charges they’re preparing against me, I’ll be finished in Net Force. Which means I’m finished with the Net Force Explorers.”
Slowly James Winters got control of his face and became the apathetic stranger who had answered the door. “I guess I feel betrayed.” He sighed. “What goes around, comes around. I still remember the look in Iron Mike’s eyes when he realized who had turned him in. Now I can understand it better.”
His lips curved in a bleak smile. “You know, if anybody could have done this job on me, it would have been Iron Mike Steele…. Of course, he’s not alive. But he’s the only person it would make sense would be responsible.”
Moving almost as though they had a will of their own, Matt’s fingers went to the pocket that held Leif Anderson’s datascrip.
“What—” Matt had to clear his throat to get the words out. “What if Mike Steele were still alive?”
“He died down in the Caribbean, on his boat.” Winters shook his head. “Mike loved his boats. I used to kid him that that was why he stayed single — he couldn’t afford a boat and a family, too. The baby gift he gave us — it was a custom-made sterling silver rattle in the shape of an anchor.”
“Let’s go to a room that still has a working computer system,” Matt interrupted the flow of reminiscence. “Leif has worked up a file that I think you should see.”
After a brief explanation as to who Marcus Kovacs was, and why he was a factor in James Winters’s life, Matt ran Leif Anderson’s dog-and-pony show. At first Winters shook his head, unbelieving. But as Leif continued fighting for his case, Winters’s face subtly changed. By the time the file finished its run, the tough-minded Net Force agent that Matt knew well was looking out of James Winters’s eyes.
“This theory of Leif’s is by no means conclusive,” Captain Winters said. “It could be wishful thinking. On the other hand, it’s the first explanation I’ve heard that works for this nightmare I’ve been living. And I’ve been racking my brains for any reason that made sense.”
With spare, determined movements, Winters retrieved the datascrip from its system port. Then he engaged the holophone to call the offices of Mitchell, Liddy, and Laird. Stewart Laird was still at work.
“Stay there,” Winters crisply told his lawyer. “We’re going to reroute the cab you sent to bring Matt here. I want to show you something the Net Force Explorers have uncovered.”
“What?” Stewart Laird asked, staring. Obviously, he was unable to believe the sudden change that had come over his client.
“Better you see it in person rather than over a phone line,” Winters replied.
Matt could see a darker, more tactical reason for a personal visit. Whoever had set Winters up for a murder charge would surely have a tap installed on his victim’s phone.
Winters smiled at the expression on his lawyer’s face. “And cheer up! I was going to contest the cab fare you spent sending Matt to come and see me. This way it becomes a legitimate business expense.”
16
Matt could see that the waiting driver was surprised to see two people coming out to his car. He was more surprised — and somewhat dubious — when James Winters told him about the change in destination.
“We’re going to the offices of Mitchell, Liddy, and Laird,” the captain announced. When he saw the look on the driver’s face, he said, “Check with your dispatchers. And have them check with Mr. Laird.”
Even when the okay came through, the driver kept shooting his two passengers quizzical looks in the rearview mirror. It couldn’t be the change in destination — that wasn’t that unusual. No, it was probably that the driver felt he knew Winters’s face from somewhere, thanks to all the news coverage. Or perhaps he even recognized the captain. But if so, he didn’t say anything. Nobody spoke. Matt was so glad to see Winters shake off that frighteningly lackadaisical attitude he’d shown during their visit — and so shocked by what the captain had told him — that he really couldn’t think of anything else to say. As for Winters, the captain seemed downright impatient to get to his lawyer and discuss a defense.
From the continuing looks in the mirror, Matt suspected that the driver really had finally identified Winters as the unwilling star of so many recent news items. The driver’s silence was one of suspicion, although that turned to a broad smile when the captain gave him a fat tip on their arrival at the downtown offices of Mitchell, Liddy, and Laird.
Matt and Winters strode through an impressive lobby and rode up in an elevator. All along the way the captain held Leif Anderson’s datascrip, tapping it repeatedly with his forefinger.
Steward Laird must have been just as eager. He almost flew into the reception area when they were announced and all but hustled them into his private office. “What have you got?” the lawyer demanded.
“Some information — and a possible description — of someone with the motive and means to create the mess I’m in,” Winters replied crisply. “And we have this young man and several of his associates to thank for it.”
He took Laird through the original Alcista case — not mentioning why Cynthia Winters was using the car — and the aftermath, explaining how his partner had fabricated evidence to put Alcista away — and how Winters had found out and blown the whistle.
“I’m aware of that much,” Laird said. “Michael Steele was cashiered and died soon afterward.”
“Perhaps,” Winters corrected. “Take a look at this presentation and tell me what you think.”
After seeing Leif’s show-and-tell and hearing how I-on Investigations made its amazing profits, Laird got on the phone. “We keep a private investigator on retainer — a somewhat more ethical investigator than the ones I just heard about. I want him to see this and start looking into Marcus Kovacs. This isn’t enough to convince a jury on its own, but it certainly strikes me as a fruitful line for investigation.”
The lawyer’s conversation with the private eye was brief and to the point, requesting a detailed background check on Marcus Kovacs and I-on Investigations.
Winters interrupted. “You don’t know how secure this line is,” he said, putting a hand over the holo pickup. “I suggest you don’t transmit the datafile electronically or put the file on any networked computer. Use a dedicated machine only. Make a copy of the finished file and have it hand-delivered.”
Laird looked incredulous at first. “We have our lines checked—”
“Remember who we’re dealing with,” Winters warned.
A new expression came over Laird’s face as he remembered all the trouble Winters was in. He nodded and completed the call.
“Now that you have an idea who did this to you, does it suggest anything about the way it was done?” the lawyer asked.
Captain Winters nodded grimly. “Iron Mike Steele was a specialist agent at Net Force. His job was figuring out how the bad guys got into computers, so he had a lot of knowledge on how to do just about anything to a computer.” Then, as he paused, if anything, Winters became more grim. “He also had a knowledge of the Net Force computer system that any outside hacker would envy.”
Matt was abruptly reminded of Hangman Hank Steadman’s mocking words. “If someone could infiltrate our systems like that, I’d hire them immediately as a specialist agent.”
That was precisely Mike Steele’s job description. Matt began to feel hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, the seemingly airtight case Internal Affairs had compiled was beginning to spring leaks.
Winters shook his head. “Mike was very good at his job. When it came to cooking evidence, he’d create a sort of baloney sandwich, slipping false data between a few slices of truth. It almost always passed muster.”
Matt thought back to the records Mark Gridley had accessed — the story of how Steele had planted the fake evidence on Alcista. The Net Force agent had used what seemed like an innocuous phone call to sneak a program onto the gangster’s system. That program had initiated the incriminating calls, then erased the records — but not so well that Net Force techs couldn’t find traces of them.
“Before things, um, hit the fan, did you get any strange calls to your office?” he asked Winters.
The captain frowned. “Now that you mention it, I got the king of all wrong numbers a few days before Alcista died. A telemarketing call, trying to sell me a discount casket. I had a job breaking into the salesman’s spiel, telling him he’d gotten an office, not a home number — and the offices of Net Force, at that.”
