“I can’t verify it yet but I believe Gail was murdered. You’ve probably already figured that out but I want to make sure you understand she likely was targeted and abducted.”
Lucy wiggles the table and it’s more stable.
“I wish I’d activated the video camera when it would have mattered,” she says as if that’s what bothers her most about what I just said.
Beneath her flat calm she’s agitated. She’s upset. I can tell.
“You had a way to control her phone remotely.” I remember to take off my coat and I place it in my lap.
“Her phone?” Lucy’s green eyes flash. “The chip stacking, the camera capabilities, the connectivity, the range of operating bands, everything’s mine and I have the tech specs, invoices, and copyrights to prove it.”
“Then what was it Gail had to offer?” I realize how badly I need coffee. It warms my throat and gets my blood flowing.
“Multimedia subsystems, packet data, fiber-optics with upstream speeds about ten times what can be done today, and search engines that match intent not just keywords. All the same stuff I’ve been really interested in and working on. Her promises sounded good over a couple of drinks.”
“I see. It sounds like at the end of the day she proved totally useless.”
“Not useless but weak, and then she turned. I didn’t let on that I was aware of it. I had one particular app and to give her credit she had some pretty ingenious ideas about it. Then she got other ideas that were fucking scary,” she says as I think of Benton’s remark about biometric software and its potential use with drones.
“You met her casually. Since when do you trust strangers?” I ask.
“About eight months ago.” Lucy sips her coffee and makes a face. “Generic Kenya that tastes like Kmart. Why the hell does Bryce have to be so cheap? Janet and I ran into her at the Psi Bar and we started talking. We run into a lot of MIT people and talk. They’re the kind of people I’m most comfortable with.”
“And you decided to work on a project together just like that.” Caffeine dulls the edges of a headache that’s lingered since Marino woke me up. I realize I need a lot of coffee badly and I push my chair back.
“I don’t know why.” She toys with her cheap cup, turning it in slow circles on the table. “Sometimes I’m stupid, Aunt Kay.”
“You’re never stupid but all of us have trusted people we shouldn’t.”
“I felt bad for her at first because it was a terrible story she told, growing up poor in California, her father an alcoholic who killed himself when she was ten. Her mother has early Alzheimer’s and is taken care of by a sister who’s mentally challenged. Then Gail trusted people to manage everything she has and next thing it’s gone.”
I get up to start a refill of generic stuff that right now tastes wonderful.
“I thought her areas of expertise could be helpful,” Lucy says. “Unfortunately I was basing my assessment on her having made a lot of money from really cool phone apps when she was a teenager.”
“You related because it sounded like you. A kid, a prodigy, who’s suddenly incredibly wealthy with everyone trying to take advantage including your own mother who was never there until you had money. You support her, and the more you do, the worse she is.”
“Who? My mother?” Lucy says sarcastically.
“That’s a lonely place to be.”
“She’s dating some rich Venezuelan twice her age. Did I mention that? Lucio something or other, owns a lot of Miami real estate, South Beach, Golden Beach, Bal Harbour, hosted some TV show when he was young, recently got a Lap-Band so he’ll look good for his new mujer fatal. It’s confusing. She calls both of us Luce.”
“The misfortune of having my sister as your mother.” It has left Lucy with a vulnerability that I don’t think will ever heal. She trusts completely, and when she’s hurt she goes after the enemy with an energy that’s dazzling.
“She’s not making much of a living anymore after putting a vampire in the children’s book before last and more recently a kid with magical powers who constantly recites these clunky rhyming spells,” Lucy says.
“I haven’t read them.”
“I do out of self-defense. She should write her autobiography. Fifty Shades of Dorothy. That would sell.”
“One of these days you’re going to give up hating her.”
“I think Grans is really getting old.”
“My mother’s been old for quite a while.”
“Seriously. She shouldn’t be driving. She goes to Publix with that huge white Chanel pocketbook that’s a hand-me-down from Mom and then can’t find her car so she walks around pushing her grocery cart and clicking her key until headlights go on. It’s a miracle she hasn’t been mugged.”
“I need to call her.”
“The word need is never good. I hope you never use it when you’re talking about me,” Lucy says.
25
“I’ll call her and she’ll tell me how bad she feels and what a terrible daughter I am.” I fill the water filter pitcher at the stainless-steel sink. “That’s what it was like over the weekend right after I got back.”
“Did she know what you were doing in Connecticut?”
“She saw it on the news.” I’m not going to get into what my mother said about it, almost blaming me while bemoaning the fact that I never save anybody’s life. I should work in a funeral home. She said what she’s said before.
“Tell me more about your work with Gail.” I pour water into the Keurig’s reservoir.
“All she was supposed to be doing at this stage was bench-testing, which has dragged on for a reason,” Lucy explains. “Months and months of troubleshooting while she’s secretly worked on copies of my apps, adding features and edits that I would never permit. She assumed I wouldn’t find out.” She takes a swallow of coffee and leans back in her chair. “Her programming is now nonexistent. Nobody should have it.”
“They will anyway. If you’re talking about biometric technology, specifically facial-recognition software that’s used by domestic drones, it won’t be you who stops that sort of scary progress.”
“And it won’t be me who puts digital eyes in the sky to target our own citizens or law enforcement or politicians. The problem is it won’t just be our government doing it. Imagine criminals having access to drone surveillance technology.” She brings that up again. “Something small enough to fly through an open window and hover at a thousand feet if you want to scout out where a target lives or follow people in their car or orchestrate a huge heist or a home invasion or assassinate someone. I’d rather be figuring out ways to combat nightmares like that. Which reminds me. The missing guy Benton’s told you about? The kid who disappeared seventeen years ago?”
I don’t respond one way or another.
“You don’t have to answer,” she says. “I know Benton would tell you because he has to tell someone he can trust besides me. Things aren’t good for him at the Bureau.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Age progression, facial recognition. Put it this way: Martin Lagos isn’t in any database anywhere on the damn planet. So the idea that he’s suddenly a serial killer leaving his DNA? Forget it. I can run a search like that from my phone.”