Remote Control Read online

  She snapped, “Don’t patronize me, Ethan.”

  He exhaled and began speaking quickly. “Okay, some of the code isn’t running right; it’s terribly complex programming and we’re constantly finding bugs. The more sensory tracks we try to record or to run, the more memory problems we develop. Sensory data like this eats memory in massive quantities. I’ve got people working on ways of trying to compress the signals to reduce the memory consumption.

  “The sensors we’re using in the collar and helmet are running too hot. Even with all the advances in superconducting metals I need to find a better way of supplying coolant to the collar. Because of that problem, currently, I’m much more efficient at recording the neural signals than the transmitters are at feeding them back into the brain stem for playback. Follow?”

  “So far.”

  “None of those glitches worries me, technically speaking. Whatever problems I don’t solve, the advance of technology will solve for me. Higher temperature superconducting metals are just around the corner. The biggest single problem I have and the one most likely to turn out to be intractable is that there are resident signals already in the system—”

  “What system are you talking about? Your computers?”

  “No, no, no. In the human body—that system. Even when the test subject is at rest, these neural pathways we’re monitoring are carrying torrents of data up from the spinal column and down the cranial nerves. I need to find a way to block the resident signals so they don’t compete with the signals we’re transmitting in from system memory. Until I do, quadraplegics and amputees will provide my best test subjects, for obvious reasons.”

  “Those problems don’t sound minor, Ethan.”

  “They’re not. But I’m confident.”

  “That’s great,” she muttered.

  She pulled the robe tight and walked over to the windows. She felt like the whole world could see her every movement and that the paparazzi were having their way with her.

  She daydreamed of France.

  Behind her, she heard him stir, slide into his shorts, and click off the computers.

  “I want it erased, Ethan.”

  “It’s late. I’m tired. Sleep on it. If you want it erased, I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind.”

  “Fine.”

  James Morelli was the bodyguard whom Kevin Quirk had arranged for Emma to interview. Morelli had suggested that he come by Ethan’s apartment at eight-thirty the next morning so he and Emma could go somewhere for coffee and get acquainted.

  Emma was out of bed before Ethan. She showered and made herself some tea.

  The tape, or disc, she had decided overnight, would have to go. Although she couldn’t understand why, she knew there were people in the world who would interrupt their daily lives to be in her presence. There were people who would pay good money to read what banal things she had done with her week, where she was shopping for groceries, what kind of car she drove, what movies she went to, and whether or not she wore a helmet when she Rollerbladed.

  She didn’t doubt for a moment that there would be people who would pay good money to be part of this latest technological marvel, to discover just what it had been like for Ethan Han to have sex with her.

  Could this equipment really duplicate that?

  The thought made her shiver and she pondered the true value of technology that had the capacity to intrude on her privacy to a degree that vastly eclipsed all the prior assaults that had been made on her. She wondered if Ethan really understood the raw thrust of the technology he was creating.

  Someone could actually experience having sex with her without her permission.

  It was as though technology had found a way to invite strangers into her bed whenever they chose to enter. And they could do this, they could feel her mouth and her tongue and her flesh and her fingers and her—they could be inside her—without her knowledge that they were doing it.

  The concept paralyzed her. Have they stolen my will? Can my soul be far behind?

  She tried to juggle the image enough to make it real.

  The skeptic in her wondered if Ethan was lying. The lawyer in her began to wonder about the legal ramifications of Ethan’s technology and its effect on privacy, when she noticed the clock on his microwave change to 8:15. She decided to wake Ethan.

  She was determined to have the data destroyed before she left his house for the day.

  Ethan seemed distant when he awoke. Emma did not feel as though she was a particularly welcome part of his morning and considered the possibility that he had been feigning sleep until she left for the day so that he wouldn’t have to deal with her.

  She initiated an embrace. He touched her lightly on the shoulders and mumbled that he had to use the bathroom. When he came back he was wearing the bathrobe she had worn the night before. She hoped she had succeeded in mingling her smells with his.

  “Listen,” she said softly, “I’m going to need to go soon. That bodyguard I’m supposed to interview will be here any minute. I’ve decided that I definitely want to erase the disc, or whatever you call it, from last night, before I meet with him.”

  He looked at the floor, his hands lost in the pockets of the robe.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That’s disappointing.” His face was impish. “I was really looking forward to playing that back someday.”

  “That’s exactly why it has to be erased. I don’t want to be ‘played back.’ Last night wasn’t a performance I gave. It was a gift. Love. I don’t want anyone, you included, having control over that. It’s mine to give, when I choose to give it. I have so little left that feels truly private…please, erase it now. Ethan, last night will never be replayed, and that’s fine. We can have plenty of time to do new versions, right?”

  He nodded, reluctantly she thought.

  “Okay. It’s easy enough. Let’s go do it,” he said.

  She followed him through the center of the laboratory and down the hallway to the front room.

  The big windows caught the morning light at an acute angle and the room was alive with a shadowed brilliance that reminded her of beach light at daybreak. Down below, an industrial machine scrubbing the bricks on the Mall compromised the mood, filling the space with an annoying buzz.

  Ethan stopped about five feet from the equipment cart and turned back to face her. “Don’t be funny, Emma. It’s too early in the day.”

  She stared at him. A streak of light cut at a diagonal across his thighs. The bathrobe hung open to his navel, one nipple exposed, a dark dot on his copper flesh. She found her breath shortening. She didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “What?” she said.

  “What did you do with it?”

  “What do you mean what did I do with it? What did I do with what?” An electric jolt of alarm covered her like a shawl and made her skin feel raw.

  He was pointing at the cart. “The optical drive? The Bernoulli? Where did you put it?” He patted an empty space on the second shelf of the cart. She remembered the space had held a vanilla-colored piece of equipment about the size of a small VCR. “Where is it?”

  “Ethan, no! What the hell is a Bernoulli? Are you telling me the tape is gone?”

  “It’s not a tape, it’s a disc. You didn’t take it, did you?”

  “Of course I didn’t take it. This isn’t funny to me. I’m not even sure that I know what on earth an optical drive is.”

  “It’s the storage device for the system.” He waved his hand at the empty spot on the cart. “It was here last night. And now it’s gone.”

  She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to attack him. Instead, she turned away from him, hugged herself, and cried until finally her sobs stilled, and her anguish turned flat, lifeless. All she felt was a dull ache deep in her gut.

  She didn’t know what else to feel. Violated. Defiled.

  But no, this is worse.

  Rape.
This felt like rape.

  Ethan tried to console her.

  She pushed him away and cried out, “What about the program, the software, don’t they need that? Did they get that?”

  “No. Well, not last night, anyway,” he said.

  “What do you mean, ‘not last night’?”

  “The application program, the code, isn’t on the optical drive. But three copies have been made without permission over the past few months. I have a computer security specialist looking into it, how it was done.”

  “So whoever has the disc may have the software, too?”

  “Yes, they might,” he admitted. “But they don’t have the collar.” He had told her five times not to worry about the stolen drive, the data was useless without the collar. And even if they got one, the technical problems that still needed to be solved…

  Ethan retreated to the shower.

  She slunk off to her favorite place in his flat, on the wide windowsill of the front room overlooking the Mall. She was staring at the cart of computer equipment as though it were as vile as the gun used to kill her father. The sound of the doorbell intruded—someone ringing up to the flat from the second-floor landing. James Morelli, her prospective bodyguard, she guessed, right on time.

  She hit the buzzer to unlock the lower door and waited for the knock. Two sharp, confident raps soon followed.

  She swung the door open. The person at the door wasn’t her new bodyguard. It was the mailman.

  She was surprised to see him. He seemed surprised to see Emma, looking at her twice, knowing that he’d seen her before, not quite able to piece together how he knew that face. “I’ve got a package. Mr. Han doesn’t like me to leave them downstairs.”

  “Do I need to sign?”

  “No.” He narrowed his eyes. “Do I know you from somewhere else on my route?” He handed her the large padded envelope and a three-inch stack of Ethan’s daily mail.

  “I don’t think so,” she said absently. She figured that her identity would dawn on him later in the morning. He’d probably tell his wife about it at dinner. They would both be pretty excited.

  Emma was baffled by it all.

  She carried the stack of mail into the laboratory and placed it on Ethan’s desk. The top envelope in the pile caught her attention.

  “Oh my God,” she said, looking over her shoulder to see whether Ethan was done with his shower. She listened intently, and thought she heard the water continuing to run.

  Her heart felt as though it would erupt.

  She lifted the envelope, hefted it. Standard business size, not too heavy. Two sheets inside, maybe three. She noted that the postage was first-class, not bulk rate. The address had been individually typed; it wasn’t a label.

  She placed the envelope back down. Walked away. Closed her eyes. She tried to catch her breath. She told herself the letter didn’t mean anything.

  But she couldn’t leave it alone. She returned to the desk and raised the letter again, holding it up to the dull light that was coming from the western windows. The bond was too heavy; she couldn’t make out a thing that was written on the paper inside.

  Why is Ethan receiving mail from Operation Rescue? What does the right-to-life movement want with this man?

  Emma took a deep breath and checked her watch.

  “Screw the bodyguard,” she said aloud.

  She stuffed the envelope into the middle of the stack, scribbled a brief, talk-to-you-later note to Ethan, and headed out the door. The bus station was a block away. She could find a cab there.

  As soon as she arrived at the bus station, she used her cell phone to connect to Ethan’s answering machine.

  “It’s me,” she said. “Please don’t tell the police what happened. If you figure out how the guy got into your flat, I want to know. I may have a friend of mine, a private investigator, call you to look into all this. His name is Kevin Quirk. Bye.”

  FIVE

  Friday, October 11. 10:30 P.M.

  Heavy Snow, 18 Degrees

  The instant Scott Malloy left the interview room to consult with Sergeant Pons, Lauren pounced on Casey.

  “You had no right to tell him—”

  Casey held up her hand, realized that there was a reasonable chance Lauren couldn’t even see the gesture, and lowered it, feeling silly.

  “Save it, Lauren. You heard me, I didn’t say a word to Malloy about your illness. And for now, I won’t. Not that it makes a hell of a lot of difference; the fact that you can’t see worth shit isn’t going to stay secret for long, anyway. And, if I understand this optic—whatever it is—correctly from Alan, you need medicine that you can’t get in the infirmary at the jail. And I need some more time with you to try and understand what the hell is going on with your friend, and I think I need it tonight. If you go to the jail right now, I’ll lose you for as many hours as they decide to waste booking you. For the moment, making them deal with you as a medical crisis case will serve both of our needs.”

  Lauren was unswayed by Casey’s logic, adamantly guarding a need to maintain a sense of control over something. “I didn’t give you permission to—”

  The frustration that had been creeping into Casey’s voice exploded out. “I don’t need your bullshit permission to untie my own hands. I will do everything I can to accommodate your desire for privacy. I won’t, however, permit you to interfere with my ability to defend you. If you insist on that freedom, I’m walking out of here right now, and you can find yourself a new lawyer. Given that we’re approaching midnight, on a weekend, in a blizzard, good luck. You’ll stew in the damn county jail with a public defender—someone you may well have antagonized in court last week—until you make your first appearance tomorrow afternoon. Maybe that’s what you want—to be some kind of sacrificial lamb. I can no longer tell what your agenda is.”

  Casey recognized the impact of her intensity on Lauren and softened her tone. “I can tell you I don’t like seeing you here in handcuffs. I am truly frightened by whatever is going on with your health. And I absolutely don’t want to see you spend even a minute in the Boulder County Jail.”

  Lauren was suddenly terrified that her only true ally in this awful place was angry at her. A renewed sense of vulnerability blew over her. She recognized an impulse to apologize, but instead stood speechless, frozen by the sound of footsteps echoing down the hall in her direction.

  Scott Malloy was back. He’d been gone less than five minutes.

  His face was somber. He glanced once at Lauren’s eyes before directing his words to Casey Sparrow. Casey detected the tautness in his jaw and guessed that Detective Malloy did not like whatever message he was being asked to relay.

  “Sergeant Pons says there’s a nurse at the jail. ‘A good one, a fine one’ is what he said to tell you. She’ll examine Lauren and make the call as to whether or not the doctor gets paged tonight. Let’s go, there’s a car waiting outside.”

  “I’m not sure that delaying seeing a doctor is a prudent decision, Detective. There are liability questions to consider, don’t you think?”

  “Well, it’s not my decision and liability right now is not my concern. And as far as I can tell, Ms. Sparrow, you’re not a doctor. I sure as hell am not a doctor. The consensus seems to be that we have a good medical opinion waiting for us a few miles away. What do you say we get over there as quickly as we can and see what the nurse has to say?”

  “I’d prefer that my client be taken directly to the hospital from here. For evaluation and treatment.”

  “I’m sure you would prefer that. It’s just not going to happen.” He turned to his prisoner. In a pleasant, cajoling voice, he said, “Come on, Lauren, let’s go.”

  Casey wasn’t done protesting. “Speak to me, Detective, not to my client. I—”

  Malloy glared at the attorney. “You’re not going to win this one, Counselor. I suggest you save your energy.”

  Scott helped Lauren pull the coat up high on her neck and led her down a long corridor to a heavy
steel door with an EXIT sign above it. Without any further warning, he pushed open the door and led her into an enclosed dock. A patrol car, newly cleaned of snow, engine running, was waiting ten feet away. Malloy guided Lauren out to the car, helped her onto the cold backseat, and slammed the door. He realized he had been leading her as though he believed she were, indeed, half-blind.

  The transfer happened so quickly that Casey Sparrow didn’t get a last word with Lauren.

  When Malloy came back inside, he was prepared to end his diplomacy.

  Casey disarmed him. “Thanks for your help tonight, Detective. I know you gave her some consideration that you weren’t required to give her. If I was abrasive with you, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be difficult. I’m just trying to do what’s best for my client.”

  Malloy narrowed his eyes, wondered if the conciliatory tone indicated that the attorney was playing some new game. He said, “I hope that Lauren’s vision problem isn’t serious.”

  “She thinks it is. So I have to take it seriously. Detective, there’s one more thing you can do for me, if you don’t mind.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?” His voice carried a tractor trailer full of skepticism.

  “Can you give me directions to the jail? I don’t have any idea where it is since they moved it away from the Justice Center.”

  He laughed, and said, “Come on, I’ll draw you a map. You know where the Boulder Airport is?”

  She took two more steps, and said, “Boulder has an airport?”

  Cozier Maitlin directed Alan to beach the BMW in the no-parking zone in front of the main entrance of the police department.

  He did. Immediately after shifting the transmission into park, Alan announced, “I’m going in to see her.”

  “No, you’re not. Not if you care about her welfare.”

  “Why the hell can’t I go in?”

  “You can’t go in, Alan, because the detectives are dying to interview you. And because Casey and I don’t know whether you know something important or not, so at this time we don’t want them talking to you. They will not let you see your wife, regardless. So your efforts would be futile.”