Bobby Quinn whistled. “Shit, Cooper. What did you do to her up there?”
They’d found her missing datapad in her hotel room and a stamp drive in her pocket. He’d given both to Luisa and Valerie, told them to hit the San Antonio field office and check them out. Vasquez had claimed the virus needed another week of coding. If she was telling the truth, the thing was far too complex for another programmer to easily finish.
I dream the most beautiful programs never written.
About two in the morning he’d put in a call to Drew Peters, director of Equitable Services. Despite the hour, his boss sounded wide awake. “Nick, good. What’s the word?”
“Alex Vasquez is dead.”
There was a pause. “Was that necessary?”
“She killed herself.” Cooper hated talking on the phone. He felt handicapped when he couldn’t see the other person, the play of their muscles and the change in their pores and the widening of their pupils. When he couldn’t see someone, he had to take their words for what they were instead of reading the meaning beneath them. He’d heard that some readers actually preferred the phone because it stripped away the wild dissonance between what people said and what they were thinking, but for him, that was akin to cutting out his tongue because he didn’t like the way something tasted. “I couldn’t stop her.”
“Too bad. I’d have liked to have talked to her.”
“I think that’s why she killed herself. We spoke before she jumped, and she mentioned interrogation. It scared her. Not the process, but what she might tell us.”
Another long pause. “Hard to see an upside to that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. Well, still a success, even if not total. Nice work, son. Get everything settled and come home.”
After the call, there had been cops to deal with, and jurisdiction issues. The department wielded broad powers no local dared question, but government work always had a CYA factor, and there had been forms to fill out, authorization codes to pass, after-incident reports to write. His team had questioned the other patrons, making sure that Vasquez didn’t have a partner among them. He’d arranged to have the body shipped back to DC—thirty years since the first brilliants, and the scalpel crew still liked to take their brains apart—and put in calls for regional law enforcement to deliver the bad news to next of kin. Vasquez had a mother in Boston and a father in Flint, both normals. One brother, Bryan, also normal, a once-promising engineer turned dropout, last seen peddling weed in Berkeley.
The previous days had been a long run, and Cooper felt raw and exhausted with the forms and the procedure, all the trappings of civilized law enforcement. Patience for bureaucracy wasn’t his strong suit even when he wasn’t worn out. When he finally got on the charter jet back to DC, the reclining seat felt like a featherbed. He glanced at his watch, figured a three-hour flight with an hour time difference, plus a ride from Dulles to Del Ray, call it ten o’clock. Late but not too late. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. Found a vision of Alex Vasquez waiting for him, that quarter turn she made when he had realized her intention, the way she had thrust her hands deep in the pockets of her jeans. The way she had planted herself off her right foot as she bent into her leap.
I dream the most beautiful programs never written.
Cooper was asleep before wheels up. If he dreamed of anything, he didn’t remember it.
A hand on his shoulder woke him. He blinked, looked up, saw the flight attendant smiling down at him. “Sorry. We’re landing.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” The woman held the smile. It was a coquettish look, but he could see that it was practiced. “You need anything?”
“I’m okay.” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and glanced out the window. DC was smeared with rain.