Criminal Minds (Fox Meridian Book 4) (16 page)

Sister Anne gave Fox a bleak smile. ‘She’s stable and she’ll recover. They closed the vessels and reinforced them, closed up the wound, and pumped her full of artificial plasma. She probably won’t even have a scar, but they’ll need to wait for her to wake up to be sure the blood loss didn’t result in any brain damage.’

‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed,’ Fox said. ‘Sister Naomi will be over to see her in an hour or so. She’s currently discussing extra camera coverage with Ryan.’

‘I don’t think there’ll be any objections. Not after this. Did you get anything from the forensics?’

‘More mystery. Even with all our equipment, the guy leaves nothing behind. He had to be wearing a suit, but there’s nothing visible in the video from the security system. We’ve got flakes of surgical-grade steel from the blades he uses, and when we catch him, we can tie those to his knives metallurgically. But… No skin cells, no hairs. We got a few fibres from what looks like a black, waterproof coat. Those were in a box in the cold storage room, which appears to be how he got in, but that’s just more weirdness.’

‘A box in cold storage?’ Marie asked, puzzled.

‘Yeah. He has to have got into the packing plant, labelled a box, got into it as it was going into the sealing machine, and then waited for at least two days while it’s delivered right past the security cameras. Two days, sealed up in a box. I’m starting to think he’s not human.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘No… I’m going to grab a couple of hours’ sleep. You two should do the same.’ Fox turned from the room and started out. ‘Kit,’ she said, silently, ‘check on Terri’s availability tomorrow. I want to talk to her about homicidal AIs.’

10
^th
October.

‘Well, of course it’s not impossible,’ Terri said, ‘but it can’t just happen. Someone would have to deliberately program an AI to be a killer.’

Despite it being a Sunday, Terri was working in one of the AI labs, and that was where Fox had found her, along with a rat which was running around the floor between and under the desks. It was a little distracting, but Terri seemed oblivious. ‘So we’d be talking a military programme, or NIX,’ Fox said, her eyes on the rat, which was currently washing its whiskers. It did look like a lab rat, white-furred and plump, and clearly not caring about the humans.

‘Probably. You see, there are protocols. Every AI we design, including Kit, has to have behavioural control protocols. They obey laws and they won’t develop mental kinks that might result in harm. It’s coded into their minds at a pretty basic level. It’s not
impossible
for them to break the rules, but it’s pretty hard, and they’d probably turn themselves in if they did.’

‘But someone could leave those protocols out?’

‘Illegally, yes. Every AI put into production has to be run through a series of psychological tests before release. No pass, no sales, and you’re required to scrap the software and start from scratch. It’s assumed that the flaw is fundamental.’

‘What about experimental models? I mean, you said they had to be tested to go out for sale. If that wasn’t intended…’

‘Prior to testing, you have to keep the code on secured servers. No access outside the local network.’

Fox grunted. ‘Even NIX aren’t useless enough to lose two projects like this. And the thing that infected Doran and Deedle seemed to have purpose: it just got outside its normal operating parameters. I guess we’re probably dealing with a human. A really dedicated, insane human.’

‘Probably,’ Terri agreed.

Fox watched as the rat finished with its whiskers and darted under a desk. ‘Terri… AI labs aren’t noted for pets. What’s with the rat?’

‘Agnus? She’s not a rat. Or, she is a rat, but not a real one. She’s our only success from the Akh project. So far.’

‘Don’t recall that one.’

‘Immortality in digital form. We use nanomachines to take a brain apart and analyse the structure. The results are converted to a program which emulates the original brain.’ She paused. ‘It’s obviously a lot more complicated than that.’

‘Yeah. I’d kind of figured it would be.’

‘Yeah. So it works on rats. And if they stick to a viron we created for them, they do okay. They don’t even know they’re software. When we try to take them out… What you see there is a cyberframe with a v-tag overlaying the image. Agnus is the only one we managed to get to function in the frame. Took to it like…’

‘A rat to cheese?’

‘Ha ha, but pretty much. All the others go totally bug-o. One was irretrievable. Totally lost it even when we put him back in the viron. Just sat in a corner and shivered. We had to turn the poor little guy off. We’re a fair way off human testing, but if we ever even want to think about it, we’re going to have to understand what the problem is.’

‘Who’d want to have their brain reduced to mush and coded into a computer?’

‘You’d be amazed, but it really is something people are considering. You’d never die. You’d be out there, swimming in the internet ocean.’

Fox could see that Terri had considered the option more than a little seriously. ‘Until someone kicks the plug out.’

‘Huh. Hey, a thought comes to mind. There was a project up in Boston last year. Um… Criminal Minds, they called it. They were using AIs to explore the mental processes inherent in various criminals, serial murderers primarily. A couple of papers came out of it and then it was shut down last December.’

‘Why?’

‘Not sure. Funding was probably pulled. No commercial application or some such shit. Maybe they could shed some light on your killer.’

Fox frowned. ‘If it was shut down…’

‘People are still around. And maybe they have more data you could use to add detail to your profile. Hell, if it’s promising, maybe Palladium could get the project running again and get
more
data.’

‘Okay. Fancy an outing to Boston?’

Terri blinked. ‘Me?’

‘You speak psychologist and AI programmer, and I don’t.’

Terri looked at the virtual displays hanging over the desk she was using. ‘I have to have this wrapped today, which is why I’m in here… I guess I’m free tomorrow. If you track down the people from the project, I can go with you. Might be fun to do some investigation. Fieldwork, I mean.’

‘Okay, good. Just don’t get too carried away. I have to brief NAPA first thing tomorrow. We can head out about midday.’

‘Looking forward to it.’

Airborne, Northbound over the Atlantic, 11
^th
October.

‘I have had some difficulty locating all the people involved with the project,’ Kit said, sounding apologetic and a little annoyed.

‘Kit,’ Fox said, ‘if you’re having trouble, I’d say it indicates they’re hard to find, not that you haven’t done your job.’ Fox was watching Terri pilot the vertol; Terri had insisted on flying the aircraft saying that Fox got to fly Pythia’s ship.

‘Thank you, Fox. I have located two of the senior members and arranged interviews with them this afternoon. I will continue to look for more of them, but we will not be able to talk to all of them.’

‘Why so?’

‘We would need a medium. Three of the team have died since the project was closed down. One committed suicide, two died of natural causes. I have considered the probabilities and this seems slightly excessive.’

Fox nodded. ‘See if you can get details of the deaths.’

‘I will. Oh, a message from Captain Ungar came through just as we were taking off. They have started proceedings to move Silas Bent to Cold Harbour.’

‘Data came through?’

‘They located the machine Mister Bent was using to access the internet, and the guard who was supplying him with access to that machine. The guard is now awaiting trial and Captain Ungar now has a solid argument for shipping Mister Bent to a more secure facility.’

‘If your second killer is one of his disciples,’ Terri said, ‘that news might cause issues. He might step up the programme in revenge.’

‘Being callous about it, that might be a good thing. The one who hit the chapter house is cold, precise, and evil. The other one, I suspect, is a second-stringer. If he starts moving faster, he’ll screw up and that’s one off the streets. The only problem is that someone might have to die first.’

‘That’s a helluva problem. How did the briefing go with NAPA?’

‘About what you’d expect. Rutherford actually seemed glad I’d taken the chapter house. I’d imagine dealing with three dead Sisters while the rest glowered at her for not catching the guy yet would have been bad.’

‘Yeah. I’d imagine it would.’

‘Her captain was there, as well as Robbard from IA, both looking daggers at me.’

‘Water off a duck’s back?’

‘Don’t give a shit about either of them unless they get in the way. Seems like they’re staying out of it aside from watching.’

‘Let’s hope it stays that way.’

New York Metro.

Dillan was a little surprised when she was allowed through the police cordon to the crime scene, but Rutherford
was
looking like she needed all the help she could get. The detective was wearing an expression of profound annoyance as she stood a couple of metres back from the corpse, but there was an underlying, panicked energy about her, a fidgeting nervousness which she was failing to mask.

‘Where’s Meridian?’ Rutherford snapped as soon as she saw Dillan approaching.

‘Heading for Boston.’

‘Boston?!’

‘She wants to interview some academics she thinks might have some useful information,’ Dillan replied, shrugging, ‘and we didn’t know there was another body coming.
I
wasn’t expecting to be allowed up here.’

They were in an alley in Jersey, with another mutilated corpse. Dillan’s local knowledge was a little light in this area, but a quick search on the way over had uncovered the fact that there was a plaza nearby which was frequented by slightly upper-end street girls. This one might have regretted her choice of venue if she had lived.

‘You’ll get my report by tomorrow morning. I figured you might as well see the scene first-hand.’

‘Well then, thanks. Do we know who she is?’

‘Claire Rawlins. She has one arrest for illegal prostitution. Went legit after that. She was twenty-two.’

Dillan nodded. ‘Senseless waste of… This is the second one. The cuts are more proficient than last time, but he’s still far sloppier than the one who got into the chapter house.’

Rutherford gave a grunt: possibly agreement, though it was hard to tell. ‘That had to smart. Him getting past your security and killing three.’

‘You saw the reports. He sealed himself in a crate for two days to get past our security. The guy is… He’s not human. Anyway, my job doesn’t start until they get at their victim. I need to stop him killing another, just like you.’

Rutherford’s gaze was fixed on the body in front of her. ‘Doesn’t look like I’m doing a great job then, does it?’

Boston Metro.

Doctor Brandon Overman was a political sort of scientist. You could tell from the smile. Fox decided she disliked him almost immediately, but first impressions were not always a good indication of true character so she fixed a slight smile on her own face and let Terri handle the talking.

‘Doctor Overman,’ Terri said as she stepped up to the man’s desk and held out a hand, ‘I’m Teresa Martins, a–’

‘Of course, Doctor Martins,’ Overman said, cutting her off in his enthusiasm. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve read some of your papers on distributed AI systems. Most innovative.’

Terri smiled. ‘Thank you. And this is Tara Meridian, the CIO of Palladium Security Solutions.’

Overman was significantly less enthusiastic about shaking Fox’s hand, which she actually found rather amusing. ‘Of course I’ve heard of you, Miss Meridian.’ He put a very slight emphasis on the ‘Miss,’ as though he wanted to make it clear that there were two doctors in the room and Fox was clearly the inferior. His eyes shifted back to Terri. ‘You wanted to talk about Criminal Minds. You realise it was closed down almost a year ago?’

‘Yes,’ Fox said. ‘Why?’

‘Budget cuts.’ The man’s tone was sour. He took his seat again and left Fox and Terri to assume they could sit too. ‘We had funding for two years, but we were “not making sufficient progress” after eighteen months and they shut us down.’

‘I remember some of the papers you produced,’ Terri said. ‘I thought they showed a lot of promise. Could you explain the idea behind the project? For Tara’s benefit.’

‘Of course.’ The tone was indulgent as Overman prepared to dumb down his explanation for the layperson. Fox forced her jaw to unclench. ‘Essentially, we were creating… emulations of serial killers from history as AIs. The idea was to examine their thought processes in detail and produce memetic countermeasures designed to stop them wanting to kill people.’

‘Ambitious,’ Fox said. ‘I’m not so good on artificial intelligence, but my criminology is pretty good. You’d need multiple countermemes to work on all of them.’

‘Obviously. And multiple AIs representing the different motivational types.’

‘So you had a visionary?’

‘Harvey,’ Overman said, nodding. He seemed to be warming a little as Fox displayed at least some knowledge of the subject. ‘He was based on David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam” killer who claimed to receive his orders from a demon in the shape of a dog.’

Fox smiled. ‘Named Harvey. A thrill-killer… Hansen?’

‘Coral. Based on Carl “Coral” Watts. Lionel was based on Jeffrey Dahmer, his middle name. Teddy, the power and control killer, was based on Ted Bundy, of course. And there was Bent.’

‘Silas Bent. I met him recently.’

‘He was our media-influenced killer, emulating the Whitechapel murders.’

Fox waited a second for him to continue and, when he said nothing, she asked, ‘You didn’t do a mission-based killer? Jack would be the obvious one, but the Zebra killers might have been a more useful example.’

‘We had plans to, but the axe fell first.’

‘Oh,’ Fox said. ‘That’s a shame.’ The man was lying. She was sure of it, but not of why.