Surveillance (Ghost Targets Book 1) (8 page)

Katie shrugged, suddenly miserable. "I'll be fine," she said. "It's just tough making a start in a new town, a new job. And I've got this awful case...."

Eva said, "Oh." She put her smile back on, and tugged Katie's hand to get her moving. "Well, we'll get it sorted out," she said. "Come on, let's walk and talk."

"Yeah," Katie said. "Good plan." She leaned across the table to grab her jacket, then followed Eva out the door.

They walked a couple blocks while Katie filled in the broad strokes for her, then she said, "You know what it's like? It's like the books I read when I was a kid. It's like...do you remember
Law and Order
? That old TV show? It's like that. I need to be hitting the beat. I need to be knocking on doors and asking the tough questions." She thought for a moment, and shook her head. "They always used to say, 'After three days, the trail's cold.' Maybe that doesn't matter when it's all in the database, but my new perps
aren't
. So all of a sudden it's like I'm an old-timey cop again, just like I used to dream about, and right now I'm looking at a trail that's gone cold. I'm spending day three hanging out with old friends and parroting back decade-old congressional talking points to a judge who already agrees with me. I need to be in hot pursuit, you know?"

Eva chuckled, and when Katie turned she caught the other woman just watching her. She'd always been a good listener. Katie said, "What?"

"Katie Pratt, Gumshoe," Eva said, and then laughed at Katie's frown. "Fine," she said. "Tell me about it. I bet you've already got more than you think you do."

So she laid it all out. She spent hours bringing Eva up to speed. Most of it they spent walking, strolling Katie's old beat, but after a while she summoned her car and they sat in its spacious interior while she pulled out her handheld to show Eva the HaRRE video.

She pulled off her headset and turned up the volume to use it as a speaker, then she opened her notes while the video was loading so she could skip to the really creepy part. It took a while for the video to render on her handheld, so she narrated while they waited. "Okay, so she's standing in the office, the elevator dings, and everything goes black." Even as she said it, the HaRRE screen resolved, already black. An unbroken roar came from the speaker. She stopped the video and checked the time in the environment, then double-checked her notes. "Weird."

"What?"

"She should be...." Katie skipped backward in time five minutes, and there was the girl, staring at a painting on the wall. Katie said, "Ooh, there she is."

"Pretty," Eva said in an analytical sort of way. "Shame."

Katie said, "Okay, well, here she's listening to some music. She looks nervous to me, but not exactly scared."

Eva nodded.

Katie went on, "Now she moves around behind the desk and—oh." The screen went black.

"Wow." Eva said. "That's spooky. It's not—"

"No," she said, and switched back to her notes. "It has shifted. We've lost...almost three minutes off the record, since Monday." She turned to Eva, eyes wide. "It's growing."

She shrugged. "So?"

"So I was already stumped. This...I don't know what the blackout represents, but it's totally blind. I looked, and it covers the whole downtown building and halfway down the block. I can't get details on anyone or anything within it. We're already pushing half an hour. That means unbroken positive IDs are about to start popping. Anyone inside that blackout—whether it's janitors cleaning up the building or an executive working late on a proposal across the street—if they stay inside the blackout past half an hour, the confidence level on their IDs plummets. It could take weeks for them to repair that. This has ramifications way beyond my homicide."

"How so? I mean, sure, maybe some bystanders can't get good credit for a couple weeks—"

"No. Eva, think about it." Their earlier argument was still fresh on her mind. "That blackout is manufacturing ghosts. The murderer was
already
 erased, but this is ghosting everyone. Anything they do is lost to history. Any voice notes they record on Hathor, any last, precious conversation with a dying friend, any violent comment that could have shown motive in some crime of passion weeks from now. And any crimes. If someone was mugged out on the street, we would have no more evidence against them than against my ghost. This is a nightmare. And it's growing."

Eva opened her mouth, but she found herself at a loss for words. That was for the best. Katie said, "Hathor, connect me to Rick Goodall, high priority." He didn't answer, and instead of leaving a message Katie said, "Goodbye. Hathor, connect me to Craig, FBI. Craig, connect me to Rick, high priority."

This time Rick took the call, and Katie immediately said, breathlessly, "Rick, we've got a problem."

"What's wrong?" His concerned voice flooded the interior of the car.

"It's the Little Rock case," Katie said, turning down the volume a little. "There's something very bad there. It's not just a regular ghost. There's some sort of blackout—"

Rick cut her off, laughter in his voice. "Hey, slow down. Take a breath. I know how hard you're working on this case, so I took a look at your case file this morning and there's nothing to panic over. It's a little odd, but I can show you how to handle it as soon as I can get a minute free—"

"Rick, it's growing. It's a real problem—"

He chuckled. "We have ways of dealing with it, Katie. I appreciate your zeal, but this is nothing worth getting worked up over. How did your appeal go?"

"I trashed them," she said, trying not to sound petulant. Her voice just came out flat. "It went great."

"Great!" he said. "Take your time getting home. I'll see you in the morning. Goodbye."

They sat in silence for a while, Katie fuming. Eva finally spoke up. "Look, Katie, I know you don't want to hear this—"

"No," she said. "I know they're the experts. I know I'm just a rookie now. But there's no way this is routine. If it
is
—" She stopped, and took a deep breath. "If it is, the whole system is a lie. All our confidence...." She trailed off, furious and frustrated.

Eva waited a moment, then said. "I know a guy." Katie looked up and met her eyes. Eva shrugged. "Look, if they're as busy as you say they are...if it's the president, Katie, and they only have a handful of agents, your case isn't changing priority in their eyes. You just have to accept that." Katie's eyes flashed, and Eva hurried on. "However, if you want to get to the bottom of this on your own, there's a few things you can do. You can go to Little Rock and knock on doors—"

"I already have permission for that. I fly out Monday."

Eva smiled, a tightening of her lips, and went on. "That's a start. Interview everyone involved, and see if anything turns up." She glanced back at Katie's handheld on the seat between them, the HaRRE screen still solid black. "If you want to figure that out, though, you're going to need an expert."

"And you know a guy."

She shrugged. "I know
of
 a guy. Runs a company called Database Archive Management, Inc. The
Times
 ran a feature on him a couple months back, and I knew you were looking into Ghost Targets so I shared it with you." Katie looked away, and Eva said, "I know, you were busy. But this guy sells a...service. He 'manages' the database archives of the rich and powerful. The database in question being Hathor's." Katie's eyes grew wide, and Eva said, "Yeah. Right out in the open. They call him Ghoster."

She said, "Ghoster?"

A silky smooth, unfamiliar voice answered her, unnaturally loud from the headset speaker. "Ghoster," it said. "Pleased to meet you, Katie."

Eva started, then covered her surprise with anger. "Who is this? How did you connect to this line?"

"I thought we already covered that," the voice answered, sounding annoyed. "I'm Ghoster. Now, here's my question: why is a Federal Ghost Targets agent discussing me and my services with an officer of the court?"

Katie's eyes narrowed, but her voice was level. "Do you have any idea how much trouble you could get in for hacking the communications of a federal agent?"

He answered with a laugh in his voice. "I do. None. I'm walking away from this. Look, I know you're new to the department and all, and apparently you haven't gotten your orientation yet. So here's the most important bit of it. You forget about me. I don't exist, as far as you're concerned. In exchange, I'll throw you a bone now and then. That's the deal."

She caught Eva's eye, and hers were as wide as Katie's. She shrugged, just as confused as Katie. Katie said, "Look, umm...Ghoster. I don't—"

"That's all, Ms. Pratt. Leave me out of your plans. Goodbye."

Silence fell in the car once more. Then Katie shook her head. "What the hell?"

"Okay," Eva said. "I guess I don't know a guy. You're on your own."

Katie said, "No. Hathor, connect me to Ghoster." Her headset played a tone to indicate the name couldn't be resolved. She said, "Hathor, reconnect the previous call." The same tone played, and she growled. Then she barked, "Ghoster! Ghoster, Ghoster, Ghoster! Database Archive Management. I'm talking about you!"

He spoke from her headset once again. "Stop that. You trigger alarms when you do that."

"I know," she said. "You weren't taking my calls."

"I told you—"

"I need your help," she said. "Apparently you know a thing or two about Hathor. Someone has found a way to blind her, and I need you to explain what's going on."

"You couldn't afford me," Ghoster said. "Get your boss to show you how to track down ghosts. It's not as hard as you think."

"This is different," she said, and then her confidence wavered. "I think this is different. It's not just a blind spot. The whole scene is blacked out, in HaRRE. I've never seen anything like it. It's like the lights just go out."

"There are no lights in HaRRE."

He sounded patronizing, and she answered it with irritation. "I know," she said. "I'm trying to describe it. The murderer on my case is already a ghost, but somehow the entire office building goes black, just before the crime. Audio is just noise—a solid bar of noise."

She got no answer from Ghoster. After a moment, she said, "Hello?"

"I'm here," he said. "I'm thinking." Several seconds later he said, "Okay, that's weird. When do you get back from Brooklyn?"

Eva shot her a warning look, but she ignored it. "I'm heading back this afternoon."

"You'll be in the office tomorrow?"

She nodded, "Bright and early."

"Okay. I have a ten o'clock spot free. I'm going to meet you there."

Her eyes shot wide. "Really?"

"You've got me stumped," he said, then added quickly, "It's probably something stupid. No offense, but it usually is. But my Thursdays are usually slow, so I'll give it a look." Before she could thank him—before she really understood that he had volunteered to help—he cut off the conversation with a terse, "Goodbye."

She looked at Eva. After a moment, her face split in a grin. She said, "Thank you, Eva."

"I didn't really do anything," she said.

Katie laughed. "You've given me some hope, for the first time since I started this thing. It's probably something stupid, like he said." She waved away Eva's protest. "No, I've known that from the start. But this is my first opportunity to find out
what
. I just want to know how to do my job."

Eva smiled back at her. "You've got that, then. This guy sounded like a real jerk, though."

She laughed. She glanced at her watch, "Ah. I've used up your whole day."

"Don't worry about it," Eva said. "I took most of the afternoon off as soon as I learned you were coming to town." She glanced at her own watch, and groaned. "I do have an arraignment before long, though. I'm sorry—"

"Oh, no. Don't let me keep you any more than I have." Katie said. "I've got enough to keep me busy now, getting ready for Ghoster." She blanked the screen of her handheld and put it away, hung her headset back on her ear, and smiled at Eva. "Thank you again. Want a ride to the courthouse?"

Katie dropped her off, waved a sad goodbye, then sank back in the seat with eyes closed as her car sped toward DC. After a while she called up her dad, and left him a message all about her day. When she got home, her mind was abuzz with plans, details she needed to get sorted out to share with the database expert. She forgot about dinner, working in the comfort of her home office, and it was well past midnight before she finally shut off the lights and fell into her bed.

When the alarm went off the next morning, she cursed it roundly. The thought of her appointment with Ghoster got her out of bed, though, and she showed up at work smiling. Rick commented on it before he disappeared into the conference room. Even his disappearance didn't bother her, because she had found a mentor on her own. She went straight to her desk and pulled up the case file. Her first, highest priority was to learn more about the blackout.

It was indeed growing, in space as well as time. Two other buildings beside the Aggregator's were now fully engulfed, and she'd lost another forty seconds since she'd showed the video to Eva. She stopped the playback just before the blackout and left it rendered while she tried to do the math on her loss rate. She came up with a prediction just a moment before the video on her desktop dropped to black—easily an hour early. Aggravating, but she had no reason to expect the blackout's growth rate to be constant. She had an estimate, anyway.

It was alarming, too. If it took another ten days for the assassination case to resolve (one way or another), they would be looking at a dozen new ghosts in Hathor—people who were in the buildings or on the street earlier in the day. If it took a month, maybe a hundred other lives would lose some bit of information as their pasts wandered into the growing cloud. If it took much longer than that, the blackout could reach back into business hours, and then the damage would be catastrophic—locally, if not nationally. She found seven other people already caught in the blackout, all in one of the three buildings currently consumed. All of them had arrived at least an hour before the blackout started (most had been there since lunch), and the first to leave didn't do so until thirty-seven minutes after the end of it. All of them were less than a day away, real-time, from losing their positive IDs in Hathor, without ever leaving the office. At the very least, she thought, they needed to be warned.