 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Peter Sargent

"Hammers in the Fog," by Thomas Alan Orr, copyright © 1995 and 2014, is reprinted by permission of the author.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

THE DEAD RECKONER

The night train wailed and shook the ground. At dawn

A crow flew past old headstones leaning in the corn,

Coyotes barked in the woods beyond the marsh, hungry

For my chickens, and it thundered in the morning

Without a kiss of rain. I heard hammers in the fog,

Like someone making weather, a distant urgent sound.

My love was baking bread and singing. The neighbor

Put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Some days warn us and we are still surprised,

Poorly guarded against the angel of dread.

Thomas Alan Orr

# Part One: Absolution And Desolation

## ONE

Every time she drove down this street, Ruth thought she saw a glimpse of the man she'd put in prison for killing her husband. It was a fleeting and unreliable impression, but not an impossible one. Yancy had escaped a number of years ago. Nonetheless, Ruth had to admit that once at large, the man was bound to haunt both her waking and sleeping mind. She had never seen more than a fragment of a face that looked like his or a gait that walked like his. Then there was that day when Ruth was driving with her son in the back seat, when Yancy appeared in one unmistakable, unthinkable final manifestation.

There was no rain but the air was damp and warm. Through the haze Ruth saw people from both sides of the street stop and stare. Those who were closer to Yancy gathered in a loose, wide circle around him. No one approached closer than an arm's length. The man stood outside a pizza shop on Washington street, in the Boston neighborhood of Brighton. A green and white awning hung over him and his nearest spectators. Yancy was shirtless, his glistening fishbowl shaped belly hanging over his boxers. He'd written the word "TULIP" on that belly using a medium that looked to Ruth like blood. He held his arms out like a cross. As Ruth closed the distance, she saw that he was bleeding from his wrists. The letters were blood.

Detective Ruth Holland fished her badge and cuffs from the glove compartment and pulled her car to curb. She called for help and instructed Jason, the sixth grader in her back seat, to stay put. He rolled his window down as his mother climbed out and cut through the crowd, badge in hand. When Yancy saw her, he tipped his head up and looked into the heavens – or, rather, the awning outside the pizza place.

"The voice of him that cries in the wilderness." he said, "Prepare the way of the Lord; make strait in the desert a highway for our God."

Yancy leveled his head again and turned his gaze to Ruth. The look in his eyes made her hesitate. When she noticed that everyone around was now watching her, she stopped. The man extended one of his hands toward her. Drops of blood fell on the sidewalk.

He said, "I've been here, waiting for you."

So perhaps Ruth had seen the actual man, in flesh and blood, all those times before.

Yancy continued, "I wanted to tell you something. I regret what I did."

He knelt down, pressing his bare knees against the sidewalk. Then he flattened his palms on it. He stood there like a dog, lifting his head up to see her.

Yancy said, "But I'm not sorry."

Ruth broke the trance and cuffed him. He didn't resist. He didn't even wince, though the metal must have hurt when wrapped around those bleeding wrists. She saw that the wound wasn't deep. He would live. A few minutes later a squad car and an ambulance showed up to take Yancy away.

As the man retreated he said, "I'm not sorry. It wants me to be sorry, but it won't get that. It can make me stand naked on the street. It can make me cut my wrists. It can make me walk like an animal, but I'll go to hell before it can make me sorry."

Ruth exchanged a few words with her colleagues, but she was eager to get back to her son. By now his entire head was hanging out the window.

Jason said, "Who was that mom? Did you know him?"

Ruth knew what was expected of her. A parent is supposed to protect her child. A parent is supposed to lie to him. However, she didn't feel that was the right thing to do now. Ruth had never withheld the truth about Jason's father from him. She never let him believe that Frank Holland was a bad man, but neither did she ever hesitate to admit that he was a foolish one. Frank had found himself sunk deep with the likes of Yancy and had died a patsy's death.

"That was the man who killed your dad." she said.

After a moment's thought, Jason said, "Why didn't you shoot him?"

Ruth drove off. How was she supposed to go on with her day?

"We don't have to go." she said, looking at Jason's reflection in the mirror. "We can go home."

"We have to go now, Mom."

He was right. They had to go. Ruth was proud of her brave, stoic young man. He wasn't fearful. He wasn't shy. And though he was so often oblivious to what was going on around him, he wasn't much of a fool either. They drove on toward the school.

TULIP. Somehow Ruth had forgotten about that. Yancy had murdered many people. Though each homicide had been an execution for those who had failed to meet his expectations, none were staged as such. Rather, Yancy had ripped through his victims as though he were a bear or tiger. He was vicious and brutal, prone to leaving bodies so mutilated they were indistinguishable from ground meat. Yet, he did have a ritual. He used to leave a pink tulip on each body.

Ruth had never known why.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it and felt a pang of dread. Among its various icons, the screen displayed one which looked a bit like a stone cat. She knew it was supposed to be the Egyptian sphinx, but to her it resembled a domestic feline. The icon was blinking.

"Dammit not now." she said.

"Mom!" shouted Jason.

She looked up and saw the car swerving to the left. The avenue was three lanes wide with a median. She had been in the rightmost lane but was now all the way to the left – and still going left. Ruth swung back, but not before scraping her driver's side wheel against the concrete divider.

"Mom, you never drive like that."

The kid was right. Mom was a cop, and more than that she was a good one. She liked to set an example. But that damn Sorter, she thought, stealing another short glance at the blinking sphinx icon.

But I'll go to hell before it can make me sorry.

She was pretty sure she knew what "it" was.

A minute later, she pulled into the lot at Edison Middle School. Ruth ripped her phone from its charger and slipped it in her pocket. She unbuckled her son and helped him out. This was an uncomfortable procedure. Jason was much larger than his peers and moved with the agility of a paraplegic ox. His bovine stillness was so serene that at times Ruth thought he resembled a zen master, but it was also making him fat. That's why they were at school on a Saturday.

Jason started across the lot and Ruth stayed by the car.

She called out, "Forgetting something?", as she opened the lift gate.

"My uniform!" Jason cried and came sprinting back.

He should've worn the uniform here, but Jason was fastidious and habitual. He insisted on wearing it only during sessions so that it would stay as pristine as possible. He came to the back of the car and dragged out his gym bag. Rifling through it, a worried look crossed his face. Ruth asked him what the matter was.

"I can't find my belt."

"You think that will get you out of this?" Ruth smiled at him.

"Why would I want to get out of it?"

"I know, I'm kidding."

Of course Jason didn't want to miss the competition. He wouldn't on a normal day. On a day like today, it was especially important. Ruth envied his ability to focus, to shake off something that would leave most kids balling in a corner. She envied it and was a little afraid of it. No matter how many specialists Ruth saw, she could never understand how Jason's brain worked. It wasn't only different from hers, but different from those of others who shared his condition.

Jason said, "Wait, I remembered – I left my belt in my locker."

She gave him a pat on the back. "Now let's go, we're late. Run, run."

This time they ran together for the school. It was good to get Jason out and working his muscles. Knowing that he loved his new sport, she liked to tease him about it. Jason being Jason, he fell for it every time. Yet she sensed it also made him more determined to show her how devoted he was, and how happy that she'd suggested it to him. She understood that the reason why his belt was in his locker was that he brought it with him to school during the week and hung it next to his jacket.

Before reaching the building, Ruth's phone buzzed again. She slowed to walk and pulled it out, seeing that once again it was the Sorter. That thing was nothing if not persistent. She touched the icon. The program brought up a map with two points marked. The first was her, standing in this parking lot. The second represented a person inside the red brick building they were about to enter. A note attached to the second point said:

NORMAN SHAW. POTENTIAL PSYCHOTIC RISK. DANGER FACTOR: HIGH

She closed the application, saying, "Damn Sorter."

Jason asked what she meant. Ruth considered him for a moment. In some ways Jason was precocious. He was good with mechanical and electronic things. He could memorize lists of numbers and entire books verbatim. What Jason struggled with were social circles, subtle vocal intonations, and being asked to come to dinner when he was busy arranging every item in the house in a line. He was no good at that.

"The Sorter is a computer." said Ruth. "It's designed to tell you things about yourself that you can't know on your own."

"Do you use it to catch criminals?"

Yet another one of Jason's endearing qualities was his large vocabulary, which he used with precision. This was not a kid who would say "bad guys".

"Not yet. Maybe not ever. It's just an experiment."

After all, thought Ruth, it hadn't said anything about Yancy.

They arrived at the gymnasium doors. Once inside, the first thing that struck Ruth was the heat. It was May and the weather outside was warm but not hot. Inside, the place was steaming. The two faced a row of folding tables hung with banners for various sponsor companies. Beyond the tables were people gathered in groups and practicing a variety of sports. Hanging from the rafters, among the various championship banners won by the school, was a sign reading "Brighton Special Olympics." Ruth brought her son to one of the folding tables, where a woman about her mother's age was waiting to register them.

The woman said, "Good morning Detective Holland."

To some people, you were always a cop. The woman meant to use Ruth's title as a sign of respect. Ruth understood, but that didn't stop her from wincing a little. In here she wished to be the mother of an athlete, or at least the mother of a child warming up to athletic competition after eleven years of a more or less sedentary life. But it seemed that once some people knew what she did for a living, she could never be anything else.

Ruth said, "Isn't it hot in here?"

Before she could get an answer, her phone rang. It was Lieutenant Keller, her boss. She asked Jason to register with the kindly woman and walked off to the quietest spot in the gym that she could find. The bonus was that she was standing under a large open window. The slight breeze was much more pleasant than the sauna she'd walked away from.

Keller said, "Did you just get a notification from the Sorter?"

"Yes sir, I did. I didn't think much of it. Are we acting on this information?"

"You can't exactly make an arrest based on that, but did you notice it said the danger level on this guy was high?"

"I did. Yes sir, I did, but I still don't understand the protocol."

Keller said, "There isn't one yet, but I want you to check it out. Do you know him?"

"Sort of. Norman Shaw. He's one of the organizers of this Special Olympics chapter."

"And have you ever noticed any suspicious behavior?"

"No sir." said Ruth.

"Anything suspicious about his past?"

"I only know one thing about his past." She sighed. "I know what you're going to think. His kid died maybe five or six years ago. But I just don't think that makes him deranged, do you know what I mean? It was a long time ago and since then he's put his whole life into the Special Olympics. People around here say he's a saint. Yeah, his kid died, but don't you think that if he were going to cut loose it would've happened by now? If anything, he's found a healthy way to cope."

"Detective Holland." There was that title again. "Like I said, I'm not asking you to arrest him. Look at it this way. We're just trying out the Sorter, just taking it for a spin. How can we know how effective it might be if we don't follow up on some of the leads? So take a look and see what jumps out at you."

Ruth agreed and hung up. Sure, she'd take a look, but she couldn't help feeling that the Sorter, for all its supposed magical properties, was wrong this time. It was supposed to diagnose mental ailments with such precision that it could warn the police the moment someone was planning to hurt themselves or others. Yet she had not only seen Yancy today, she'd passed by him any number of times without the sphinx speaking a word of it. And now she was supposed to believe the thing when it told her that man who had devoted his life to helping these kids was a risk? Ruth was in no hurry to follow up on that lead. She went back to Jason, who had completed registration.

She turned to the table and said, "So is the furnace on?"

The older woman shrugged. "It's an old building. Someone probably turned it up this morning when it was cooler out. Even if you turn it down again, it takes an hour or two to feel it."

Ruth nodded and walked toward the center of the gym. The woman's answer was reasonable, but it didn't help Ruth's sense of unease. There was a problem with being a cop. You notice everything and worry that everything means something. Nothing out of the ordinary can ever seem innocuous the way it can to civilians. Often this comes from experience and the general desire to keep breathing. As a homicide cop who'd once worked in an anti-gang unit, she got used to watching for tells. Was a guy packing a sidearm? Was he itching to use it? Then there are other bad feelings that are the residue of a few particular memories. There's that one odd feature of that one horrific crime and it leaves a mark. In this case, Ruth was feeling the latter.

Two years ago she'd stumbled on the murder of a friend. Her luck had never been very good. Ruth had been training this new kid on the force, Luke. The other rookies called him "Coolie". They said it was because he kept a cool temper in hot matches. The boy was unflappable and had a talent for talking down someone looking to start trouble. Those people weren't always civilians. Luke didn't like discord among the ranks. Having no power, his charm walked him through. For that, Ruth thought his handle was even more appropriate. Coolie often flashed his irreverent wit, but behind it was a growing realization of how crooked the system could be. Ruth, daughter of a cop, had always toed the line. Coolie, on the other hand, had once suffered three days unpaid leave for insubordination. Ruth felt like a coward because she knew he'd been right and she did nothing to stand up for him. He never returned from leave.

On the fourth day, Luke failed to report for duty. Ruth had gone to look for him. It had been a typical New England spring. The earlier part of the week had been cold, near freezing at night, but on that day it had inched past seventy. Ruth got no answer at the door and looked through the window. She saw the kitchen, a mess with unwashed dishes, and the door to the living room. The TV was playing and a foot stuck out from the edge of the door frame. Detective Holland retrieved the spare key from its hiding place and entered the premises with her gun drawn.

The first thing she noticed was the heat. It was stifling. She knew Coolie's thermostat was broken and didn't always turn the furnace off when it was supposed to. He must have turned it up a few days earlier when it had been cold and now it was running full blast. Ruth guessed what that meant before she entered the living room. She found Coolie's body laying next to his service pistol. He hadn't been shot. Rather, someone had used the weapon to bash his face in, and then his sternum. Duct tape bound his legs. His arms were folded beneath him, his palms resting under the small of his back. His own cuffs held them there.

The killer had placed a flower on the gun. A tulip.

Ruth snapped out of it and lead Jason to his group. She exchanged pleasantries with the judo coach and explained that she needed to use the ladies room. She asked Jason to change into his uniform and come right back here. Jason agreed and asked his mom to get his belt from his locker.

Once Ruth exited the gym, the rest of the school looked as it should on a Saturday. The halls were darkened and empty. Her sneakers made a loud squishing noise on the mopped floor. The building was quite old and the heat came from radiators hissing from underneath their protective casings. She new the utility controls were in the main office and hoped the room was unlocked. On her way there, Ruth passed through the lobby, a square room lined with trophy cases. Between two cases there was a small door and from there she smelled fuel oil, a lot of it. It was like the smell she remembered from when she was a kid and they came to fill the oil tank at her parents' home. Their tank leaked and her father put empty cream cheese tubs underneath to catch it. Maybe there was something wrong with the oil burner here at the school.

The main office was just past the lobby. The door was ajar and cast a triangle of light on the floor. Ruth heard the sound of someone rummaging through drawers and hoped it was Norman Shaw. Instead she found a man about her age, dressed in cargo pants and a white tee. He was indeed opening drawers and looking through them. When he sensed her entrance, he stopped what he was doing and looked up at her. Ruth saw that he was handsome, but wore a bad close-cropped haircut. It looked like he'd given it to himself.

"Hi." he said.

"Yes." said Ruth. "Hello."

"I'm looking for the key." The man turned to a translucent plastic lock box hanging on the wall between two green metal filing cabinets. "For this."

Ruth noticed that a row of dials were inside the box and said, "You want to turn down the heat?"

"Yeah." he said, and came around the desk to stand about two feet from her. "Do you know where the key is?"

"I was looking for Norman Shaw, the chapter chairperson? He probably turned it up in the first place. I'm pretty sure he's got the key."

"With him? Really? Well, where can we find him?" The man gestured toward the hall with an open hand. "These kids can't compete like this."

"I agree." Ruth pulled out her phone and opened the Sorter app. There was the other point marked on the map again, not too far from where they stood.

"What's that?"

Well it's the damn Sorter, that's what, thought Ruth. It was something trying to convince her that a man who spent all his spare hours helping mentally disabled children achieve their athletic goals was some kind of psychotic. And just what kind? Homicidal? Or just a little bit tense?

"I..." she started. Ruth didn't know what to say. There was at least one excuse she could always fall back on. "I'm a cop. I'm Detective Ruth Holland. But that's not why I'm here. My son's in the gym with the others."

"Okay." The man stuck out a hand. "John Smith. My sister, Alice, also competes. So that thing tracks Norman's phone or something?"

Ruth shook John's extended hand. He had a nice firm grip.

"Yes, let's go see if we can scare him up."

The two left the office and stopped short in the hall. They looked at each other and each knew what the other was thinking. That oily smell Ruth had noticed before was much stronger now. She lead John to the door between the trophy cases and they opened it. A set of bare wooden steps lead from the door into the depths of a monstrous room with a few windows at the top. Gigantic boilers turned on their sides lined the room's back wall. It looked to Ruth like the pictures she'd seen of the Titanic's engine room.

John said, "Man this place is old. Look at this. But we gotta go."

"You think it's dangerous?"

John pointed at the floor, where there was a growing slick of oil. He pulled her back through the doorway.

He said, "It looks like there's a leak. A lot of it's spilled already. This place is a fire trap. I'm not kidding, Detective Holland. I really think we ought to play it safe and get everyone out of here."

"Can we pull the emergency shut off?"

"Alright, let's pull the fire alarm and look for the shut off."

"I've got to get back to my son." said Ruth. "And if I'm in there I can help them evacuate. I'll call it in while I'm on my way."

"Ok, I'll stay here and find the shut off. Even if that puddle catches fire, it's not like it's going to explode. I'll wait five minutes and pull the alarm, so you can find your kid before all hell is loose."

Ruth nodded. "Sounds like a plan. And your sister? Alice? I can make sure she gets out safely."

"Yeah, Alice Smith. She competes in badminton. Thanks, Detective."

Ruth hurried back down the hall and into the gymnasium. She ran toward the judo group, but even while a few dozen feet away she noticed he was gone. Jason was gone. Ruth grabbed the coach by the shoulder and demanded to know where her son was.

"He wanted to go to his locker to get his belt."

She had told him that she would get it, but the boy had run off anyway. It was unlike him to wander away, but she had to admit that to him these were special circumstances. This was a safe place in his mind. It was his school and he was competing here with his friends. Besides, as his one and only parent, Ruth did have a habit of forgetting things. Jason understood that there was just so much to get done in the day and that sometimes he had to fend for himself. Ruth had to admit that this would not have have been the first time she'd promised to retrieve something important to him which she then forgot about. Nonetheless, she was angry about the lapse in supervision.

"And you let him go?" she said.

The coach shrugged. "This is his school. I figured..."

She didn't stay to hear the rest of it. Ruth returned to the halls, trying to remember Jason's locker number. He'd told her because he was thrilled when they assigned it to him. It was a special number. 314. That's right, it was 314, the first few digits of pi. Ruth stopped. The locker was on the third floor. Ruth barreled through the doors to the stairway and started up. It was a good thing she was in excellent shape. She made short work of the stairs, but when she reached the top landing she heard the alarm go off.

Ruth told herself that didn't matter. There was still no smell of fire. John had probably found the emergency shut off. The coaches and other organizers could help the kids get outside. All Ruth had to do was find Jason. It was easy to do so in the empty hall. He was the only person up there, way at the end. He was dressed in his white judo uniform. He'd found his orange belt and tied it around his waist. Now Jason was standing in the middle of hallway, hands over his ears and screaming like – well, like Edvard Munch's The Scream.

Once more, Detective Holland was running. She should've expected to find him like this. Jason was a high functioning autistic boy. He went to school with his chronological peers and performed well, sometimes above average. His disorder, if one wished to call it that, manifested in his obsessions, solitude, and clumsy personal engagement. It also came out when there were loud noises. Jason wasn't afraid of them, but he was especially sensitive to them. They felt to him like a knife through the head.

Ruth met up with Jason and spared him the lecture about setting off on his own. She grabbed his arm, still bent to keep his hand over his ear, and dragged him back toward the stairwell. Then it happened again. The Sorter. What could it want from her now? With one hand she towed Jason and with the other she unlocked her phone. The warning was blinking bright red at her now.

NORMAN SHAW. POTENTIAL PSYCHOTIC RISK. DANGER FACTOR: HIGH

The map showed that she was very close to Shaw, maybe a few feet away. She realized that one thing this map could not represent was height. Norman could be on any floor. Ruth stopped and twisted her neck from one side to the other. There was a figure inside one of the classrooms. It was standing with its back turned to her. Ruth considered this for a moment. That had to be Norman. Was he up to something? How was she supposed to approach him? And with her son beside her?

Something else was wrong too. Jason noticed it first. Without saying anything, he pulled one hand away from his head long enough to tug at his mother. He pointed at the door. Ruth smelled it before she saw it. Smoke. Lazy billows flowed through the crack underneath the door. Ruth wasn't going to open those doors. She knew what she was going to find. It was better to seek another way out now.

She took her chances with the figure in the classroom. There was no time to think about this. Ruth barged in and the man turned his head. It was indeed Norman Shaw. Then he turned his body. In his hands he carried a pistol. Ruth backed away.

"I'm sorry." said Norman.

He stood near a desk at the head of the classroom. Sitting on the desk was a disk about three inches in diameter. It was composed of four rings concentric around a circle. Eyes printed along the edges of each ring stared at them. Under each eye stood a number or letter.

"Norman?" said Ruth. "Norman, I don't care what you're doing here, but we have to go. This building is on fire."

"I know." he said. He was calm. Norman lifted the disk and that put the rings in motion. The eyes on the inner rings orbited the center, one row clockwise and another counterclockwise and the last clockwise again. As the spun they click clicked like a roulette wheel. The letters lit up and blinked from red to black as they spun. "I pried open the service valve and busted the emergency shut off."

The wheels and their eyes stopped spinning. The letters were a jumble, but Ruth's gaze fell on a group of them no frozen in red. They spelled the word "Unconditional".

Norman said, "It keeps coming up that way."

He put the device back on the desk and stepped closer with his weapon. It was clear that this is what the Sorter had been trying to warn her about. Ruth didn't have time to consider what was going on inside Norman's head, why he would endanger the lives of so many kids he seemed to care so much about. None of that mattered. She turned the door knob. Jason, with all of his significant weight, pulled her backward through the doorway.

"I'm going now." she said. "Norman, you should come with us."

"It's like it programmed me." he said. "They made me take the test. They let the Sorter peer inside of me. And it told me things, Ruth. It told me things that I just couldn't hear."

Norman raised the pistol and placed its muzzle underneath his chin.

Ruth raised a hand to him, shouting, "Don't!"

"I'm sorry, but I can't get it out and I can't let it stay."

He pulled the trigger. Ruth broke her grip with Jason and ran up to him. Why run over to a man who'd just shot himself, instead of running away? Why run over when the building was on fire? The answer was in her title. Detective Holland. You never stopped being a cop.

Norman had jerked the gun to the side when he'd fired. He was bleeding, but not dead. He hadn't actually hit anything vital. Ruth considered how to get him out of here, all the while with the fire alarm blaring and Jason screaming, begging.

Then there was someone else in the room. She turned. It was John, the man with the nice face and the terrible haircut.

He said, "I didn't see you out there and thought you might be trapped."

"We have to get him out of here." said Ruth.

"What happened?"

"Come on, let's go."

Ruth went with Jason and John pulled Norman down the hall, leaving a trail of blood. They went to another stairwell, this one much further away from the center of the blaze. Ruth asked John how he was going to get Norman down and John just knelt and propped the man on his shoulders. He hauled Norman down the stairs fireman style and at last they reached the bottom and burst into the sun and air. Everyone else was gathered there and watched them exit.

A half hour later, Ruth was walking the halls of Saint Elizabeth's hospital. Lieutenant Keller, her boss, had come to survey the situation. He spoke with Norman Shaw and a few of the others before going outside. Ruth found him on the curb smoking. Across the street from the hospital was the Brighton office of the Boston PD, where they worked.

Ruth said, "Was he lucid?"

"Very." said Keller. "The man is such a wreck, he couldn't even shoot himself. He sustained no life threatening injuries. What a loser, right?" He took a puff from the cigarette. "He told me some things. Do you know that man abused his son? The kid was six and he had Downs Syndrome. Did you know that?"

"I didn't know much about him at all." said Ruth.

"Well, he's been trying to hide it. That's what all this volunteer work was about. That's why he put every spare hour of his life into it."

"Sounds like he wanted to erase the guilt and never could."

"Not guilt, Holland." said Keller. He dropped the cigarette and crushed its burning end under his heal. "Shame. Do you understand the difference? That man is mentally ill. He always was. He abused an innocent child and the kid died before anyone could find out what was going on. Everything after that was a show to convince himself and everyone else he was a good guy."

"I thought that's what I said."

Keller pointed a finger at her. "No, it wasn't. This guy took the Sorter test and it told him all he cared about was how people saw him. How he saw himself. That's shame. If you feel guilt, you care about making things right again, not about appearing to do so."

"Seems like it had the same results. He still helped a lot of kids."

Keller pushed the walk light so he could cross back to the station.

As he waited, he said, "He could've done that without trying to burn them to death."

The light turned and Keller crossed without looking back at Ruth.

Ruth went back inside. She had left Jason in the care of a doctor treating him for smoke inhalation. When she returned to his bed, she found a different man sitting next to him. This man was not wearing scrubs or an Id. His attire was business casual: khaki pants, white shirt, blue blazer. He looked to be in his fifties, with well groomed silver hair.

"Can I help you?" said Ruth. The protective edge in her voice was clear.

"Reginald Binder." said the man. "I'm the CEO of Polymath. We made the Sorter."

Yes, she had heard of Reginald Binder and his company, Polymath. She even remembered when the Boston PD first adopted the program for its trial run and Binder gave a lecture at police headquarters. Here he was again, the source of all her troubles. Of course, a part of her had to take issue with that sentiment. Hadn't Binder and his digital progeny saved them all? Clearly, that's what he was over here to crow about. This would all be in the papers tomorrow, no doubt. And yet Ruth couldn't help resenting the Sorter or resenting Binder. She searched her mind for the reason and came up with the answer. It was something Norman had said. It wasn't just his words; it was the way his words described something Ruth had felt herself.

"I know." said Ruth. "Why are you talking to my son? How are you even here?"

"I have friends. Are you Detective Holland?"

"Yeah. Why are you talking to my son?"

Binder walked away from the bed and closer to Ruth.

"I'm sorry." he said. "I've been talking to everyone. Do you know how important this is?"

"What, exactly? The fire?"

"Yes, the fire." Binder was calm, but he spoke with a hint of excitement which disturbed Ruth to no end. "The Boston PD has been experimenting with our product for some time. The American Psychiatric Association has endorsed it and many doctors have begun to administer the test. All of these results come back to Polymath and the Sorter adapts and evolves. Each day it gets better at what it does. This is no ordinary personality test."

Ruth had taken the test herself. Everyone in the BPD had. She hadn't thought much of it at the time. These assessments were common. What she had been skeptical of was how it attempted to predict a person's behavior. Perhaps after today she had reason to become a believer. Yet Norman's words still rang in her skull. They struck an uneasy memory. He had used the term programmed. The computer had programmed him. Ruth hadn't been able to place this feeling before, but now she had to agree that she had felt what Norman had described. She too had felt it roaming inside her head, plucking at the strings in her brain.

Now the fear was more real: as crazy as it sounded, what if there was some truth to that? What if Keller was wrong and the Sorter had not seen something deep inside Norman Shaw? Perhaps it had created the problem in the first place and then predicted the outcome of its own handiwork. If so, that homicidal, suicidal person could've been her. It could still be her, some day.

But I'll go to hell before it can make me sorry.

To Binder, she said, "It does seem like your program knew that Norman was dangerous."

"My goal is nothing less than a peaceful world." said Binder. "For years people have been taking tests to tell them what job to pursue or who they might fall in love with. We're used to the idea that a computer might tell us something about ourselves that we can't know on our own. The Sorter is so much more. Can you imagine what we could be capable of?"

I'm sorry, but I can't get it out and I can't let it stay.

Ruth said, "Norman said he felt like the Sorter had programmed him to do what he did."

"If only it could." said Binder. "A program is dispassionate. It chooses an outcome based on logic and reason. I know this sounds crazy, but is there no part of you that thinks we'd be better off if the machines programmed the people?"

## TWO

SIX MONTHS LATER

"I just don't want to be that kind of guy." said John.

"Do you think you are that kind of guy and you want to change?" she said. "Or do you want me to tell you that you're not that kind of guy so you can feel better?"

John looked away. Each time the therapist asked a question like that, his eyes jumped to the corner with the toys. He didn't know what kind of help to expect from a shrink who devoted most of her practice to treating abused children. Weren't there enough angry men in the world to devote entire squadrons of specialists? Or was the judge who'd sent him here trying to tell him something?

The counselor said, "You're looking at the toys."

He wanted to tell her what he thought. Instead, he said, "I'm dating a cop and she's got a kid. I really like her. The kid's great too."

"How do you feel about dating a police officer?"

"It's fine. What difference does it make?"

"You're not always on the right side of the law."

"Dr. Lane." said John. "A judge sent me here because he thinks I tried to kill a guy." John slapped his open palm on his chest. "I don't want to be that kind of person. So don't ask me; tell me what you think. Am I just a normal guy who's got a few triggers or am I some kind of psychopath? Do think this is going to happen again?"

"Let's talk through it and see what we come up with."

John sighed, tossed his hands up, and slapped them back on his knees. He slumped in his chair and caught himself trying to glance over at the toys again. This time he turned his head the other way. Outside, the trees were turning. A low book shelf lined the space between the floor and the window sill. It was stuffed with books, many by the woman who sat across from him now:

Myers Briggs and the Science of Self Selection, by Dr. Sophie Lane.

Three Days Inside the Stanford Prison Experiment, by Dr. Sophie Lane.

My Life As a Clothed Monkey, by Dr. Sophie Lane.

"I'll tell you what I think." said John. "All I wanted was new rain gutters. The first call I got was from a guy who sounded reasonable enough. He quoted me a really good price. I asked him to come by and work up a formal estimate. A day before that appointment, this woman called me and told me what was really going on."

Dr. Lane nodded. John had told her this story before, but now he was telling it better. It showed that he was starting to understand what wheels were turning inside his head.

"It was his ex. They used to be in business together, but the business went the way of the marriage. The guy isn't even legally allowed to operate under its name. I don't think he's forgotten how to do his job, but I don't want to get into the middle of that. I told him I'd find someone else."

"Makes sense to me."

"He called back when I wasn't home. My sister answered. What have I told you about Alice?"

"That she lives with you." said Dr. Lane. "Because she's disabled and can't live alone."

"That's right. I know I've told you about her, but have I mentioned her part in this story?"

"I don't think you have."

John hesitated. In his first session, he'd gone into all of that stuff about getting to know you that therapists want. He wasted an entire hour not talking about why he was here. That was when he'd talked about his sister. In the second session he'd told the story about the rain gutters guy, but without mentioning Alice at all. Now it was time to tie these together. There were at least two reasons why John was here and both were connected to Alice. Neither had come up before, with Dr. Lane or the police or anyone else. He wondered what consequences would come from telling the truth.

He became aware of how the two were sitting, patient and doctor. He was hunched over and avoiding eye contact. She was sitting straight and poised with one leg over the other. She balanced a notebook on her knee. Dr. Lane was an authority, no doubt. What was odd was the kerchief around her head. The knot kept the fabric tight against her skull and there was no hair sticking out under its edges. She must have been bald or nearly bald. At first John had wondered if she had cancer. Then one day the door to the bathroom outside her office had been ajar and he'd seen a shaver in there.

It wasn't chemo making Dr. Lane bald. It was Dr. Lane making herself bald. Was this person who held John's legal fate in her hands also a little loony?

At last John said, "I'm protective of Alice. There are certain lines you cannot cross."

"That makes perfect sense."

"The guy told my sister he was coming by that day, even though I'd canceled. Alice called me, scared out of her mind. I never let anyone come by when I'm not home. I rushed home and when he came, I was waiting for him. " John closed his eyes. "He never stepped foot on the property. He stood on the sidewalk and was saying something about how we just needed to talk. We could work it out. Times were tough and he was begging me to give him a break. I had a bat and I banged up his knees, but that wasn't all I did."

John gripped his legs and then let go and slammed his palms into them. He opened his eyes.

"I made contact with that ass's jawbone just like it was a ball. He almost flew like one too. He spat blood out his nose, straight up in the air as he went over."

"What were you feeling?"

"Never question me. I'll ask a man once nicely. The next time I won't ask."

Dr. Lane nodded.

John said, "Well?"  
"You looked like you had something else to say."

Spot on. He'd worked through the first reason. Now it was time to roll up his sleeves and get down to the real business here. It was worse than all that. He took a deep breath and went on.

"I've hit Alice before too."

This made the woman visibly pause. Somehow that pleased John. He'd gotten the response that he'd been after.

She said, "Go on."

"Alice has the mind of a kindergartner. Sometimes she acts like one. I work all day to provide for us and when I come home I cook and clean. I protect her because she doesn't know how to keep herself safe. Sometimes she just doesn't get that. Sometimes she won't do what I say and she starts yelling and stamping her feet."

John leaned forward enough to make the shadow of his face cover his shoes. He was close enough to the therapist to hear her breathe and smell her perfume.

He said, "When these feelings happen, it's like a short circuit in my brain, a freak accident. I'm never like that, but then I snap all of a sudden. I'm out of control."

Dr. Lane closed her notebook and said, "I want you to try something."

"Homework?"

"It's a test."

"Like a blood test?"

"No, a question test. It's called the Sorter."

John shook his head. "My girlfriend's talked about that. She doesn't have high opinions."

"Why?"

"I don't know." said John. "She doesn't get into the details. I can tell you my opinion, though. I think it's just another sign that we've replaced belief in God with belief in technology."

"You're Catholic." said Dr. Lane. "The Sorter offends your religion?"

"No, don't be ridiculous. I asked for your help, didn't I? Even if a judge ordered me here, I've been sincere about wanting to get better, right? That's what I've said since the beginning. I want to get better. That's my whole motivation. Because I've got a sister. And I've got a girlfriend and her kid to think about too."

She said, "What's the problem? I don't understand."

"I believe in science – hell I'm even willing to believe in psychiatry – but this thing sounds like an oracle. It sounds like you just inhale the fumes and start dancing to its tune. Do you even understand how it works?"

"I admit that the Sorter is very sophisticated."

"So no. But these people who believe in it dress it up like it's the height of human achievement. I think it's no different than religious fanaticism. And the only thing worse than believing you have God on your side is believing you have science on your side."

Dr. Lane was very calm. She wasn't argumentative. She spoke the way she did because regardless of whether she had a deity or science on her side, she definitely had the law on her side.

"You will take the exam, John." she said. "And if you want to stay out of trouble, you will take seriously what it tells you."

## THREE

When Sara was done making love with Reginald Binder, she slipped on the two piece pajamas she kept in his top drawer, curled up next to him, and went to sleep. Reggie was awake. He was waiting for Todd Laurel to show up in his kitchen, after all these years. They would each have their revenge.

He passed the time with a mental tour of his elementary school. Reggie kept a visual library of all the places that defined his memories of childhood. His repertoire included his schools, his parents' church, and the last home in which his grandparents had lived before their deaths. Sometimes, when sleep eluded him, Reggie walked the halls in his mind, stopped in the rooms, and handled familiar objects. They were more real to him than the daylight world.

Sara yanked Reggie from his odyssey when she rose to use the bathroom. In the weeks since they'd been together, he'd become accustomed to her routine. At first she fell dead away to sleep, only to rise a few hours later to pee and return to happy slumber when she was done.

This time, she flipped on the light and cursed. The toilet was jammed. It had been jammed all day, but her frosty consciousness had lost that memory. Earlier, Reggie had stuffed wads of toilet paper down there because he knew that when this moment came, Sara would have to wander through the kitchen to get to the other bathroom.

Despite his trip to grade school, Reggie had been aware of muffled sounds from the kitchen just a few minutes before. Todd Laurel had arrived. He was looking for something that he would never find. His frustration would put him in a place that made him willing to make risky choices. One such choice became clear when he saw Sara floating through the darkened room.

Reggie stood up. For a moment he watched the lights outside. The wall of his bedroom was a single window made of several panes, each stretching from floor to ceiling. His condo was fifteen stories up and it overlooked South Boston's Seaport District. Beyond the restaurants and hotels, the federal courthouse and the modern art museum, there was water. Beyond that, planes hung in the blackness waiting for entry into Login Airport. Silent clusters of lights lined the sky, like candles strung along a kite wire. On one of the planes there was someone arriving to meet him this morning, but all of that was yet to come. Whatever tumult there was in the coming and goings of the night, this window rendered it a peaceful landscape.

Reggie opened the top drawer of the night stand and removed a pistol with mounted silencer.

Sara released an unmuffled scream.Her assailant wanted her to rouse the man he was after. Reggie held his pistol behind his back and entered the living room. From there he could see the kitchen. Laurel had turned on the little light over the sink. Reggie entered the kitchen and saw Todd with his own pistol snuggled against Sara's temple. The man was dressed in jeans and a black long-sleeved tee. He wore a black knit skull cap and three days of gray whiskers. He leaned his back against the counter with the sink and the lamp above bathed him in a halo. The hand without the gun held Sara by her neck, forcing the much shorter woman to arch her back. Her belly button stuck out between the two pieces of her pajamas.

"I want the video." said Todd. "I know you kept it."

An island stood between Reggie and the intruder. Its massive granite surface was empty except for a bowl of muffins. A half eaten one sat on the top.

"You ate my muffins." he said.

"Yeah." Todd smiled a little. "God, they sucked. Did you cook those?"

"They're special. I'm diabetic. I thought you knew that."

Reggie placed his pistol on the counter so that Todd could see it.

Todd said, "I doubt a lily white rich jackass like you could hit me without hitting your bitch."

Reggie just stared. He watched Todd's face and arms. They started to tremble.

"Where.." said Todd. He swallowed. "I want the video."

"I haven't slept all night." said Reggie. "I've haven't slept since they put you away. I can wait a little longer."

Todd bit down and tried not to close his eyes as he said, "I'm getting it."

Reggie sighed.

He said, "I put tranqs in the muffins. It takes time to metabolize. Just wait..."

Todd's gun clattered on the floor, followed by it owner. Sara jumped away and almost bashed her elbow against the island. She opened her mouth, but Reggie made a silencing motion. He liked that she obeyed. Reggie had never been with a woman like his wife since she'd died. His recent molls were all young, docile and disposable. They were exactly what you'd expect a lily white rich jackass such as himself to hang his bugle on. But it didn't have to be that way. Had Todd Laurel and his buddy never entered his life, Reggie would be married to the same woman today. And she would be old and opinionated and still the most beautiful woman he'd ever known.

Reggie placed his pistol on the island and sat on one of the bar stools. He motioned for Sara to sit on the other. As she walked over she cast a hesitant glance behind her, where Todd was curled up on the rug in front of the sink.

Reggie wagged a finger at Laurel. "Fifteen years ago this guy killed my wife."

Sara hugged herself and nodded, looking at the floor and saying, "You told me."

"It was big news then, but everyone has since forgotten. Let me tell it again."

Sara shrugged.

Reggie said, "My wife and I were at home. We lived in a secluded cottage in Hopkinton. We were in bed when this kid..." He paused and gestured again at the now aging convict. "...set off the alarm." Reggie shook his head. "We should've barricaded ourselves in the bedroom and let the cops do their jobs. But that's not what my wife did. Do you know why?"

Sara said, "She shot at him. She missed and he killed her."

"I said do you know why? It was because we knew Laurel. He'd harassed us for a couple years by then. It had something to do with our affluence and our Jewishness. You know how it is. The police did little about it. The gun was my wife's idea. When Todd broke into the house, she wasn't going to stand still and watch."

"Okay," Sara nodded. "I understand."

"I'm sure that you don't." said Reggie. "She had no reason to think Todd was capable of murder. He was a nuisance, but he'd bothered us for a long time without escalating. Something had changed. He'd come with an older man, a man whom I believe put him up to it. He was a skinny guy with a burn over one side of his face. He burst into the house, shouting while Todd stood back. Do you want to see?"

"What? See what?"

Reggie stood and unlocked a door in a table by the entry to the hall. He retrieved a memory stick and a computer tablet and brought them back to the table. From the memory stick, Reggie loaded a video featuring a posh living room at night. A sliding door leading to a porch was ajar and bits of glass littered the floor. There was the skinny burned man, standing firm in the center of the room while Todd cowered by a small potted tree.

Reggie said, "This is from the security camera."

The two criminals were the only ones in the room. There was no sound, but it was clear that the burned man was shouting something. Then he went off camera. Todd tried to follow, but the Binders entered the room from another direction. Reggie's wife pointed the gun at Todd and he froze. He walked backward and the woman walked forward. She was yelling, gesturing with the gun, and looking out of control. She fired and missed. As Todd backed through the door, retreating to the porch, Reggie appeared to be talking his wife down. He approached her from behind, wrapped his arms around her, and placed a hand on top of the gun. She let it go and Reggie took it from her hands.

As Reggie pulled away, the burned man entered the frame again. He fired twice. Reggie's wife hit the ground. The burned man closed the distance and fired again, into her face.

Sara gasped. In the video, Reggie, having just pulled the gun away from his now deceased spouse, released another silent shot. The burned man was dead. Police lights flashed outside, behind Todd, and the video ended.

Reggie shut off the screen and said, "I managed to move the body of the burned man before the cops entered my home. I never showed them this video and they never questioned my story. Todd shot my wife and was bloody from holding her body."

"Oh my god." said Sara. "Todd Laurel didn't kill your wife."

"That's right."

"You sent him to prison for it. Why?"

"Because I don't believe in hell. Only the living can pay for their sins."

"What sins?" Sara pointed at the prostrate form. "That man didn't kill your wife."

"He would have." said Reggie. "And that's good enough."

"How can you know that?"

Reggie raised his palms and his voice, as if the answer were obvious.

"Because he's here." Reggie said. "I followed Todd's prison career. He was a model inmate and they released him early on parole. And yet, what was the first thing he did upon his release?"

"He put a gun to my head. And you knew he would." She wasn't so docile now. "What did you expect? Todd Laurel didn't kill your wife."

"Do you remember a few months ago, when a Special Olypics volunteer burned down Edison Middle School, nearly killing all the kids inside?"

Sara said, "I'm going."

Reggie reached for the pistol, saying, "Please stay."

She gave him a dirty look, but didn't move.

"My company's product, the Sorter, tried to tell the police that man was dangerous. They were slow to respond. This time I'm not taking chances. Yesterday the Sorter predicted that Laurel would come after me if released. I talked to the Suffolk County sheriff myself. I also slipped a lead to the press."

"Did you tell them that Laurel wasn't guilty of murder?"

Reggie shrugged off the question. "The parole board doesn't have to listen to the Sorter, and they didn't. Maybe now they will."

"You set him up."

Reggie leaned forward, poking his chest with his index finger as he spoke. "I didn't make him come back here. It doesn't matter that Todd Laurel didn't pull the trigger. He would've had his friend not done it first. It may have taken him longer, but he'd come around. I am certain of it."

"You can't know that."

"He took the damn test!" Quieter, he said, "And so did you."

Sara didn't answer.

Reggie said, "I'll prove I can know what people will do. Here."

He handed Sara the gun. When she wouldn't take it, he placed it on the table and walked away.

"Look behind you." he said.

Sara stood, spun, and saw Todd Laurel waking up. The weapon he'd held against her head was just out of his reach. Sara's fingers tickled the grip on Reggie's pistol, but she didn't grab it. Todd lifted his head and saw her. He saw the gun on the counter. He lunged for his own weapon and lifted it, but the drugs were still wearing off and that made him slow. Sara took the pistol on the table, swung it forward, and popped it off without looking. She pulled the trigger a half dozen times before dropping it. Todd Laurel's blood crept toward her bare feet.

She looked for Reggie. She found him standing in a corner and holding a video camera. He shut it off, removed the memory stick which also contained Reggie's first adventure with murder, and locked it in its drawer.

He said, "I'm not nearly done proving my point."

## FOUR

Marianne didn't like what she had to do, but she believed it was right. She wasn't worried about destroying Reginald Binder. What she didn't like was his uncertain psyche. His public persona was a caricature of charisma, resembling a costume with no one inside. People called Reggie hollow and shallow, but Marianne knew better. He was careful and deceitful. She suspected he was dangerous when backed into a corner too. Nonetheless, she was committed to this path.

She switched the shower from hot to cool. She turned her body in the stream, letting it flow on every part of her. Then, by inches, she pushed the handle down to make the water colder and colder. Marianne was never sick, but it seemed the price to pay for that was a host of less debilitating maladies. Chief among these was her eczema, a plague that no balm was capable of soothing. Only the frigid water would do. She'd turned these cold showers into her daily meditation. The ritual put her mind right for the things she did. For what she did to other people every day.

When she stepped out of the shower, she heard a whoosh in her skull and took a dizzy misstep. Marianne steadied herself with the towel bar on the shower door – and then keeled over the toilet and puked. So much for never getting sick.

"Marianne?" came a woman's voice from the next room. "What's going on?"

She felt better after a few seconds. She dressed and left the bathroom. A woman just past sixty sat on her bed. She wore a frilly loose blouse and a checkered gingham skirt. She'd been wearing the beads around her neck for as long as Marianne could remember. The turquoise paint was starting to chip. In her lap, the woman held a stack of papers. Marianne tried to snatch them away, but the older woman clutched them against her chest.

"This is my job, Mom." said Marianne.

"Is this even legal?"

It wouldn't be if the law made any sense, thought Marianne. But laws didn't ever make any real sense, once you figured them out. Marianne was no lawyer, but she was sure the attorneys at Blue Water Capital, her employer, had been all over the ways this deal could rot. And of course they wouldn't leave you holding the bag, would they?

Marianne said, "Yeah it's legal mom. What's illegal is you reading it."

Her mother held out the pages. "You shouldn't leave them out then."

Marianne found her suitcase, a black backpack with a laptop slot and a roller board. The pocket behind the laptop was unzipped. She grabbed her folder from her mother and slipped it in that opening.

"I didn't leave it out." she said.

She dragged the bag off the bed and it hit the floor with a big thud. She extended the handle and rolled the bag across her apartment and into the little vestibule by the front door. Behind her, she heard her mother's cane clicking and thumping, clicking and thumping. The rubber stopper on the end was loose; it popped out when she pulled the cane off the floor and snapped back into place when the woman returned her weight to it. Marianne thought that someday that thing would fly off, leaving her mother to fold over and slide across the floor.

Her mother said, "If you play this game, at best you'll loose yourself. At worst you'll get hurt."

"You don't understand what you're reading."

"You forget I went to law school." said the older woman "How's this? There's a company called Polymath. Some of its employees are staging a coup. Blue Water is posing as a client, but they intend to conspire with these mutineers and take over the company. As for you, you're just a spy. You're going in there with nothing to protect you if people get wind of the plot. Did I get that right?"

"Those facts don't describe everything. Reggie Binder, CEO of this company, is an ideologue who is using its technology to further his political agenda. In the process, he's driving it into the ground."

"You mean he's losing money because of his beliefs and that bothers you?"

"It bothers me that he's risking the livelihoods of his employees." said Marianne.

Her mother went into the kitchenette. There was a partial wall there, with a window communicating between the kitchen and the rest of the apartment. She cracked a couple eggs into a pan and Marianne watched the steam rise over that wall. Her mother always was an excellent cook. The woman knew she could use her skill to lull her prey.

Her mother said, "This isn't what we fought for."

"Who are these people that were doing the fighting?" said Marianne. "You and the other girls who dropped out of law school because you couldn't hang with the guys?" She wanted to bite her tongue the moment she said that, but instead she plowed on. "You always wanted women to be equals with men, but when the going got tough you dropped out of the fight. I'm holding my own against the most narcissistic men in the most cut throat industry in the world. How is that not what you fought for?"

"Being equal to a man doesn't mean becoming one. You're still playing by their rules. You'll loose yourself and then they'll turn on you and beat you down. Honestly, you're more like your father."

"What's so bad about that?" said Marianne. "He worked hard. You're the one with all the debts and not three words of marketable skills to put on your resume."

"He used me up and left me."

"He died Mom."

Her mother sucked in a deep breath, holding back tears, and said, "He shot himself in the head when we were broke, when we needed him most. I raised you. I paid for your college. And what kind of thanks do I get for that, you ungrateful bitch?"

The woman threw her hands over her mouth the moment those words left it. It wasn't Marianne's job to bite her tongue. She was still the kid and somehow entitled to tell her mother off whenever she pleased, but no mother ever forgives herself for loosing her temper with her child. Not even bad mothers. And Marianne's, in the end, wasn't bad at all.

Marianne, for her part, found her calm. Despite having a sharp tongue, she didn't get where she was by escalating arguments into shouting matches.

"Did it ever occur to you," she said. "That maybe the men I work with aren't they way they are because they're men, but because they're survivors? I'm not becoming a man, I'm becoming a survivor."

Her mother was very quiet now. "It doesn't matter. You have to make a choice, between your morals and your career."

"You mean between your morals and my career."

"It's not just me you have to worry about. What about the baby?"

The baby. She knew. Marianne wasn't ready for this. She was going to tell her mom before she told anyone else, including the father, but that was supposed to be after things settled down, after the deal with Polymath was done.

Her mother went on, "You think you're hot stuff and that you've got the weight of Blue Water behind you, but you're going up against a man who built an entire company. You said he was an ideological fanatic, which means he's not going to give up, ever. What if he ruins you? What if all those survivors at Blue Water cut you off so you don't drag them down? Then where will you and your child be left?"

"I have a plan." said Marianne.

"You and your plans."

The older woman turned off the heat, came back around the partition, and put her hand on her daughter's arm. She was crying. It hurt Marianne, but it also made her feel like a fool. One might ask, was she expressing real distress or just being manipulative? Marianne knew the answer was both. She wondered what the next volley was going to be. What would her mom say now to make her stay?

"I've got my secrets too." she said. "If you leave now, I might not be alive when you return."

## FIVE

Ruth Holland fought the panic that rose in her when she heard banging on the door. It had been months since the school fire and she was still on edge. She could even put a name on what ate away at her. It was that software and its creator, who'd had the audacity to speak to her son while he was in the hospital. Ruth still wasn't sure of Binder's true reason for coming. Whatever it was, her she was sure her encounter with him had been no accident. He had planned to meet her and that was more frightening than the fire itself.

The knocking was insistent. It had started while Ruth was in the shower and kept up as she ran down the stairs, throwing her clothes on as she went. The house had been silent for the last week. Her sixth grader, Jason, had been away at camp for children with special needs. Sometimes his absence made her anxious too. The noises he made while wandering around the house put her at ease and even made her feel safer. She liked having her family close.

She reached the door and flung it open. Before she could speak, she saw who it was and caught her breath. Jason was standing there with a woman about Ruth's age. It was six in the morning and the camp was two hours away.

"I'm Miss Jewel." said the woman. "I'm sorry to come to you like this."

Ruth knelt down and grabbed her son, looking him over.

"What's wrong, are you okay?" she said. Jason was limp and didn't look his mom in the eye. Ruth said, "What happened to you?" Then, looking up at Miss Jewel, "What happened to him?"

"He's fine." she sighed. "I mean, he isn't hurt. We found him in the computer lab this morning. He'd disassembled every computer in there. We just can't handle this anymore."

Ruth stood, switching from concern to clear and present anger. She was a cop, after all.

She said, "You're a camp made entirely for kids like this."

"I know -"

"And shouldn't you keep places like your computer lab locked?"

"Of course, but somehow he got in there."

"So?" said Ruth. "So – what? You're going to drop him off at six AM and drive off? I've got to get to work. I paid you up front. There's got to be some kind of legal obligation."

"I don't want to read the fine print to you." said Miss Jewel. "But the policy states that we can return a child to his parents if our staff can't manage him."

"With no warning whatsoever?"

Ruth was screaming now, and there were lots of reasons she didn't want to. For starters, Jason had put his hands over his ears. He was sensitive to loud noises, and the gesture always reminded Ruth of how she'd found him at the school. Then there were the neighbors to think of. They already thought Ruth was a little off. But sometimes you've just got to tell people how to find their own asses.

Miss Jewel said, "Jason's not the only child there. We have to think of everyone's safety."

"Right." said Ruth. "You've got kids that bite or shout or hit and your main concern is a little boy whose biggest crime is wanting to know how things work?"

Miss Jewel started to speak, but Ruth threw her hands up and said, "Forget it, forget it. I know he's here now and there's no way you're taking him back."

Ruth escorted her son inside and slammed the door shut before Miss Jewel could speak again. She loved that door; it was an old, heavy wood construction with a big vertical dead bolt and slamming it produced the most satisfying thud she'd ever heard.

Jason stood on the bottom step with his back turned to her. The space was a narrow passage, just wide enough for the door and the stairs. On one side a radiator hissed, releasing steam onto a little window that was the hallway's only source of light. It cast a rectangular shaft of light onto Jason as he cupped his ears and looked up the stairs, to where they twisted away. Ruth knelt down and put her hands on his shoulders. He lowered his hands and she turned him to face her.

"I'm sorry." she said. "I'm sorry I had to yell. I'm just mad at those people for taking you away from your projects."

"I didn't like it there." he said.

His voice wasn't very childlike. It was firm and confident for his age. He was also big. He wasn't just overweight, but also tall. He wasn't easy to frighten. Even the loud noises didn't frighten him. They just annoyed him.

Jason said, "Can you call Mr. John today? I'd like to go see him."

Ruth nodded. "First let's call your grandpa. Would that be okay?"

He made a satisfied grin and nodded. "That would be fun. I'm hungry."

"Okay, let's go up."

The stairs took them to the second floor apartment in the triple decker home. Ruth made her son peanut butter on bread and checked the clock on the microwave. This was not a good day for Miss J or anyone to drop a surprise on her. Most days she might be able to work out some slack. After all she was a sergeant, a detective investigator, not some rookie beat cop. She could pull at least a little weight, even if her lieutenant didn't like her. Her boss thought of her as nothing but a cop's kid with an urge to please but not enough bricks in her brain to get the job done. Ruth thought of herself as cautious and unwilling to take chances, but that slowed her closure rate. Somehow, that didn't sit as well with the lieutenant as whip snap numbers.

Calm down, she told herself. She was worked up enough as it was without thinking of her boss. He was, after all, not her problem today. No, today she faced something even worse. She had an appointment to testify in court. It was federal court, no less. She was a minor player in the case and it would take her no more than an hour to discharge her duty there and get on with being a cop. But it was an appointment, and god help you if you piss off a federal judge.

Ruth dialed her father's cell phone. When he answered, he was huffing.

"Honey, I'm really sorry to hear that." he said, once Ruth explained what had happened. Always merciful, he ignored how she repeated the story as though he'd been the one at fault. Ruth was still hot in the skull and needed someone, anyone, to boil for it. Dad was always happy to man the escape hatch and bring her pressure down low enough to manage thinking again.

"Are you at jogging?" she said. She glanced at the clock and ran her finger up her forehead and through her wet, pony tailed hair. "I'm sorry, Dad. I forgot what time it was."

"No problem. Don't worry at all. So what are you going to do?"

"I was hoping you and Mom could take him for the day."

There was a pause. And then, "Well, Ruthie, I would if I could. But we're not at home."

Ruth waited a few beats. She wasn't sure what that meant. Somewhere in her brain, someone knew the answer and was trying to tell her. But she just wasn't getting it.

Dad said, "Sweetness, we're in West Palm Beach. With all the other old farts."

As her Dad always used to say, light dawned on Marblehead. "Oh Dad," said Ruth. "Dad, I totally forgot."

Her parents, life long New Englanders, had flown out the day before. It was their first time either had been south of DC. It was supposed to be a vacation, but Mom didn't try very hard to hide her plan to look at time shares. Ruth's dad was a retired cop (no surprise there) and swore he'd never take the easy road like every other "old fart". But he'd also once said that he used to be tough as bark, until the day he had a daughter tougher than he was and he just gave up on trying to be better than her. The sound of his voice made it clear that he was enjoying himself. She wanted all that for him, for the both of them.

He said, "So, do you want me to fly back and pick up Jason? I'm getting tired of this fantastic weather anyway."

She smiled. "No, I'll figure something out."

Jason tugged on her jacket. He mouthed the words "John Smith".

"You've got someone?" said Dad. "Someone you can rely on with your son?"

"Well, there's John."

She winced. She knew Dad wouldn't like that idea.

"The guy with the baseball bat?" he said. This time he sounded like he might actually get on that plane on fly north.

Ruth and John had been seeing each other since a few weeks after the fire. She thought he was a pretty good guy. After all, he'd come back for her. That meant a lot. Dad would say that "pretty good guy" doesn't sound much like the making of a soul mate. Well, to Ruth it sounded like she was being a realistic adult. A girlish crush made her a single parent in the first place. (Ruth glanced at the wine stains on the Formica counter – evidence of how that little fling had ended) Dad was lucky he'd found a soul mate early in life, but that meant he didn't really get how the other half lived. "Pretty good guy" was about all the material she needed for a sturdy partnership.

The best thing about him was that Jason loved him. And she could understand why. John was a networking tech and had access to all the computer equipment things that Jason loved. For John's part, he had a sister named Alice with her own special needs and that made him understand and admire the boy. He was genuine and not like the guys who pretended they could put up with Jason because they wanted his mom.

John's main problem was his temper. He was gentle most of the time, but when he exploded he obliterated obstacles in his path. It was one such incident that forever cemented his identity in Dad's brain as "The guy with the baseball bat". To him, that was the ultimate counter example to pretty good. John's circuits were cross wired in some unpredictable ways. How could Ruth ever be sure we wouldn't go "bleep, bleep kaboom" at the wrong time?

She couldn't, but life was full of risk. Today she was ever more willing to take that risk because she had a date in court, not that she was about to tell her father.

"Maybe not John." she said, "Dad, don't worry, I'll find someone else."

Jason let go of her jacket, dejected.

Dad said, "Maybe I shouldn't have left."

"No, no, no. Really, don't worry." She closed her eyes. "You know what, I've got this friend who's not at work today. She's not too far away and she loves Jason."

A voice insider her screamed, you moron, did you forget your Dad's a cop? But if he saw through the lie – and she was sure he did, even over all those miles of phone line – he let it go.

"Okay." he said, "Okay, let me know how it goes. I love you."

"You too." she said.

Ruth hung up the phone and dialed John Smith.

On the dining room table, her phone buzzed at her. The blinking sphinx icon announced the Sorter's presence. The program had not signaled her directly since Norman Shaw. Perhaps she'd been right all along. It wasn't done with her. She touched the symbol and the resulting message said:

COMMENCE PROGRAM ASSET ONE

Underneath the words were a series of concentric rings, each with eyes around the circumference and each spinning in the opposite direction of its neighbors. There were letters and numbers under each eye. They were blinking lights, switching from red to black as they spun. It looked like the device Norman Shaw had been holding in his hands before he'd shot himself. Ruth touched it. The wheels slowed and stopped. The blinking stopped as well. The letters that had been lit in red when the image froze stayed like that. They were scattered across the wheels but easy to read and they said,

4 HOURS

## SIX

Reggie folded his bathrobe on one of the Adirondack chairs next to the pool and mounted the diving board. He stood there for a moment, alone in the quiet pool room. Sara had left a few minutes before. The police had asked her a lot of questions, but they hadn't taken her to the station. Todd Laurel was an ex-felon with an obvious grudge. He'd been standing in Binder's kitchen when Sara had shot him. Given that and her hysterical sobbing and state of undress, the cops had little motive to belabor their interview with her. Reggie had called her a cab and the look in her eyes as she rode away made it clear that it would be some time before she slept well again.

Reggie just needed to clear his head a little. The indoor pool was on the top floor of his condo complex. At this hour in the morning, the room was dim and abandoned. He could have turned on a light, but he preferred the windows and their dawning sun. The pool's water stretched away from the patio and touched the windows. It looked as though he could swim straight into the sky.

He hopped on the diving board and plunged in. The windows continued below the water line, making the pool seem a bit like an aquarium. The difference was that these walls were made of one-way glass. No one on the outside could see in. Reggie swam under the water, all the way to the edge, and put his hand against the window. He could see the street sixteen stories below. He thought about what he had to accomplish today.

Binder had tipped off his journalist contacts about Todd Laurel and they were bound to seek him out later. That was the easy part. Before that, he had to meet with two representatives from Blue Water Capital, his largest potential client to date. He didn't know what to expect from these two, Marianne Madora and Dale Benedict. Of course, knowing what to expect wasn't his job. He had the Sorter for that. As with most clients, the Blue Water people had taken the test. The Sorter, however, had not yet returned the results. The delay worried him. He wondered what could be wrong with these people to make their psych profiles gum up the works. He was eager to know the answer.

After a few minutes of swimming, Reggie returned to his condo and showered. While standing naked, he unwrapped an insulin cartridge and placed it inside a pump. He attached a catheter between the pump and the port that was surgically mounted above his hip. A strap secured the pump to his side. Reggie dressed in crisp khakis, a blue cotton shirt and dark blue blazer. By his front door he found a pair of shined shoes and slipped them on. He didn't have any preference for style, only for what worked. He'd concluded that this attire struck the right balance between gravitas and casual confidence. He was happy to suffer people their little superstitions if it served his purposes.

There was a knock on the door. That was odd. Reggie lived in an exclusive complex. Unless you lived here, you didn't just walk up to someone's door and knock. Reggie didn't know anyone else in the building. That left one other possibility. He opened the door and wasn't surprised.

A tall man nearly Reggie's age and smelling of cigarette smoke entered the apartment.

"Lieutenant." said Binder.

Keller walked into the kitchen. Todd Laurel's blood was still wet. Human blood takes ages to dry out.

Binder said, "I'm probably going to sell the place, now that it's served its purpose."

The lieutenant sat in the seat at the island where Sara had been sitting a few hours before and said, "I'm sorry I couldn't be here for the main event."

"But you're checking up on me now." Binder sat on the other stool. "You shouldn't be worried. This..." he gestured at the blood stain. "...wasn't the main event. It wasn't even close."

"Were you ever a master chess player?"

"Once."

"I've noticed that they don't like winning. They like humiliating their opponents."

"That's no less true of you."

Keller said, "The commissioner is very pleased with the Sorter's results. He regrets not taking quicker action on many of its recommendations."

"Can I assume that that will change?"

"You have no idea, Mr. Binder. I heard there was an important vote in the Senate tomorrow."

"Of course. On the legality of using the Sorter in police activities and parole decisions."

Keller smiled. "I get that's what this is all about. You're putting on a show and I get that, but I've got a secret for you. The commissioner is in DC today testifying before the Senate. That information's supposed to be confidential. Did you know about it?"

Reggie straightened up a little.

Keller said, "I'll take that as no." He leaned forward. "The news says the vote is divided. You've heard of this freshman senator from Connecticut, Paul Varden? He's a pretty boy and he talks well and that makes him a media darling. CNN's saying he might sway the vote. If you've got a show planned, today is the day."

Reggie leaned away from the Lieutenant. The man stank. Binder always had difficulty respecting anyone who couldn't respect their own body. Smokers and the morbidly obese were among his chief repulsions. The Sorter would have told him that there were circumstances, there were always circumstances. One of the unexpected annoyances of working with the Sorter is that it made it hard to judge people with an honest mind. Our opinions of others are so often consolations to ourselves. Losing them in favor of equations was like losing faith in a god. Reggie didn't like it much and found that even he, the Sorter's most dedicated promoter, had to leave himself little corners of irrational sentiment, or else risk going insane. These are the sacrifices one must make for the greater good.

Binder said, "What do you expect to get out of this? Don't tell me it's a promotion."

"I'm sure you already know."

"You're writing a tattle tale book, aren't you?"

"I've already got a publisher, but I'm holding out for a bigger scandal."

"You have no idea, Lieutenant." Reggie said, mimicking the tone of voice the other man had used with the same phrase. He stood up. "However, it doesn't end there."

He surveyed his apartment, looking for his cell phone. He saw it face down on the counter by the sink. That troubled him; he would never have done that. Reggie had once dated a girl who'd smashed his phone. Maybe Sara had picked up this one with that intent and changed her mind. He could tell the screen was blinking because it cast a blue halo around the device on the granite surface. Binder flipped it over and saw that the blinking came from his own company's logo.

"What's the matter?" said Keller, craning his head to see.

"I never liked this picture." said Reggie, turning the phone so that Keller could see the icon. "It's supposed to be the Great Sphinx of Giza, but I had always wanted the sphinx of Thebes. Do you know why?"

"Should I care? Did you say you had something else to show me?"

"The sphinx of Thebes chewed up anyone who failed to answer its riddle. The only man who could solve that riddle was Oedipus."

"Seems appropriate for an electronic head shrink."

Reggie waved his hand in dismissal. "Leave it Freud to ruin a good story. Lieutenant, you are as ignorant as the rest. Willful incest borne of shameful childhood eroticism has no relevance to this story. It couldn't have, because Oedipus didn't know who his parents were. This very ignorance brought him to ruin. Once in possession of the truth, he knew that to save his city he must sacrifice himself. That is what the Sorter is about. It tells people the hard truth they need to hear."

"Do you have a hard truth you want to tell me?"

Binder came back to the island and placed the phone on it, face up.

He sat again, saying, "The Greek sphinx bears no relation to the Egyptian sphinx. However, my business partner, Dr. Kevin Nagel, convinced me that if I wanted a sphinx, it had to be Giza's. No one knew of any other one." He glanced at the phone. "I hate conforming to public stupidity, but I sometimes relent if it serves a more important goal. Sometimes Kevin does have practical sense."

They sat in silence. Then the phone buzzed. It was getting more urgent now.

Keller said, "Are you going to answer that?"

"The main event involves two visitors from Blue Water Capital, an investment firm. I am suspicious of these people. They remain unknown quantities. My hope is that this," he gestured at the phone, "is the result of their testing."

When Reggie continued to delay, Keller cocked his head and gave him a quizzical look. He leaned in again, assaulting Reggie with that cigarette stench.

The lieutenant said, "Are you afraid to know?"

Without saying anything, Reggie pushed the accept button. It said:

COMMENCE PROGRAM ASSET TWO

The look on Reggie's face was something Keller had never seen before. There was a mix of surprise and genuine anxiety. It went away, but for that moment it became clear that Binder's aura of omniscience was only a magic act, as if Keller needed any further confirmation.

Keller said, "What the hell does that mean?"

I'm going to kill George, Reggie thought.

George Simon was his chief coder and a mistake Reggie wished he hadn't made. George had seemed a perfect match. He'd aced his interview exam, a feat no other applicant had come close to. The exam was more than a test of intelligence. It was a test of nuts and bolts know-how. Though Reggie ran the company, the Sorter was based on Dr. Kevin Nagel's theories. Those theories were dead on arrival unless someone could translate Kevin's chicken scratch into executable bits. Kevin was one of those people you'd call book smart. That is, the best way to steal his wallet was to remove his pants.

On the other hand, George Simon would pound out useful code like a bull on a cow, but he wasn't a big ideas kind of guy. For a couple years he worked out well. Then he lost focus, got depressed, or just plain blew a ball bearing somewhere. He got sloppy and unreliable. Some days he was still brilliant. The rest of the time he had a habit of malfunctioning. And so did the Sorter.

The lieutenant said, "Your baby's sick, isn't it?"

Binder closed the app and opened a photo album. He selected a picture and showed it to the other man.

He said, "Do you recognize this person?"

"Yeah that's John Smith. He's Detective Holland's boyfriend."

"He's a wonderful subject." Reggie closed the picture. "You were right, I do have something else to tell you. I am aware of your animosity toward your detective. You have this petty grudge against her."

"I wouldn't call it petty."

"I would, because you are a petty man and are capable of nothing else." Reggie put the phone in the inside pocket of his blazer. "You used to work with this Yancy fellow off the clock. Some years ago, you roped in Detective Holland's husband, but he had a change of heart. He thought he might expose this entire operation and got himself killed instead. Holland put your business partner, Mr. Yancy, in prison. Ever since Yancy escaped, the Sorter has been screaming about it."

The lieutenant looked uncomfortable, but he wasn't about to pretend that he was a paragon of morality.

He said, "You're right. I kept those results from Holland."

"But you couldn't keep Yancy from her."

"That was the point, after all."

"You want to destroy Ruth Holland, but not without torturing her first."

"You think you're better than me?" Keller stood up and pointed at the blood stain on the floor. "You're a goddam murderer. And I may have helped you cover up the evidence of Todd Laurel's innocence, but you and I are in different leagues."

"Calm down, Lieutenant." said Reggie. "Yes, let it be known that I do think I'm better. Everything I do serves a higher goal. I was once a chess player, as you said. Nonetheless, I realize the importance of cooperating with animals such as yourself."

"When it serves you."

"If we both benefit, what's the difference?"

Keller shook his head and said, "Fine, what have you got?"

"John Smith is a decent man with a violent temper. Such people are useful when they're predictable. Just wait. Today is the day, Lieutenant Keller. You will get your scandal and you will get Detective Holland the way you want her."

The other man looked at his watch and headed for the door. He stood by it, pointing a finger at Binder and shouting.

"I'm counting on you." he said. "Figure out these other two visitors you have and fix this bug in the Sorter. You might think you're in charge, but don't you forget that I know enough to bring you down at any moment. If you make a fool of yourself, I will not hesitate to cut you loose. I'll bring your entire company down and put you in prison. I'll rip the Sorter apart and lock it away in an evidence room."

"You shouldn't worry." said Binder as he held out his hand towards Todd Laurel's drying blood. "Haven't I shown you I have the commitment to do what it takes?"

## SEVEN

Will they find out? Will they come after me?

Marianne was trapped in the La Guardia security line with no one to talk to but her own mind. She shouldn't have spoken to her mother like that. She shouldn't have walked out. But she couldn't stop herself. She was desperate to hide her fear. Marianne's brain was running terrified laps around her head and she couldn't stop it.

Reginald Binder was the least of her worries. There was an unknown quantity there, but she had some confidence she could handle that. She'd handled a few before. Next on the list was the baby. Yes, the baby was a big deal. She wasn't sure how she felt about it, but she was sure she loved the child's father and that they could raise it together. All they had to do was stay out of prison. That was the problem.

She checked her phone. The last message from Paul was from yesterday, telling her that he'd arrived in DC for the Senate hearing on the Sorter. He was supposed to be reassuring her that nothing was wrong, but he was failing this one simple job.

Marianne thought about yesterday. She'd gone up to Stamford to see Paul before he left. He lived in a nice town home, but there was a "For Sale" sign out front. Marianne used her key to enter and found her fiancee at the dining room table going over his notes. All the lights in the house were off and he was illuminated only by the ample sunlight streaming through the bay window. A "Paul Varden For US Senate" sign still hung on the wall behind him.

"It's one thing to be conscious of your carbon footprint, Paul." said Marianne. "And quite another to make yourself blind over it."

She flipped on a light and sat across the table from him. Next to the campaign banner was a gas fireplace with a mantle. It had once been cluttered with family pictures, along with pictures of Paul's staff and their families. Paul had always treated his staff well and Marianne liked that he thought enough of them to put their pictures there. Most were gone now, Paul having packed them away. Two remained. One was of Paul's chief of staff and childhood best friend. The man stood with his wife and his fifteen year old daughter. The second photo was of Marianne.

She said, "So the place is listed?"

"Yes." said Paul. He put away his notes and gave her his undivided attention. She always loved that he did that, even when he was busy with something as important as the US Senate. "I was thinking this weekend we could go look at places together."

"If I survive."

"You'll survive. Binder's no match for you."

"You know what I mean." she said, pointing at the papers gathered in his accordion folder.

"How is the job search?" said Paul. "Have you told Dale yet?"

Marianne replied with a sigh. This was one characteristic she didn't like. Paul was a politician and no politician who makes it as far as he had, and so quickly, can ever really turn it off. You don't like the topic? Change it. Retain control of the conversation.

Paul said, "You haven't done either. I know you want to leave Blue Water but haven't had the time with this Polymath business. So the problem must be Dale."

"I can't, Paul. I can't break his heart. I know I have to but I can't."

"The man is your boss, not your father."

"I'm afraid of moving." she said, proving her future hubby wasn't the only one who could play that trick. "I really enjoyed running the campaign trail with you last summer. I liked seeing places. I liked meeting people."

"And arguing with them." he said, with a smile.

"All for you, baby. What I'm afraid of is staying still."

"What makes you think you'll have to stay still?"

Marianne looked down at her belly. There was nothing to see there yet, but she felt it. Paul reached out and put his hand on top of hers. When she looked up again she understood the look on his face. He didn't have an answer for her. He didn't doubt that she loved him, but he knew she was afraid of becoming a house wife. No matter how much he told her that she could continue her work, she would have to hold the home together while he was in DC. And that home was going to be in Stamford, not New York. Her doubts were as easy to see as if they had been that campaign poster, or that lone photo on the mantle. Paul pressed his hand down on hers and she slipped it away. The man, fresh from a major political victory, now looked a little heartbroken.

Marianne said, "Please tell me this isn't illegal."

"You mean the vote?"

"Yes, the vote. What else?"

"You have to tell Dale." said Paul. "It's better that he find out now than later. There's nothing he can do to stop you now. Don't look at me that way." he paused. "Marianne, you and Dale started this deal when Binder's partners came to you and offered you the company. In your own words, you were aiding the rebels in a civil war. Now you're worried about turning on Dale and sabotaging the whole deal, but this time it's not treachery. This time you're making it right."

Marianne laughed, but not in a happy way. "I guess your mom never told you that two wrong don't make a right."

"And how is the second one a wrong?"

"It's betrayal. It's back stabbing."

"Marianne." said Paul. "I've made a lot of progress swaying people's minds about the Sorter, but I'm only a freshman senator. If this vote passes, it will set a precedent that we can't turn back. It will make us all slaves not just to the Sorter, but to one company. How can that be a good thing?"

"I believe you. I do. I just don't know if it's the right way to do it." she paused, looked down, and then looked back up at him. "Have you taken it?"

"I have. And I know you have too. It's frightening."

"Okay." Marianne drew a deep breath. "If it's not illegal.

"It's not illegal." He grimaced and looked at his paper. "But public opinion matters too. I'll let you know if you should jump ship."

They exchanged a few more words about where they would be over the next few days and when would be a good time to talk. Paul promised Marianne that he would call or text her about the hearings which preceded the vote. He even said that if she didn't hear from him, she should turn around and go home.

Now was the time.

Marianne was still standing in the security line, still waiting for that message. Should she give up? She looked around. She knew it was silly, but everywhere she saw people staring at her. There was a state trooper standing near the TSA checkpoint. They don't usually have troopers there, she thought. Was he waiting for her to approach? Why would he wait instead of coming for her? Perhaps he hadn't seen her yet.

When someone did recognize her, it wasn't in the way she'd expected.

"Aren't you that Senator's wife?" said a male voice.

When Marianne turned, she saw a tall, barrel shaped man with a sweater vest pulled over his white buttoned shirt. Just behind him stood a girl of maybe eight or nine years. She dragged an unbearably adorable little pink suitcase behind her. Her mom held the child's free hand and carried a backpack over her shoulder. A delicate white Celtic cross pattern was embroidered on the bag.

"I'm Senator Varden's fiancee." said Marianne. "Marianne."

It should've been strange that she didn't hesitate to introduce herself, but to her it was a comfort. Since this man didn't appear to be a threat, it was a way for Marianne to ease into a familiar and comforting place. Paul Varden had won election less than a year ago. She had become accustomed to stumping for him and engaging in various political discussions. She felt more alive when meeting people this way. Sometimes she couldn't help herself.

"What is it like?" the man said, "I mean, to find out he's such a jerk?"

The woman behind him said, "Richard."

Richard went on, "For me it just shows what trouble you get into without a moral compass."

Marianne wasn't taken aback by this opening volley. It was one thing to encounter educated people at dinner parties with differing views, even if they were at times belligerent. More common was some rube accosting her at an airport security line. This occurred with greater frequency than she had expected, but nine times out of ten it came down to someone who took issue with Paul's choice words about religion. He had won his seat by a slim margin. Though popular for positive economic policies as a state senator, Paul had struggled because he was an avowed atheist who had made his name prosecuting church and state separation cases when he was an attorney. Connecticut was a blue state but not quite as blue as its neighbor to the north. Marianne did what she did best and changed the subject to a topic she could argue.

"I don't know if you're from Connecticut or are familiar with what Senator Varden has done there." she said. "But I would say that he's accomplished what many thought was impossible, which is pursue pro business and green policies. He's been successful at it too. The state now has one of the largest green industry sectors in the country and it's a significant driver of employment."

That sounded good. Nonetheless, the barrel shaped man pressed on with his original campaign plank.

"Why would you defend such an entitled prick?" His wife tugged at his arm and he continued. "I thought you were some soulless, high powered wall street vampire capitalist. I would've expected you to walk all over him and leave him in your dust."

Marianne considered the little girl. That was the member of this family her eyes were drawn to. There was dad, a hulking bully. The mom had proven just how impotent she was. What was the hope for their daughter? Marianne put her hand on her belly. She almost swore that she could feel a tiny, tiny heart beating in there. She didn't like to back down. It had always been for own good before, but not now. Maybe she could be a mother after all. Maybe she could stand up as an example. She left the diplomatic talk behind.

"Why should you be afraid of me?" she said. "If a man did what I did, you would call him a winner, not a vampire capitalist. As for my relationship with Senator Varden, I defend him because I believe in what he stands for. If he gave all that up, I wouldn't hesitate to give him up too."

She wondered if that was really the right thing to say. She tried to read the girl's face and got nothing. The speech was for her, but it probably went over her head. If Marianne was going to do this she needed a little practice.

There was no time to practice here, though. The line had advanced to the security kiosk. Marianne turned and there was the state trooper, staring her down from behind the TSA agent. They didn't stop her though. Marianne put her things in the bin and placed the bins on the conveyor belt. As she approached the scanner portal, she her phone rang from inside the x-ray machine.

She didn't know how to feel. Maybe it was Paul. Maybe he was telling her that everything was fine. Or maybe he was trying to warn her. She could still turn back. Once on the other side, Marianne dashed over to the outgoing conveyor and grabbed her phone before anything else. The call had been from her mother. There was a message. That was no help.

Marianne wheeled her bag up to an empty gate so that she could be alone. The windows overlooked the tarmac. She saw a row of a dozen planes waiting for takeoff and sighed. La Guardia reminded her of purgatory, each plane inching forward as the passengers paid for their sins. Marianne raised the phone to her ear and started the message replay, but then something much more pressing grabbed her attention.

People were watching her. She saw them look away when she noticed. They fixed their eyes on the perpetual roll of CNN coverage which occupied dozens of screens all over the airport. At first she saw pictures of herself standing with Paul at the victory rally, arms raised. Then she saw police leading Paul from his town home in handcuffs. They passed the "For Sale" sign and Marianne felt herself come unglued from the Earth.

Oh god, this is how it happens?

And yet, she was all wrong. It was so much worse than she had feared.

The anchor said, "Paul Varden, the freshman senator from Connecticut, was arrested this morning on charges of statutory rape. Police raided his Stamford home and searched for evidence of his alleged affair with a high school sophomore. Authorities have not released the name of the girl, but sources close to Varden suspect that she is the daughter of his chief of staff."

A familiar feeling washed over her. Her father had cheated on her mom, but that wasn't what stung. Marianne had always defended him. While Mom spent all her time blowing smoke about politics and roughing up Dad for every infraction of her ten thousand life sucking rules, Dad had worked hard and had never raised his voice. It didn't surprise his daughter that he'd been getting his kicks off in another dimension, one where he mattered. Hell, three minutes a week rodgering another woman probably spent his frustration and made him a better person – at least until Marianne left for college and the man hosed his skull in the garage.

The news went on, "There are rumors developing that the senator received a profile from the Sorter, a psychological profiling computer program gaining increasing notoriety for its accurate predictions of human behavior. These rumors indicate that the Sorter had indeed predicted the senator's actions. Whether these rumors are true or not, this developing story will affect the Senate hearings on what legal action can be taken as a result of Sorter profiles. Paul Varden was an adamant opponent of the Sorter and many political commentators believe his arrest will ensure victory of those measures when the full Senate votes on them tomorrow."

Marianne had believe that if that vote passed, the Sorter would cripple American society. She still believed that. What she doubted was whether Paul had ever believed that. He was so good at making his point that is was sometimes difficult to know if he really cared about it. Or was this is simple as a man wanting to silence the witness to his crime? He had taken the test, after all.

"We'll try to reach you again when we ave a better idea of her condition."

That's what the voice in the phone message, not her mother's voice, was saying. It was hurried and tense. Marianne hadn't heard the first part and didn't know what that last sentence meant. The message ended after that. She let her hand slip to her side, the phone resting on her hip.

What bothered Marianne about her father, what just about killed her, was learning that the other woman had been one of Dad's high school girlfriends. She'd even met this woman before. She'd witness cryptic Christmas cards and phone messages from her. When the truth came it made Marianne wonder if her dad had been having it on the side all this time? Instead of reaching his limit after fruitless years of trying to please the woman he loved, could it be that he'd considered his marriage a mistake from the beginning? Perhaps he'd made a decision he regretted and spent the rest of his life trying to have it both ways.

The same sort of doubt burned in her flesh that morning she sat at La Guardia, waiting for a plane to take her on a mission to steal another person's pride and joy. There was a second when an image of Paul sitting at his dining table in the dark flashed through her mind. There was his campaign banner, a memento of his most recent triumph, hanging on the wall like a team pennant. And there was the mantle, cleared of everything except for the pictures of the two people, one a woman and the other a girl, that he'd been sleeping with. It was then that Marianne knew her place. She was a trophy.

As soon as that thought settled in her sickened stomach, another rolled in.

She's not conscious.

That's what the voice on the phone had said. Then an alarm on her phone went off. It was reminding her of her boarding time. She hurried to her gate and boarded the plane. No one there seemed to recognize her. Perhaps no one even bothered to look. Marianne lifted the phone to her ear again and replayed her message.

"Hello, I'm trying to reach Marianne Madora. This is Doctor Pierce at Presbyterian Hospital. A few minutes ago we brought your mother in with a collapsed lung, apparently due to an untreated pulmonary fibrosis. The damage is quite advanced and she's not conscious. We'll try to reach you again when we have a better idea of her condition."

Marianne almost envied the dilemma which faced her just a few moments ago, when she stood in the security line. Times were simpler then. All she'd had to worry about was whether she should turn back as Paul had suggested or fly off to this one last kill, risking prison. She had been sure she'd loved Paul. She had been sure she'd keep the baby. She had been sure she'd find another job more suited to her role as wife and mother. And she hadn't given too much thought to her mother.

They closed up the plane. They ask her to turn her phone off soon. Marianne stared at Polymath's logo on her phone. She'd taken the Sorter exam. Everyone at Blue Water involved with the deal had taken a test drive. It's how her superiors knew they wanted the technology so badly. However, she had not solicited any feedback from the sphinx and it hadn't offered her any. In that moment she considered asking for advice. From a computer.

"Screw that idea." she said.

Then the icon blinked. For the first time since she'd installed the app on her phone, it was reaching out to her. She ignored it and called her boss, Dale Benedict, instead. He had left earlier this morning and she have already arrived in Boston. Marianne and Dale had a unique work relationship. He was the only one at BW she trusted and, despite being twenty years her senior, the only person from work she spent any time with off the clock. Their relationship was not romantic, but she kept it a secret from her other friends. She didn't need to hear the phrase daddy issues even one more time. It was true, nonetheless, that Dale fit a place her in life that needed someone with more life experience.

Marianne figured that maybe she'd wanted to pour her heart out, but found herself relieved when the phone went to voicemail. What had she expected to accomplish in the next three minutes? Better to wait.

She said, "Hi Dale, it's me. Just boarding now. When you plug back into reality, you're going to see some stuff about Paul. I don't know how to feel about it. It's just one more thing that's making me feel my heart's not into my work. There's something I've been meaning to tell you. I'm sorry I've kept it a secret, but I've been interviewing and... I don't know, I'm weighing my options."

The flight attendants made the warning about electronic devices and Marianne hit end. She wasn't satisfied with that message. She wanted to kick herself because she hadn't said what she'd wanted to say. This was the wrong time to make Dale doubt her resolve. She still wanted to see the deal through and make him proud. Instead, she'd basically resigned.

The Sorter icon was blinking.

Marianne's finger hovered over the power off button, but then she activated the Sorter instead. A message box came up and said,

"What you want to do is the wrong thing. Dale won't understand."

There was an hour glass. Then, another message popped up underneath the first.

COMMENCE PROGRAM ASSET THREE

One of the flight attendants came down the isle to perform the pre-flight check. Marianne closed the Sorter app and powered off her phone. Then her plane made the long, slow crawl out of purgatory and into freedom.

## EIGHT

"Are you serious?" said Keller. "You don't want to piss off a federal judge."

Ruth said, "Any suggestions? The more we talk about it the worse it will get."

The lieutenant didn't want to let it go, but he did. When she hung up, Ruth called for Jason to get in the car. Some days were better and some days were worse, but most days it was clear to Ruth that she wasn't going to ever see Keller's good side. She was unsure whether this had something to do with her or if it was just the man's disposition, but she hadn't met many people who had become his favorites so she shrugged it off.

As they pulled away from home, Jason asked his mother what the hurry was.

"I'm late for work." she said. "And I've got to appear in court today."

"Is it a good case?"

"Not really. It's from the days when I used to investigate gang activity."

"Sounds good to me." said Jason.

"This one's about tax evasion."

Well, that was how they caught Al Capone so it wasn't too bad. It was another criminal in prison, at any rate. That is, it would be if she made it to the courthouse on time. They drove up to John's tiny cottage in Watertown. His van was parked outside, with the name "Judge Network Solutions" written on the side in a jagged font. As they walked up to the front door, Ruth noticed that he'd managed to get some gutters installed. Inside she found the house in its usual disarray. The dining room table was cluttered with mail and piles of books, including several on the JFK assassination and September 11th terror attack conspiracies. There was a cardboard box filled with a stack of single spaced printed pages. The title on the top page read "Manaoh's Regret."

There was something else on the table, something that made Ruth pause. It was a disk about three inches in diameter, with concentric rings and figures and eyes. John had taken the device that Norman Shaw had been holding before he shot himself, the one whose image had appeared on her phone. He'd hidden it from her all this time, but now there it was on the table. As they had when before, Ruth's eyes picked out red letters in the mess of symbols. It spelled "Limited". She reached out her hand as if to take it, but thought again. Ruth let it be.

She saw John standing in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. He was talking with someone in the kitchen that she couldn't see. She didn't recognize the voice, but it was male.

"Where's Alice?" she said. "Who are you talking to?"

John turned to her, saying, "She's at her day program."

He stepped back as the man in the kitchen came through the doorway and stood with them in the dining room. This other man was dressed in cargo shorts and a sweat splotched Sunday River tee. He wore a brace on his nose and bandages on other parts of his face. Ruth pointed at him, speechless.

"This is Jimmy." said John.

"The man you hit?"

Jimmy said, "Well he did more than hit me."

"Jimmy put the gutters up." said John. "He did it for a good price too, as a favor."

Ruth said, "A favor for breaking his nose?"

"Is this your girl?" said Jimmy. "She looks sharp."

"Yeah, she's a cop." said John, and Jimmy stepped back a little. "Plain clothes detective."

Jimmy nodded and waved. "Hi, ma'am. Yes, it was a favor. You see I was doing some time and I just got out a little while ago. Been trying to find work but my ex keeps stepping on me every chance she gets."

John said, "It turns out that Jimmy grew up in Chelsea, like me. We probably went to school together but hung out in different circles. Anyway, his dad knew my dad and he's got some new information on where my dad might be."

Ruth looked at the ceiling and back again. She glanced at the books on the table. Then she picked up the box with manuscript entitled "Manoah's Regret."

She said, "You know John, I read your novel, or as much as you've written so far. It's good. It's really good; it is. And if you spent as much time on it as you spent on these conspiracy theories or looking for a man you haven't seen in fifteen years and don't like anyway, you could've finished it by now."

"It's not a theory." said Jimmy. "When I was in lockup I met this old gang boss by the name of Yancy. I don't know his first name; he was just Yancy. And he said he didn't know where Big John – you know, John senior? He didn't know where he was, but he knew who did."

Ruth shook her head and checked her watch. She didn't know what to think or say about this new bit of information. Why couldn't Yancy ever leave her alone? She'd put him away and he'd escaped and gone mad and hunted her down. Now he was locked up again, but again he'd found some way back to her. There was no time for this.

She said, "John, I've got to go. You said you could take Jason?"

"Sure."

"But you and this guy are doing what?"

Jimmy said, "I was just leaving, ma'am."

He brushed by her and left by the front door. Ruth and John looked at each other. John was a slender guy, no more than 160 pounds. He was good looking but didn't wear it well. She came over to him and brushed the side of his head with her finger tips.

"Thanks for doing this." she said.

"I want to do this. I like the kid."

She kept her hands on his head. She needed to go, but just a few more seconds wouldn't hurt.

Ruth said, "You know, it would look better if you grew it out."

"So you keep telling me. Come on, let's go."

They went to the curb and Jason tugged on the rear doors of the van. John grasped a key chain on his belt and pulled it out of the hook to which it was attached. A steel cord unspooled from the hook. John unlocked and opened the door. Jason crawled inside and John let the steel cord reel the keys back to his pants. Ruth realized she was frowning when John turned back to her. She turned it into an unconvincing smile.

"Don't worry." said John. "There's nothing in there he can hurt."

Inside the van, Jason was enumerating the types of equipment.

"Infiniband QDR finer, a Mellanox router – hey John, you've got a Symetricom GPS to IRIG server with a rubidium oscillator? Who uses that?"

"Well, it sounds exciting." said Ruth. "What are you going to do today?" When John took a little too long to answer she said, "Don't tell me you're going to follow Jimmy's lead?"

"You'll never guess who Yancy pointed him to." He paused for effect. "Keller."

"What? Keller and your dad – wait. No. Absolutely not. Leave Keller alone."

"Do you think you could get him to talk to me?"

"He barely talks to me, John. Don't you have some other work to do?"

"Whoa!" cried Jason. "What's in there?"

Both adults snapped their heads around. Jason was eying a heavy plastic crate sitting in the back of the truck. Metal bands wrapped around each side, secured with padlocked clamps. A bright four-color fire diamond label covered most of the end facing them.

"See Mom, each of these colors means something." said Jason, pointing to each of the four diamonds inside the larger one, "The blue says the health hazard, the yellow is reactivity-"

"Yes, I know." said Ruth. "I've seen a hazard label before."

She shot John a look.

He said, "It's a hypoxic air safe." John shrugged. "I don't know what's in there; I was just asked to deliver it. What I do know is that box is the most expensive fireproof safe you can buy."

"A fireproof safe with a fire hazard warning?"

"Not fire hazard. Chemical exposure." said John. "It has a liquid nitrogen backup."

"That won't spill."

"It costs a fortune so no, it won't spill. I guess that answers your question about whether I have a job today." He shrugged. "I was supposed to take this thing in, along with some other stuff, but I agreed with another guy at Judge to exchange it."

"So you could chase your dad's ghost?"

John got very close to Ruth and spoke in a low voice. "The man sends letters to my sister all the time. He's no ghost. He's not even gone." He gripped her shoulders. "Now I want that bastard to be gone and leave us alone forever, so I've got to find him first."

"Not today, John."

Ruth did admire his desire to protect his sister. Their father had abused them and, it seemed, was still doing it. John knew he had a habit for obsession and control. He wore his breaks and bumps like they were forever burning a hole in his skin. John was a man exposed. Ruth liked his authenticity, but he often needed encouragement to direct that on more worthwhile endeavors. She looked him in the eyes and sent him a message. Even in his worst moments, she didn't worry about him being the guy with the baseball bat. Not when it came to her. She could crunch him in her teeth and he knew it.

John released his grip.

"I'd never put the kid in danger. I'll take care of him."

She believed him. If he could protect Alice, he could protect Jason. Ruth had no idea how often he had trouble protecting Alice, especially from himself. While his treatment of Jimmy may have been the reason John went to see a psychiatrist, it was his treatment of Alice that the doctor ordered him to take the Sorter test. Ruth knew nothing of how John wondered if some day he wouldn't become the nice guy no one expected to walk into a grade school with a loaded gun.

When Ruth sighed a complicit agreement, John grinned. Then he spoke a little louder, so that Jason could hear. "After the job, I was thinking maybe we could take one of the harbor ferries."

Jason stopped to the van door, saying, "Can we go to George's Island?"

George's Island sat in Boston Harbor and was the home of Fort Warren, a civil war military base. The T ran a ferry out there for ten bucks round trip and Ruth must have taken Jason about a dozen times now. She shook her head.

"Not this time." By habit, she opened her mouth to give a reason, but she decided to rely on mother's prerogative. She was in no mood to wind John up again. The truth was, she had a gut feeling that made her want to keep her family closer to home. She'd had that feeling a lot since Yancy and the school burning, but today something she couldn't quite put a finger on was bothering her. Today she just didn't want any more surprises. John wouldn't understand that, so she said, "Maybe that's something the three of us can do together another time."

John turned to Jason and said, "Your mom's right."

Then Ruth saw John offer her son a little wink. Jason, of course, missed the cue entirely. Jason never noticed those things. But Ruth saw it. She knew it meant that maybe John would take him there anyway. What she hoped was that if he tried, Jason would remind him of what his mom had said. Jason was good like that. Once he understood the rules, he was good at following them – no, he was insistent. The rules gave him a structure that he craved.

"So," said Ruth, "Where's your job today?"

"Polymath, down by the waterfront."

Ruth tried to hide her surprise and growing fear. "Oh, is that where that box is going?"

"I've got some other work to do there, but yes. What's the matter?"

Ruth wasn't used to people reading her expressions. On the job, she was good at keeping her feelings to herself. At home, she was less guarded because she spent all of her time around her parents or Jason. She trusted her parents with her thoughts, and her son wouldn't know what his mom was thinking unless she wrote the words on her forehead. John, on the other hand, was more perceptive than she was used to. She didn't like to admit this, but typically the people who could read you like a book got that way while learning to survive. Add that to John's unpredictable and explosive temper and the evidence was mounting that his troubled past wasn't going to stay there.

Ruth said, "Are you sure you can take a kid with you into a job?"

John shrugged, "Either they will or they can reschedule."

"Your boss doesn't mind?"

"Judge doesn't care, because he's off shining his billy with some chick that's not his wife."

Yancy wasn't the only one who wouldn't leave Ruth alone. It seemed Reginald Binder and his baby were after her too. Ruth was never as prone to cooking up conspiracies as John was, but a part of her was fearful of what this meant. Binder had come to see her after the school burning. He had spoken to her son. There must be a reason.

John said, "I can still blow it off."

He could, but how would that end? She didn't like the idea of them sailing out George's Island just now, and she sure as hell didn't like the idea of John dropping in on Keller with Jason in tow. It was unlikely he'd get to see the lieutenant, but the only meant John would go pick up his new friend and wind down some other path he though led to his lost father. Was Polymath really the lesser of all these evils?

"No." said Ruth. "Call me when you get there."

"You want to check in on me?"

"So long as Jason's with you, yes. That's all it is."

John gave Ruth a hug and walked back to the front his truck, calling for Jason to sit down and buckle up. As he pulled open the door, his phone blinked without a noise. He pulled it out of one his utility holsters and Ruth tried to get a peek. She half expected to see the stone cat face, but it was a calendar reminder. John ignored it and put the phone back.

"Hey," said Ruth. She got close to John and put her palms on his face. "Thanks."

She was standing close enough to get a look at the phone's screen through the clear plastic cover of its holster. The calendar reminder was for a counseling session he was supposed to attend this afternoon, with Dr. Sophie Lane. Ruth wondered if that's why he was so eager to take Jason out after his job. It gave him a legitimate excuse to avoid it. She checked her watch. She had less than half an hour to get to the courthouse.

"It's not a problem." said John. "The boy's in good hands, trust me."

Then she noticed another icon appear on John's phone. It was the familiar Sorter picture. She wondered if it had a message for him that was anything like the cryptic message it had given her. There was no time to ask; John closed the truck door and drove off.

## NINE

COMMENCE PROGRAM ASSET FIVE

Dale put his phone away when he got the sense that someone was watching him. He turned around and saw a man leaning against a white van marked with the words "Judge Network Solutions." In one hand he held a shiny metal box labeled Camel Rares and in the other a cigarette. A kid of about ten or eleven sat cross legged on the sidewalk nearby. He stared at the ground and rocked back and forth.

"Hi Dale Benedict." said the man. "Did the Sorter ruin you too?"

Never in Dale's life had someone he didn't know greeted him in this way. This man could be trouble for him. Though he was thin, he was muscular. Dale, on the other hand, was already getting junk mail from AARP. He looked up and down the street. It was busy with commuters. This offered some consolation.

The man with the Camels smiled. "I know your name because it said so in that app. You have it set with giant old person font. I could've read it across the street."

Dale relaxed a little and tried an insincere laugh. "I think the Sorter helps people."

"Oh so you're an apostle?" Camels pushed his back against the van, propelling himself in Dale's direction. The kid didn't look up or stop swaying. "This building." he said, pointing with the bright end of the cigarette, "There used to be something else here. My dad worked here once." He waved the cigarette at Dale. "You know I quit years ago. These used to be my favorites, but the old man liked to steal them from me."

They stood in front of a newish looking brick building. Whatever it had been in the past, it was now a pricey apartment complex with store fronts on ground level. One such store front was the home of Flour, a South End sandwich shop for which Dale had been waiting to open when Camels had accosted him. He'd come here to meet his daughter before heading off to Polymath.

Camels said, "I just got a message from my psychiatrist. I was supposed to meet her later, but she just couldn't wait to tell me the good news. Do you want to know what that was?" He thrust his hand at the building as if he could stab it and bring a piece of it down. "Because of my dear old dad, I'm a monster. A monster who can't be trusted to care for his sister. That's what the Sorter does."

Dale stepped back, saying, "Look around you. This isn't the place to be doing this." He pointed at the boy sitting on the sidewalk. "Do you think your kid wants to see this?"

"He's not my kid." Camels walked backward, keeping his eyes on Dale. He thumped his chest as he spoke. "My sister. Dr Lane wants to take my sister away from me because the Sorter told her to. It told her my dad broke me for good. But I saved Alice from him. Do I get any credit for that?"

There was an inner voice telling Dale to ignore this idiot, but he didn't listen to it.

"I believe in what the Sorter can do." Dale said. "But it's not legal to take someone away because of what it says. There should always be humans making those decisions."

"Yeah." the man said, "Well the doctor tells me that after tomorrow that all might change. Some vote in Congress that will give her the power. I checked and it's true."

"I heard about that vote." said Dale, and that was more than true. It was a big part of Blue Water's motivation to acquire Polymath in the first place. "Did you actually read the proposed legislation, or did you believe what some blogger said about it?"

Camels shook his head. "The words are just camouflage. The government always finds a way to do what it wants. Nobody believed the law gave the federal spy apparatus the right to monitor every US citizen living on US soil, but they did it anyway and got the courts to back them. It's not about the words; it's about how the words trick us into thinking we live under rule of law while providing hidden loopholes our clandestine agencies can use to accomplish their objectives."

"And do you see loopholes in that law?" Dale said.

The lawyers at Blue Water had poured over the document and didn't find any. This is what they wanted. Blue Water was interested in a product with high market share and solid revenues, not something the federal government could interfere with. Dale knew what Camels was referring to when he talked about spying through hidden loopholes. Many of the largest Internet companies relied on collecting massive data on their users so they could sell this to advertisers. The NSA had seen this as an opportunity to look for people more interested in blowing up buildings than buying phones. The loophole was simple: who could deny the government the right to spy on its citizens for reasons of national security when those companies were using the same data to make a profit in the private sector? Blue Water didn't want that kind of attention or meddling.

The advantage of Polymath was that it did not sell what it learned from its test subjects to other companies. Indeed, Polymath learned nothing. The Sorter encrypted that data in such a way that its keepers could not access it. The Sorter relinquished only the conclusions it drew from the data, and only when these were relevant to the initial purpose of the test.

"What do you think is going to happen when they..." The man slipped his tin box in his back pocket. He used the free thumb on the hand with the cigarette to press the fingers of his other hand in order, ticking off his list. "The police, the justice system, the psychiatric and pharmaceutical complex – what happens when they're all allowed or even encouraged to follow this computer's directions? They'll do it, of course, and then have something to blame when it all goes wrong. And doesn't it worry you that this thing is centralized? I mean, who really controls what it says and does?"

Dale knew the answer to that. All of these words sounded like things Senator Paul Varden liked to say. Varden was another big topic of discussion at Blue Water and it was not just because of his strident opposition to the legislation. He was the fiancee of Marianne Madora, Dale's partner and protege. Marianne had assured Dale that Paul's views would not affect her performance and he in turn assured his superiors. They made her sign a document that would result in her immediate termination should this not prove to be true. Dale didn't need that. He trusted Marianne to do her job. More significantly, he trusted her to put the advancement of her career above anything else, including love. Dale was more worried that she'd give up a good man than give up a high profile assignment.

Camels went on, "Not that it matters." He thumped his head. "Not that it matters. The Sorter will get what it wants." He thumped it again. "Because I can feel it in my head. I can feel it programming me. I can't get it out and I can't let it stay."

Dale had become certain of one thing. This guy's shrink was right to take his sister away. Camels was sounding more psychotic by the minute. Of course, he knew what the man's response to that was going to be. Camels wasn't crazy, the Sorter was making him crazy. Those chicken and egg questions had made the rounds at Blue Water too. It didn't matter to Dale; the Sorter was just a computer. What he wondered about now was the safety of the child sitting on the ground. He wondered if he should call someone about it.

Camels said, "Someone needs to stop them."

Dale was saved by an employee of the sandwich shop, who opened it. He went in and Camels stayed by his van, watching Dale through the window.

"What was that all about?" she said.

Dale shrugged and she smiled at him. She was probably about college age. She was short and slender, with spandex pulled over an athletic frame. She wore her hair in a blond pony tail pulled through the back of a Red Sox cap. Dale watched her walk across the seating area.

She said, "I haven't seen you here before. Usually I recognize all the die hard fans; you know the sorts who wait outside for us to open."

Dale tried to modulate his voice when he answered. He didn't want to sound like a creep who couldn't speak because he'd spent the last minute admiring her body, even if that's what he'd been doing. He did try not to be a dirty old man, but even as he neared sixty he didn't find his eyesight dwindling quite that much.

"I haven't been here before." he said. "I just got off a plane a Logan. I'm meeting someone here. She's your die hard fan."

The woman stepped behind the counter. As Dale went up, he checked his watch. He had only an hour. Lorie must know that this time it matters, he thought. Please do not be late. Then he looked up and found the woman beaming at him, waiting for him to find his way out of his thoughts.

She said. "If you know what you want, let me know, but I should warn you that the kitchen is still setting up and it may be a few minutes."

"I'm told the egg sandwich will let me die happy."

"Okay, give us about twenty minutes. Have a seat."

He did. He looked out the window and there was Camels and his rocking kid. The man was watching the building more than he was watching Dale, but knowing this hardly calmed Dale's nerves. He decided it was time to call the police. He told them about a man shouting at strangers while neglecting the child that was with him. He repeated the last words the man had said. The officer who took the call didn't seem concerned. This was the city and it was full of lunatics. Had the man been physically violent? Had he proposed any specific violent action? No, he had not, but the meaning of their exchange was clear to Dale. He'd been there. He'd heard the tone of voice which spoke spoke of specific intent under that vague language.

I can't get it out and I can't let it stay. Someone needs to stop them.

Dale considered his watch again. He'd wanted to fly in with Marianne, but he had other obligations. His relationship with her was simple. Dale had sold his mortal coil to Blue Water soon after graduating college, but the prospect of making partner seemed more distant to him now than it had then. Marianne was something different. She was a bitch with steel toed pumps and a clockwork soul. That woman could own the company and turn it into something you'd never cross twice. Dale saw a drive in her that he wished he'd had. Marianne recognized that Dale could protect her from people who were afraid of that drive, at least until she was strong enough to stand on her own. Unlike with his hostess at this sandwich shop, Dale didn't hold a single dirty thought in his head for Marianne. She was like a daughter to him, plain and simple. However, Dale had a real daughter to worry about and that is what he was here to do.

Lorie Benedict studied piano at Berkeley College of Music, here in Boston's South End. Last year she moved into an off campus apartment and began living in Boston full time. Dale hadn't seen her in eight months. Despite their rocky history through the duration of Lorie's adolescence, she'd seemed eager to meet up with her father. He only hoped she could get it through her teenage brain that eight o'clock really meant eight o'clock – or that she wouldn't take advantage of the small window of time and make an excuse to be late. Whatever happened, Dale would be on his way in an hour. Even if he couldn't be with Marianne on the plane, there was no way he was going to let her walk into Polymath alone.

I'll give you that hour. Then I'll go on to help the daughter I can rely on.

Lorie wasn't on time. Dale's food came and he finished it. As he stood up to toss wrapper and napkins in the garbage, he considered leaving. If kids could blow off their parents, could parents not do the same? Maybe, but that could never be true for Dale. Parental love was the worst kind of unrequited longing. Lorie could ditch him as many times as she liked and her daddy would still come around again like a sorry puppy. On the other hand, if he left now and she showed up a minute later, she might not speak to him for another eight months.

There was a woman at the door. Dale didn't recognize her at first. Lorie had always favored mini skirts and green hair cropped high over her ears. The girl who walked into Flour that day wore a frilly blouse, an ankle length skirt, and dark hair to her waist. Except for the white blouse, all of her clothes were black, including the black socks in her black leather boots.

Something was wrong. Smiling and laughing had never been easy for Lorie, but today she looked sadder than Dale had ever seen her. At last, she lunged at him, arms wide. He caught her and she buried her face in the corner between his neck and his shoulders. She let out a soft sob and sucked it all in. They sat and she held his hands in hers.

Without giving it any thought, Dale glanced at his watch again. This was perfect. There had never been another moment in life when Dale felt more compelled to be on time. Now Lorie was here with her heart wide open. When his eyes returned to her face, he caught the briefest tick of expression. He read it as clear as newsprint. She saw him checking his watch and concluded that it was he who was being insensitive at the first time in years when she needed him to be there for her.

Dale said, "Lorie, what is it?"

"You haven't heard?"

"What, did something happen? Are you OK?"

"Mom died last night." said Lorie. "She killed herself."

He didn't open his mouth. He didn't even move a muscle in his face. Dale hadn't seen or spoken to his wife in five years, but it had been longer than that since they could've called themselves a functioning couple. They'd never divorced. Dale had said he could never let go of her. It was more accurate to say that he could never let go of the need to care for her. His wife completed the circle by never letting go of her need to receive that care, even if it amounted to nothing more than money. When Dale had last seen her, she had been growing cannabis at an alternate lifestyle compound in Vermont.

He said, "I don't understand."

Lorie shook her head, saying, "I don't either. One morning she didn't show up for work. Her friends found her body. She'd overdosed on aspirin." She looked at her hands, still wrapped around her father's. "I didn't even know that could kill you."

"She was a allergic." said Dale. "How did you find out? No one told me."

"They found my email address on the back of a baby picture."

You had to find out through email?

Dale reached over and wrapped his arms around her. He was still a daddy and found that getting back to that emotional place was as easy as tripping. The embrace was the same as the one he'd given her when she was two and had hurt herself on a shred of glass. At any other time the broken glass would've angered him, but when she was bleeding that was all that mattered. In that moment in Flour, it didn't matter that Dale had lost his wife. It had always been his nature to expect that she'd see the errors in her ways and return to him. That hope was gone, but what mattered more was that Lorie had lost her mother. Dale might find another lover, and indeed he had, but Lorie would never get her mom back.

Lorie said, "Her throat closed up and she asphyxiated." She was holding back and trying not to sound too girlish. Lorie pulled away and Dale released her. "How can anyone kill herself in that way?"

"Maybe she forgot because she was high and took the aspirin for a headache."

"They found four tablets in her mouth and more in her stomach."

Dale let out a breath and slumped back in his chair. He looked out the window, where Camels was still contemplating the wall. No cops had arrived to do anything about it. On the other side of the street, a group of people were boarding a Silver Line bus. Dale ran his fingers through his thinning hair, leaned forward, and grasped Lorie's hands again.

He said, "Your mother was sick."

"Mentally?"

"Yeah. And it's a little bit my fault."

The phone cut him off. The special ring tone told him it was Marianne.

Lorie said, "Is that work? Is it her?"

She watched her father for a reaction. When she said "her", it was with the same voice that Dale's wife had said "her" when she'd though he was cheating on her. To Lorie, Marianne was the other woman. She wasn't another lover, but another daughter. Lorie was testing Dale.

He said, "It can wait." He paused to regain his bearings. "Do you remember the fight we had when your mom left for that commune?"

"Yeah Daddy, I do, but..." Lorie shook her head. "I don't blame you like you think I do. You shouldn't blame yourself either. You had an affair. You're human and Mom wasn't always the easiest person to live with." She sighed. "I even defended you to Mom."

Dale shook his head. Lorie didn't understand what her father wanted to say and he didn't know how to say it. When he didn't speak, Lorie continued.

"The only think that ever came between you and me was your work."

She meant many things when she mentioned his work. She was thinking of the hours Dale spent away from home. She was thinking of the exhaustion he felt the rest of the time. Most of all, however, she was thinking of the other woman.

Dale said, "Lorie, the truth is that I never cheated on your mom."

"What to you mean? You admitted it to her."

"I think you know I'm not the kind of person who would've done that. I want to do the right thing. I'm seeing someone now. Her name is Rosalind. But I wasn't seeing anyone while your mother and I were still trying to work things out."

"You begged for her forgiveness." said Lorie.

"I admitted to what she wanted to believe. I would've said anything to keep her home. It wasn't just because we needed her, but because it was dangerous for her to be alone." Dale let go of Lorie and crossed his arms. "I wish I wasn't right, but I was."

They say that revealing a secret that you've carried for years feels like a weight lifting off your chest. Dale didn't feel that way at all. Instead, he relived the pain he'd tried to outrun all those years. Work had stopped being a source of satisfaction for him a long time ago, but it kept his mind off the terrible truth of his wife's fading faculties. It was also the place where he found the only person he trusted with these feelings. Marianne was more than another child, she was a child to whom he'd confessed what he'd wanted to confess to Lorie. He had been trying to protect Lorie. She was fragile, but Marianne was strong. Dale always feared that Lorie would turn out like her mother and break under the weight of reality. He wasn't going to let that happen again.

Perhaps Lorie was old enough now. Perhaps she'd grown enough to understand the private hell her father had endured for her sake.

"What you're telling me," said Lorie, "Is that mom was mentally ill and that she was dangerous if left alone or forced to let go of her delusions."

"Yes."

"Why didn't you do something?"

Dale had that feeling that rock climbers must have when they're halfway up the cliff and they feel a toe hold give. He'd been struggling for a way to show Lorie the big picture. She'd even said that she forgave him. He thought she was ready for the truth and the top of his climb was in sight. Now he felt weightless in the plunge.

Lorie said, "You should've called her psychiatrist. You should've had her committed. You should've done anything but enable her fantasies and let her get sicker."

"I didn't know."

Dale's phone rang again. This time it was his calendar reminder. He had to get to Polymath. He had to. Lorie would just have to understand. Or not. Either way, Dale could not stay here.

He said, "It wasn't like she had ever been diagnosed."

"Obviously you didn't need a doctor to know she needed help. Why didn't you take her in?"

"I told her she needed counseling." said Dale. "She never went."

"She was sick!" Lorie stood. "Of course she never went. It wasn't her job to get the help she needed. That was your job."

Dale stood. "Can we talk about this another time?" He glanced over at the counter, where the woman who'd met him at the door was pretending not to see all this. "I've got to go."

"That's convenient."

"Lorie, come on. I didn't fly all the way over here just to see you-" and that was it. That, sir, was it. Lorie turned and walked out the door, with Dale calling after her, "We agreed on the time."

She stopped and said, "I know that. Don't you think I know that? But that was before all this. This is about you keeping secrets from me all these years, secrets that lead to the death of my mother. What's the worst that can happen if you miss your goddam meeting? Do people have to buzz like a machine for you you cut them some slack?"

Dale held his arms out. "Okay." He nodded. "Okay, Lorie. I understand. I just can't think straight because I've got a lot of things on my mind. Will you meet me later? After my meeting?"

They stared at each other. Then Dale said,

"Please. Please Lorie. I'm begging you."

"I don't know Dad." She looked at her feet and shook her head. "I don't think I want to see you again."

With those words, she was gone.

Dale hurried out the door. He didn't go after Lorie. She didn't want him to anyway. He went down to the curb to hail a cab. Camels was still there, but he'd had his fill. He was rummaging in the back of his van, where Dale saw a collection of electronics. In the center was something a little less prosaic, a box wrapped in metal wire and secured by padlocks. Hazard labels covered it in several locations.

"What's that?" said Dale.

The man jumped out and slammed the doors shut, saying, "None of your business."

"What did you mean when you said someone has to do something about the Sorter?"

Camels hopped in the front seat and started the engine.

"Also none of your business."

Dale hailed a cab and gave the driver directions to Polymath. He retrieved his phone and saw that Marianne had called. She'd left a message and he listened to it. It was short and confusing and contained the words, "I'm weighing my options."

What the hell? He thought. Weighing my options?

Dale knew what that was supposed to mean. Marianne was making a gut reaction to bail on him and she was trying to make it sound like a professional decision. He'd never believed in god before, but in that moment he started to believe in a devil. Either that, or a god that he'd royally pissed off and who was now screwing with him.

He felt himself burning. Burning. It was like there was no end to this. To people pissing on him – and for what? For sacrificing every inch of his flesh for his company and his family and all the people who mattered most to him? He thought of Camels and wondering if maybe this is what it felt like to be going crazy, what it felt like to the suffer the irrepressible sensation that something else what in control of your life.

Dale's phone buzzed. He pulled it out. There were those words again, about program asset five. He'd ignored them before. Dale didn't like the Sorter much, but it was profitable. He'd never seen this sort of message before. Underneath it he saw spinning wheels with letters blinking from red to black. Dale touched the symbol and it stopped moving. The red letters spelled out a phrase.

2 HOURS

## TEN

She stared at the letter and then back up at the man who had given it to her. How had he found her here? An hour ago, near sunrise that morning, Rosalind Munro had walked from her Beacon Hill apartment off Charles Street to the place where her sister moored the "Jump Skipper", her 30 foot weekender yacht. Rosalind's twin sister, Lucie Munro, had died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma a few weeks earlier and today was their birthday. Rosalind had watched the lonely vessel bobbing in the dawn lit water and had turned away.

She jogged along the harbor walk instead. People always said that a good run could help you clear you mind. That wasn't true for Rosalind that morning. She passed several people along the way and couldn't escape the feeling that they were watching her sullen, bitten expression as she tried to cope with the loss of her truest friend. What she didn't realize was the simpler truth. Most of the people she passed were men, and they liked to watch her run. This happened every morning, but Rosalind was oblivious to such looks. It was only on that morning when Lucie's death had finally ripped its way through the layers of her psyche that she became aware of the attention, and interpreted it in her typical way.

After the run, she returned to the "Jump Skipper". She was ready to complete her birthday ritual on her own, but then a man came up to her with that letter.

"I don't understand this." said Rosalind. "How could I not know anything about this?"

The man was squinting. Rosalind was positioned so that if he wanted to look her in the eye, he'd have to face the unadulterated sunlight now beating down on the harbor.

"What did you say your name was?" she said.

"Aaron.

"Aaron." She handed the letter back to him. "I'll figure this out."

"The response period has already passed." said the Aaron. "It's been six months since the notice went out that this matter was being referred to a collection agency."

"My sister died last month. There must be a rule about that."

"I had heard that." He looked at his feet. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"But you're just doing your job." She grabbed the yacht's railing and hoisted herself onto the deck, saying, "Why don't we discuss this in here."

Aaron followed her and they ducked below decks. There was a long table with indentations to prevent object from slipping when the boat rolled. The sliding windows were opened and a slight cross breeze blew through the cabin. Rosalind opened a fridge. She removed a covered pitcher and a plastic wrapped tray of croissants, fruits, cheeses and other breakfast foods. She place them into the pits on the table. She uncapped the pitcher and unwrapped the tray.

Rosalind said, "Would you like a mimosa?" When the man looked confused, Rosalind shrugged, poured herself a drink, and said, "Lucie and I are twin sisters and today is our birthday. Every year we make ourselves this brunch and go out on the harbor."

Aaron nodded. He turned his back to her, took three steps, and arrived at the other end of the cabin. There was a shelf with an odd device sitting on it. The object looked like a set of four interlocking wheels, each with eyes printed around the edges. A number or a letter was engraved under each eye. He considered it as though Rosalind weren't still there.

Rosalind said, "Did you want to say something?"

The bill collector took a deep breath and said, "Miss Munro, it isn't up to me."

"I wasn't trying to change your mind. I'm terrible at that. Feel free to eat something."

"Didn't your sister tell you anything about this?"

"I had no idea." said Rosalind. "It wasn't like her to keep debts. However, I've learned not to be surprised when the past turns out to be different than I thought. It's a job hazard. Anyway, if I think a moment it makes sense that Lucie took out loans. She was dying. What's shocking is that anyone bothered to give them to her."

"She listed her property as collateral. Such as this boat." He was still turned away from her.

"You can have the boat, but let me finish my birthday." Rosalind took a bite of cheese. "I've got some nasty business to get to today."

"We called you many times."

"On her phone?" When Rosalind got no answer, she said, "Did you try a medium perhaps?"

The bill collector worked up the courage to reach out and touched the device with the many wheels. They spun and the object wobbled a little. Then the two heard the sound of someone mounting the deck outside. The boat tipped and the device toppled over and smashed on the floor.

Rosalind said, "Don't worry about that. A work colleague gave one of those to everyone this past Christmas. I hated it but Lucie thought it had some charm. I made her keep it in the boat."

She stepped over the wreckage and climbed back through the hatch. Aaron followed her again. There was another man standing on the ship's stern. He was taller than either of the other two and just shy of obese. He wore a white shirt, open by several buttons over his chest, and a blazer. He carried a paper bag in one hand and gripped the railing with the other.

The big man pointed at the bill collector, saying, "This is Dale?"

"No." said Rosalind. "This is Aaron. Lucie owed money and he's come to take the boat." She turned to Aaron. "This is Doctor Kevin Nagel. We work together."

Both men hesitated and shook hands. Kevin's phone buzzed and the others looked at him. He shook his head.

Kevin said, "It's Reggie. He's been calling me all morning. I think he knows."

"You're talking about Reginald Binder." said Aaron. "The man who created the Sorter?"

"I created it." said Kevin.

"You thought of it." said Rosalind. "George Simon created it. Reggie raised the money. I pushed it to completion." She turned back to Aaron. "It was a team effort, but your belief is popular even if it isn't true. Reggie's gotten a little too much credit and a little too much control."

Nagel said, "I don't think we can go through with this thing."

"Don't get cold feet on me now."

"Reggie thinks there's something wrong with the Sorter." said Kevin. "He's blaming me."

"Should he?" said Rosalind.

"I haven't touched it. But there have been problems with the aspect weaver for three days."

Rosalind stepped close to him. "What kind of problems?"

"It's missing."

Rosalind nodded. She turned back to the door and climbed below decks again.

"What?" said Nagel. "Does that make sense to you."

"I'll explain later. Can I at least enjoy my birthday?"

Kevin followed her. He saw the smashed spinning wheels.

He said, "Was there a fight in here?"

Rosalind responded by taking the bag Nagel was holding and pulling out a bottle of champaign. She offered the doctor a smile and he returned a hopeful look which she missed. She placed the bottle in another indentation on the table and rummaged for an opener. Aaron climbed down after them.

"Miss Munro." he said. "I'm very sorry, but I have to ask you to vacate this property.

"We had a deal." she called back. "You can have it when I'm done."

"I never made that deal."

Kevin took another look at the broken spindle and then at the face of the bill collector. He climbed up again, pushing the other man back out onto the deck. Aaron let out a truncated yelp when the big man took him by the shoulders. Nagel dragged his opponent to the edge and lifted him by his shoulders. He had Aaron off his feet and pressed against the railing, a little shove away from tumbling into the harbor, when Rosalind came up and scolded him.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Kevin dropped the man, letting his head slam into a steel bar. It bled. Rosalind lifted a hatch under a seat and retrieved a first aid kit. She patched Aaron up.

Rosalind said, "It's not that bad." She looked at Nagel. "You could apologize."

The doctor climbed down from the boat and disappeared without a word. Aaron gave Rosalind a frightened look, which faded as she helped him up.

Rosalind said, "Do you want me to call someone?"

"It's not your fault."

"That's not what I asked, but I'm sorry anyway."

"I'm sorry about your sister." said Aaron. "And your birthday."

Rosalind went to put the first aid kit back. For a moment her gaze fell down the hatch and looked at the broken bits of her wheels, the eyes reflecting the light that came through a port hole. In the next moment, she felt woozy and grabbed her head. She stuttered step left and right and fell. Rosalind landed on the seat where she'd taken the kit from and Aaron came over to her. He asked if she was okay.

"Yes." She said, pressed the palm of her hand against her head. "Have you ever known anyone with a neural implant?"

"You've got a chip in your head? You must make the big money."

"It's only for my memory." she said. "But a swear it stings me like it's my conscience sometimes."

"You feel that guilty?" He chuckled a little.

"Not so much about Kevin, sorry." She looked up and over the ship masts. The pain eased a little and she took her hand away. "My company has three partners. They are myself, Kevin and Reggie. Today the first two will betray the third."

"I sure hope the two of you aren't planning on running off together."

Rosalind laughed. "Kevin's problem is that he's undisciplined. He's a total mess. That's something I just can't stand. Once this is done, I hope I never see him again."

Near the ladder, she saw a card on the ground. She picked it up. It was a generic birthday card, with a picture of a sunset on the front. Rosalind opened it and found a long note written inside. When she finished reading it, she bit her lip and ran her fingers through her hair, pulling on the ends a little as if she were going to pull it out.

Aaron said, "Did he get you a birthday card?"

"I think he wrote me a love letter. Or a suicide note."

## ELEVEN

When Reggie walked out of his complex with the pistol that had killed Todd Laurel, he wasn't sure if he'd need to use it again. He half thought of pointing it at George Simon, his lead coder, but that was just a passing idea. It wasn't part of the plan.

"You really think I'm an idiot, don't you?" said George on the other end of the phone.

Reggie was crossing the street as he said, "It would be better for you if I did, but I don't."

"I've got something to show you. Seriously, this will kill you. Gonna be in soon?"

"Not today George. We have company."

"I know. That means you haven't got long to see this."

"George, do not so much as breath until I arrive." he hung up.

Reggie boarded the Silver Line as he did every weekday morning and most weekends as well. The line, an electric bus that connected with the subway system, was Reggie's favorite part of Boston's mass transit system. For as long as he could remember, Reggie had been fascinated with transit. He could name dozens of light rail car models and had memorized the system maps of Boston, New York, London, Montreal and many other cities. Sometimes Reggie cornered a fellow rider and accosted them with the history of tunnel construction techniques.

The fares were few and sparse that morning. Reggie chose an isolated seat near the back and watched the ocean as it peeked out and disappeared behind the rows of new construction along the seaport. As the bus slipped underground, a man walked over. He looked to be in his mid twenties. He was dressed in an untucked gray button shirt and ripped jeans and wore a rather well developed beard. The bearded man sat next to Reggie and held his phone up.

He said, "You're Reginald Binder, aren't you?"

"I am. You should schedule interviews through my office."

"I've heard rumors that you're losing control of your company. Is there any truth to that?"

"What rumors?" said Reggie.

"Not everyone is happy with the direction you're taking Polymath." said the bearded one. "If that's true and it were to become public that would be quite a blow to the Sorter's credibility."

"You've heard wrong. As for the Sorter's credibility, it's based on science and that can't be altered, no matter what the people around it may do."

"Mr. Binder." The kid laughed. "Since when does credibility have anything to do with the truth? The Sorter has become a near religion with millions of people who no nothing about its inner workings, which as I understand it are proprietary anyway. Now the US Congress is due to vote on major expansions of the Sorter's powers. As far as I'm concerned that's a violation of the separation of church and state."

"I see." said Binder. "You have an agenda."

"I only want to understand what we're buying into here."

"Can you come with me?"

The bus slid into South Station and Reggie departed. He lead his interviewer through a maze of tunnels which interconnected the various bus, subway and heavy rail systems. They arrived at a mens room and entered. Reggie checked the stalls. Satisfied that there was no one inside with them, he dragged a large trash barrel over to the door. Then he shoved the other guy into the wall of urinals and the kid scrambled to find something to hold onto and steady himself. Reggie pulled his gun and placed the muzzle against the bearded man's head.

Reggie said, "Are you threatening me?"

"It's not me." said the kid, holding his hands up with his palms out. "It's not me."

"Are you some kind of reporter?"

"I'm a blogger."

Binder let the gun fall and turned his back to his opponent. He looked at himself in the mirror that stretched along the wall above the sinks. A blogger.

"Fine." said Reggie. "Go."

"What?" said the kid, not knowing was was good for him. "Over two hundred thousand people read me every day."

Reggie turned back to him. "Okay, so you want me to hurt you? Who's your source?"

"I can't say that."

"Because you need to keep your sources confidential? Come off it, you're no journalist."

"I'm not telling you anyway." said the bearded man. "What matters is that I have communications written by one of your partners, Rosalind Munro."

"Rosalind?" said Reggie. "Really? Let me see."

The kid shook his head. Then he slipped his phone in his pants pocket. Now Reggie knew that's where he'd find the incriminating information. He charged back in the other man's direction and whipped him across his forehead with the butt of his pistol. The kid went down. Reggie leaned over him and stuck his hands in his pockets, retrieving the phone. As the bearded one rose, Reggie slammed the point of his shoes into the man's gut. Down again. Reggie secreted the phone in his own jacket and left.

Reggie returned to street level and entered the Atlantic Mall. The Atlantic was an upscale shopping center near the city's most tourist choked districts. It featured a grand, marble floored atrium with an indoor waterfall and trees. Along one side of the atrium, a three story glass wall overlooked the Rose Kennedy Greenway. A staircase swept around the edge of the other side. Reggie climbed this staircase to a balcony where the open retail area of the building gave away to the office space of the upper floors. A twenty story tower rose above the mall, but Reggie's destination was here on the balcony level.

He swiped an Id card at a set of turnstiles and nodded to the guard who manned the line between the shops below and the tenants above. Reggie followed the balcony until he reached the last suite, where the name POLYMATH stood in human sized letters just to the right of the entrance. These were the offices of Reginald Binder's company. This is where the Sorter lived.

The front room was small and dominated by a long reception desk similar to the sort you might find in a hotel. Despite having room for several people behind it, there was never more than one. That one was always the same face.

"Good morning Cass." said Reggie.

Cass was little short of breathtaking. She was an olive skinned, curly haired mix of features. She looked exotic to everyone, whether they were American or Indian or from somewhere in between. It was impossible to guess her race by looking at her. This only made them want to look at her more. Folks wanted to place her and they never could. It only added to her charm. And this was the point. She was always the first thing anyone coming to PM encountered. Sometimes the sight of her stunned the male visitors well enough to handicap them in subsequent negotiations. This was advantageous because most of his callers were from companies looking to license his technology, and most were middle aged men.

"Cass." said Reggie. "Is everything okay?"

"I'm not feeling well." said Cass.

Reggie shook his head. "George? Did George do this do you?"

"Mr. Simon is in the Tomb."

"Cass, why aren't you feeling well? Was George up to something?"

She shook her head. "I'm just a little sick. It will pass. Mr. Simon is in the Tomb."

"Okay. If you're sure." He paused. "Is the report ready on those two from Blue Water?"

A look of horror crossed her face. "I'm sorry. I know how important this is, but I don't know if it's ready. Let me check." She ran the palm of her hand across her face the way someone might when they have a migraine. "I'm so sorry. Can I get back to you?"

Reggie nodded. "If George has hurt you, I will hurt him."

"Please don't. You know what he means to me."

This statement took Reggie by surprise. He'd never heard Cass speak that way before. Binder leaned in and put his face inches from Cass.

"Cass? Just what does he mean to you?"

"I won't let you hurt George. He's my truest friend."

Reggie slapped the desk. "Great, now I will kill him."

Binder walked through the inner doors. There was a long hallway, with window offices on the left and a half height wall on the right. A common area extended from the other side of the wall to a group of cubicle offices. Binder removed his shoes and placed them under the couch. This would ensure they were spotless when Dale and Marianne arrived. He left the office and passed the next two, which belonged to his partners. These were Dr Kevin Nagel and Rosalind Munro. Both offices were locked and dark. He expected Rosalind to be a little late, but Nagel's absence annoyed him. Reggie had been calling the man all morning.

Something was wrong. The fire alarm had gone off. There was no sound, but there was a blue light fixed to the ceiling in the common area. It flashed inside a metal cage, silent but persistent.

"George." said Reggie.

At the end of the hall another door lead into the engineering suite. The door was heavy with a thick window, but Binder could hear the music coming from the other side. He could feel it. Reggie opened the door and walked into a wall made of the sounds of Maria Callas singing the Habanera from Carmen at a volume that shook the walls.

"L'oiseau que tu croyais surprendre..."

There was a collection of tables filled with exposed electronics. Huge sheets of paper covered nearly every wall. Some bore technical drawings and lines of code. Others bore more artistic work in charcoal and colored felt tip pen. The themes of these latter images included stone bulwarks and forests where the trees bled with red blood. One was a human skull marked with words written in many alphabets and languages. Another was a contraption made of wheels within wheels, eyes around the edges and the heads of animals floating above them. On the floor, Reggie saw women's underwear.

"Battit de l'aile et s'envola..."

To the right were heavy doors protecting this work area from the server rooms. Fans and air conditioners hummed from behind them. Reggie swiped his Id badge across a key pad and entered his PIN. The box blinked yellow, indicating that his attempt to unlock the room had failed. Binder tried again and once more the device emitted an angry buzz and blinked yellow. Out of frustration, Reggie yanked on the handle. He almost fell over backwards when the door to his vault of secrets opened without any effort. It hadn't been locked at all.

The first server room was the customer room. The Sorter didn't live here, but that's not what Polymath told its clients. The room contained a glass case filled with black server racks. Each rack featured a narrow strip of blue lights down the center, which pulsed with random patterns to make the federation of about 1000 processors look like they were "thinking". The glass on the front of the case featured the sphinx logo that Reggie hated. A bank of 50 inch screens covered the upper half of the opposite wall. These were always blank except for demos. During those demos they displayed impressive looking charts of personality traits and trends. This little room did run a subset of the Sorter algorithms, but only enough to impress the riff-raff.

Reggie cursed George again as he went to the next secured door. This time he didn't bother to swipe his card. He hauled the door open and stormed inside. This was the inner sanctum. Few people in the company ever entered here, let alone outsiders. To clients, Reggie referred to it as the Holy of Holies. Among Polymath employees it was known as the Tomb. The Tomb was a massive room. It was so dim it looked like the edge of space. It was also filled with racks, though many more than in the demo room. They each carried four cubes, one stacked on the other. Thin silver strips covered the front of each cube. These strips were the termination of air ducting baffles on the end of processor boards. There were no standard chips here, no operating system of any kind. Rather, each board was an optical interconnect supporting a dozen three dimensional Field Programmable Gate Arrays, all plugged into the high speed switching fabric at the back of each chassis.

Each of these cubes screamed. The FPGAs got so hot that each rack required a bank of powerful fans, all drawing air at a rate proportional to that of a jet engine. It was the cramped spaces, the darkness and that constant banshie wail that earned this place its nickname. Most people thought of tombs as quiet. Perhaps this Tomb is what they would sound like if you could hear the crying of the damned.

Reggie saw George Simon's elbow peeking out from behind one of the racks. He hooked it and dragged the man into the narrow passage between towers rows. George nearly tripped because his pants were around his ankles. As Binder's eyes adjusted he saw that there was woman still in the alcove, skirt pulled up.

"Who's this?" said Binder.

George stretched his neck and looked at the ceiling. Then he reached down to pull up his pants. The programmer was two inches taller than Reggie and half his age. He wore his red hair to his shoulders. His shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a tattoo that read "Vitam regit fortuna non sapientia." His sleeves were rolled up and Reggie could see puncture wounds on his veins. As George spoke, his head lolled and he never looked his boss in the eyes.

"She's the best." he said. "She showed me this, and it changed my life." George rifled through his pockets and pulled out a disk made of concentric spinning wheels. "Have you seen this before?"

"Yes," said Reggie as he grabbed for it.

George pulled it away, making a scolding motion with his index finger and saying, "This one's mine. Get your own. With that vote coming up, these things are more and more popular." He leveled his face and finally met Binder's eyes. "They say you can beat the Sorter."

"The Sorter isn't a game."

"And yet the house always wins."

"That thing is just divination. It's like dice or tarot cards. The results are nothing but chance."

"Fortuna." said George. "What better way to make the mind mysterious again?"

George shook the device, setting the wheels in motion and the lights blinking. When they stopped the red letter spelled the word "Irresistible." He turned back to the girl and showed her the results.

"Isn't that the truth?" he said, pointing to himself.

"Get out." said Reggie to the woman. When she didn't move, he showed her the pistol he'd secreted in his blazer pocket. "Go on."

She ran away, leaving by the open doors.

Binder said, "Sorry to scare your girlfriend."

"It's okay. I like her, but I love Cass."

"We'll get to that in a moment."

Reggie held the phone up for George to see the message.

COMMENCE PROGRAM ASSET TWO

"That's new. It's not my work." said George. "Did you ask Cass?"

"Why would I ask her?"

"Maybe something leaked to her."

"What have you done to Cass?" said Binder, waving the pistol.

George held his hands up, saying, "I admit that I've been noodling with her. But you know, you should really be paying more attention to Dr. Nagel. Come feel this."

He walked back into the space where Reggie had found him and the girl and motioned for the other man to follow. George place his palm against one of the racks and so did Reggie. It was warm. That was never supposed to happen, not with all those baffles and fans and ducts. It couldn't happen unless the room itself was failing to vent the heat. Binder began to speak, but George beat him to it.

"I know I've been a bad boy, but I didn't do this. Dr. Nagel's was here all night. You can check the logs. This is why the fire alarm is on."

Reggie said, "Is there any damage to the Sorter?"

"No, but I was almost a few minutes too late."

George walked to the back of the room. The rear wall bore what looked like a row of six foot tall propane tanks.

He said, "These tanks hold the CO2 fire suppressant. This whole thing is controlled by a VESDA box that feeds into the situational control computer. That's the same thing that runs our security system, our office LAN and all the other IT equipment that isn't a part of the Sorter. This morning I came in and heard the alarm." He pointed into the air and smiled. "It's off now."

"At what point did you bring that woman in here?"

"Oh, she came with with me. Anyway, the CO2 puts out a fire by suffocating the room. It's bad for people, but good for electronics. Much better than that."

He pointed up again and this time he looked up too. Thought it was difficult to see in the dim light, rows of pipes and sprinklers lined the ceiling.

George said, "The gas is the first line of defense, but if it fails to deploy then the water turns on. Saves the building, but kills the Sorter. The sprinklers aren't connected to the VESDA. That means if this room caught fire, it would be flooded. Do you see what I mean, boss? You should be worried about Nagel, not me."

The red head continued calking down the row of tanks. The wall turned a corner and there was a door ajar. On it was a sign reading, "Emergency Exit. Alarm Will Sound."

"There was no fire." said George. "The chassis were overheating and the AC couldn't handle the load. That triggered the thermal sensors. The alarm sounded, but there was no smoke. I turned off the alarm, but that warning light will blink so long as I have this door propped open to let the hot air out."

"I have no fire system and no security system." said Reggie. "On today, of all days?"

George leaned in close, ignoring the weapon in Reggie's hand.

He whispered, "Blame Kevin Nagel."

"What I want to know it what you've been doing to fix it."

"I was getting to it." said George. "I just had some other business."

Binder nuzzled the barrel of his gun under George's chin.

"You have been a problem for a long time."

George held up the spinning wheel and said, "The wheel says we all die today."

"George, fix it."

"Not before I show you my surprise."

The coder held is phone in his other hand. It showed the image of the wheel and when George pressed it the image was replaced by the words,

1 HOUR

"I was going to make you wait, but I won't."

George swiped across it and produced a number keypad. He typed in a code and when he closed the keypad the screen now read,

ZERO HOUR

A few moments later, a phone mounted to the wall rang.

Reggie said, "What is this?"

"That's the beauty." George shrugged. "I have no idea what's going to happen, but I know it's going to be good."

The phone rang again. Reggie walked over and pushed the speaker button. Cass's voice blared over the whining noise of the fans.

"There's someone here to see you, George. John Smith from Judge Network Solutions?"

Reggie turned to George and said, "Who's that?"

"I have no idea. I just hope you're ready for this."

## TWELVE

TWO HOURS LATER

"Are you the only one who doesn't feel the Sorter isn't trying to control you?" said John.

Ruth was sitting in her car and John was inside Polymath. The phone rested in a dash mount and John had opened up a video chat session. All she could see right now was his face, but she knew there had to be a reason why he wanted her to see something rather than just hear it.

"I don't have time for a philosophical discussion. Let Jason go, right now."

"Philosophy isn't for alone time, Detective Holland." said John, his dilated eyes filling the screen, "It matters for each and every decision you make."

"Can you put Jason on? Can I talk to him?"

"In a minute."

"John, I need to know he's okay. Don't you understand that?"

She paused and wondered how she was supposed to handle this. Could she appeal to his conscience at this point? Or should she treat him like any other terrorist? When she spoke again, it was slower and more deliberate.

Ruth said, "Jason was an accident. I know that you intended to hurt Reginald Binder and the Sorter, but I also know that you don't want to hurt any innocent people."

"None of us are innocent. We've all been doomed from the start."

"And what about all those people standing outside the building now? You let them evacuate. The only people in there now are those who were in the Polymath office when the bomb threat went out. You believe they're guilty and maybe you're right, but Jason is just like the others you let go. He wasn't even a part of your plan before this morning."

"It's not my plan, Ruthie." said John, and it really stung when he called her that. "It's in the Sorter's hands now. As for the guilty..."

At last, John turned the camera away from his own face. Though the image was poor, Ruth could make out a typical office space. The camera passed over some people she didn't recognize standing near a group of cubicles and looking stunned and in pain. One of them stared off to the left, at something outside the field of view. As the camera panned, however, it became clear what had put them in that state of distress.

Reginald Binder was sitting in what looked like a conference room. There was a table with chairs, but the walls were gone. Ruth supposed that they must have been made of glass, because the floor was covered with shards of it. Reggie was seated, with his arms hanging loose over the sides of the chair. He was staring at the ceiling. His neck was a mess. It looked as though someone had wounded both of his jugular veins with multiple tiny, tiny cuts. Binder's motionless body made Ruth feel cold.

John moved the camera away, but it hardly out of mercy. The next image was worse than the first. There was another body laying on the floor. Its shirt was open at the chest and some tattooed words were visible on its skin. They looked to Ruth like Latin, maybe. Its hair was long and red and its face simply wasn't there at all. It looked like a close range weapon had removed it, leaving a pulpy mess in its place.

Then came the last icon in this infernal little triptych. She saw Jason. He was not dead. Rather, a pistol hung by his side as he looked over the destruction.
