ABBEY knocked on the door of Sylvia Hackman’s apartment in the seamy heart of North Las Vegas. There were bars on her windows, and the neighborhood around her was ground zero for gang activity in the valley. This wasn’t a place anyone chose to live unless they couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. When Abbey had first met Charles Hackman’s wife, the woman had owned an upscale house in Summerlin, but money had obviously grown tight after her husband became a notorious killer.
The woman answered the door from behind a chain. Her eyes were suspicious. “What do you want?”
“Mrs. Hackman, my name is Abbey Laurent. I visited you once before when I was working on an article last year.”
“I remember. I told you back then that I don’t talk to reporters.”
“Yes, I understand that, but I have some new information to share with you. Maybe if we put our heads together, we can get some answers.”
“I don’t care about answers,” Sylvia snapped.
“Don’t you want to know what really happened to your husband?”
“I already know. I was married to a monster. He killed all those people. He ruined my life. End of story.”
Sylvia began to close the door.
“I can pay,” Abbey went on quickly. “Five hundred dollars. Just to talk. It looks to me like you could use the money.”
The woman hesitated. “Off the record? You leave me out of it?”
“Sure.”
“Let me see the cash.”
Abbey dug in her pocket for a wad of folded bills and pushed it through the crack in the door. Sylvia Hackman took it, undid the chain, and opened the door. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes.”
The woman led Abbey into the small apartment, which was neat as a pin but sparsely furnished. The television was on, and she switched it off using a remote. She took a seat on a worn sofa near the barred windows, next to a fat orange cat that was sound asleep. Abbey pulled a wooden chair from the kitchenette and sat near her. She glanced around the apartment and saw nothing personal here. No family photographs. Nothing from the woman’s past.
Sylvia was tall and slim. She had short gray hair and wore glasses, and her makeup and nails were carefully done, even though she didn’t look as if she went out much. Her orange blouse and beige pants were old but clean and wrinkle-free. Abbey got the impression that Sylvia was a woman clinging to the tiniest bits of who she’d once been.
“I’m sure the last eighteen months have been very difficult,” Abbey said.
Sylvia frowned and stroked the cat’s fur. “You have no idea. I was fired from my job. I had to sell my house. It was partly for the money, but also because people kept breaking the windows and painting obscenities on the garage. My neighbors didn’t want me around anymore. My children haven’t spoken to me in a year.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No one can seem to believe that I didn’t have the faintest idea what Charles was planning. I’m as disgusted and horrified as anyone. Everyone tells me, ‘You must have known! You must be guilty, too!’ Well, I didn’t know. I didn’t have a clue. Whatever broke inside his head, it came out of nowhere. I’ll tell you what I told the FBI, Ms. Laurent. I wish I could help you, but I can’t. I have no idea why Charles did what he did. If the government couldn’t figure it out, I really don’t see how you think you can.”
Abbey looked around the apartment and wondered if it was bugged. By Treadstone. By Medusa. By the FBI. “I think the government knows more about your husband’s motive than they’re saying,” she told Sylvia.
“Are you one of those conspiracy nuts?” the woman asked. “Because if that’s all this is, you can leave now.”
“No, there’s more. I know that an intelligence agent was investigating your husband before he killed all those people.”
Sylvia stared at her. “That’s impossible. You’re mistaken.”
“I saw the information this agent gathered. She was looking into his whole life. The material was dated several days before the massacre.”
“Charles didn’t have so much as a parking ticket before the shooting. How could anyone have known what he was planning?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Abbey said.
“Who was this agent? Who did she work for?”
“I can’t say. But I do have some questions for you. I think you can help me.”
Sylvia looked shaken. “Yes, all right. I still can’t believe this is true. If someone in the government knew about Charles, why didn’t they stop him? Why didn’t they do something?”
“I’m not sure if she knew what he was going to do. She simply knew he was involved in something.”
Sylvia shook her head. “What can I tell you? What information do you want?”
“Did Charles ever mention an organization called Medusa?” Abbey asked.
“No.”
“The name never came up? You never saw it in any papers he had?”
“No, I’ve never heard of it before. What is Medusa?”
“I think they may have been involved in recruiting or manipulating your husband to do what he did.”
“Recruiting him how?”
“It may have started online. That seems to be their specialty. Are you familiar with a social media software called Prescix?”
A shadow crossed Sylvia’s face, and her lips tightened with disgust. “Oh, yes.”
“Do you know if Charles used it?”
“All the time. He signed up almost as soon as it came out. He thought it was a joke, this idea that software could predict what you were going to do next. But he couldn’t believe how accurate it was. Charles was an actuary, so he was impressed at the statistical modeling that was built into the code. He said it was like Prescix knew him better than he knew himself. What started out as a hobby became kind of an obsession for him. At first, I thought it was just a professional thing, trying to reverse engineer how they did it. But it became personal, too. He used Prescix all the time. He’d spend hours going through the feed, seeing what others were saying, going into chat rooms. I told all this to the FBI, you know. I told him this was where Charles’s problems started.”
“What do you mean?” Abbey asked.
“He became a different person because of Prescix. He was addicted to the software and obsessed with trying to understanding its algorithms. He started pulling away from me. His entire world went online. But I never thought he was at risk for anything like what he did. I still can’t imagine why he killed those people.”
“Did you know he’d purchased guns? That he was training with rifles at gun ranges?”
“I had no idea.”
“The FBI said he wasn’t particularly religious and didn’t seem to have any strong political beliefs.”
Sylvia nodded. “Yes. Charles didn’t care about those things. He was a scientist.”
“Were there any groups of people he didn’t like? Or that he spoke out against?”
“No, nothing like that,” she said. “Actually, he was frustrated by the divide in the country. He used to say that the left and the right were so far apart that maybe it would be better if we all just divorced before we wound up in another civil war.”
Abbey took her phone out of her pocket and found a photo that Jason had texted to her. It was a picture of Nova. There was something about the woman’s fiery, confident face that made her a little jealous. She realized that she felt that way whenever Jason talked about her. She could see the emotion in his face when he did, and most of the time Jason seemed disconnected from any emotions at all.
She showed the picture to Sylvia Hackman. “Do you ever remember seeing your husband with this woman? Or do you remember seeing her anywhere else?”
Sylvia studied the photograph. “I don’t think so. She has a distinctive face. I think I’d remember.”
“What about this man?” Abbey asked, pulling up a picture of Peter Restak.
“No.”
Abbey sat back in the chair and frowned. She knew more about Charles Hackman than she ever had before, even when she was researching him for The Fort, but she still felt as if she knew nothing at all. Somehow Medusa had recruited him out of millions of other prospects because of his psychological profile. What had Hackman said to his wife? Prescix knew him better than he knew himself. Somehow, thanks to Prescix, Medusa had found him and brainwashed him. Radicalized him. Set him up in a hotel with a rifle.
That wasn’t just a software operation. It was more complicated than that. It may have begun online, but there had to have been a direct contact somewhere, too.
“Did you ever see your husband’s Prescix account?” Abbey asked.
“He wouldn’t let me see it. Typically, he and I used the same password on all of our online accounts, but he used a different one for Prescix. I tried to log in, which was how I found out he’d changed it. I asked him why, and he got upset. He said he deserved privacy and that I shouldn’t be checking up on him. I figured he must be having an affair with someone he’d met out there. But I never saw his account in order to know who it was. And of course, he deleted the account before the shooting. Or somebody deleted it.”
“Somebody?” Abbey asked. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, it was all very strange. The FBI asked if I was sure about Charles using the Prescix software, because they hadn’t been able to locate his account. They couldn’t even find archives of it anywhere. It’s like it never existed. I swore to them I wasn’t wrong. Charles used Prescix every day. If they couldn’t find the account, then somebody removed it. For all I know, it was the company itself. I’m sure they were worried about all the lawsuits if it came out that Charles was influenced by things he did online.”
Abbey shook her head. The social media trail had been wiped out of existence. Leave no clues. Even so, someone must have reached out to Hackman in real life. They had to have spent hours together, and that was harder to conceal. There had to be evidence. Witnesses. A location where they met.
“Was Charles away from home a lot during those last few months?” Abbey asked.
Sylvia nodded. “Yes, he’d be gone for long stretches of time. Often overnight.”
“Did you ask him where he went?”
“He said it was client work.”
“Did you look at his credit card statements?”
“I did, but wherever he went, he must have paid cash. There was nothing out there. I looked, Ms. Laurent. So did the FBI.”
“I understand, but the thing is, I’m convinced your husband didn’t do this alone. I think he had help. I need to know who helped him and where they met. Because this organization called Medusa is not done. The massacre wasn’t an isolated event. Whatever they do next is likely to be even worse.”
“I wish I could help you,” Sylvia replied. “But Charles took his secrets to his grave.”
“Did you ever follow him?” Abbey asked.
“What?”
“You said he’d be gone for long stretches of times. You were concerned. You thought he was cheating on you. Did you ever follow him to see where he went?”
Sylvia looked away, as if she were embarrassed. “Once.”
“Did you tell the FBI?”
“No, because it turned out to be nothing. Charles told me he had to visit a client, and he said it was a long drive, so he was going to stay overnight rather than make the round trip. I thought maybe he was meeting a woman. So yes, after he left, I followed him. As it happens, that was one time he wasn’t lying to me. He really did go to a client’s location. I felt stupid about it, so I went back home and never followed him again.”
“Where did he go?” Abbey asked. “Who was the client?”
“A casino in Mesquite called the Three Mountains. They were a new client, but they were generating a lot of business for him. He had to go out there almost every week.”
Abbey frowned. “Charles was an actuary, right?”
“Yes, he did complex statistical modeling. Anticipating risk. He was a brilliant man. He had an incredible mind for math.”
“Had he worked for casinos before?”
“In Las Vegas? Of course. They’re obsessed with balancing risk and reward.”
“You said the Three Mountains casino was a new client. A lucrative one. Do you know how they picked Charles to work for them?”
Sylvia shrugged. “It was a referral. That was how he got most of his business.”
“Who referred him?”
“He’d built a relationship with a New York lawyer who had connections at a number of the casinos in town,” Sylvia replied. “They’d known each other for several months. Charles got bumped up to first class on a flight to LaGuardia, and this man sat in the seat next to him. It was totally coincidental, but sometimes that’s how the best connections happen.”
Abbey didn’t think the meeting on the plane was a coincidence. Not where Medusa was concerned.
“What was the lawyer’s name?” she asked.
Sylvia hesitated as she tried to place it in her memory. “It was an odd name,” she said finally. “Gattor, I think. Yes, that was it. Carson Gattor.”