"We don't know anything," Val Cho said flatly. "Don't waste your time talking to us. Get out there and find the son of a bitch who shot Rachel."
"Easy," Simon said gently. "He has to follow procedure, Val."
Finley sized up Val for a moment. "A bit defensive, aren't you? Got a problem with authority?"
Simon turned to the detective. "You might, too, if you'd spent the first ten years of your life in a North Korean concentration camp."
"I don't need you to make excuses for me, Simon," Val said curtly. She looked the detective in the eye. "Are we under suspicion?"
"No, we've checked, and you were both in your lab when the shooting occurred. I thought you might have an idea who might have done it. Dr. Kirby wasn't willing to cooperate." He paused. "And she was a little belligerent."
"You must have caught her in a good mood," Simon said lightly. "She's usually more than a little. Particularly when she's feeling helpless."
"Is that why she said there were people wanting to kill her?"
"Nah. Who kills someone because she's testy? Look, they let you talk to her. Can you get them to let Val and me in to see her? She'll feel better if she knows we're keeping things running."
"What things?"
"The lab."
"And what do you do in that lab? I understand it houses one of those supercomputers."
"It's not a supercomputer in the traditional sense. But still, Jonesy could eventually have the capacity to run the entire country."
"Jonesy?"
"Just our nickname for the computer. Matthew Alvin Jones donated the computer to the university. When you live and work with a computer as intimately as Val and I do, it becomes almost a person to you."
"I wouldn't think anyone could become intimate with a computer."
"You're wrong. You should see Rachel working with it. She can make it do tricks that are pretty amazing. It's almost an extension of her."
"And what do you do in that lab?" he repeated.
Monteith chuckled. "Well, we're not trying to undermine Wall Street or concocting biological weapons. We just process and allocate data."
"Boring?"
"Sometimes."
"Good money?"
"Fair."
He glanced down at the dossier. "Then why would you give up an offer at AT&T that would have put you on a very lucrative fast track?"
"Money isn't everything. I like university life. Lots of beer parties and football games. It's relaxing."
Val snorted. "For God's sake, stop hedging, Simon. If you don't want to tell him, don't do it." She looked Finley in the eye. "It's a good job with potential to develop into something extraordinary. We're both learning a hell of a lot from Rachel, and we're grateful. Yes, she's tough as nails, but she has to be. She doesn't deserve some nut trying to kill her."
He leafed through the dossiers. "Her report says she received her Ph.D. in Computer Science when she was fifteen and her Doctorate in Medicine at twenty. Impressive. She worked in Japan for four years before she returned to the U.S. You were working in a government lab in Yokohama during that period. Is that where you met?"
"Yes."
"And later she pulled strings and brought you over here when she started working here at the university. You must be grateful."
"No, Rachel doesn't accept gratitude as a concept." She smiled faintly. "She says it gets in the way. The giver tends to feel sanctimonious, and the receiver feels a tinge of resentment at owing a debt. She brought me here because she wanted to do it. I came because I wanted to do it."
"Why you? Why not a U.S. student?"
"I'm brilliant." She glanced blandly at Simon. "And look what she got when she hired Simon."
"A bonanza," Simon said. "Not a Madame Butterfly who thinks she's a Nobel Prize candidate."
"Madame Butterfly was Japanese."
"Whatever." Simon turned back to the detective. "Can you get us in to see her?"
"Maybe. She said she wanted to see you. Why do you have to have security clearance to work in the lab?"
"Ask Rachel." He stood up. "And you know the reason I have security clearance is because I'm not a blabbermouth. Now will you get me in to see her?" He paused. "It's important."
Finley hesitated.
Val took a step closer, her hands clenched into fists. "I know she probably made you angry. She has to wheel and deal so much that she has a tendency to be blunt as hell when she lets down her guard. But Rachel has to juggle problems you couldn't even imagine. Give her a break."
"Give me a break. I have my captain hot on my ass to find who this shooter is. Who's to know if that sniper might not decide to choose another target? School shootings are a nightmare. Every parent of every student at the university will be on the phone wanting to know why he wasn't caught and why we didn't know this was going to happen. I'm walking around in the dark, and I don't like it." He paused. "So you get me out of hot water and give me something to tell me my captain and I'll get you in to see her."
Val hesitated. "What do you want to know? We have no idea who shot her."
"Too many candidates?"
"Maybe thousands. I'm not joking. We get thousands of applicants who want us to dole out processing power to their research. We might make or break careers. To some of these people, it may even be a matter of life or death."
"Processing power? I still don't know what the hell you're talking about. It can't be that important."
"Believe me, it's that important."
"And what exactly do you do in that lab?"
Val spoke simply, as if talking to a child. "You know the expression 'two heads are better than one'?"
Finley nodded. "Of course."
"Think about how much better three hundred thousand heads would be. Because that's what we have."
"What?"
"People all over the world let us use their computers when they're not using them. They do this by installing a small program that lets us send and receive data to and from their systems. Our computer, Jonesy, divides up problems and distributes them through the Internet to these thousands of smaller computers."
Finley nodded, trying to understand. "So you've got all these other computers working together on the same problem."
"Exactly. We get people to donate their computer's processing power to our projects. We measure this power in terms of computing cycles. The more cycles we can get, the better."
Simon smiled. "And it's not just from computers. Tell me, do you have children?"
The detective's eyes narrowed on him. "Yeah. A boy."
"Does he have a game console at home? Nintendo, X-box, PlayStation?"
"Sure."
"There's more computing power in that box than most businesses have. If the owners of those game consoles agree to leave them powered on and connected to the Internet even when they're not being used, they can let us use their processing power—their computing cycles—for all kinds of projects."
"And you get them to donate the use of their computers?"
Val nodded. "Absolutely. It costs them nothing, except maybe a few cents in electricity. And Rachel's software is designed to only use the donor's systems when they're not being used for anything else. We use computing power from home users, businesses, anywhere we can get it. And they get to be a part of all kinds of worthwhile causes. It's a win-win."