Daniel Suarez - Influx

Falwell was right behind her.

She held up the glass. “Run the prints on this glass. Tonight. And I want a DNA test on this hair sample…” She passed the hair to him.

“Where did you get a hair sample?”

“He left it behind. Supposedly to prove who he was.”

“And if it matches a victim—what then?”

“It could be some scheme of Cotton’s to taint the evidence—and the case.” She pointed again at the hair. “DNA.”

“It’ll take five days at least. How big a problem you think this guy is?”

“Look, it’s probably nothing. But after all these years, I don’t want to take any chances. Do you?”

Davis stood looking over a criminologist’s shoulder in a cubicle at the crime lab in the FBI’s Chicago field office. It was past ten P.M. The tech clicked around a computer screen, marking points on an image from the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

The criminologist glanced back at her. “I found three different sets of fingerprints on your beer glass. Exhibits one and three show no IAFIS matches—or at least none with reasonable scores. But exhibit two gave us two candidate hits.”

“Show me.”

He clicked through a couple screens and a passport photo appeared in a window above the name “Jon Grady”—beneath that was a label reading “Deceased.”

Falwell glanced over at Davis. “That’s not good.”

The criminologist looked up at her. “You want to see candidate two? It’s a much lower score.”

She shook her head. “No, thanks. Can you print that out for me?”

“Sure.” He clicked the mouse a few times, and they heard the laser printer by the door spit out a couple of pages.

“Thanks for the help. C’mon, Thomas.”

Falwell grabbed the pages as they headed for the elevators. He held up the printed photo. “This the guy?”

She nodded.

“So you met a ghost.”

She nodded.

“What does this do to the case?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“And what was this guy claiming?”

“He said they were disappearing inventors of disruptive technologies.”

“Who was?”

“A rogue federal agency.”

Falwell chuckled. “Sure.”

They got in the elevator and headed to the itinerant-agent floor, where they had offices for the duration of Cotton’s trial.

She leaned against the elevator’s back wall. “Well, it’s clearly fake. We found most of this Grady guy’s right arm at the Edison scene. We had a jawbone. Teeth. A shinbone. A partial tongue. All DNA matched. And we’ve got Richard Cotton on video preparing to kill him.”

“He’s up to something.”

“We’ll need those DNA test results the moment they come in. And let’s put out an APB on this Grady imitator. He couldn’t have gone far.”

“If he wanted to get arrested so bad, why didn’t he stick around? Why arrange a meeting all the way in New York?”

“I don’t know.” She considered it. “Did Grady have a twin brother?”

“Twins don’t have identical fingerprints.”

The elevator doors opened, and they walked out into the guest cubicles. There were still quite a few agents moving about. Davis had put her Winnower team in a group workstation with no partitions between them, and she and Falwell took off their jackets.

“So what do we do?”

She stared for a moment but finally shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think we have to inform the prosecutor’s office.” She fell back into her office chair. “Thomas, you ever hear of something called the Federal Bureau of Technology Control?”

He squinted. “What is that, Commerce Department?”

“Have you heard of it or not?”

He thought some more before finally saying, “No. Why? Who are they?”

“I don’t even know if they exist.” Davis keyed her password into her laptop and then launched her Internet browser. She entered “usa.gov” on the URL line, then navigated to an A-to-Z index of government departments and agencies. She entered the term “Bureau of Technology Control” in the search box—clicked “Search.”

It returned about a quarter million results. Davis scanned down the list of hits with headings like “U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security” and “Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

Falwell was looking over her shoulder. “Try it enclosed in quotation marks.”

She enclosed the search term and searched again. Now it returned zero results.

Falwell shrugged. “Why are we looking for them?”

“That Grady guy mentioned it to me. That was supposedly the federal agency that kidnapped him.”

Falwell let a smile escape. “Right. If it’s a top-secret agency, I’m guessing they wouldn’t be listed in the directory.”

“Look, I don’t believe his story, Thomas, but I did want to see if they were a real organization.”

“Let me get this APB out.” He opened up his own laptop. “So what do we do if we don’t have him by next week?”

“You mean, do we meet him at Columbia University? I want to see the DNA results first.”

“You’re actually thinking of going?”

“We might be, yeah.”

“What about the depositions next week?”

“Reschedule them.”

“Denise, you’re not meeting this guy alone.”

“No, of course not. We’ll use a team. It’s a university library, so there’ll be security cameras. We’ll see him coming.” She paused. “There’s something here that’s gnawing at me, though. Something about Cotton—how he could disappear for so long without a trace. And with so many faceless followers—none of whom made mistakes.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m just—”

“We arrested three of his people with him.”

“And none of them seemed very bright. They all had felony drug rap sheets.”

Falwell laughed ruefully. “You’re starting to worry me.”

“It’s just strange, that’s all.”

Just then Davis’s desk phone rang. She glanced at the LCD readout—and then did a double take. She sat up straight. “Thomas.”

“What?”

She held her hand above the receiver. “It’s D.C.”

“FBI headquarters?” He checked his watch.

She picked it up on the start of the third ring. “Denise Davis.”

“Agent Davis, please hold for Deputy Director Royce.”

She blanched. “Yes. I’ll hold.” Davis covered the receiver and glared at Falwell. “It’s the deputy director.”

He gave her a quizzical look. “Of the FBI? ”

“No, of Grease , the musical—who do you think?” Davis was on hold for about ten seconds before a man’s voice came on the line. “Denise Davis.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were contacted by a man claiming to be Jon Grady tonight. Is that correct?”

Davis frowned at Falwell—who frowned back, probably because he had no idea what was going on. “Yes, sir. We had a positive match on fingerprints. We’re running a DNA test on a hair sample.”

“Do you have any information on his present whereabouts?”

“Not at the moment, sir. We’re putting out an APB.”

“Don’t do that just yet. Did he say why he was contacting you?”

Davis paused for a moment, then looked over at Falwell again. Then she said, “Deputy Director, I must apologize, sir, but I absolutely must respond to something. Can I phone you at your office in under a minute? I sincerely apologize, sir.”

There was silence for a moment. Then, “Call me back as soon as possible, Agent Davis.”

“Thank you, sir. Very sorry.” She hung up.

Falwell squinted at her. “Are you nuts?”

Davis stood up and started rifling through the shelves for a bureau directory. “Thomas, I don’t even want to hear it. Would you look for a directory over there?”