MIND FIELDS (17 page)

“I know.  If you did, I couldn’t have fit in here.  Which reminds me … if you wouldn’t mind, I would really appreciate it if you would pick up a little bit more hard drive memory.  It is awfully cramped in here.  I don’t even have room to decompress all of my files.  I am not asking for the Taj Majal, but I would like to have a little room to stretch out.”

Richie marveled at how far Daisy’s personality had developed since he had first programmed her.  “I’ll see what I can do.  In the meantime, how about getting me a printout of that phone log from this morning?”

“You’ve got it.”

The printer whirred quietly and spit out three pages, listing all the phone calls in and out of BNI between seven-thirty and nine-thirty that morning.

Kincade glanced down the list.  He stopped midway down the second page and raised an eyebrow.

“Daisy, I could kiss you.”

“Technically, you could not. If it would make you feel better, you could kiss the monitor; however, that would not likely help me gain the acceptance of your wife.”

Richie laughed.

“Can you network with Detective Hank Holiday’s home computer?”

“Sure.  Piece of cake.”

“Great.  Get a message to him.  Use level II encryption, encode sequence ‘burrito-man.’  Message reads:  Hank, ready to do some digging?  I need for you to work your magic and see what you can find out about …”

Chapter fourteen

  Early September is usually a beautiful time of year in Baltimore, but this year, Labor Day was followed by several days of overcast weather, often accompanied by a cool drizzle to dampen the spirits.  Sandi had tried to get back into her routine in the lab, but she just couldn’t seem to concentrate.  She had long ago come to terms with the fact that Paul left their research lab for the private sector and abandoned her in the process, but the latest blow was the toughest to bear. 

When Paul Hingston left Hopkins to join BNI, Sandi realized he was not the altruistic man she thought she had fallen in love with.  She was upset with herself for misjudging his character as much as she was upset with him for leaving.  She had no desire to rekindle their relationship, but during the initial months after he joined BNI she had remained convinced that he was still a good man who simply chose to follow a different path.  She continued to have great respect for him as a scientist

Sandi had managed to immerse herself in her work and leave the bitterness of Paul’s departure behind, but when BNI patented the neuronanobot technology, she was infuriated.  When she reviewed the patent applications and realized that BNI had stolen her work, she lost all respect for Paul, and was convinced that he had lost respect for himself as well; he never even had the decency to call her after reviewing the data that she had sent him, irrefutable data showing that BNI had exactly duplicated her work at Hopkins.

As the months passed, Sandi had managed to let go of the bitterness once again.  Although she could never forgive Paul for stealing her work, the pain faded with time.  Her anger morphed into pity for the man she once admired. She was just starting to get excited about going into the lab again when Detective Kincade walked into her life.

Kincade’s inquiry had opened a festering wound that she was barely managing to keep covered.  She had not been able to get Paul Hingston out of her mind since that day Kincade had stopped to greet her outside the lab.  As much as she tried, she could not hate Paul, but she no longer felt any need to protect him.  When she sent him that packet containing her files nine months ago, she had hoped he would come to his senses, do the right thing.  She didn’t want to see him in jail; she just wanted to right a wrong.  This time was different.  Now, she was determined to get to the bottom of this, no matter what the consequences.  She was convinced that Paul had stolen her work.  She had the proof, and now she had the ear of a detective who was willing to investigate the Goliath that was BNI.

Sandi sat at her desk, flipping Kincade’s business card over and over until the paper began to go limp.  She stared down at the number and thought once again about Paul.

  “Ah, the hell with it.”

She picked up the phone and punched in the number.  The lab’s phones were all still manual push-button phones.

“Detective Richard Kincade, please,” she said into the handset.

She waited a few minutes before someone answered. “Uh…yeah.  How can I help you?”

“Sandi Fletcher.  Remember, you came to see me the other day at Hopkins.”

“Sorry, miss,” Hank Holliday said at the other end.  “Detective Kincade’s on leave.  Is there something I can help you with?”

Sandi hesitated.  “Well...I really wanted to talk to Detective Kincade.”

Hank glanced around the room, and then spoke softly into the phone.  “Give me a number where he can reach you.”

Sandi gave him her cell phone number.

“Eh-hmm,” Hank cleared his throat as a couple of the secretaries walked by him on their way to the coffee maker.  “Yes ma’am.  I’ll look into that right away.  Give me a number where I can reach you.”

She repeated the number.  His eyes darted back and forth between the departing secretaries and the note pad on his desk as he jotted it down.  “Right, got it.  Thank you, ma’am.  I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

__

A few minutes later, Sandi’s cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Fletcher?” Richie asked.

“Yes, this is Dr. Fletcher.”

“Right. This is Detective Kincade.  I just got your message.”

“Oh, Detective.  Thank you for getting back to me so quickly. I really wanted to talk to...”

“Not now,” Richie interrupted tersely.  “I’d rather do this in person.  Can you meet me at Lexington Market?  We’ll talk over lunch.” 

It was obvious to Sandi that he thought someone might be eavesdropping.  “Sure, I guess so.  Where?”

“There’s a great little Mexican place there called Pedro’s.”

“Ah good, I love little Mexicans.”

Richie hesitated.  “Boy, you don’t miss a beat, do you, Doc?”

“I try not to.  The world passes you by too fast.”

“Ain’t that the truth?  Meet you at noon?”

“I’ll be there.”

The line disconnected. 
How strange,
she thought
.  Why on Earth would anyone be listening in?  He must be paranoid.  Maybe this was a mistake.

Sandi went back and forth in her mind all morning about whether she should actually go to meet with Kincade, but in the end she knew that she would be useless in the lab until she could get some kind of resolution.  She was more distracted than ever.  Besides, she loved a good burrito.

Kincade was at Pedro’s Mexican Food counter at Lexington Market when she arrived.  “Hope you like burritos.”

“With a passion, Detective.”

“Good.  These are the best in town.”

“I know,” Sandi said, turning to the heavy-set woman behind the counter.  “Juana, give me the usual.”

“She looked up at Sandi and smiled.  ‘Jou got it, Doc.”

Richie was impressed. 
My kind of girl,
he thought to himself.

They waited for their food, and then grabbed a table.

Richie looked around the room carefully.  Once he was satisfied they were not being watched, he turned to Sandi.  “So, whatcha got for me, Doc?”

“Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I still don’t think too much of your mind-controlling nanobot theory as an explanation for those accidents and seizures at BNI.  On the other hand, I’m convinced that something is going on there.”

Kincade was a little disappointed.  This case was going in circles, and without the Department’s help he needed some little miracles to happen quickly.

“What do you mean, Doc?  This isn’t about that stuff you started telling me about BNI stealing your work, is it?”

Sandi could see the look in his eyes.

“Well...”

“Hey, I just work in the Motor Vehicle Division.  I’m not sure that I’m the...”

“Yes.”  She glared straight into his eyes.  “You are the guy I want to talk to.  Look, Detective, I’m not stupid.  If I go to the cops, no offense intended, and tell them that BNI is stealing my work, they won’t lift a finger.  No one who cares a lick about his career is going to start poking around at a behemoth like BNI.”

“Now you tell me,” he laughed.

“I take it your not on voluntary leave, then?”

“You take it right, Doc.”

“Sorry.  But that means you’ve got plenty of time on your hands, right?”

“Well, I...”

“Look, this thing is really getting to me.  I’ve got to know how Paul is stealing my data.  I’m so paranoid that I can’t get anything done anymore.  I’ve just been spinning my wheels at the lab for the past few months.  I’m wasting time, and I can’t live like that.  I’m an overachiever, Detective, and if I’m not achieving, I’m not living.  You’ve got to help me.”

Kincade sat quietly, sipping his Coke.

“God, say something, would you?”  Sandi was fidgeting in her chair.  She’d hardly taken a bite of her burrito.  She was not the patient sort.

“Look, I know that something is going on at BNI, I can feel it in my bones.  I may just work Motor Vehicles, but I’m a snooper at heart.  I’m not just a traffic cop, I’m the guy who sniffs out the suspicious accidents, the ones that look like homicides or recreational de-chipping jobs.”

Sandi looked confused.

“De-chipping jobs.  You know, the ones where the kids have the safety chips removed from their cars so they can drag-race or at least drive fast enough to impress a girl.”

“Fast cars don’t impress me, Detective.”

“No, I didn’t suppose they would.”  Sandi Fletcher didn’t seem the wild type.  “But there are those they do impress.  Anyhow, my job is to track down the ones that do the de-chipping.”

“Great.  So I’m asking a traffic cop to investigate high tech theft going on at one of the world’s most influential corporations.”

“Yup.  That’s about right.  I’m definitely your guy.”

They looked at each other and laughed.

Kincade took a sip of Coke. “Look, one way or another I’m going to find out what’s going on at BNI.  I know Anderson is hiding something, something a lot more sinister than stolen data.  They were too anxious to get me out of the way. You and I may be looking for two different things, but I’ve got a hunch we’ll find them in the same place.”

He put his cup down and leaned back, arms folded across his chest.  “Tell me what you’ve got.”

Sandi proceeded to detail the whole story about her work on nanobots, her relationship with Paul, his defection to BNI and her discovery in the patent applications that BNI had exactly duplicated her work at the Hopkins lab.  Kincade was no scientist, but she made it quite clear to him that the extent to which her work had been duplicated was far too great to be coincidental.  She also told him of the packet of data she had sent to Paul, the packet that he had ignored, the packet of evidence that proved her theory.

Kincade listened intently until she had finished.

  “Be careful, Doc.  This proof you sent them, if they know you have it… I’m surprised they haven’t come after you yet.  There’s still a piece missing here.”

“Paul may be a self-indulgent capitalist, but he would never hurt me.”

“You may know Dr. Hingston, but he’s not alone.  Believe me, these are not nice men.”

__

  Richie arrived home at about two-thirty.  He still had his doubts that JT Anderson would have gone to the trouble of having one of his employees steal Dr. Fletcher’s work.  It wasn’t that he thought Anderson was incapable of such a thing, only that he had too much at stake to risk being caught.  Besides, Anderson was supposed to be the smartest guy on the planet, at least that’s what the press would lead you to believe.  He shouldn’t need to steal research from a local academician.

  Just the same, Richie was determined to approach this case with the same thoroughness as he approached all his cases.  Other than an all too obvious breaking and entering, Watergate-style, the most likely source of data theft would be through a direct Internet uplink between Sandi’s computer, where her data was stored, and a computer at BNI. 

  “Daisy?”

  “Yes, Detective?”

  “I need you to do some checking for me.  Make this top priority, O.K.?”

  “Of course.  What would you like me to look for?”

“I need you to cross-reference all the phone calls and broadband Internet links that were made between Dr. Fletcher’s home or lab, and BNI or the homes of any BNI employees over the past two years.”

“All BNI employees?”

“Well, I guess that could take just shy of forever.  I’ll tell you what, just make it the homes of JT Anderson and Paul Hingston, O.K.?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Look for any recurrent patterns, any time sequences that would be consistent with a Net uplink that could be used for data transmission.”

“Starting search.  Estimated time to completion: fourteen hours.”

“Fourteen hours!”

BNI’s records are all encrypted and monitored.  In order for me to complete the search without their knowledge, I will have to use circuitous algorithms.  Of course, if you don’t mind letting them know we’re poking around in their files, I could speed the process up considerably.”

“No. That’s OK, Daisy.  You just take your time.”

“Thank you, Detective.  May I get started now?”

Richie smiled.  “Compute away.”

“No interruptions please.”

“Right.”

Richie shook his head and smiled. 
Just like having a second wife,
he thought
.
He walked upstairs to the bedroom to change.  A hot shower seemed like a pretty good idea.