Prodigal Son Read online

  She looked up finally to scowl at Evan.

  At her shift in focus, Dog the dog’s tail went thump-thump-thump against the bolster bed.

  She went back to work. Snuck another look at the dog.

  Thump-thump-thump.

  Joey’s face softened with affection.

  Evan pretended not to notice the lovefest. One of the many arcane rules he’d learned when it came to dealing with a sixteen-year-old girl was to let her express herself in her own time.

  “How are your courses going?” he asked.

  One of the conditions of her living in here under his unofficial supervision was that she stay enrolled at UCLA. She’d chosen a computer-science major, promptly tested out of a raft of classes, and was struggling to slow her brain down enough to tolerate the remaining ones.

  She guffawed. “Dull and last-gen theoretical. They’re way outta date on machine learning, neural networks, and neuromorphic computing. The other day in lecture, the prof was going on—incorrectly—about PyTorch with some boring-ass PowerPoint, and I was, like, dying of tedium, so I thought I’d, ya know, crack the staff-only Wi-Fi. I did a quick deauth attack to force a reconnect and then sent the captured key hashes to the CrackStation critters, and next thing you know I’m inside the network and then into his laptop using a handy Metasploit payload, so I replaced one of his PowerPoint slides with a pic I found in his Photos of him and his wife in puppy-play sex outfits at the Folsom Street Fair. And it came up, and everyone was all like, ‘Ah, kill that shit with fire,’ and then he knocked over the laptop and it broke, and then lecture got canceled.”

  Evan cleared his throat. Staved off the ice-pick headache threatening to bore through his frontal lobe. “Let’s just pretend I didn’t ask.”

  “Or…” Fingers templed like a Bond villain’s, she swiveled magisterially in her gamer chair to face him. “We could sit here and bask in your discomfort until the heat death of the universe.”

  “You need to stay in school.”

  “Even though I could, like, teach the professors?”

  “We’re not having this discussion again. Pick another major.”

  “But then I’d have to do work. When we both know that—especially now that you’re in your dotage—my talents would be better spent taking over for you. I’d be a way better Orphan X. You’re a middle-aged white dude. Get with the times. C’mon, X, tell me the world’s not ready for a rebrand.”

  That ice pick made further headway, burrowing toward the brain stem. “The world’s not ready for a rebrand,” he said wearily. “I’m not even Orphan X anymore. We’ve discussed this. I retired.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I just need help on a … thing I’m looking into.”

  She rolled her eyes, shot a glance at the wall clock. “Can we get on with whatever it is you need?”

  “I need to hack into the CDCR website—”

  “Even a two-digit-IQ noob like you should be able to manage that.”

  “—and get cleared as a visitor to Kern Valley State Prison. And get put on the log under one of my fake IDs to meet with the inmate. For tomorrow.”

  She frowned. “Hmm. Which ID you wanna use?”

  He told her. As his unofficial in-house hacker, she kept files on his various identities and papers.

  She whipped back around in her chair and pounded away on one of myriad keyboards. A cluster of monitors hovering around her lit up with code. She went at it for a while, fingers blurring, pausing only to slurp from her Big Gulp and once to strain herself into an awkward half hug so she could massage out a knot beneath her shoulder blade. Dog the dog shifted on his bolster bed, emitting a contented groan.

  At last Joey’s hands slowed. She tapped the mouse. Rolled the sensor ball. Tapped it again. She spun to him and chef-kissed her fingers, complete with a “Muah!”

  “Done?”

  “You’re on the books for seven A.M. under the name ‘Frank Kassel.’ Bring the appropriate photo ID and filled-out waivers. I sent you a link. I assume you can figure the rest out all by yourself like a big boy. Now, is that it?”

  Her urgency caught him off guard; he was used to her prying for details, not rushing him out.

  He thought about the impound lot where the murder of Jake Hargreave took place. How the surveillance cameras had magically gone down during the key seven minutes. If Joey could coax some other electronic eyes out of the ether, there might be a way to piece together a picture of what happened.

  “Can you find geotagged cameras in a specific area?”

  She snickered. “Is Putin an alpha?”

  “One straight answer would be so lovely.”

  She did robot voice and robot arms. “Yes. I can. I’m so sorry, Mr. X.” Her posture reverted to her characteristic slump, as if she had no bones and the chair was her exoskeleton. “I’ll just hack up some code to hit the Shodan device discovery API and filter results for our target area. It already comes back geotagged for every device it finds. Then we fire up five hundo Amazon EC2 instances and automate the crap out of sploiting them with pro_exploit from Metasploit again. We bust into that shit, we’re looking at the world through their eyeholes.”

  “I have an idea for your new major.”

  “What’s that?”

  “English as a second language.”

  “Wow. Dad joke. Maybe you could start wearing plaid shorts and T-shirts with golf puns on them. And, like, wearing shower sandals with socks. And drinking Arnold Palmers. And—”

  “Joey.”

  “Fii-nuh.”

  As he stepped into her circular work area, he sensed an immediate rise in temperature, the burned-wire smell of electronics working overtime. He commandeered a keyboard to search out the impound lot’s address, but the monitors were stacked three high all around and he wasn’t sure which one to look at. Joey reached up, cupped his chin, and pivoted his focus to the appropriate screen.

  He pulled up the lot on Google Maps. “A murder took place there three weeks ago, but the security system was knocked out. I need to know if there are any other cameras with a partial view of that parking lot that we can get into and grab archived footage from.”

  “I need specifics, X. Date, times. And what’s the story with this? A prison visit, a murder scene. That’s a lotta shit for a retired dude instead of … ya know, bingo.”

  He stared at her, his mouth shifting. He had no one else he could talk to about something like this. Someone who had the same points of reference to understand how tricky this was for him to navigate. He mustered the words. “The woman who gave birth to me contacted me.”

  Joey’s eyebrows shot up, disappeared beneath a fringe of hair. “You don’t have a mother. I mean, you know what I mean. No wonder you decided to risk your whole presidential immunity setup. Must be super emotional, right?”

  He said, “No.”

  “But I mean, it’s gotta be weird, right? Like it must’ve rocked your world?”

  He said, “No.”

  “C’mon. Everything you thought you knew about yourself is different. I bet you’re freaking out. I mean, internally obviously, since you’re all No Affect Guy outside and incapable of expressing human emotion.”

  He said, “No.”

  “X,” she said. “It’s your mother. What’s she like?”

  He grimaced. Leaned back against one of the curved desks. Crossed his arms. “Can we skip all that so I can read you in on the mission?”

  “Ah. It is a mission. I knew it.”

  “I misspoke.”

  She started her next retort, but he raised his palm emphatically. “Joey. Do whatever you need to do to get to those cameras. Shut your piehole. And let me fill you in.”

  As quickly as he could, he gave her a just-the-facts intel dump. When he finished, she stared at him, eyes wide, her surprised face looking impossibly youthful.

  Before she could respond, someone rapped on the door, and she stiffened as if she’d been hit with a cattle prod.
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br />   25

  The Wide World of Fuck

  Evan couldn’t read Joey’s face. She kept her gaze at the monitors, not looking over at the door.

  The rapping came again, more insistently.

  “You expecting someone?” Evan said.

  “Nah. Just ignore it. They’ll go away.”

  “Joey. Is someone harassing you?”

  She shot him a look, her green eyes blazing, emphasized all the more by that eyeliner. “Harassing me?” she said. “Have you met me?”

  “I’m gonna answer it.”

  “Don’t answer it.”

  Already he’d exited the workstation. He put his body to the left of the jamb and cracked the door.

  A young guy stood outside. Sagging jeans, wide-collar shirt, thumbs looped in a distressed leather belt. A tuft of rigorously mussed hair with a hard side part razored in. He was ridiculously good-looking, no doubt a future actor or a Starbucks barista.

  “Oh,” Evan said.

  Joey’s makeup. The blouse. The orange-blossom perfume.

  “Oh,” Evan said again.

  “Hey, man. I’m Bridger. Joey here?”

  Evan heard a thunk behind him. Joey’s forehead hitting the desk.

  “Where do you know Joey from?” Evan asked. “Bridger.”

  “Like, lecture class.”

  “Lecture class,” Evan said. “How old are you?”

  “Uh, eighteen.”

  “Eighteen,” Evan repeated. “You know it’s illegal for you to—”

  “Evan.” Joey was suddenly at his shoulder, tugging his arm. Behind his back she gathered his hand in a pronating wrist lock to steer him away from the door. He reached back with his other hand and deployed a countergrip, prying her hand off his.

  They both kept their faces pointed at Bridger, maintaining smiles as he rubbed at an honest-to-God soul patch on his chin.

  Dog the dog was up, growling. Seeming to sense that Evan had the situation in hand, he padded back to the Red Vines tub that served as his bowl, lapped up some water, and huffed down onto the pillowtop again.

  Evan kept his stare level on Bridger. “I didn’t catch a last name.”

  “Bickley. But I go by Bicks sometimes, ya know.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, rose up on his tiptoes, rocked back on his heels. “Anyhoo. Joey and I were supposed to, like, hang out.”

  “Hang out?” Evan said. “It’s two in the morning.”

  “So it’s a bad time?”

  “Yes,” Evan said as Joey said, “No.”

  “Okay. Cool, cool.” Bridger bobbed his head, managed eye contact with Evan. “And you are…?”

  “My uncle,” Joey said in a rush. “This is my uncle. He’s protective—really annoyingly protective—and I guess he needs to talk to me now about some stuff, so could we, like, reschedule?”

  “No worries,” Bridger said. “Grab you tomorrow? Like eight o’clock?”

  “Surethat’dbegreatthanksbye.”

  Joey ratcheted the door closed in Bridger’s nonplussed face and delivered Evan an extra-pointed glare; on the receiving end, it felt like a shiv to the chest. “What the actual hell, X?”

  At her tone Dog the dog lifted his head, collar tags jangling. Joey went on tilt, coming at Evan, driving him away from the door.

  Evan said, “Language.”

  “I cannot believe you. You’re such a dipshit.”

  “Joey,” he said. “That’s offensive.”

  “Yeah, to dipshits for having to be compared to you.”

  “He’s eighteen years old.”

  “I’m in college. Who am I supposed to date? Middle-schoolers?”

  “Because that’s the only other option.”

  “You can’t just come in here like you own the place—insert punch line here—and be all controlling.”

  “It’s not about being controlling. It’s about making a few inquiries about a guy named Bicks with a soul patch who says ‘anyhoo’ and wants to hang out with you at two in the morning.”

  “We were gonna go to a party!” she said, again digging furiously at that muscle knot near her shoulder blade. “Oh, my God. I should just give up on ever being normal and enter a nunnery.”

  “Before that can you help me with the geotagged cameras?”

  She made a noise like a horse whinny but more rageful and then stomped off to her workstation, where she began pounding on the keyboards.

  Evan retreated to the bolster bed and sat on the floor next to Dog the dog, who offered him a sympathetic gaze. For a while Evan scratched at his scruff, the dog grumbling with pleasure, a sonorous groan-snore.

  Finally Joey said, “Get over here.”

  He obeyed. Dog the dog obeyed as well, getting halfway across the room before realizing that the command had not been directed at him. With relief he slunk off.

  Evan took up a position behind Joey. “What am I looking at?”

  “A variety of digital footage from cameras around the block cued up and frozen the night your boy was killed. We’re starting here.” She pointed at a monitor behind Evan’s head, her fingernail barely missing his cheek, a near gouging that seemed not unintentional. “An EyeSky Web-connected cam at a First Union Bank of SoCal ATM.”

  She tapped the mouse and the frozen black-and-white scene thawed to life, a silent winter film. Leaves scuttling across a sidewalk. A city bus hogging both lanes, there and then gone. A Hasidic Jew shuffling by wearing his wisdom on his face, a twelve-inch charcoal beard, brittle and ragged.

  And then a Corvette drifting into the camera’s purview, creeping along at a pedestrian’s pace. Tinted windows. Blank license plates.

  It eased from the frame, and Joey clicked again. The neighboring monitor picked up the Corvette from a different angle, capturing it pulling up to the curb across the street from the tall chain-link fence of the impound lot. It idled opposite the open gate. No sign of movement except fog wisping from the exhaust pipe.

  Nothing happened. And then more nothing.

  Joey nudged the footage of both screens forward, the time-stamp numbers flipping like slot-machine reels, closing in on 3:00 A.M.

  Back on the previous screen, a Prius darted into view on fast-forward and then swept into the new field of vision. Joey slowed down the world as the car turned in to the parking lot.

  In the dark Corvette, no one moved. It sat there heavily, breathing exhaust, lights gleaming across the impenetrable windshield.

  Joey’s fingers rattled across her Das Keyboard, and then she flicked her chin at yet another screen up on the third row of monitors. A slice of a view onto the impound lot from a neighboring rooftop camera allowed them to track the Prius. It pulled up the main lane carved through the wrecked vehicles, creeping toward the kiosk. The kiosk door was ajar, the big window mirroring a fireworks burst of skyscraper lights.

  The Prius halted midway up the lane. A man climbed out.

  Jake Hargreave.

  No idea he was being watched.

  He walked over to a totaled Bronco and tried the caved-in driver’s door, but it wouldn’t budge. He circled to the passenger seat, tugged it open, and ducked inside.

  Evan sensed movement and pivoted back to the second monitor, which held the parked Corvette in view. He snapped his fingers. “Look.”

  A man and a woman finished climbing out of the car. They kept to the shadows on the opposite side of the street, holding tight to the buildings. The man wore a fine-tailored suit that seemed at odds with the sense of menace he projected. The woman, too, was done up, fluffy hair, jeans, a fitted top. They could have been heading to a night at the theater.

  The man’s elbow was bent, a hand held out to the side as if bearing an invisible butler tray. Nothing on his palm.

  Together they strode a few paces up the sidewalk, presumably to gain a better vantage on Hargreave. They paused, partially illuminated by a streetlight. The man was locked on, a predator’s stare pointed off frame, staring through the darkness at Hargreave.

  But
that’s not what lifted the hair on the back of Evan’s neck. It was how the man was holding his palm up, as if it contained something incredibly dangerous and delicate.

  The woman gave a nod, walked calmly back to the idling Corvette, and sat behind the wheel. Ready to take off.

  The man remained in the outer throw of the streetlight, hand still raised. And then he lowered it to his side.

  Monitor Three: Hargreave backed out of the truck abruptly. He stared in the opposite direction of the couple—toward the depths of the impound lot.

  “What’s he looking at?” Evan asked. “Do we have an angle there?”

  Joey shook her head, transfixed.

  Hargreave stood with his back to the street, staring at someone or something. Head tilted to one side with curiosity.

  There was an awful calm, the breath-held moment before calamity.

  Hargreave turned partially.

  And then he seized, muscles jerking.

  Blood shot up from his neck.

  With a hand he tried to stem it, to no avail.

  He crumpled.

  And wound up in the crescent pose Evan recognized from the crime-scene photos.

  The man in the suit observed calmly. Then held his palm upturned in the position he’d had it before.

  Monitor Three: The kiosk door flew shut. It was right at the edge of the camera’s purview, so they couldn’t see who or what had struck it. The same invisible force that had opened up Hargreave’s neck?

  But no, the man on Screen Two lowered his arm again, frustrated. Glared into the darkness. Something had not gone according to plan.

  In the Corvette the woman’s mouth was moving. Her face strained, cords in her neck. Anger? No—concern.

  The man jogged back to the Corvette and jumped in.

  It zipped out as if on fast-forward.

  Quiet street. Quiet compound lot. A black, icelike sheet spreading beneath Hargreave.

  Joey cocked back violently in her chair, laced her hands at the nape of her neck. “What in the wide world of fuck.”

  Evan couldn’t muster the focus to give her a reprimand. Plus, she’d expressed his thoughts exactly.

  “What do you think’s up with Merlin?” she said. “Some super-secret CIA program to harness energy and, like, kill people with invisible rays?”