Nikki made a face. “I can guess. The situation in Haddington, all those years ago. I don’t know why we didn’t just close down the house there. Some adviser or other probably thought it would look bad. A tacit admission of responsibility.”
The girl’s delicate features froze into an even more bitter expression. “As children, we were coached to stay well away from poor, half-crazy Mrs. Hadding. The police and publie prosecutor won’t talk to her anymore. If the media even discuss what happened, they call it a ‘cold case.’ More advisers at work. Public relations. No one can disgrace the Callivant name.”
She shook her head. “Even with the assassinations, there are four generations of Callivants in our house. Maybe that’s too many. It’s made us — well, I don’t know what it’s made us.”
“I know what some people would say,” Matt said.
“People!” Nikki scoffed. “They say that public service is my family’s business. But if it is, it’s only true for the boys. I thought things might have changed when my father didn’t run for office. But, of course, he went to work for the government.”
“What does your dad do?”
“National security,” Nikki replied. “Threat analysis, covert this, international that—we never get to hear about it.”
“He’s a what — a spy?” Matt couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“According to my dad, he drives a desk and spends a lot of time worrying about budgets.”
So did Captain Winters, Matt suddenly thought. Although sometimes his days got a bit more exciting.
“Whatever your father does, it sounds like another road to power,” he finally said.
“Some power.” Nikki’s lips tightened. “Dad might have escaped some of the family traditions, but he expects me to follow right in line — making the perfect appearances at the right parties with a smile plastered on my face and lots of Callivant charm.”
She thumped her chest. “I want to be the Callivant woman who runs for something instead of standing gracefully at somebody else’s campaign kickoff. I’ve got girl cousins who could do just as good a job as the guys in the family. But you’ll never hear about them. No public arguments. Family solidarity.” She nearly spat the words. “Nobody dares disgrace the Callivant name.”
“Or gets away with it?” Matt asked.
She didn’t reply to that comment, confusion all too evident in her blue eyes.
Matt went on to describe the strange deaths of Ed Saunders and Harry Knox.
Nikki Callivant shrank away from him in her seat, those strange blue eyes growing wider. “That’s crazy,” she said. “My family uses lawyers, P.R. people — sometimes strings are pulled. But you’re suggesting—”
“I’m just asking if you don’t think it’s a strange coincidence that two people connected to a small sim based on your family scandal died within a week of each other,” Matt cut in. He shook his head. “I’m not accusing your family of anything. But I don’t know what’s going on, and it makes me edgy. Maybe they were accidents. If so, I’m sorry I disturbed you with this. I suppose I should be glad you went out of your way to talk to me, even if I may be saying things you don’t want to hear.”
“I’ve been getting a bit of that lately,” Nikki ruefully admitted. “Most of it from friends of yours. But it comes along at a time when I’ve been asking a lot of questions about my family — I guess I’ll just have to add these questions in with my own.”
She reached under the denim jacket. “I really wish you hadn’t used that fumigation line. Now I’m itching like crazy.” Still scratching, she pulled out of the parking place and headed back to the school.
At least, Matt thought, she didn’t lose control of the car while she drove him back to school one-handed.
Matt was in his room, working on his homework, when the chimes of an incoming call rang out. He closed out his classwork file and ordered the computer to make the connection.
Captain James Winters’s face appeared over the console. “Matt, something turned up in relation to those — ah — cases you mentioned to me.”
“New information?” Matt eagerly leaned forward.
“More like old information.” Winters ran a hand over his chin. “I decided to run a check on the names you gave me, to see if any of those people had a criminal record.”
“And Harry Knox did?”
“A juvenile record. It seems back in 1999 Knox was a Script Baby.”
Matt blinked. “A what?”
“He was seventeen at the time, exploring the early version of the Net, and found a crude set of hacking tools. They were called ‘scripts,’ developed by talented, or at least successful, crackers for use by less experienced — even inexperienced — would-be hackers.”
“Was Harry Knox experienced?”
“No. That’s probably why he got caught. His incompetence is probably what saved him. He wasn’t able to do much damage, and the courts were disposed to be lenient with young people on a first offense.”
“Anything else?” Matt asked.
“Nothing that we found out,” Winters replied. “Maybe he was scared straight. On the other hand, once a hacker—”
“Always a hacker.” Matt finished the saying.
“Among the things we recovered from the wreck of his truck was a laptop computer,” Winters went on.
That would either put Knox way on the trailing edge of technology, or on a recent dead end. Leif’s father had tried to revive the idea of portable, full-powered units, but people were happier with their home consoles and their little palm computers. People who liked playing with techno-toys went for the machines, however. A lot of kids from Net Force had picked up laptops at a deep discount — superbrains like David Gray. “Old or new?” Matt asked.
“It was a late-model unit, damaged in the crash and the dunking,” Winters said. “A police technician noticed a certain amount of wear and tear on the input/output connections. Apparently when he was on the road. Knox plugged the laptop into motel systems rather than networking with his home computer.”
“That would argue a certain amount of technical ability,” Matt offered.
Winters nodded. “Which would seem to point to him as the hacker in your group of sim enthusiasts.” He frowned. “But it only suggests his guilt. There’s no hard proof.”
And since there was no hard proof of hacking — not even a legal complaint — Net Force couldn’t get officially involved. Winters had probably pushed the investigative envelope just by looking into the past of the late Harry Knox.
“Thanks for letting me know about this,” Matt said.
“For whatever good it does.” Winters gave a helpless shrug and signed off.
Seems like I’m collecting a lot of interesting but useless stuff. Matt thought. He filed the latest information in the same mental bin as his conversation with Nikki Callivant. Then he ordered his computer back to the trig problem he’d been trying to solve. Possible clues were always interesting, but right now, homework had to take first priority.
His homework was done and the house was filling with spicy smells when Matt came into the living room that evening. Dad was cooking chicken fajitas for dinner, judging from the scents of frying peppers, onion, and garlic — lots of garlic.
Matt’s stomach rumbled, reminding him it had been a while since lunch, as he headed for the main computer console. It was time for the local news.
A holographic projection appeared — the HoloNews logo, clouds floating behind it, while urgent, staccato music came from the living room speakers. “News music,” Matt’s father had called it once.