Rafael nodded with no show of enthusiasm. “We can drop off Mo and Sci on our way. My vehicle is in the garage across the street.”
He led them outside the terminal to the multi-story opposite, and a few minutes later they were in his white BMW X5, overnight bags loaded in the trunk, speeding through the airport complex.
It took a little over ninety minutes to reach the city, and they fought late-afternoon traffic all the way. Sci and Mo-bot were in the back. Sci was lost to his phone, and Mo-bot had her laptop open and was tapping away intently. Justine envied people who could read and write in transit. She felt a little queasy just looking at Mo-bot.
While the other two worked, Justine had tried striking up a couple of conversations with Rafael, but they’d quickly died out. It was clear grief and anxiety had taken hold and trapped him with his thoughts. They spent most of the journey in silence, Justine taking in the sights as they made slow progress to West 82nd Street.
Manhattan was an island with heart and soul. It had taken both to muster the energy and ingenuity needed to build the canyons and peaks here that rivalled anything the natural world had to offer. Huge monuments to industry towered over the city, casting it in shade, reaching for the heavens, embodiments of human ambition.
Rafael parked outside a building that looked like a concrete bunker, next to a line of NYPD patrol vehicles.
“We’ll leave our bags with you,” Sci said, and Rafael nodded.
“Stay in touch,” Mo-bot advised Justine.
“Will do.”
Mo-bot and Sci jumped out and headed for the main entrance. Rafael pulled away and drove along 82nd Street. They joined Columbus Avenue heading south and drove downtown to Mount Sinai, a huge redbrick hospital that occupied most of 59th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Rafael parked nearby and they walked toward the hospital.
He stayed silent and seemed to grow more and more distressed as they neared the building. This had to be difficult for him. As Private New York’s lawyer, he had almost daily contact with Jessie and the two of them were friends.
“She’ll be okay,” Justine said, touching his shoulder.
“I hope so,” he replied. “I can’t bear to think about what happened to them.”
They went inside, got directions from a receptionist, and navigated the soulless corridors and monochrome wings to reach Jessie’s room a few minutes later. A nurse showed them in before leaving to give them some privacy.
Justine approached Jessie’s bed, shocked to see the state of her colleague. Purple shadows surrounded Jessie’s sunken eyes, and her lips were an icy tint of blue. She was hooked up to monitors and drips, giving no sign that she knew she had visitors.
Justine took her hand, which was cold and clammy.
“Jessie, it’s Justine. I hope you can hear me. I want you to focus on getting better. We’ve got this.”
Justine was surprised to find herself growing emotional. This could have happened to any of them. It could have been her in that bed, or Jack, or Rafael. Jessie didn’t deserve this any more than they did. Like the rest of the Private team, she’d only ever tried to do good.
“We’re going to find the person who did this,” Justine assured her colleague. She looked at Rafael and saw his eyes were full to brimming. He nodded at her emphatically. “We’re going to find them and bring them to justice.”
Chapter 11
Detective Luiz Salazar, a grizzled, streetwise cop in his late thirties, had offered to drive Mo-bot and Sci over to the crime scene. Deskwork had probably put a little beef on Salazar, but there was enough of a hard edge to his six-foot muscular frame to suggest he could still handle himself. The shootings had taken place in a small apartment that had been rented for a month by Private New York. Rafael had emailed Mo-bot and Sci the case files, which revealed Jessie and Lewis had been investigating Ivor Yeadon, a degenerate hedge-fund manager whose employers believed he was selling corporate secrets to fund an increasingly out-of-control drug habit. Of course, Yeadon or one of his associates was prime suspect in the shooting. Some might say he’d have to be dumb to kill the people surveilling him, but after a lifetime spent hunting criminals, Mo-bot knew the simplest, sometimes stupidest, explanation was often the right one.
Mo-bot wasn’t famous, not like Sci. He lectured on forensics all over the world and ran special courses with the FBI and police departments around the country. Sometimes he was brought in to consult on difficult investigations, bolstering his reputation and building up a bank of favors with field offices, police departments, and district attorneys all over the United States. His semi-celebrity status earnt him a warm welcome from Salazar, who seemed to appreciate the prospect of superstar support. The two men bonded almost immediately and spent the short journey talking about Sci’s motorbikes and Salazar’s silver Dodge Charger, which had a custom engine and lowered suspension. The detective was seriously proud of his personal transport, which growled like a lion through the Manhattan streets.
Mo-bot didn’t enjoy the limelight, which was just as well because her work took place in the shadows. She had several hacker aliases to ensure she stayed current on the latest cyber threats and intrusion and detection technology. She knew she was regarded as the mom of Private to Sci’s dad, and didn’t mind playing the nurturing role to atone for her more mischievous activities. She couldn’t stay current without a little black-hat hacking every so often. After the events that had almost led to the destruction of the Private Moscow office, she’d taken a particular interest in Russian Intelligence agencies and infrastructure and, a few months ago, had managed to successfully disable the FSB email system for almost a week.
They pulled up outside the redbrick building on 75th Street where the Private surveillance team had been based, got out of Salazar’s formidable vehicle and followed him inside, taking the elevator up to the twelfth floor.
“You check building security?” Mo-bot asked.
Salazar nodded and produced his phone. “And every camera in a five-block radius. We got these.”
He opened his photos and flipped through some images of a masked man entering the building then chasing Jessie out of it, plus a couple of photos of him on the street.
“And then?” Mo-bot asked.
“He disappears. Either got in a vehicle or changed his clothes. Man in a ski mask would get noticed,” Salazar said wryly.
Mo-bot scoffed. “You think? Can you access the camera footage remotely?”
Salazar nodded. “It’s on our VPN.”
“I have a little piece of code that might help,” she said, patting her laptop case.
The elevator car opened and they walked along the corridor to a door that had been sealed with police tape. Salazar pulled this away and opened the padlock that had been fixed to the door.
They went into a tiny studio apartment — bed, kitchen, and living space, all in one room with a nano-shower cubicle off to one side. The window offered an excellent view of the penthouse opposite, but Mo-bot’s eyes weren’t on the building across the street. She was looking at the bloodstains and little marker flags that showed where bullets had hit the floor and walls. She shuddered at the thought of the horror perpetrated here against people she cared about.
“Okay to use this?” she asked, indicating the kitchen counter.
“We’ve been through the place so you’re good,” Salazar replied.
Mo-bot took her laptop out of its case and it switched on as she opened it.
“Can you log in?” she asked Salazar.
He came over and went to the NYPD Twentieth Precinct private network and logged in. He found the case file and opened the folder that contained hundreds of clips of video lifted from cameras around the building.
“This is everything we could get half an hour either side of the shooting,” he said.
“Thanks,” Mo-bot responded. She took control of her laptop and went to a folder marked “Gaiter.”
She highlighted the video footage and ran it through the Gaiter program.
“Neighbors see anything?” Sci asked.
Salazar shook his head. “They heard the chase and a woman yelling, but no one saw anything useful.” He looked over Mo-bot’s shoulder. “What is that?” he asked, pointing at the Gaiter status bar, which showed the program had almost finished analyzing the video files.
“No two humans walk the same way. Our gait is as unique as out fingerprints, so I created an AI program that’s studied millions of gait patterns from video footage taken around the world and has taught itself to identify a person solely from their gait,” Mo-bot replied. “Pretty cool, huh?”
She was used to the stunned reaction she received from people when she gave them these glimpses of the future, and Salazar didn’t disappoint.
“We’ve got six matches,” she said, looking at the search results. She scrolled down a tile display of six individuals who featured in multiple videos. One was the masked man.
“This looks like our shooter. He takes off his mask between that camera and this one.” She pointed at stills from two different sites. “Unfortunately, he’s got his back to the camera when he removes the ski mask.”
“Wow,” the detective remarked in awe. “You just saved us hours of legwork.”
“You think you could share the case files?” Sci asked, taking advantage of the goodwill their breakthrough had engendered. “We can see what else we can help with.”
Salazar nodded. “Sure. Once you’ve signed a contractor NDA, I’ll send you everything we’ve got.”
Mo-bot smiled as she clicked the still and Gaiter opened the relevant video file: a short clip taken from a traffic camera at a distance. The shooter walked away from the camera for a little while before pulling open a wire-mesh gate and hurrying into an alleyway beside an apartment building.
“You see it?” Mo-bot asked.
“Yeah,” Sci replied. He was at her shoulder, totally absorbed in the footage, which had started playing again from the beginning.
“See what?” Salazar asked.
Mo-bot waited until the suspect pulled open the gate.
“See how he reacts here?”
She saw Salazar register the significance this time.
“He nicks himself on the gate.”
“Right,” Sci said. “We don’t have a visual, but we just might have his DNA.”