Джеймс Паттерсон - The People vs. Alex Cross

Rawlins laughed and said blithely, “Oh, no, Porngrinder is on me. What can I say? It’s a lonely life in the basement at times.”

“My God,” Batra said, disgusted. “The Bureau frowns on that kind of thing.”

“Have them sue me, won’t you?” Rawlins said.

“What was the flash?” Batra said.

“I don’t know. A blip, a screen hiccup. They happen, you know.”

“Or a bug in the plug-in that drives the video player?” Batra said.

Rawlins held up a finger. “A momentous occasion. Special Agent Henna B. and I might agree.”

Batra rolled her eyes. “Tell us about the video.”

I won’t bore anyone with the details of Rawlins’s technological savvy and instincts, but they were shrewd and his results conclusive. At first, he used ordinary software to try to access the video file’s so-called dark data. No luck. The video had been run through an onion system similar to the one used to create the Killingblondechicks4fun website. The dark data had been stripped away.

“Not surprising.” Rawlins sniffed. “But I’ve still got the dust rag.”

The “dust rag” was software Rawlins had designed and coded himself to raise the faintest trace of old dark and metadata. He compared the software to the Hubble Space Telescope looking for cosmic debris a thousand miles behind a comet’s long tail.

Sure enough, his screen was soon filled with fragments of code that played out in sync with the video. By focusing on the moments where the lighting was dimmest and the noise of the alleged killing most pronounced, Rawlins found evidence in the data dust that suggested an audio splice in the sound track roughly six seconds long. Those six seconds included the knife-across-the-throat slitting noise and the pah that sounded like air bursting out of a frightened and dying chest.

“She’s alive,” Rawlins said barely fifteen minutes after starting his examination. “Or at least, those weren’t the sounds of her murder.”

I sighed with relief. I wouldn’t have to give Alden Lindel or his wife more heartbreaking news. “Explain how you know. The parents will ask.”

Rawlins said, “The sound patch itself is fairly sophisticated CGA. Computer-generated audio. So someone’s had advanced training in sound effects. You’re looking for a film-school grad or someone who worked in a special-effects company out in Hollywood, not a coder.”

“Why’s that?” Batra asked.

Rawlins gave his computer a command, and the video on the center screen rewound to the beginning of the six-second splice. A second screen showed the remnants of the dark data. He pointed out a jagged line of data that almost connected top to bottom.

“That’s your digital splice,” Rawlins said. “A more adept coder would have hidden it better, sewn it up as clean as a plastic surgeon. There wouldn’t have been even a hint of a scar.”

“So this is basic sound-editing work?” I said.

Rawlins touched his Mohawk as if it were a high-fashion hairdo and said, “Three steps above butchery. And that’s all I can manage now. I have a lot to do before Goddess opens.”

I was puzzled.

“His favorite dance club,” Batra explained.

“Do you dance, Dr. Cross?” Rawlins said.

Before I could reply, my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, saw the number.

“My son’s school,” I said. “I have to take this.”

Ali Cross believed he was smarter than the average kid at Washington Latin but not brilliant, not a genius. The kids he considered supersmart were also the shyest and the most awkward. He decided within a month of starting at the charter school that brilliance was overrated. He’d take very bright, very hardworking, and very curious any day of the week.

Ali was the youngest kid in fifth grade at Latin by at least a year. With his attitude and sense of humor, he fit in with most of his older classmates. But, as his father always said, there were jerks in every crowd.

Ali met two of them shortly after the school bell rang to announce the end of classes. He had fifteen minutes before debate practice and decided to go sit outside. It was a nice sunny afternoon, not too cold.

Ali stopped on the front steps and looked toward the plaza, remembering the hooded men who’d grabbed Gretchen Lindel and shot Ms. Petracek. Rather than dwell on those violent events, he sat up on the wall at the top of the stairs and started playing a game on his phone.

He was aware of knots of kids walking past him, and he caught snatches of their conversation. Suddenly, someone grabbed him by the collar, right below his chin, and pushed as if to shove him backward off the wall. Then whoever it was yanked him forward again.

Shocked, surprised, Ali felt his stomach go sick with adrenaline and fear before he’d fully realized what had happened. George Putnam, a burly sixth-grader, still held Ali so tight by the collar, he was having trouble getting his breath. The older boy laughed at his reaction.

“Saved your life,” Putnam said. “You little turd, Cross.”

“Let go!” Ali said. “You’re choking me!”

Putnam’s buddy Coulter Tate was taller and already fighting acne. Tate leaned over, got right in Ali’s face, and gave him a crazed, zitty look.

“How’s it feel to be a killer’s son, Cross?” Tate said. “How’s it feel to have murder in the genes?”

Putnam tightened his hold, making Ali’s eyes feel like they were swelling. There was no thought, no consideration on Ali’s part after that. He just pulled back his head and then slammed it forward. His forehead connected with Tate’s nose, and he heard a distinct crunching noise.

Tate screamed and stumbled back, holding his hand to his nose, which was gushing blood.

“He broke it!” He sobbed in disbelief. “He broke my nose!”

Putnam was still holding on, looking shocked as he stared at his bleeding buddy, and Ali punched him in the throat. Putnam let go of Ali’s collar and went down on the stairs, bug-eyed and coughing, his hands to his neck.

Ali was still in a fighting stance and trembling head to toe when Mrs. Dalton, the headmistress at Washington Latin, came running out of the school.

“My God, what’s happening?” she cried.

Ali didn’t reply or move. He kept his attention on the two sixth-graders, as if daring them to get up.

“He broke my nose, Mrs. D.!” Tate said, the blood dripping between his fingers. “And the little frickin’ insane-o hit George in the throat!”

“Ali?” Mrs. Dalton said. “Why did you—”

“I’m not talking until my dad’s here,” Ali said, trying to stay calm.

“You will tell me now, young man,” she said, sounding angry and full of authority. “Right now.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Dalton,” Ali said, feeling weak as he dropped his fists and turned to face her. “Please get my dad here, or a lawyer, and then I’ll tell you exactly what happened.”

Traffic was snarled as I crossed back into the district, and I wondered what Ali had gotten himself into that was so bad it deserved an immediate meeting. The headmistress wouldn’t tell me a thing.

Inching over the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, I decided to call Alden Lindel. He answered on the third ring.

“This is Alex Cross, Mr. Lindel. I’m happy to tell you that Gretchen did not die in that video. It was a fake.”

Her father made a noise partway between a cough and a cry.

“Oh, good!” He gasped. “Oh, thank God! Are you sure? How do you know?”

“Because a very talented FBI computer wizard said that the video’s audio was altered. The sounds weren’t real.”