Delirious (44 page)

Rachel sat down on the ground, her skin whitening from both cold and shocked disbelief. “Who would do that?” she asked.

“Who would forge notes in my handwriting?” Charlie asked in return. “It’s somebody who has a terrible grudge against me and possibly my brother. Maybe someone I worked with at SoluCent. I’ve cut down a few trees on my way to the top of the mountain.”

“And the voices? Eddie’s voice? The dead bodies?” asked Rachel.

Charlie looked down. “I can’t explain everything,” he said. “But I can tell you that those bodies are real. People have died.”

“Who killed them?” Rachel asked. Without meaning to, she glanced at Joe.

“No … no …,” Joe said, shaking his head violently from side to side. “I wouldn’t do that! I couldn’t.”

Charlie put a firm hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Joe, you almost killed us,” he said. “No matter what we find out, it’s not on you. You are the victim here.”

Joe turned his head so he wouldn’t have to look at Charlie. Charlie took his brother’s chin and turned Joe’s head until their eyes locked.

“Joe, listen to me. I will never abandon you. I will never let anything bad happen to you. You’re my brother. You’re the only brother I have.” Charlie paused. He looked as though he wanted to say more, but couldn’t.

“I get what you’re saying, Charlie. But tell me what you’re doing with the InVision system,” Rachel said.

“Whoever knew about Joe’s condition also knew how to control him. But to control him, the person would have to communicate with InVision. The GPS signals are Wi-Fi transmission. That is done via a standard wireless protocol. It wouldn’t be easy for somebody to hijack that signal. But we support IP communication as well.”

“IP as in Internet protocol?” Rachel asked.

Charlied nodded. “Exactly. It’s what’s used to send and receive Web pages over the Internet. It’s just a communication mechanism for one machine to connect with another.”

“And you’re saying that somebody might have used an IP to control InVision?” said Rachel.

“Somebody who knows technology could have figured out how to use cellular transmission and static IP to hack the system,” Charlie explained. “With access to the operating system, they could override the Wi-Fi signal and substitute their own voice commands and play whatever media, be it music, light, or any sound they wanted.”

“You’re suggesting that somebody sabotaged Joe’s InVision system?” Rachel said.

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” Charlie said, holding up the InVision brains for added effect.

“But who?” Joe asked. He was unable to hide the desperation in his voice.

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” said Charlie. “You see, the OS has a built-in registry. The registry is used to store information about the system, much of it used to boot up the device, but it also maintains customer preferences, date and time setting, and that sort of thing. Anybody who hacked into the device would have had to write their IP address to the registry to maintain two-way communication. If I can get to that IP address, I can get to a physical address as well.”

“How are you going to do that?” Rachel asked.

“The best InVision hacker I know lives twenty miles outside Boston. His name is Arthur Bean. We get to him and we get the IP address.” Charlie paused. “Either that, or he’s the guy who rigged it.”

T
he three walked under the bridge and trudged up a steep bank to the roadside. They watched from the cover of the underbrush as a few cars drove past the mangled guardrail. They heard no sirens, but that didn’t mean at least one of the passing motorists hadn’t called the police.

Charlie had no idea how far from Revere they had traveled, and Joe couldn’t remember anything before coming to on the reservoir shore. If they were stopped and questioned by the police, it wouldn’t take long for them to ID Charlie. A wanted homicide suspect on the run was high-priority bulletin material for every police station from Boston to Springfield. They would have to keep to the woods if they wanted to remain hidden.

Joe did most of the clearing, using his girth and raw strength to rip down branches and obstacles that inhibited their passage. Rachel kept watch, making sure the main road stayed in sight. Though they were all cold, none as yet were suffering from hypothermia. Even so, getting lost in the woods held the prospect of becoming a wrong turn from which they couldn’t recover.

Charlie stayed silent and lost in thought. His mind raced to pick a prime suspect for the InVision sabotage. He recalled names of employees from California whom he had fired prior to the acquisition. Were any so angry they could have done something so deadly? Nobody he could think of seemed to fit the profile of a killer.

No,
Charlie thought.
This person is special. They have to know the OS. It is an amazing feat of technical sabotage.

Arthur Bean, the quality assurance engineer whose dismissal from SoluCent he had instigated, came to mind. He had the skills. The hack he’d posted broadcasting the minor security flaw to management proved that.
But what about the motive?
Charlie wondered. Did his dismissal warrant such a violent response? And why bring Joe into it? Something wasn’t adding up. There was more to this, other pieces of the puzzle that just weren’t fitting together.

Who was Anne Pedersen? Was she involved? What did he see in Rudy Gomes’s apartment? How did it explain Randal’s tape recording of Gomes’s voice?
These questions dominated Charlie’s thoughts as the three continued their silent march through the woods. And the question that stood out above all others was why?

Rachel broke the silence. She was pointing northeast, about a hundred yards from the edge of the woods. “That looks like a gas station,” she said.

Charlie saw the outer edges of a white building. He defogged his glasses and was able to make out what appeared to be rusted oil drums leaning up against a low chain-link fence some one hundred yards away.

“Rachel, I can’t risk being identified. You go alone. Joe and I will wait here.”

“And what is it that you want me to do?” she asked, hands on her hips. “I’m soaking wet. I have no ID, no cash, and no idea what we’re doing.”

Charlie just smiled. He reached into his pants pocket and fished out a large, wet wad of cash. It was the remainder of the money he and Maxim had stolen. He didn’t know how much was there but figured it was enough to buy them a break.

“The guy’s name is Arthur Bean,” he said. “I need to get his address. You should be able to do that with a quick call to information. He lives in Waltham.”

“How do you know that?” Rachel asked.

“Because I had to sign a formal letter of reprimand from HR after he leaked secrets about InVision. He used an unorthodox approach to convincing us to beef up InVision security,” Charlie explained. “I remember that he lived in Waltham, because Joe and my mother lived there as well. That letter might have very well cost him his job.”

“He tried to help you guys out, and you personally slammed him?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “Ain’t I a peach?”

“Okay, so I get Bean’s address. What then?” said Rachel.

“Get us a ride to his house. No questions asked,” Charlie replied.

Rachel stretched out her arm, palm to the sky. Charlie stuffed the soaking wet wad of cash in the palm of her hand.

R
achel leapt over the chain-link fence separating the building’s grounds from the woods’ edge with a hurdler’s grace. She walked to the front of the building, mindful that her wet clothes were enough to raise suspicions. The front lot was littered with cars, all in varying stages of being disassembled, presumably for parts.

The place was Wilson’s Automotive Repair, at least according to the sign hanging crooked above the large garage bay doors. Where the paint hadn’t faded, large rust stains made certain most of the sign was illegible. The unkempt grounds around Wilson’s Automotive Repair and the paint-chipped building exterior suggested that whoever the owner was, he relied heavily on his car repair skills and not aesthetics to lure potential customers into the shop. What little grass there was had been overrun by weeds and adorned with discarded car parts or crumpled soda cans.

The repair shop featured two large bays, each with its own hydraulic lift. Both bays were empty. If Wilson was working, she couldn’t tell. Both of the bay doors were open, and Rachel could hear music. She entered through the right repair bay, careful not to step in several small pools of oil and fluids congealing on the cement floor.

“Hello,” she called out. “Anybody here?”

From a small office at the back of the shop she heard the soft shuffle of footsteps. A man emerged. He wore a greasy Red Sox cap and a black T-shirt with the word
taxes
in the center of a thick red circle with a slash running through it. He had on a pair of denim jeans covered by several wide, dark stains. His face was wrinkled and hard,
but she took him to be more wise than angry. The white of his beard helped to soften some of his hardness.
Santa’s grease monkey
.

“Yeah?” he called out, rubbing dirt and grime from his hands onto his jeans.

“I need your help,” Rachel said.

He made it a point to look around the shop and shook his head. “Gonna be at least a week before I could get to it,” he said. “We’re booked solid.”

She looked around the empty bays and outside at the lot full of junked cars. The words
we
and
booked solid
almost made her laugh; still she managed the needed restraint.

“I have a different request,” Rachel said.

“Oh?”

“I was wondering if I could use your phone.”

“Sure,” he said. “Phone’s in the office.”

He pointed behind him. As she neared, he could see that her clothes and hair were soaked. He made it a point to look outside, in case he had missed that it was raining. When he saw the sun shining, his eyes narrowed.

“What’s going on here?” he asked. “You in some kind of trouble?”

“What if I said yes?” Rachel said.

The man laughed. It was a warm laugh, one that evoked countless nights of whiskey, cards, and raw jokes. “I’d say why didn’t you go to the police?”

He wasn’t flirting. There was, however, something playful about him. She liked him even more.

“I can’t go to the police,” was all she said.

He cocked a knowing grin. “Oh, you can’t, can you?” he said. “Well, I know a thing or two about that. Think they’re on your side, and next thing you know, they’re shutting you down because of some fucking permit that’s run out. Assholes.”

“So you get it?” Rachel asked. She was playing into the antiestab-lishment philosophy advertised on his T-shirt.

“Yeah, I get it. Nearly shut this place. Didn’t care none that Dorothy wouldn’t have been able to afford her medication. I’d have had to go to Canada to get it, and who knows what quality I’d be getting? Assholes.”

“Right,” Rachel said, smiling more. “I have something for you, but it comes with favor number two.”

He cocked his head sideways and gave her a shifty, skeptical look. “Favor number two?”

“It would buy a lot of medicine,” Rachel said. She pulled the wad of wet cash from her pocket.

Wilson’s eyes widened. “What’s the favor?” he asked.

“I need a ride. You got a pickup?”

Wilson nodded.

“Two friends are coming. They both go in the back, under a tarp. Drive us to Waltham. I’ll use your phone to get the address. No questions asked.”

Wilson took the cash and began to count. “That’s a lot of money for a short ride,” he said. Then he paused and let loose another crooked smile. “But I do have trouble turning down a tax-free job.”

C
harlie’s spirits brightened. A white pickup truck had pulled parallel to the road, then had backed up until its tailgate nearly abutted the chain-link fence. A man got out of the driver’s side and walked back toward the rear of the truck. He lowered the tailgate and climbed back into the cab. Charlie heard police sirens wail. He held up a hand to Joe, who seemed ready to make a dash for the fence. He wanted to wait for the first batch of sirens to pass before they made their move.

From their crouched position, concealed from view by brush and trees, the brothers watched as first one, then three more police cruisers screamed past. A fire truck, ambulance, and several civilian cars followed, each with strobe lights attached. Charlie assumed those were the volunteer firefighters’ cars. There was no doubt they were heading to the bridge. Somebody had seen the smashed guardrail, but probably not the crash. When it was safe, Charlie signaled and the brothers took off running.

Charlie helped Joe step over the fence. They climbed into the truck bed and slipped under a blue plastic tarp. There was only dim, bluish-hued light underneath the tarp, and the air within grew increasingly stale. Charlie grabbed a corner of the tarp and pulled it back a bit. From outside they heard footsteps.

“Charlie, we’re getting a ride,” Rachel said. “I have the address. Dave here is kind enough to take us. We need to bungee the tarp to keep it from blowing off during the drive. Put these blankets over you to fight off the cold.”

Charlie caught only a glimpse of Rachel when she uncovered the
tarp to hand them the blankets. Her eyes felt more warming than the sun.

“Thank you,” Charlie whispered to her.

She smiled down at him but said nothing. They were once again plunged into the dark bluish light under the tarp. But at least they were warmer. The truck bed vibrated from the churn of the motor. The wheels crunched the gravel and stone underneath. Seconds later they were heading in the opposite direction of the bridge, west on some main road. The brothers pulled their legs tightly to their chests to shield them from the cold. Thankfully Rachel had had the foresight to give them the blankets. If not, they’d both be icicles by the time they got to Bean’s apartment.

They rode in silence until Joe spoke.

“I’m so sorry,” Joe said.

“Joe, it wasn’t you, got that?” Charlie said. “Somebody knew enough to use you. That’s all.”