Thirty-Six

Despite being a visitor to our country, Xiong Shoushan had shown a firm grasp of our laws and customs.

“Lawyer,” he had said as Mel hauled him to his feet, and then he spoke no more.

Now, Mel, Jael, and I sat in an FBI conference room, the whiteboard a scribble of box-containing ideas and multicolored connections.

Bobby walked in on us, looked at the whiteboard, and said, “No luck, eh?”

“Why would you say that?”

Bobby pointed at one box labeled Xiong and the other box labeled Senator Video and then the whiteboard between them. “I don’t see any lines connecting these two.”

Mel crossed her arms. “We’re working on that.”

“There is one connection,” I said. I stood, picked up a purple marker, checked that it was actually erasable, and started drawing in the white space between the boxes.

Bobby said, “Is that supposed to be you?”

Mel said, “It looks like a constipated monkey.”

Jael said, “No, it is definitely him. A monkey does not wear a Red Sox hat.”

“Yes, it’s me!”

“It’s always about you,” said Bobby.

“I visit the senator and I immediately have Xiong threatening me? That’s the link.”

“How did he know you were working for the senator?”

“Surveillance,” said Jael. “It makes sense to be watching the lobby.”

“And Pat greeted us in the lobby,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“What about Peter?” said Bobby. “He’s the one who stole the video.”

Mel said, “We’re not so sure about that.”

“What are you talking about? We traced the hack to his computer.”

“Now that we’ve got access to Peter’s computer, we scanned it and—”

“It didn’t have the video.”

“If you would let me finish,” said Mel. “It had some pretty nasty malware on it.”

“Nasty how?”

“Nasty enough to turn it into a zombie.”

“Zombie?” asked Bobby.

“Yes,” said Mel.

“What are you talking about?”

“Somebody else was controlling Peter’s computer,” I said.

“When he hacked your niece’s Facebook account?” asked Bobby.

“Cousin,” I said. “And no, he did that on his own.”

“Then when?”

Mel got up and walked to the whiteboard. Drew a passable desktop computer, then a lightning bolt to another computer. Then she drew an angry-faced stick figure sitting at the other computer. “Somebody could have used Peter’s computer to hack the senator.”

“Could have used?” asked Bobby.

“There’s no way to tell,” I said. “It would look exactly as if Peter were typing.”

“Wouldn’t Peter have seen that happening?”

“Not necessarily. He could have been sleeping, or their system might have created another KVM set and used that.”

“Exactly,” said Mel.

“KVM?” asked Bobby.

“Keyboard, video, mouse,” I answered.

“You couldn’t just say that?”

“Who’s got the time?”

Bobby walked to the whiteboard, drew a remarkable likeness of Peter between the senator and Xiong.

“Wow, you can draw,” I said. “Who knew?”

“I dabbled in cartooning.”

“Look at you with the layers,” I said. “You’re like a huge onion.”

“I think Peter may be the real link between Xiong and the senator.” He drew a dotted line from me to Peter. “You just stuck your nose in here and got entangled.”

“I stuck my nose in because Peter hacked my cousin.”

“Yeah, well, whatever reason you had, you became part of Xiong’s problem.”

“What problem?”

Jael said, “He needs to protect the video to keep the pressure on the senator.”

“There you go,” said Bobby. “Jael understands it.”

Not a surprise. Jael’s previous job was with Mossad.

I said to Jael, “That makes no sense.”

“Why?”

“There was no way for Xiong to know I was after Peter.”

“Unless somebody told him,” said Jael.

Silence settled across the conference room as each of us wrestled with the implications.

Mel stood, walked over to Bobby’s drawing of Peter, added a squiggly line at the neck in red marker, and a single drop of blood.

“Eww,” I said.

“None of this explains Peter’s murder. If Xiong wanted to keep Peter quiet, he’d just shoot him. Why cut off his head, and why put it on 4chan?”

I sat back and looked at the whiteboard. I imagined sliding around the boxes, the lines, and the remarkably accurate drawing of Peter, mentally reconnecting them, grouping them, ungrouping them. There was still something missing. I stood and added something to the board: @PwnSec

“I had forgotten about them,” said Mel.

“They’re the loose end,” I said.

“How do you mean?”

“Peter’s dead. Xiong’s not talking. The senator doesn’t know anything. All we’ve got is that PwnSec is clearly upset at me about Peter. Peter was one of theirs. They give us a place to start.”

“Some more doxing?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got a plan. Got to do a little coding.”

“Can I help?” said Mel.

“You mean like team coding?”

“Yeah, I can help catch your typos.”

Did I want a pretty woman watch me do what I did best? It turned out that yes, yes, I did want a pretty woman to watch me do what I did best. Also, I remembered one of Jael’s rules.

“Isn’t this Shabbat?” I asked her.

“Yes. It started a half an hour ago.”

“Shabbat?” asked Mel.

“Jael doesn’t work Saturdays.”

Mel’s eyes widened. “Oh … ”

“So it’s just you and me.”

Bobby said, “You two need to get a room.”

I said, “And a computer. And maybe even some pizza.”