Shadow, sixteens, pens, closets . . . This was a whole new world to Amelia Sachs.
Geddes enjoyed having a receptive audience. He leaned forward. "You know that SSD has an education division?"
She thought back to the chart in the brochure that Mel Cooper had downloaded. "Yes. EduServe."
"But Sterling didn't tell you about it, did he?"
"No."
"Because he doesn't like to let on that its main function is to collect everything it possibly can about children. Starting with kindergarten. What they buy, what they watch, what computer sites they go to, what their grades are, medical records from school . . . And that's very, very valuable information for retailers. But you ask me, what's scarier about EduServe is that school boards can come to SSD and run predictive software on their students and then gear educational programs to them--in terms of what's best for the community--or society, if you want to be Orwellian about it. Given Billy's background, we think he should go into skilled labor. Suzy should be a doctor but only in public health. . . . Control the children and you control the future. Another element of Adolf Hitler's philosophy, by the way." He laughed. "Okay, no more lecturing . . . But you see why I couldn't stomach it anymore?"
But then Geddes frowned. "Just thinking about your situation--we had an incident once at SSD. Years ago. Before the company came to New York. There was a death. Probably just a coincidence. But . . ."
"No, tell me."
"In the early days we farmed out a lot of the actual data-collection part of the business to scroungers."
"To what?"
"Companies or individuals who procure data. A strange breed. They're sort of like old-time wildcatters--prospectors, you could say. See, data have this weird allure. You can get addicted to the hunt. You can never find enough. However much they collect, they want more. And these guys are always looking for new ways to collect it. They're competitive, ruthless. That's how Sean Cassel started in the business. He was a data scrounger.
"Anyway, one scrounger was amazing. He worked for a small company. I think it was called Rocky Mountain Data in Colorado. . . . What was his name?" Geddes squinted. "Maybe Gordon somebody. Or that might've been his last name. Anyway, we heard that he wasn't too happy about SSD taking over his company. The word is he scrounged everything he could find about the company and Sterling himself--turned the tables on them. We thought maybe he was trying to dig up dirt and blackmail Sterling into stopping the acquisition. You know Andy Sterling--Andrew Junior--works for the company?"
She nodded.
"We'd heard rumors that Sterling had abandoned him years ago and the kid tracked him down. But then we also heard that maybe it was another son he abandoned. Maybe by his first wife, or a girlfriend. Something he wanted to keep secret. We thought maybe Gordon was looking for that kind of dirt.
"Anyway, while Sterling and some other people were out there negotiating the purchase of Rocky Mountain, this Gordon guy dies--an accident of some kind, I think. That's all I heard. I wasn't there. I was back in the Valley, writing code."
"And the acquisition went through?"
"Yep. What Andrew wants, Andrew shall have. . . . Now, let me throw out one thought about your killer. Andrew Sterling himself."
"He has an alibi."
"Does he? Well, don't forget he is the king of information. If you control data, you can change data. Did you check out that alibi real carefully?"
"We are right now."
"Well, even if it's confirmed, he has men who work for him and would do whatever he wants. I mean anything. Remember, other people do his dirty work."
"But he's a multimillionaire. What's his interest in stealing coins or a painting, then murdering the victim?"
"His interest?" Geddes's voice rose, as if he were a professor talking to a student who just wasn't getting the lesson. "His interest is in being the most powerful person in the world. He wants his little collection to include everybody on earth. And he's particularly interested in law enforcement and government clients. The more crimes that are successfully solved using innerCircle, the more police departments, here and abroad, are going to sign on. Hitler's first task when he came to power was to consolidate all the police departments in Germany. What was our big problem in Iraq? We disbanded the army and the police--we should have used them. Andrew doesn't make mistakes like that."
Geddes laughed. "Think I'm a crank, don't you? But I live with this stuff all day long. Remember, it's not paranoia if somebody's really out there watching everything you do every minute of the day. And that's SSD in a nutshell."
Chapter Twenty-four Awaiting Sachs's return, Lincoln Rhyme listened absently as Lon Sellitto explained that none of the other evidence in the earlier cases--the rape and coin theft--could be located. "That's fucking weird."
Rhyme agreed. But his attention veered from the detective's sour assessment to his cousin's SSD dossier, sitting beside him on the turning frame. He tried to ignore it.
But the document drew him, needle to magnet. Looking at the stark sheets, black type on white paper, he told himself that, as Sachs had suggested, perhaps something helpful could be found in it. Then he admitted that he was simply curious.
STRATEGIC SYSTEMS DATACORP, INC. INNERCIRCLE(r) DOSSIERS
Arthur Robert Rhyme
SSD Subject Number 3480-9021-4966-2083
Lifestyle
Dossier 1A. Consumer products preferences
Dossier 1B. Consumer services preferences
Dossier 1C. Travel
Dossier 1D. Medical
Dossier 1E. Leisure-time preferences
Financial/Educational/Professional
Dossier 2A. Educational history
Dossier 2B. Employment history, w/ income
Dossier 2C. Credit history/current report and rating
Dossier 2D. Business products and services preferences
Governmental/Legal
Dossier 3A. Vital records
Dossier 3B. Voter registration
Dossier 3C. Legal history
Dossier 3D. Criminal history
Dossier 3E. Compliance
Dossier 3F. Immigration and naturalization
The information contained herein is the property of Strategic Systems Datacorp, Inc. (SSD). The use hereof is subject to the Licensing Agreement between SSD and Customer, as defined in the Master Client Agreement. (c) Strategic Systems Datacorp, Inc. All rights reserved.
Instructing the turning frame to flip through the pages, he skimmed the dense document, all thirty pages of it. Some categories were full, some sparse. The voter registration was redacted, and the compliance and portions of the credit history referred to separate files, presumably because of legislation limiting access to such information.
He paused at the extensive lists of the consumer products bought by Arthur and his family (they were described by the creepy phrase "tethered individuals"). There was no doubt that anybody reading the dossier could have learned enough about his buying habits and where he shopped to implicate him in the murder of Alice Sanderson.
Rhyme learned about the country club Arthur belonged to, until he had quit several years ago, presumably because he'd lost his job. He noted the package vacations he'd bought; Rhyme was surprised he'd taken up skiing. Also, he or one of the children might have a weight problem; somebody had joined a dieting program. A health club membership for the entire family too. Rhyme saw a lay-away purchase for some jewelry around Christmastime; a chain jewelry store in a New Jersey mall. Rhyme speculated: small stones socketed in a large setting--a make-do gift, until times were better.
Seeing one reference, he gave a laugh. Like him, Arthur seemed to favor single-malt whisky--Rhyme's new favorite brand, in fact, Glenmorangie.
His cars were a Mercedes and a Cherokee.
The criminalist's smile faded at that reference, though, as he recalled another vehicle. He was picturing Arthur's red Corvette, the car he'd received from his parents on his seventeenth birthday--the car in which Art
hur had driven off to Boston to attend M.I.T.
Rhyme thought back to the boys' respective departures for college. It was a significant moment for Arthur, and for his father too; Henry Rhyme was ecstatic that his son had been accepted by such a fine school. But the cousins' plans--rooming together, jousting over girls, outshining the other nerds--didn't work out. Lincoln wasn't accepted by M.I.T. but went instead to the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, which offered Lincoln a full scholarship (and had some panache back then because it was located in the town where HAL, the narcissistic computer in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, was born).
Teddy and Anne were pleased their son was going to a home-state school, as was his uncle; Henry had told his nephew that he hoped the boy would return to Chicago often and continue to help him with his research, possibly even assist in his classes from time to time.
"Sorry you and Arthur won't be rooming together," Henry said. "But you'll see each other summers, holidays. And I'm sure your father and I can swing some trips out to Bean Town for a visit."
"That might work out," Lincoln had said.
Keeping to himself that while he was devastated he hadn't been accepted by M.I.T., there was an upside to the rejection--because he wanted never to see his goddamn cousin ever again.
All because of the red Corvette.
The incident had occurred not long after the Christmas Eve party at which he'd won the concrete piece of history, on a breathlessly cold day in February, which, sun or cloud, is Chicago's most heartless month. Lincoln was competing in a science fair at Northwestern in Evanston. He asked Adrianna if she wanted to accompany him, thinking that he might go for the marriage proposal afterward.
But she couldn't make it; she was going shopping with her mother at Marshall Field's department store in the Loop, lured by a big sale. Lincoln had been disappointed but thought nothing more of it and concentrated on the fair. He won first place in the senior division, then he and his friends packed up their projects and carted everything outside. Fingers blue and breath clouding around them in the painful air, they loaded the gear in the belly of the bus and sprinted for the door.
It was then that somebody called, "Hey, check it out. Excellent wheels."
A red Corvette was streaking through campus.
His cousin Arthur was at the wheel. Which wasn't odd; the family lived nearby. What did surprise Lincoln, though, was that the girl beside Arthur, he believed, was Adrianna.
Yes, no?
He couldn't be sure.
The clothes matched: a brown leather jacket and a fur hat, which looked identical to the one Lincoln had given her at Christmas.
"Linc, Jesus, get your ass in here. We gotta close the door."
Still, Lincoln remained where he was, staring at the car as it fishtailed around the corner on the gray-white street.
Could she have lied to him? The girl he was considering marrying? It didn't seem possible. And cheating on him with Arthur?
Trained in science, he examined the facts objectively.
Fact One. Arthur and Adrianna knew each other. His cousin had met her months ago in the counselor's office where she worked after class at Lincoln's high school. They could very easily have exchanged phone numbers.
Fact Two. Arthur, Lincoln now realized, had stopped asking about her. This was odd. The boys had spent plenty of time talking about girls but recently Art hadn't once mentioned her.
Suspicious.
Fact Three. On reflection, he decided that Adie sounded evasive when she'd demurred about the science fair. (And he hadn't mentioned its site as Evanston, which meant she wouldn't hesitate to cruise around the gridded streets with Art.) Lincoln was slammed with jealousy. I was going to give her a piece of Stagg Field, for God's sake! A splinter of the true cross of modern science! He considered other times when she'd begged off seeing him under circumstances that, in retrospect, seemed strange. He counted three or four.
Still he refused to believe it. He crunched through the snow to a pay phone, and called her house and asked to speak to the girl.
"Sorry, Lincoln, she's out with friends," said Adrianna's mother.
Friends . . .
"Oh. I'll try her later. . . . Say, Mrs. Waleska, did you two ever get downtown for that sale at Field's today?"
"No, the sale's next week. . . . I have to get supper ready, Lincoln. You stay warm. It's freezing outside."
"It sure is." Lincoln knew this for a fact. He was standing at a phone kiosk, his jaw shivering, no desire to pick up the 60 cents that had leapt from his quivering hands into the snow after he'd tried repeatedly to feed the coins into the phone.
"Jesus Christ, Lincoln, get in the bus!"
Later that night he called and managed to maintain a normal conversation for a time, before asking how her day had gone. She explained that she'd enjoyed the shopping with Mom but the crowds were terrible. Garrulous, rambling, digressive. She sounded dead guilty.
Still, he couldn't take the matter on faith.
And so he kept up appearances. The next time Art was visiting he left his cousin in the rec room downstairs and slipped outside with a dog hair roller--exactly the sort used now by crime-scene teams--and collected evidence from the Corvette's front seat.
He slipped the tape into a Baggie and, when he saw Adrianna next, he took some samples of fur from her hat and coat. He felt cheap, scalded with shame and embarrassment, but that didn't stop him from comparing the strands with one of the high school's compound microscopes. They were the same--both fur from the hat and synthetic fibers from the coat.
The girlfriend he was considering marrying had been cheating on him.
And from the quantity of fibers in Arthur's car he concluded she'd been there more than once.
Finally, a week later, he spotted them in the car, leaving no doubt.
Lincoln didn't bow out graciously or angrily. He just bowed out. Without the heart for a confrontation, he let his relationship with Adrianna wind down. The few times they went out were stiff and riddled with awkward silences. To his further dismay, she actually seemed upset about his growing distance. Damn it. Did she think she could have it both ways? She seemed mad at him . . . even while she was cheating.
He distanced himself from his cousin too. Lincoln's excuse was final exams, track meets and--the blessing in disguise: Lincoln's rejection by M.I.T.
The two boys saw each other occasionally--familial obligations, graduation ceremonies--but everything had changed between them, changed fundamentally. And of Adrianna neither boy had said a single word. At least not for many years after that.
My whole life changed. If it weren't for you, everything would've been different. . . .
Even now Rhyme found his temple throbbing. He couldn't feel any coolness on his palms but he supposed they were sweating. These hard thoughts, though, were interrupted by Amelia Sachs, striding through the door.
"Any developments?" she asked.
A bad sign. If she'd had a breakthrough with Calvin Geddes she would have said so up front.
"No," he admitted. "Still waiting to hear from Ron about the alibis. And no bites on the trap that Rodney put together."
Sachs took the coffee Thom offered and lifted half a turkey sandwich from a tray.
"The tuna salad's better," said Lon Sellitto. "He made it himself."
"This'll do." She sat beside Rhyme, offered him a bite. He had no appetite and shook his head. "How's your cousin doing?" she asked, glancing at the open dossier on the turning frame.
"My cousin?"
"How's he doing in detention? This has to be hard for him."
"Haven't had a chance to talk to him."
"He's probably too embarrassed to contact you. You really should call."
"I will. What'd you find out from Geddes?"
She admitted that the meeting had yielded no great revelations. "Mostly it was a lecture on the erosion of privacy." She gave him some of the more alarming bullet points: the personal data collected daily, the int
rusions, the danger of EduServe, the immortality of data, the metadata records of computer files.
"Anything useful to us?" he asked acerbically.
"Two things. First, he's not convinced Sterling's innocent."
"You said he's got an alibi," Sellitto pointed out, taking another sandwich.
"Maybe not him personally. He might be using somebody else."
"Why? He's a CEO of a big company. What's in it for him?"
"The more crime, the more society needs SSD to protect them. Geddes says he wants power. Described him as the Napoleon of data."
"So he's got a hired gun breaking windows so he can step in and fix them." Rhyme nodded, somewhat impressed with the idea. "Only it backfired. He never thought we'd tip to the fact the SSD database was behind the crimes. Okay. Put it on the list of suspects. An UNSUB working for Sterling."
"Now, Geddes also told me that a few years ago SSD acquired a Colorado data company. Their main scrounger--that's a data collector--was killed."
"Any link between Sterling and the death?"
"No idea. But it's worth checking out. I'll make some calls."
The doorbell rang and Thom answered. Ron Pulaski entered. He was grim-faced and sweaty. Rhyme sometimes had an urge to tell him to take it easier but since the criminalist himself didn't, he figured the suggestion would be hypocritical.
The rookie explained that most of the alibis for Sunday checked out. "I checked with the E-ZPass people and they confirmed Sterling went through the Midtown Tunnel when he said. I tried his son to see if his dad called from Long Island just to double-check. But he was out."
Pulaski continued, "Something else--the Human Resources director? His only alibi was his wife. She backed him up but she was acting like a scared mouse. And she was like her husband: 'SSD is the greatest place in the world. Blah, blah, blah . . .' "
Rhyme, distrustful of witnesses in any event, didn't make much of this; one thing he'd learned from Kathryn Dance, the body language and kinesics expert with the California Bureau of Investigation, was that even when people are telling the God's truth to police they often look guilty.
Sachs went to their suspect list and updated it.
Andrew Sterling, President, Chief Executive Officer Alibi--on Long Island, verified. Awaiting son's confirmation Sean Cassel, Director of Sales and Marketing