in here, plus a few others from nations around the country. Then we’ve got a few private clients, mostly businesses from around here or that do business around here. The biggest of those would be Medichord.”

“What’s Medichord?” I asked.

“Medical services company,” Begay said. “They contract to run the Nation’s medical services. Been doing that for six, seven years.”

“I remember when they came in,” Redhouse said. “Promised to train and promote Navajo medical personnel in return for an exclusive contract.”

“Have they?” I asked. Redhouse shrugged.

“It’s quasi-governmental and confidential medical information, so Medichord keeps all the Navajo data here instead of linking it up with the rest of their network,” Begay said.

“No one else would use this facility to do a job search?” I asked.

“I wish they would,” Begay said. “We’ve got the office space and we could use the business. But no.”

“Do any of the private companies send reps or IT guys here?”

“The companies we got, if they had an IT department, they probably wouldn’t need us so much,” Begay said. “But they don’t need to come here anyway. They can access their servers and data remotely with standard software. What we do is host and act as backup if for some reason what IT people they have do something stupid. Which does happen.”

“Can someone hack into this place?” I asked.

“I should tell you no, but you’re a Haden, so I’m guessing you’re not stupid about these things,” Begay said. “So I’ll tell you that if anything is connected to the outside world, it’s hackable. That said, all the Nation data is on servers that are accessible only from Nation computers that are either GPS-tagged or require two-factor authentication or both.”

“And that includes this Medichord company,” I said.

“It does,” said Begay. “Why are you asking about Johnny Sani?”

“He died,” I said.

“That’s too bad,” Begay said. “He was a nice guy.”

“I thought you said he was slow.”

“He was slow,” Begay said. “Doesn’t mean he wasn’t nice.”

*   *   *

“This keeps getting more fucked up as we go along, doesn’t it?” Vann asked me. It was seven thirty in D.C. and from the ambient sound around her I could tell she was in a bar again, possibly picking up from last night on her quest to get laid. I was in the Window Rock Police Department, at a spare desk, using my inside voice.

“We have two choices at this point,” I said. “We have to believe that either a guy who couldn’t get a job pushing a mop is also a savant Integrator who somehow lured Nicholas Bell into that hotel room on the pretense that he was a tourist looking for a thrill, or we have to believe that someone tricked this poor son of a bitch away from his home, implanted a neural network in his head, and then convinced him to play along with their plan, whatever that was, which somehow involved Bell.”

“And then commit suicide,” Vann said. “Don’t forget that.”

“How can I forget?” I said. “I talked to this guy’s family today.”

“On a brighter note, I got a judge to okay our record pull for Bell and Kearney,” Vann said.

“And?”

“Bell’s don’t tell us anything we didn’t already know,” Vann said. “Bell just signed a long-term contract with Lucas Hubbard, as in, just
today
. He is also first call with a bunch of well-off Hadens when he’s not tied up with Hubbard. And then he does piecework for the NIH, just like every other Integrator. Well, until next Monday, when Abrams-Kettering kills
that
little program.”

“What about Kearney?” I asked.

“He’s got a long-term contract, too,” Vann said. “And as it happens, his is with one Samuel Schwartz, lead counsel for Accelerant.”

“That explains last night,” I said.

“You lost me,” Vann said.

“Hubbard and Schwartz were at my dad’s little soirée last night,” I said. “Hubbard was riding Bell, but Schwartz was riding a woman Integrator. Said that his usual Integrator had a previous engagement.”

“Yeah, blowing up Loudoun Pharma,” Vann said. “Who was the woman Integrator?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You know it’s not polite to ask.”

“Go through the D.C. Integrator listings,” Vann said. “You’ll find her.”

“So, Bell with Hubbard and Kearney with Schwartz,” I said.

“What about it?”

“Doesn’t that seem a little coincidental?” I asked.

“That two Integrators involved in weird shit on the same day work for the two most powerful people at the same corporation?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Honestly?” Vann said. “Yeah. But here’s the thing about that. There’s ten thousand working Integrators in the whole world. Maybe two thousand of them are in the U.S. So there aren’t that many of them to go around. D.C.’s got maybe twenty in the area. Meanwhile there are probably a hundred thousand Hadens in the area, because Hadens flock to urbanized areas that can support them. One Integrator for five thousand Hadens. You’re going to see a lot of overlap.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Definitely,” Vann said. “If you want to start making connections, we’re going to need more to go on.”

“All right, one more data point to throw at you,” I said. “Medichord.”

“What about it?”

“Medical care and services company,” I said. “Has the contracts here in the Navajo Nation.”

“Okay,” Vann said. “So?”

“Medichord is part of Four Corners Blue Cross,” I said. “Guess who Four Corners Blue Cross is owned by.”

“If you say Accelerant, you’re going to make me unhappy,” Vann said.

“Have another drink,” I suggested.

“I’m pacing myself,” Vann said. “I want to be able to feel later tonight.”

“A lot comes back to Hubbard and Schwartz and Accelerant,” I said. “We have too much piling up for it to be coincidence. I mean, hell, Schwartz is even Bell’s lawyer.”

“All right,” Vann said. “But let me say it again: If you’re going to suggest Schwartz was somehow complicit with the Loudoun Pharma bombing you’re going to need more than an Integrator contract. And you’re forgetting that when the bombing was going down, Schwartz was at a party with one of the most famous men on the face of the Earth and an FBI agent who, if hauled up in front of a court, would have to admit to seeing him there.
You
are his alibi, Shane.”

“There is that,” I said.

“Plus Baer was actually Kearney’s client,” Vann said. “He contracted with him three times in the last two years. It’s evidence of a prior relationship.”

“Not all of my ideas are going to be gold,” I said.

“Stop thinking for the evening,” Vann said. “You’ve done enough for the day. When are you coming back?”

“I’m about to finish up here,” I said. “The Window Rock police are letting me park my loaner threep here for a couple of days in case I need to come back. Once that’s squared away I thought I might try visiting that place I’m renting a room in.”

“Crazy idea,” Vann said. “Get to it. Good night, Shane.”

“Wait,” I said.

“Talking to you is cramping my evening’s planned festivities,” Vann said.

“Johnny Sani,” I said.

“What about him?”

“The family wants the body back.”

“When we’re done with him they’re welcome to him. The FBI will work with them so they can have someone pick up the body.”

“I don’t think his grandmother and sister have that sort of money,” I said.

“I don’t know what to tell you about that, Shane,” Vann said.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll let them know.” I hung up and switched back over to my outside voice. “I’m about done here,” I said, to Redhouse.

“No one’s using that desk,” he said, pointing to where I was sitting. “If you want to just plug in there, there’s a socket on the floor. Captain told me to ask you to let us know before you’re going to drop by, but otherwise you’re fine for a few days.”

“I appreciate it,” I said.

“Did you talk to them about Sani’s body?” Redhouse asked.

“I did,” I said. “When we’re done with it I’ll give you a contact in D.C. to have the body shipped.”