MIND FIELDS (25 page)

“The Camry?”

“Yeah.  When I borrowed Mrs. Flannery’s Camry that Friday to take you home after Hank’s car blew up, she told me that her kids were coming by to get her.  She was planning on spending a couple of weeks in the mountains with them and told me to keep the keys in case I needed it again while she was on vacation. I knew no one would miss the Camry, but they might be looking for my car, so I took it and drove off.  I’ve been hiding out in that hotel room ever since.”

“Smart thinking.”  Richie admired her ability to think under pressure.  “There’s still one thing I don’t get, though.  They found a jacket downstream from where Guy’s pick-up went off the bridge.  It had your Hopkins ID in the inside pocket…”

“My ID?” Sandi looked surprised.

Richie nodded.  “And a large blood stain on it...your blood.  We figured Guy must have forced you into the truck after he stabbed you.  When we found that jacket…well, we all figured you were dead.”

“Oh God,” Sandi rolled her eyes, “So that’s where it was. No, that jacket had been sitting in the back of his truck for weeks.  I spent hours looking for that damn card.  I never thought to look in that cruddy old jacket.”

“So how’d the blood get there?”

“Hmm? Oh…we had gone hiking out in the Catoctin’s a few months back.  We liked to do that whenever we could both break away for the weekend.”  She hesitated a moment and bit back a tear, then continued.  “Well, it was kind of a warm day, so I tied the jacket around my waist.  I was just wearing a T-shirt and I slipped on a rock… you know, one of those big boulders.”

Richie nodded, but he really didn’t know.  Hiking through the mountains was not his idea of a good time; he’d never seen the rocky trails in the Catoctin Mountains.

“I skinned my elbow real bad – bled like a stuck pig.  The only thing I had with me was the jacket, so I wrapped it around my arm.  By the time we got back home, that jacket was such a mess I just tossed it in the back of the truck before I went in the house.”

Sandi slumped back in her chair and sighed.

Richie could see the exhaustion in her face.  “Come on, there’s a guest room upstairs.  We’ll talk some more in the morning.”

Sandi nodded appreciatively and followed him up the stairs.

Chapter nineteen

Paul Hingston stretched and looked out over the harbor from his penthouse in Poe Towers.  The heavy rain of the night before covered Harbor Place with a surrealistic glaze that caught the rays of the morning sun.  It was a crisp, clear morning, the kind that invigorated the soul, something that Paul needed desperately.  He had struggled through the workday on Friday.  Everyone looked a little different to him now.  He eyed everyone with suspicion and hoped his paranoia did not give him away.

The thought of someone using his work to kill people sickened him more than it angered him.  He couldn’t believe that JT would be involved in something like this, but who else could it be?  Paul had gone over and over the possibilities in his mind, trying to tie together the theft of Sandi’s data with the four cases that Kincade had given him involving the BNI employees with frontal lobe brain injuries.  There was only one plausible explanation:  JT was so anxious to reap the rewards of the new nanobot therapy that he stole the work from Hopkins to keep his lab on pace, and then authorized premature human experimentation with the nanobots on his own employees, each time with dire consequences. 

Paul couldn’t believe it.  Although no one was around to hear, it often helped him to organize his thoughts out loud.  “JT must have been looking to hire people with frontal lobe injuries so he could experiment on them.  The early generation nanobots weren’t ready for clinical use, and JT proved that the hard way.  God, if anyone ever finds out and associates me with this…” 

He wasn’t sure who he could trust, but Kincade was as good a place as any to start.

“Hello?” Richie was in the kitchen making breakfast when the phone rang.

“Detective Kincade?”

“The one and only.”

“This is Paul Hingston.  We need to talk.”

“Ah, you read the file.”

“Yes.”  Paul wasn’t sure it was wise to elaborate on his other discoveries over the phone.

“So what do you think?”

“I think we need to meet.”

“Right.” Richie could hear the anxiety in his voice, but wasn’t sure if it was derived from a fear of what he might be mixed up in at work, or whether he was just trying to figure out how to get Richie off his back.  Kincade still wasn’t convinced that Hingston was not involved in the theft and murder plot unfolding at BNI.

“Meet me at noon in front of Phillip’s at Harborplace.”  His voice was shaking.

“Noon won’t work for me, Hingston.”  Richie would make sure that this meeting took place on his own terms.  “Be at the phone booth across the street from your building at one o’clock today.  I’ll contact you there.”  Kincade had jotted the number down when he left Poe Towers after his brief meeting with Paul Hingston the other night.  He had a feeling it would come in handy.

“I’ll be there.”  Paul hung up the phone and poured himself a drink.  He was disgusted with himself for drinking this early in the day, but his nerves were frayed.  He glanced at the clock.  He still had four long hours to wait.

___

Sandi slept well for the first time in days.  By the time she awoke, Lara had gone to work and Richie was lounging in the kitchen having coffee and catching up on the morning news.

  “Good morning,” she smiled as she walked in. 

  “Maybe we should get you to a doctor,” he said, watching her limp into the room.

  “Nah, it’s not that bad, just a little stiff when I first get up.  What I could really use is a hot cup of coffee.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Richie said, pushing away from the table.

  “No, no,” she motioned him to sit back down.  “You stay put.  Just point me in the direction of the cups.”

  Richie pointed to the cabinet above the coffee maker.  “Help yourself. Can I make you some eggs or cereal or something?”

  “Not yet, thanks.  I’d just like to sit and talk if that’s OK?”

  Riche nodded.  “Sure.”

  “I had plenty of time to think things over sitting in that hotel room,” she said.  “I keep going over and over it in my head, that bizarre scene with Guy.  God,” she laughed, “you should have seen him.  He’s definitely not the cloak and dagger type.  I think he was more nervous than I was when he pulled that knife out, and believe me I was plenty scared.  I’m surprised the two of us didn’t both just pass out on the floor together.”

  Richie smiled, but he could tell that Sandi was still rattled when she talked about it.

  “Anyway, like I said, I keep thinking about it to see if there was some hint that I missed, some clue that he might have given me as to who his contact at BNI was. I keep coming up empty except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The BNI Intranet mailbox that Guy was having me send the information to: the ID was TOM and the password was Mindfields.”

  Richie didn’t want to make her feel stupid, but it sounded pretty obvious.  “Well, Tom could be the name of Guy’s contact at BNI.”

  “Duh,” she glared at him.  “Is that why they call you a detective?”

 
Real swift, Richie
, he thought.  “Suppose you thought of that, huh?”

  “Uh, yeah.  Came up with it right away.  Pretty clever, eh?”

  “All right, all right.  So I suppose you checked it out already, right?”

  “No.  I was afraid to access the Net.  I don’t know who these guys are, but I figured it would be better if they really thought that I was dead.  If they were monitoring the Internet, I’d give myself away as soon as I linked in.  I kept going over and over it in my head, and all I could think of was Paul.”

  “Paul?  Is his middle name Tom?”

  “No, but his father’s name was Thomas and Paul thought the world of his dad.  It would make sense for him to use it as an ID name on a hidden account.”

  “Except for one thing,” Richie said.  “If Paul were using that account to steal your data, he wouldn’t be hiding it using a secret ID that would be so obvious to you.”

  “I thought about that too, but it just seems so right.  Paul is one of the few people in the world who would know what to do with my data, he works at BNI, his father was named Tom and,” this part made her sick, “he could have told Guy all the right things to say to win my trust.”

  Richie felt sorry for her.  It was tough to argue; Paul was the obvious suspect.  “I’ve learned that things aren’t always what they seem, Doc. Let’s check out all the avenues before we plunge headlong down that road.”

  She composed herself and nodded.

  “Right,” he said, “let’s get to it then.”  He motioned for Sandi to sit at the kitchen table by the computer monitor.  She nodded and they sat.

  The computer was already booted up, displaying the latest network news update.

  “Computer, close program.” The screen went blank.  “Computer, load program ‘Daisy.’”

  “I’m here, Detective,” was the immediate response.  “You don’t think I’d sleep the whole day away, do you?”

  Sandy gawked at the computer.  “Wow!  What is
that
?”

  “Daisy, meet Dr. Sandra Fletcher; Doc, meet Daisy,” he pointed to the monitor.

  “Pleased to meet you, Doctor.”

  “Awesome,” Sandi gasped.  “AI?”

  “Yes,” Daisy answered.  “I have artificial intelligence capabilities, but they’re rather stifled in this cramped computer.”

  “Give it a rest, would you, Daisy?  I told you I’ll get more memory for you as soon as I can.  Hell, if things go right I may even be able to take you back to the station soon.”

  “That would be a relief.”

  “Enough small talk.  It’s time to earn your keep.  Access the BNI employee database and show me a list of everyone with the names Tom, Thomas or Tomassina.”

  Sandi looked up. “Tomassina?  I never would have thought about Tom being a girl.”

  “That,” Richie emphasized, “is why they call me a detective.”

  Sandi grinned.

  The list came up immediately.  “I already took the liberty of running that search while you and the doctor were talking.”

  Richie raised an eyebrow.  “You scare me, Daisy.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sandi and Richie scanned down the list:

   
Thomas Jones, Mailroom Clerk

    Thomas Martin, Director of Sanitation

    Tom Post, Legal Department

    Thomas Richter, Marketing

    Tomassina Small, Inventory Management Clerk

  “Pretty unsavory looking bunch, eh?”

  Sandi rolled her eyes.  None of these people would have the education to understand nanobotic gene sequencing.  She sat, staring at the screen, and then a thought came to her. “What if it’s not a name?

  “Huh?”

  “What if Tom is not a name?  When Guy had me type it, he had me enter it in all capital letters.  Maybe T...O...M are initials.”

  “Hmm...Daisy, show us a list of all BNI employees with the initials T.O.M.”

  The list appeared after a brief delay:

   
Timothy Olin Mallory, Finance Division

    Thomas Oliver Martin, Director of Sanitation

  “That sanitation engineer is starting to look pretty suspicious, isn’t he,” Sandi smirked.  “None of this is helping dissuade me.  It’s got to be Paul.”

  “Daisy,” Kincade said, “display all employees with the middle name “Tom, Tomassina or Thomas.”

  Once again, the list was short:

    Jason Thomas Anderson, CEO

    Harold Thomas Johnson, Marketing

    Marsha Tomassina Smythe, Human Resources

  “Bingo,” Sandi said.  “That son of a bitch.  JT Anderson.  I never thought about what the JT stood for.”

  “Anderson?  He’s a CEO.  How would an administrator know what to do with genetic research?  Besides, why would he dirty himself with stealing your data?  If he wanted it done, he’d just pay someone else to do it for him.”

  “Maybe, but if you were doing something like this, wouldn’t you want as few people as possible to know about it?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And as far as understanding what to do with it, don’t forget that JT Anderson was one of the pioneers in nanobotics.  Before he was a bureaucrat, he was one of the brightest scientific minds in the world.  Believe me, he would have no trouble figuring out how to use my research.”

  “Well, unfortunately, there’s still the matter of proof.  The last time I went to talk to him, two NSA agents came knocking at my boss’s door within an hour...and that was just for talking to him.”

“Our only hope is to go to the press.  If we go public with this, they can’t touch us.”

“Go public with what?  All we’ve got are a bunch of mysterious coincidences with BNI employees, a scientist griping that America’s leading medical research company stole her ideas...no offense...”

“None taken.”

“...and to make matters worse, the most damning fact we have against Anderson is that his middle name is Thomas.”

“Yeah, we’ll look like idiots.”  She had to agree.  “We need someone on the inside, someone who can get into the files at BNI.”

  “Funny you should bring that up.”

  Sandi looked at Richie and put up her hands.  “Nooo.  No way.  Look, I don’t believe for one minute that Paul Hingston would get himself involved with this murder and espionage stuff, but there’s no way I’m contacting him again.  The last time I called to accuse him of stealing my work he called me a pathetic loser, not in so many words maybe, but I felt about two inches tall.  I am not going to let him make me feel like that again.”

  “What if he feels differently now?”

  “I don’t care.  I am not going to call him.  No way.”

  “Maybe you don’t have to.”  Richie smiled deviously.

  Sandi gave him a dirty look.

  “He called this morning.  He wants to meet with me,” Richie said.

“Even if he is being up front, how did he know to call you?”

“Well, when you were missing I was at my wits end.  My last trump card was to show Hingston the files on the four BNI cases Shelly Lange told me about.  I figured that if he wasn’t in on this mind control thing they are working on, it would pique his interest.”

“And if he was?”

“Then he’d go to the NSA and we probably wouldn’t be here talking right now, but like I said, he called this morning.  I guess I piqued his interest.”

“Or he just wants to draw you out into the open.”

“I’m not completely naive, Doc.  I’m going to meet him on my terms.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No way.  If this is a trap, I don’t want you there.  Like you said, the longer they think you’re dead, the better.”

“Nobody knows Paul better than I do, Detective.  I need to be there to see if he’s telling the truth.  He won’t be able to lie to me.  Never could.”

Kincade hesitated.  “Well... If we’re going to do this, we’ll do it my way.”  He proceeded to detail his plan to Sandi.

___

At one o’clock sharp, the pay phone across the street from Poe Towers rang.  Paul Hingston was pacing in front of it and darted forward to answer.

“Yes?”

“Is that you, Hingston?”

“It’s me.  Where do we meet?”

“Meet me just outside the front entrance at Fort McHenry, two o’clock.  Come alone.”

“Who in the hell would I bring?  I’m not even sure that I trust
you
.”

“Don’t be late.” Kincade turned off his cell phone.  He was already at Fort McHenry, positioned with a perfect view of the main road in and the front gate.  The backdrop of the Chesapeake Bay made for a beautiful sight. Hingston seemed sincere enough, but Kincade was not about to take any chances.  The odds of “TOM” being Hingston’s father were just as good as the odds of it being JT’s middle name.  Kincade sat on the concrete bench and waited.  There was little else to do for now.