Parents and technology.
If that video had been sent to their account, Emily could download it to her computer.
She flipped on her bedroom lamp, blinking in the sudden light. Flung herself into her computer desk chair. She woke up the computer and cruised to the Internet. Logged into the account. Her fingers trembled as she checked the time and date for her mother’s last upload.
There was the file: Morton’s Video.
Real subtle, Mom.
Emily eyed the file name. If she downloaded it, and the man who’d stolen her mom’s computer managed to break into this account, he could track the download to her.
Only one way around that.
With a few clicks she sent the video file to her computer. Then she deleted the account.
Back hunched, Emily leaned forward to watch the video.
It was pretty much what her mom had explained. No sound. A machine shaking, then letting off steam until the whole screen went white. The final sequence of another machine near an electrical power plant. Black smoke came from that one.
Emily sat back, frowning. Then watched it again.
Near the end her eye caught something at the bottom right of the picture. What was that? She paused the video. Some kind of pixelation. In technical terms, “noise.” Was it just poor quality? The end of the video was more blurry than the beginning. Or was it supposed to be there?
She hit “Play.” The noise continued. Then at fifty-nine seconds, it stopped.
Why?
Emily went back to the beginning again and watched a third time. And a fourth. A fifth and sixth. After seven views, she was sure of one thing.
The noise had a pattern.
There was something here, but her laptop didn’t have the software she needed to figure it out.
She snatched her cell phone off the bed and checked the time: 4:15 a.m. If she left soon she’d get to the office by 5:00. She’d have three hours before anyone else showed up.
Emily threw on some work clothes and makeup. She grabbed her computer, stuffed it in her laptop bag with wallet and keys, and headed for the door.
Chapter 15
SPECIAL HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION INTO FREENOW TERRORIST ACTIVITY OF FEBRUARY 25, 2013
SEPTEMBER 16, 2013
TRANSCRIPT
Representative ELKIN MORSE (Chairman, Homeland Security Committee): Sergeant, I’m now going to turn to the early morning hours of February 25, at the address of 738 Powell Street, San Carlos, California. The home of Hannah Shire. How were you informed of the events that occurred there?
Sergeant CHARLES WADE (Sheriff’s Department Coastside): Throughout the night I’d been in contact with Deputy Williams, who was running surveillance on the property. Sometime after 3:00 a.m. he stopped responding. At about the same time I was informed by the San Carlos bureau on a possible shots-fired dispatch to that location. I hurried to the address. It took me about half an hour to arrive. There I met San Carlos officer Tim Dunmeyer, who’d checked the house through an unlocked back door and discovered it empty. He reported seeing blood drops in the house, leading out that back door. There seemed to be no sign of forced entry. If the house had been broken into, someone had very efficiently picked the lock. Hannah Shire’s car was not in the garage. Williams’s unmarked van was still parked on the street. He was behind the wheel, dead, with a single gunshot wound to the head.
MORSE: An unfortunate, sad victim, to be sure. As for Mrs. Shire and her mother, did you think they’d been kidnapped?
WADE: A neighbor reported seeing Mrs. Shire drive away in her car in the middle of the night. There was no doubt she’d left of her own volition.
MORSE: So what was your assessment of the situation?
WADE: I couldn’t be sure. But here now, in a matter of hours, I had a third homicide. Plus—where were Hannah Shire and her mother? Were they hurt? Or had Hannah Shire shot the deputy and taken off?
MORSE: That isn’t really what you thought, now was it, Sergeant Wade? They were indeed the questions you voiced to the San Carlos bureau, and expected them to act upon. In truth, you knew far more about what had happened that night at the Shire residence, did you not?
Did you not, Sergeant Wade?
WADE: You are mistaken. I did not know the details of what happened.
MORSE: I’m not asking if you knew every detail. I would expect not, since you weren’t present. I am asking: why didn’t the death of Deputy Williams and the disappearance of Hannah Shire and her mother make you believe her story? She’d said she was in danger. Now she was gone, and there was blood in her house. Didn’t you question whether it was her blood?
WADE: Of course. But as I began questioning neighbors, I learned more.
MORSE: And a deputy had been killed. One of your fellow law enforcement officers. How could you not face your own culpability in his death?