MIND FIELDS (14 page)

  “So, I hear you’re the lady to talk to when it comes to nanobot technology.”

  “Is that right?  Where did you hear that?”

  Kincade fidgeted uncomfortably.  He wasn’t so sure that Shelly Lange wanted to be any more involved with this than she already was.

  “I know, I know.  You can’t reveal your sources.  I watch TV enough to know that cops don’t like to reveal their sources.”

  Kincade was relieved.  “Something like that.”

  “Well, I suppose your
source,
” she emphasized as she made imaginary quotation marks around the word, “is correct.  I’ve probably spent more time developing nanobots than anyone else on the planet, except maybe for Paul, that traitor.”

  “Paul?”

  “Dr. Paul Hingston.  He used to be my mentor here until he jumped ship to join the private sector.  He works for BNI now, and what’s more, he had the audacity to steal my work…that bastard.  I’m sure of it, but it’s nearly impossible to prove.  The son of a bitch patented all my work.  He stole
my
research and
he
got the patents… beat me to the punch.  He even got the stuff that I developed
after
he left here, I just can’t figure out how.  He doesn’t have access to the lab anymore, much less to my computer.  But somehow he did it.  No doubt about it.  And to think I was gonna marry that SOB.” 

Sandi saw the vacuous look in Detective Kincade’s face, and blushed.  “Uh, sorry.  Guess I kind of digressed a little, huh?”

  “Kind of.”  It was an interesting twist, but one that Kincade didn’t have time for at the moment.  He decided to file it away for now, but this slant on Hingston added a twist to the case that Kincade hadn’t considered.  When he thought about BNI, he assumed that everything revolved around JT Anderson.  “But BNI is the reason I came to talk to you.”

  “Ahah!  I knew those bastards were up to something.”

  Sandi’s animosity toward the company was almost tangible, and Kincade wanted to keep this more factual … for now.  Sometimes it paid to play on the emotions of a witness, but at this point, he needed to understand what bots could and could not do.

  “Maybe,” he waved off the notion with his right hand, “but let’s get back to you for a minute.”

  “Me?” She sounded insulted.

  “Yeah, you are the nanobot expert, aren’t you?  That’s why I came here — to learn more about nanobots.  More specifically, to learn more about those bots they are using to repair damaged brains.”

  “Neuronanobots,” she nodded.  “Pretty amazing stuff, isn’t it?’

  Kincade nodded.

  “Most of the basic work in their development was done right here in my lab.”

  “Then I came to the right person.  Tell me, are they really safe?”

  “Absolutely.  We engineered layers of safety protocols into their programming.  They’re safer than the cells we were born with.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, for one, they prevent seizures.”

  “Prevent them?  I thought that any trauma to the brain can
cause
seizures
,
and it seems to me that putting artificial cells into a brain is certainly a form of trauma.”

  Sandi was surprised.  “Well, I see someone’s been doing his homework.”

  “Spoken like a true teacher, Doc.”

  She blushed again.  “Sorry.  It’s second nature, I guess.  Anyway, that was precisely one of our concerns when we started the project.  We knew that implanting nanobots in the human brain would create a risk of seizures.  Even the new organic bots, which are a lot less irritating than mechanical bots, could create a nidus for a seizure.  The solution was kind of brilliant, if I say so myself.  I programmed a code into the genetic sequence of the nanobots, so they would secrete a natural neuronal cell membrane stabilizer.”

  Kincade was lost.  “Uh, could you say that in English, maybe.”

  “Oh, sorry,” she giggled.  “I get carried away sometimes.  The bots make a chemical that acts like an anti-seizure medicine, and release it into the surrounding area in the brain.  Once they do that, there is less risk of a seizure occurring than there would be in you or me.”

  Kincade raised an eyebrow.  “Curious.”

  “What?”

  “Did BNI build in that same safety protocol?”

  “Yes.  Of course they did.  I went over all their patents myself as soon as they were public.  That’s how I know Paul stole my work.”

  Kincade was almost disappointed.  So much for his theory about Rocky Stankowski’s auto accident.  He was sure after having heard about Helen Jensen’s seizures that Stankowski must have had a seizure just before his accident, one caused by those BNI nanobots in his brain.

  “So it’s impossible for someone to have a seizure after the bots are implanted?”

  “Well, not impossible.  If that person were to have a seizure originating in some other area of the brain, the chemical secreted by the bots may not stop it, but the bots definitely would not
cause
the seizure.”

  Kincade sat quietly, absorbing the new information and trying to piece it together, not only with the Rocky Stankowski case, but also with the four strange cases Dr. Shelly Lange had described from her days at BNI.

  “Were any of the bots used before you perfected the anti-seizure stuff?”

  “Well, in some animal studies, yeah, but no human trials were started until we got over that hurdle.”  Sandi was growing suspicious at the line of questioning.  “What’s this all about, anyway?  You’re not just gathering a little harmless background info for a case, are you?”

  Kincade thought for a moment, and then let out a brief sigh.  He figured he wasn’t going to get much further with this unless he leveled with Dr. Fletcher about his suspicions.  What harm could it do?  She was no big fan of BNI anyway; she certainly wouldn’t leak the information to them. 

  “Look, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but my source detailed some strange happenings over at BNI during the two years before nanobots were approved for brain injury treatment.” 

  Kincade described the four cases related to him by Shelly Lange in as much detail as he could recall.

  “So what do you think, Doc?  Could there be something to all this, or do I just have a paranoid informant who’s out to get BNI, maybe even dislikes them more than you?”

  Sandi eyed him closely.  “More than me?  Am I a suspect here, Detective?  Am I the one you’re investigating?”

  Kincade laughed.  “No, no, Dr. Fletcher.  I’m sorry if I … I guess I can see why you might have thought … No, I was just thinking about your earlier comments about how BNI stole Dr. Hingston away from academia, how he … jumped ship, I think you put it.  But I certainly did not mean to implicate you in any wrongdoing.  Not in the least.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.  I mean, there’s no love lost between me and BNI …”  Her voice trailed off as she realized that there really was love lost, in the truest sense of the word, when BNI stole Paul away from her.  “…but I certainly would never do anything illegal, or even immoral for that matter, to try and get even with those bastards.”

  “Of course not, Doctor.  My apologies, but I really could use your help on this one.  What do you think?  Could BNI be using the nanobots to control people’s minds?”

  “Who sounds paranoid now, Detective?”

  Kincade chuckled.

  “In theory, yeah, I suppose so, but we don’t have anywhere near the technology to do that.  Either the bots would have to be preprogrammed to carry out some specific action before they were even injected into the patient, or they would have to be somehow altered after they were injected.  The latter is impossible with what we know today.  The bots can’t be altered once they are injected; there would have to be some sort of remote signal to control the nanobots, to reprogram them from outside the body.  The only way we can program them now is by direct DNA sequencing that has to be done before they are injected.  The only guy I know who could conceivably program something that complex would be Paul, and there’s no way that Paul would do something like that, not for any amount of money.  Besides, even if he could do it, which I’m not really too sure of, there would be no way to control the timing...to control when the bots would affect the brain once they were in place.

  “In other words, the bots, in theory, might be programmed to cause somebody to veer a car off the road, but you would have to know exactly when that individual would be on the road before the nanobots are ever injected.  And more complex actions, like having a mechanic de-chip a car … I can’t imagine even Paul doing programming that complex.”

  “So most likely I’ve just got me one crazy paranoid informant out to get BNI, huh?”

  “I’d say that’s a hell of a lot more likely, Detective.”

  Kincade stood and extended his hand.  “Well, thanks, Doc.  Sorry if I wasted your time.”

  “I hope that’s all you did, Detective Kincade.”

  “Me too, Doc.  Me too.”

  Kincade turned and walked back to his car.

___

  Columbia was about a forty-five minute drive from headquarters.  Richie had been aching to go question JT Anderson, but he knew he had better do his homework before confronting the savvy tycoon.  He had spent the remainder of Wednesday afternoon researching the history of BNI and Anderson’s rise to power.  The web of business and political ties that wove themselves through the life of JT Anderson were mind-boggling.  He was probably the most well-connected man in the country, aside from those who worked in the West Wing.  This was not going to be an easy fish to hook.

  Kincade decided that it would be best to catch Anderson off-guard rather than to schedule an appointment, which not only could delay the investigation by weeks, but could also give a man like Anderson plenty of time to investigate the investigator.  Richie didn’t really have anything to hide, but he preferred to keep Anderson in the dark as much as possible.  Over the years, he had come to realize that this was generally the best way to get honest responses – not always honest answers, but honest reactions.  Richie was pretty good at reading people.

  Richie arrived at BNI at about seven the next morning.  He flashed a badge at the security guard at the main gate, but a twenty-dollar bill proved to be even more effective at convincing the guard to stay off the phone.

  Kincade pulled the beat-up ’43 Malibu into the empty visitors lot by the main entrance, and picked a spot facing the employee parking garage at the left of the main building.  There was a bit of a chill in the early morning air, and he decided to wait in his car until Anderson arrived.  Richie knew from his research that JT Anderson was one of those executives who believed in being the first one into the office each morning.  He focused his Global Positioning System monitor on the grounds of BNI and zeroed in on the front gate.  “Nothing to do but wait now,” he said to no one in particular. “Let’s hope that son of a gun didn’t oversleep this morning.”

  He settled back into his seat and took a long sip of his luke-warm coffee.  Before he could even finish wincing at the bitter taste, the GPS started to beep.

  “Right on time,” he said as he adjusted his rear-view mirror for a better view of the main entrance road.

JT Anderson eyed the beat-up Chevy sitting in the parking lot as he rode by in his black Mercedes sports coupe.  The lot was usually empty this time of day, and the appearance of Unit Five unnerved him.  As he pulled into the garage, he tried to call the guard at the front gate on his car phone, but the steel reinforced structure interfered with the signal.  He parked in his usual spot and glanced over the roof of his car toward the visitors lot as he got out.  A man in a trench coat was running towards him, waving.

   “Mr. Anderson,” Kincade shouted.

  JT fumbled quickly for his key and hit the panic button on the car alarm.  His car started beeping and flashing its headlights as Anderson ran for the door to the covered walkway that connected the parking lot to the main building.  He burst through the door waving for the security guard just inside the building at the other end of the walkway.

  Kincade realized what he must look like and tried to calm Anderson down.  “Mr. Anderson,” he shouted again, “I’m Detective Kincade from the BPD.  I just want to talk with you.”

  Anderson was too panicked to hear a word that Kincade had said.  He caught the attention of the security guard, who ran over with his pistol raised in Kincade’s direction as Richie came through the parking garage door into the walkway.

  Richie saw the guard, a man who had obviously not had much experience with either guns or emergency situations.  He stopped dead in his tracks and raised his hands, holding his badge open and facing the two men. 

  “Whoa! Take it easy there, buddy.  BPD, Detective Richard Kincade.  I’m just here to have a few words with you, Mr. Anderson.”

  Anderson was still breathing rapidly.  A second security guard, looking a bit older and more experienced than the young man waving the gun in Kincade’s direction, arrived on the scene.  He assessed the situation quickly.

  “Everybody just calm down here,” he said.  “Ease off that trigger, Tony.  Let’s just see what we have here.”

  “The man was chasing Mr. Anderson into the building, Mr. Seymour.”

  Richie chuckled.  “Do I look like a man who does much chasing?”  Richie wasn’t in bad shape for a middle-aged man, but his days of running down renegades was long gone.  “I get winded running to the bathroom these days,” he smiled.

  Mr. Seymour walked calmly over to Kincade, who still stood with his hands high, watching the anxious young guard named Tony very closely.  Seymour grabbed the badge out of Kincade’s hands, and scanned it into his security system.

  “Mind putting your thumb into here?” he asked Kincade, who slowly lowered his hand and slipped his thumb into the scanner.

  The information from the badge was sent, along with the thumbprint, to the central identification computer at the police department, where it was analyzed immediately.  The screen on Mr. Seymour’s security PDA confirmed the identity of Richard Kincade, along with a picture ID.  Seymour looked at the ID, and then looked up at Kincade.  He glanced back and forth a few times.

  “I know, I know,” Richie said.  “It’s an old picture. What can I say?  I’ve added a little gray since then.

  Seymour ran his hand along his own balding forehead.  “A little gray isn’t such a bad thing, Detective.”

  He turned toward Tony and JT Anderson.  “It’s OK, he’s a cop.” He looked at Kincade again.  “You can put your hands down now, Detective.”

  Kincade motioned with his head toward Tony, still holding his pistol up.

  “Jesus, Tony,” Seymour snapped, “Put that thing away before you hurt somebody.”

  Tony holstered his pistol.

  Mr. Seymour shrugged his shoulders and sighed.  “Kids.”  He shook his head side to side.  “Now what can we do for you, Detective.”

  “I just need to ask Mr. Anderson a few questions.”

  Anderson looked at him incredulously.  “Jesus, man! You scared the hell out of me.  What’s wrong with you?”

  Kincade shrugged.  “Sorry, I …”

  “Make an appointment like everyone else, Detective,” he said in his most authoritative manner, having now regained his composure enough to take the offensive.  He turned to enter the building.

  “I’m afraid it can’t wait, sir.”

  JT Anderson stopped.  He turned slowly toward Kincade.  “Do I need a lawyer for this?”