The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(52)

Carl leaned back. “I mean, I suppose it could be anything. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Mr. Guardian of American Justice and Values makes a personal appearance in those videos. You sure your client didn’t say anything about that?”

“No,” Hamilton said. “He didn’t.”

“Did he give you any specifics at all?”

“No.”

“Well, what did he tell you?”

Hamilton looked at Livia. “He told me he had designed the system so that if anything happened to him, the videos would be uploaded.”

Diaz nodded. “He told me the same.”

“There’s more,” Hamilton said. “The system . . . He has to operate it himself. It’s not like a normal account, where you can log in from anywhere if you know the URL, the username, and a password.”

“What do you mean?” Livia said. “Operate it himself how?”

“He has keypads in his houses. Look, I’m not technical, I don’t know the details.”

“Okay,” Livia said, suppressing her excitement. “But what did you tell Hobbs about the system?”

“Why does that even matter?”

“Because,” Carl said, “there’s a substantial likelihood that right now, your client is being tortured for information about this system you say he set up. And it would be handy for us to have some idea of what he might be telling his torturers, and what they might then do about it.”

“The initial plan was to kill me,” Diaz said. “In Freeway Park this morning. Without me to spearhead the indictment, the whole thing would have fallen apart. Schrader would have walked.”

“But when that didn’t work,” Livia said, “they shifted to some kind of alternative plan involving Schrader himself. Given that Schrader was the secondary plan and not the primary, we’ve been operating on the assumption that Schrader told someone about the dead-man switch. It sounds like that person was Hobbs, through you.”

Hamilton nodded. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Livia said. “But now it sounds like they can’t stop the system without going to one of Schrader’s houses. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Hamilton said. “But it’s more than that. Andrew said he has to personally reset it.”

“Biometrics,” Carl said. “That would be my guess. Although I hope for Schrader’s sake he didn’t rely on just a fingerprint reader. Otherwise, they’re not going to escort him to one of his nice houses. Just his hands in a bucket of ice.”

Hamilton lost some color. “No, it’s more than just fingerprints. Andrew said there’s something about a voice-stress analyzer, too. To make sure he’s not being coerced.”

“Whoever has your client,” Larison said, “you better hope they’re invested in keeping those videos suppressed. Because if what they want is for the videos to be released, all they have to do now is snuff him and let his system do its automated thing.”

Livia had been thinking along the same lines. “It’s possible,” she said. “But they didn’t need to break him out of jail for that.”

She summarized for Manus. He said, “I think Larison is onto something.”

Everyone looked at Manus. He’d been quiet for so long.

“Rispel wanted me to kill you,” he said to Diaz. “And wanted Dox and Larison to kill me after. So that Schrader could go free, the way he did six years ago. When that didn’t work, they broke him out of jail. But being let out, and being broken out, aren’t the same thing. The second one doesn’t take the pressure off him. He can’t enjoy his houses, his lifestyle, his rape parties. It’s not what he wants. It’s not what Hamilton was playing for when as his lawyer she tried to make a deal with the attorney general.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment, digesting that.

“In other words,” Manus went on, “the first plan was to give him what he wanted. The second is to get someone else . . . what they wanted.”

Livia nodded, thinking Manus might have made a good cop. “We know it was Rispel who hired you,” she said. “You think someone else broke Schrader out of prison?”

“It’s a different plan,” Manus said. “With a different objective. That could mean a different party. Or it could mean Rispel changed her mind. She was playing for one thing, and then decided to play for something else.”

It was a sound framework. What they needed were more inputs.

“Okay,” Livia said. “If the current plan is to cause an automatic upload, Schrader is probably dead already. If the plan is different . . . getting control of the videos for blackmail, something like that . . . they’re going to have to take Schrader to one of his houses. Ms. Hamilton, do you know where those houses are?”

“You can call me Sharon.”

“I’ll call you Ms. Hamilton.”

Hamilton looked taken aback. It would never stop amazing Livia. The collaborators. The enablers. The familiars. They never felt culpable.

After a moment, Hamilton said, “Yes. My firm sets up the entities through which the real estate is purchased and held.”

“How many houses are we talking about?”

“Six. The Bainbridge Island compound here in Washington State, which is the primary residence. The others are in Los Angeles, New Mexico, Aspen, Wyoming, and New York.”