it.”
Lien-hua took a sip of her Diet Coke and worked at her chicken Caesar salad while I began summarizing the visit with Dr. Osbourne.
I’m not a fan of briefings, so I tried to make my synopsis as short as possible, but before I could start explaining the connections between the different branches of scientific research, Lien-hua said, “Wait. I’m still confused about how the device ended up at police headquarters. Dunn just happened to kick the car containing it and then ordered that car be taken to impound? Doesn’t that seem a little too convenient?”
“You know, I’ve been wondering the same thing. Let’s check the plates, see who that car belonged to.”
I pulled out my laptop, but Lien-hua touched my arm to stop me. “Are you sure you should be using that? What if Shade’s able to track your computer use?” She removed her hand.
“Not possible,” I said. “Remember CIFER? It’s designed for field operatives. Masks the user’s location. I’ll just use that to access the Internet.” I tapped at a couple of keys. “Let’s find out who owns that car.”
Using my federal ID access number I logged onto the police archives and searched through the impound records; and a moment later Lien-hua nailed a finger to the screen. “It’s Austin Hunter’s car!”
“Unbelievable,” I said. “He was one step ahead of us the whole time.”
I tapped a few more keys. “The parking tickets are real. He managed to get them all since leaving the SEALs. He must have saved them up, stuck ‘em on the car so it would get noticed.”
She thought for a moment. “So, Hunter must have known that if he got caught, the car would eventually be impounded because of the parking tickets. The device would be confiscated and stored safely at police headquarters and he would still have a bargaining chip to save Cassandra. Simple but elegant.”
“It’s just that Dunn’s impatience helped the process along.”
“Very impressive.”
The mention of Austin brought a somber mood to the room, and only after working on our meal silently for a few moments did it seem right to get back to business.
At last I continued my explanation of neural mapping, identity tracking, and the technological possibility of inducing brain damage or giving someone a stroke with the device. I ended by saying, “I know that at first glance this whole thing sounds unbelievable, like some kind of science fiction movie, but-”
Lien-hua shook off my skepticism. “Pat, cell phones were science fiction thirty years ago. So were mp3 players, DVDs, personal computers, smart bombs, spy planes, digital photographs, the list goes on.”
“True.” As I thought about her words, I realized that nearly all the technology I need in order to do my job had been invented in my lifetime.
“Even a decade ago,” she continued, “who would have thought we could implant electrodes into the brains of people with physical disabilities that would allow them to type, simply by thinking of the letters?”
“What’s impossible today is commonplace tomorrow,” I mumbled. I tried to imagine what types of technological, medical, and weaponry advances we’d see within the next thirty years, but it was too mind-boggling to even imagine.
“Besides,” she added, “if what Dr. Osbourne told you is true, the technology for this device has been around for years.”
“It just took someone to pull it all together,” I said. “To make the connection.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I’m almost surprised no one has tried creating something like this before.”
Our conversation brought me back to the troubling thought that I’d first had at Dr. Osbourne’s house, but in the rush to find Lien-hua and get to an out-of-the-way location, I hadn’t had the chance to look into it. “Lien-hua, what’s the hardest thing to do in a murder?”
Without even hesitating. “Getting rid of the body.”
“Right. So, what if you don’t have a body?”
“How could you not have a body?”
“By not murdering someone.”
She took a small sip of her cola. “I’m not sure I’m following you here.”
I surfed to the online archives of the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“Remember when Hunter said he didn’t kill the people?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Who was he talking about? Which people? I figure that, since he was the arsonist, whatever deaths he was talking about would seem to be related to the fires, right?” As I spoke, I found what I was looking for. The obituaries page for April 22,2008.
“That follows, yes.” She scooted closer to get a better look at the screen. “So, what are we looking at here?” “The first of the arsons was reported at 2:31 a.m. on the morning of April 22, 2008.” I pointed to one of the obituaries. “And look. An unidentified woman was found dead that night on Euclid Avenue, within a block of the fire.”
“And that proves what?”
“Nothing. But let’s see if there’s a pattern.” I surfed to the obituaries for the date of the next fire, the one in Chula Vista. “Obits for suicides and natural deaths won’t necessarily list location, but they should list the time of death… And here we are…” I read it off: ” ‘May 17, an unidentified man died of natural causes sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.,’ that’s one hour before that night’s fire was reported.”
I scrolled to the date of the next fire. “And here, on June 16, Rene Gonzalez died at approximately 11:00 p.m., two hours before a fire was suppressed on the same street. And…” I surfed to another date. “Here we have a Jane Doe on August 1 at 1:00 a.m., ninety minutes before the fire-”
“You memorized the dates, times, and locations for all the fires?”
“It’s easier that way, then I don’t have to keep looking things up. So, see?” I kept scrolling. “Here’s a suicide, within three blocks of the fire.”
Now that I knew what I was looking for, it went faster, so I whipped through the remaining obituary pages, summarizing as I went. “Another stroke… two suicides… and two more unidentified deaths.” I finished scrolling through the dates of the fires and then said, “It doesn’t happen at every fire, but there are enough incidents to establish a high correlation.”
Lien-hua’s voice fell into a soft lament and she said the words I was thinking, the words I hoped couldn’t possibly be true: “They were testing the device on the homeless population.”
“Yes, I think they were.”
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I hated to admit it, but all the evidence so far told me we were right.
“So, use the device on someone and either induce a stroke or give him severe enough brain damage to cause him to consider suicide.”
“Probably to the frontal cortex,” she mused. “Controls inhibitions, language production, judgment. Destroy that and we’re little more than animals.”
“And remember? Hunter chose sites near trolley stops so that he could get away. So if Drake’s men were testing the device nearby, that would explain why Graysmith and Dunn noticed the high rate of suspicious deaths among the homeless near trolley tracks.”
“Don’t murder someone,” Lien-hua whispered. “Let him die from natural causes. Think about San Diego, Pat: a biotech hub with hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. What better city to test this in? Here you have all the scientists you need, all the technology and biotech resources you need-”
“And all the test subjects,” I added. “People who would never be missed: immigrants, transients, the homeless.” It was terrible to say, but I knew it was true. “The system doesn’t care if a few vagrants or illegal aliens end up dead. The nameless don’t make the news.
To the system, they don’t exist.”
“And with the high occurrence of mental illness in the homeless population, who would notice if the test only caused slight brain damage?” She paused. “This device would be the perfect weapon for an assassin.”
“Wait,” I said, staring at the deadly device laying right beside us. “Think big here, Lien-hua. We can already
