Private Lives

Matt had never considered himself a science superbrain, but even he could spot the same smear of light.

“The same tagging agents,” Steadman said.

At his order, a third spectrograph appeared. “This is from the blast crater in the next township from Winters’s house,” Steadman announced silkily. “Note—”

“I can see,” Matt said tersely.

“Shall we move on to your friend’s so-called alibi?” Hangman Hank asked.

“Captain Winters said he was contacted by a snitch—” Matt began.

“Well, if he was, it happened telepathically,” Steadman interjected sarcastically. “Call up the records,” he ordered his technicians. “Here’s the circuitry usage report from the local phone company. No calls directed to the circuitry node including Winters’s office phone. And just in case you ask, no calls to his wallet-phone, either.”

Another set of numbers came up. Steadman pointed. “Here’s the Net Force phone log, security sealed in our own computers. Do you see any incoming phone activity recorded for the captain’s office?”

“One thing hanging around Net Force has taught me is that records can be altered — even deleted,” Matt said stubbornly.

“Yeah,” Steadman replied with a sneer. “And some skell could steal the Declaration of Independence — just about as easily. I’ll grant that it’s possible to get in and mess with the phone company. But we’re talking Net Force security on our phone logs. If someone could infiltrate our systems like that, I’d hire them immediately as a specialist agent.”

He laughed and gave another set of orders. “Here’s the clincher. We found these partial prints on some of the debris from the crater in the next township.” He paused for a second. “Winters’s practice bomb.”

“You can’t—” Matt began.

“I can,” Steadman interrupted. “And here’s why.”

The image of a few twisted bits of metal and plastic appeared. A second later faint designs popped into view, loops and whorls — bits of fingerprints.

“This is a facsimile of James Winters’s fingerprints from his government records.” The explanation wasn’t really necessary. The captain’s name was right at the top of the form.

“Now, check this out.” Steadman couldn’t keep the smugness out of his voice.

The partial prints on the bomb debris suddenly turned bright red. They moved from their positions, rotating around in midair to align with the prints on Winters’s records. The fragmentary prints came to rest on the facsimiles. There was no doubt of a match.

“Myself, I’d say that was the most damning aspect of the case,” Steadman said.

“But people have known how to lift prints and transfer them for more than thirty years,” Matt argued desperately.

“And who’d have done the dirty deed? Evil agents from the twelfth dimension?” Steadman really didn’t like anyone questioning his findings.

“Anyone with the capability to pull off a decent black-bag job,” Matt retorted. “Not that it needed much in the way of criminal genius to break into Captain Winters’s garage. After all, he spends — or spent — most of his time here in his office.”

“Except for the afternoon Stefano Alcista was murdered,” Steadman pointed out.

Matt forced his voice to remain calm. “You’ve created quite a case, but it seems to ignore one fact.”

“Which is?”

“James Winters is a Net Force agent. But according to you, in carrying out this murder, he made a series of mistakes that even the rawest amateur could have avoided. For instance: If you’re going to blow someone up, why build the bomb in your own house and test it nearby where somebody’s sure to notice?”

Steadman shrugged. “It’s probably the most private workspace Winters could find on short notice.”

“Oh, that’s right. Winters had to rush everything. Except you’ve got him planning this caper for four years. That’s when he’d have had to get hold of the Semtec, when his wife was killed, isn’t it?”

Steadman only frowned.

“More important, Winters has no alibi. Think about it — he’s a Net Force agent about to commit a felony. You’d think he’d be able to phony up some sort of record to insert in the computers to put him in the clear.”

“Maybe he ran out of time,” Steadman suggested.

“He had days before your investigation even started,” Matt pointed out. “You’d think taking care of a detail like that would be on his mind in the days afterward, if not beforehand.”

“He could have been nervous about tripping alarms if he planted evidence. Why call attention to himself?”

“Yeah, that sure worked out like a charm,” Matt said sarcastically. “At least for your case. To me, the captain’s insistence that there was a call sounds like the testimony of an innocent man—”

“Who happened to leave his fingerprints all over a practice bomb,” Steadman cut Matt off.

“Exactly!” Matt nodded. “Captain Winters would have known he’d need to use rubber gloves while building the bombs for the trial run and the final one. He’s a trained investigator. He’d know how much information the lab people can pull of an exploded bomb. And when the first bomb didn’t turn out right, would he really have left all those pieces for your people to find? For all we know, they could have been planted—”

“We know the bomb exploded there.” Steadman’s gesture took in his assistants. “That blast brought a tree down. We needed a crane to shift it — and we found traces under the trunk.” He leaned his face into Matt’s. “The blast was real, the traces are real, the prints are real.”

He stepped back, obviously attempting to look reasonable. “I know you look up to this guy. But obviously he made mistakes. Maybe when you decide you’re bigger than the law, that’s just unavoidable.”

Matt clamped his jaw shut. Well, he thought, if anybody should know…

10

The virtmail message hung in holographic projection over Leif’s computer system. It was just a Net address, with a typed message: “Meet, eight-thirty.”

Leif spent a long moment looking at the glowing letters, but they didn’t tell him anything new — like who had sent the anonymous message. He could start hacking to try and track down where the message originated, but he doubted he’d get the job done before the time set for the meeting.

Could it have something to do with his attempts to clear Captain Winters? Maybe it would turn out to be a shadowy figure, like that guy who broke the Watergate scandal. What did he call himself? Deep Voice? No, Deep Throat.

But should he go? It might be the faceless enemy who was trying to engineer the captain’s doom….

Leif shook his head in disgust. He must be getting a little nuts on this case if he was thinking that way.

Of course he was going to keep the meeting! He had to find out who was behind the message — even if it was only a dumb joke.

A few steps took Leif to his computer-link couch. He sank back into the comfortable padding, although his muscles were a little tense. That always happened when he prepared to link into the Net these days. Leif had suffered trauma to the nerves around the circuitry implanted in his head. Whenever he synched in to the circuits in the chair, he could expect some measure of agony.

Leif flinched through the pain and mental static that now marked his transition to the Net, and opened his eyes to his virtual workspace. He sat on a New Danish Modern sofa in a wooden-walled room. Through a large window he could see a pale blue sky towering over green fields.

But he wasn’t interested in the virtual view. Leif got up and turned to the wall behind him, facing a complicated set of shelves. In another house it might have been called a curio cabinet. But the most curious thing about it was that it covered the whole wall, floor to ceiling, and was completely filled with icons.

Leif could have directed his implant circuitry to take him directly to the meeting site. But he thought it might be better to go armed with a few programs. He picked up a small figurine that looked like a lightning bolt — the