“Real damn hard. That’s how we all got sick.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, that’s not making any kind of sense.”
“If it’s not an accelerator, then what was it?”
“Beats the crap out of me, Joe. And so far it’s beating the crap out of everyone I talk to.”
“Other than Erskine and San Pedro, who else are we looking at?”
He leaned close and dropped his voice again. “Look, Joe, I, um, might have looked into Mr. Bolton’s computer records. A bit. You know?”
“Why? Has he done something naughty?”
“What? Bolton? God, no. It’s just that he has a higher clearance than Mr. Church right now. At least as far as the Kill Switch thing goes. But… well, I guess I got nosy.”
“I ought to hit you with a rolled-up newspaper,” I said. “Did you find anything?”
“Not sure. Mr. Church showed you the stuff I got before, right? The black budget report? Did you see the mention of a project called the God Machine? Well, I don’t know what it is, but there were two names in a footnote. One marked with an ‘I,’ which means inventor, and one with a ‘D’ for developer. Both had the same last names and I think I know who they are. The inventor is P. Bell, and that’s got to be that weirdo Prospero Bell.”
“Who?”
“Son of Oscar Bell? He’s the other name, the developer. O. Bell.”
“Again I say, who?”
“Oscar Bell is Erskine’s brother-in-law. Or he was. He was married to Erskine’s sister. She’s dead, though.”
“There was no Oscar Bell on the personnel list at Gateway.”
“Uh-uh. Oscar’s a private defense contractor. Or he used to be. His company went bankrupt a few years ago and he started drinking. After that he fell off the public radar. I’m running a deep background on him to see if he’s anywhere.”
“What about the son?”
“Oh, man, that’s a really sad story,” said Bug. “Prospero was this genius kid that was supposed to be smarter than Stephen Hawking. Super-freak intelligence. Way off the scale. Incredible inventor, though. Published papers on particle physics and quantum theory when he was a teenager, and from what I can tell from the people I’ve talked to, Prospero was as crazy as he was smart. Some of his theories are groundbreaking and other scientists have been trying to catch up because it’s apparently going to open all sorts of new doors in research. Other stuff he came up with was nutty. But Prospero also had a lot of emotional problems. His dad sent him to a military boarding school to try and straighten him out, and even paid to have a state-of-the-art lab built for him. But that backfired. First he blew up the lab, and then a couple of years later he set fire to the whole school and tried to break out.”
“Tried? What happened to him?”
“Died in the fire. Him and a friend.”
“So how’s his name on a black budget request for Gateway?”
“From the dates on the report, the God Machine is apparently something Prospero came up with when he was still a teenager. From the way I’m reading this, his father took the design, whatever it was, and sold it to the government. At first they paid him for it, and those are pretty big numbers; but then something happened and they took it away from him and sued him to recover the monies paid. That’s what broke him.”
I chewed on that for a moment. “Jesus, Bug, this is the first solid lead we have. Do whatever you have to do to find this guy.”
“Sure, but like I said, you should talk to Junie.”
“Why?”
“Remember that conspiracy theory podcast she used to do when you guys first met? I used to listen to it all the time. She had Oscar Bell on her show once. If anyone knows where he is, it’ll probably be her.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
I picked up the phone to call Junie but before I could even push a button it rang and it was she.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Wishing I was still in a coma,” I joked. She didn’t think that was funny. “Look, baby, any chance you can drop what you’re doing and come to the Pier? Mr. Church and I have a few things we need to talk to you about.”
“Is it urgent?”
“Depends. I can hear a helicopter. Where are you?”
“About to fly inland. There’s an environmental engineer I need to see. Linda Higdon. She has a water reclamation process that might work with something we’ve been developing here at FreeTech. Linda’s going to be at a testing facility out by the Salton Sea but only for the rest of the day and then she’s on a flight to Kenya. I’ve been trying to arrange this for months. If her process is compatible, we could maybe reclaim five million gallons a day once it’s up and running. Think about what that would mean to the farmers who are being crushed by the drought.”
“That’s actually kind of amazing,” I said, not joking.
“Do you need me to cancel with her, or—?”
I could tell she wanted me to say no, so I said no. The DMS was warming the bench right now, and even the stuff Church and I were banging back and forth was by-product. It’s not like the president was letting us do our jobs. Damn it.
“No, it’s good. Go talk to your scientist. Will you be home tonight?”
“Yes, but late. If you don’t feel like you can be alone, go over to Sam’s place. He has a guest room.”
“It’s all good,” I assured her. “I have plenty of people to hold my hand.”
She paused. “I hate to do this. You’ve only just come home.”
“I love you, too. Go save the world.”
And she was gone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Top and Bunny were still at the crime scene, Bolton wasn’t back yet, Church was on the phone being yelled at by the president, and I didn’t have any beer in my fridge. So I checked out, leaving a request for Lydia-Rose to call me the second Top and Bunny got back.
With Ghost trotting beside me I got into my car and went to visit Rudy.
And immediately wished I hadn’t. Rudy looked small and shrunken, paled to a ghost, wrapped like a mummy. He had bandages over his face with a metal brace to hold his nose in shape. He wore a soft cervical collar. His leg was hung from straps and framed by a postsurgical sling. The broken nose had given him two black eyes.
His wife, Circe, had been very reluctant to let me in. Even though it had been Rudy who attacked me, she seemed to regard me as a thug who had attacked and brutalized her husband. Mind you, she didn’t actually call me a thug. That was the word Rudy had used and it hung in my head.
Thug. Weird, but the shadowy figure in my dreams had called me that, too.
It took some time and a lot of promises, but Circe agreed to let me in. She sat on the far side of the bed, holding one of Rudy’s hands in both of hers. Circe is a beautiful woman with masses of curly hair and olive skin. A fierce and uncompromising intelligence glittered in her dark eyes. I was godfather to her son but in that moment I was the man who crippled her husband. I sat across from her and held Rudy’s other hand. The room was silent for a long time. It wasn’t a chatty moment, and it was maybe forty minutes or an hour before I felt Rudy’s hand twitch. His fingers curled to grasp mine. He was weak but there was a desperate strength in those fingers. I got to my feet and leaned over him.