Джеймс Паттерсон: Unsolved

“I have to disagree with you, Books.” This from Assistant Director Dwight Ross, the agent running the operation that includes Emmy, the operation on which Emmy is suspected of leaking secrets. Books has been through doors with Ross, has seen him up close and in action, and his view of Ross is the same as his view of many people he encountered at the Bureau—he overvalues his own importance and takes himself too seriously, but at the end of the day, he is doing the job for the right reasons.

“We told her,” says Ross, “that if she was going to reach out to local jurisdictions, she had to emphasize that she wasn’t speaking in her official capacity as a Bureau analyst. We even wrote up the words she had to use. But she hasn’t been using them. Reading her e-mails, I can see she’s leading people to believe that she’s doing official Bureau business.”

“Sounds like a technical foul to me, at worst,” says Books.

Ross says, “You call conducting unauthorized business in the name of the FBI a technicality? ”

Books looks at Ross, then at Moriarty, his eyebrows raised. “Yes,” he says. “What’s the harm? If her hunt leads nowhere, no big deal. You don’t waste any resources, and the only thing she wastes is her own personal time. But if it leads to something real, then she’s helped stop a killer. When did that become a bad thing? I thought that was, y’know, kinda what you guys did here.”

“Books, I know you’re close to this,” says the director.

“Maybe, but I’m still right. She’s not hurting anything or anybody.” Except herself, he does not say. “She discovered Graham’s crimes,” Books goes on, “and the Bureau took down an evil sociopath.”

“ Emmy took down Graham,” says Ross. “Or so the press seems to imply. You’d think the rest of the Bureau had nothing to do with it.”

Books turns on Ross, feeling the heat rise within him. “Emmy didn’t grant a single media interview. She never said a word in public. Nothing. The victims’ families spoke up for her. Local cops she’d contacted for help spoke up for her. Other agents on the team—Lydia and Denny and Sophie and I—spoke up for her. Because she deserved it. She never sought credit for it even though the rest of us had our thumbs up our asses while she was uncovering the most brilliant and horrific crime spree I’ve ever seen.”

“Enough,” says the director.

“I mean, that’s what this is really about, isn’t it, Dwight? That a lowly data analyst did the work that the superstar special agents were supposed to be doing—and did it better than them? That you got shown up by some numbers girl?”

“I said that’s enough .” Moriarty raises a hand.

“That’s not true at all,” says Ross, his eyes cold.

“It’s a little true, Dwight,” says Moriarty. He looks at Books. “But listen, Books, we can’t have her running around claiming that she’s doing FBI business when it’s not FBI business. Dwight’s right about that. Your girl’s doing that. And she can’t.” He lets out a sigh and looks up at the ceiling. “But we can’t call her out on this without revealing that we’ve been inside her computer. She can’t know we’re onto her until we’re ready to make a move.”

Books feels something stir inside him.

“ If we make a move,” the director says, correcting himself.

Books turns to Ross. “You haven’t found any evidence that she’s leaking secrets, have you? Forensics hasn’t pulled anything incriminating from her computer?”

“Not yet,” he says. “It will take us some time.”

They won’t find anything. Books is sure of it. Emmy’s no traitor. “You still haven’t told me about the case she’s working on,” says Books. “The one where she’s supposedly leaking secrets.”

“Emmy never mentioned it?”

Books shrugs. “It’s Bureau business. I’m a private citizen. She keeps that wall up.”

Ross seems dubious about that claim. But it’s true. Emmy and Books don’t discuss her work. He doesn’t even bother asking. If the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t say anything to her either.

“Tell him, Dwight,” says the director. “Tell him about the investigation.”

16

“YOU’VE HEARD of Citizen David,” Ross says to Books.

Of course he has. Books has read several accounts of his exploits. He’d even discussed it with Emmy one lazy Sunday morning while they were reading the Washington Post in bed.

Citizen David is the person who has claimed responsibility for a number of acts of civil disobedience and domestic terrorism over the past six months. His manifesto is, simply stated, The deck is stacked against the little guy in this country. Businesses have no moral center and will rob, cheat, and steal their way to maximum profits at the expense of the consumers. Higher education is reserved for the elite who can afford the ridiculous tuition. The criminal justice system will give liberal breaks to affluent white people but trample the rights of minorities and the poor and disenfranchised. In every way big and small, the powerful keep their power, and the rich keep the poor down.

David versus Goliath, only this David, whoever he is, has more than a slingshot. He has money, resources, and sophisticated technology.

One of his talents is hacking. He hacked into the admissions system of an Ivy League university to reveal how little merit went into merit-based selection and how many students were admitted because of the size of their parents’ wallets.

He hacked into the computer system of a pharmaceutical company and leaked e-mails showing that the company knew but never publicly admitted that an ingredient in one of its hepatitis vaccines caused renal failure.

He hacked into the computers of a minimum-security prison in Georgia and popped open all the cell doors at once to protest the incarceration of a young African-American man whom an all-white jury had declared guilty of the murder of a white teenage girl in what many critics believed was a wrongful conviction.

But he hasn’t limited himself to cybercrime. He was responsible for the bombing of several buildings in the United States. A bank in Seymour, Connecticut, accused of discriminating against minorities in its lending practices. A fast-food restaurant in Pinellas Park, Florida, after reports came out about the franchise’s cruelty to the chickens it slaughtered. A city hall in Blount County, Alabama, where officials had refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The bombings always occurred in the middle of the night and always after a bomb threat was called in, ensuring that nobody was around when the explosives detonated.

Citizen David is part Robin Hood, part Edward Snowden, part Bernie Sanders, part Black Lives Matter, and part Unabomber.

Some people call him a hero. Others call him a reckless anarchist. The Bureau calls him a domestic terrorist.

But the FBI agents don’t know where he is, and they don’t know who he is. Citizen David uses anonymous networks so his crimes can’t be traced to him, effectively shielding himself from view.

That’s where Emmy was supposed to come in. They wanted her to try to predict his next move, to discern some pattern in what he did. It was right up her alley.

“You think Emmy’s leaking the details of your investigation to the person who calls himself Citizen David?” asks Books. He asks the question with disbelief, even scorn.

But he has a sinking feeling in his stomach.

Because he’s remembering that quiet Sunday morning a few weeks back when there was a big front-page profile in the Washington Post about the anonymous Citizen David, and Books had read it while making comments on it to Emmy. Saying the kinds of things he always said: We have laws, we have rules. Protest and dissent are important, commendable, but you can’t do it by blowing up private property and invading confidential computer files. If people are breaking the law, report them or sue them, but we can’t have a nation of anarchists who take the law into their own hands or who create their own rules and punish anyone who doesn’t abide by them.