The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(91)

“Wait a minute,” Rain said. “Why didn’t you say any of this earlier?”

Maya shrugged. “You guys had this plan. They were already on the way to Schrader’s house. And I thought maybe I was missing something.”

“I don’t know that you were,” Rain said. “From what you’re telling me, probably Schrader could have reset the system. But the rest . . . Now it sounds like they were asking for a tour of a building from a guy who never even went inside it, let alone drew up the plans. Is that accurate?”

Maya looked at Evie. They both nodded.

“But somebody designed it,” Delilah said. “Who?”

Rain looked at her. He’d dragged her into this shitshow, and once she’d aired her concerns, she set them all aside. He’d caught the way she’d been looking at him earlier, when he was talking to Yuki. The expression somewhere between irritated and jealous. He’d been expecting a lot of questions. But there hadn’t been any. In the end, all she cared about was backing him. He didn’t know how he was going to make it up to her. But he would.

For a moment, no one said anything. Then Maya looked at Evie and said, “Grimble?”

Evie nodded. “Could be. Someone who could architect something like this. Someone Schrader knew and trusted . . .”

“Who’s Grimble?” Rain said.

“Constantine Grimble,” Maya said. “They met when Schrader was just a trust-fund baby and Grimble was a prodigy at MIT. Grimble’s on the spectrum, and a lot of people think Schrader exploited him, because Schrader got all the fame, but who knows? They both got rich, or in Schrader’s case richer, and celebrity seemed to be Schrader’s thing a lot more than it was Grimble’s.”

“Where’s Grimble now?” Rain said.

“I don’t know,” Maya said. “He’s supposed to be a recluse. With some kind of hobby he’s really into, toy soldiers or something like that.” She looked at Evie. “Do you know where he lives?”

Evie shook her head. “No. He gave a talk at NSA once, but for the most part he stays out of the public eye.”

Rain looked at her. “Is he still close with Schrader?”

“I don’t know,” Evie said. “But I’ve never heard about any kind of rift. And when people asked him at his presentation, he was complimentary. Maya’s right, by the way. I talked to him at length. He’s definitely on the spectrum.”

“How so?” Rain said.

Evie blew out a breath. “He doesn’t look in people’s eyes, for one thing. His presentation was fine, maybe because it was all about math, and that’s comfortable for him, but he stared at the ceiling the whole time. And when I talked to him afterward, there were tics, some echolalia.”

“Echolalia?”

“Repeated words. And instead of looking at the ceiling, he never took his eyes off my chest. And it wasn’t . . . like, sometimes you’ll catch a man doing that, and okay, he realizes he got busted, he’ll look away. Or sometimes it’ll be an asshole who’ll keep stealing glances because he thinks he has the right. But Grimble . . . he just didn’t seem to know better. Didn’t realize he was being rude, or committing a faux pas, or whatever. On the one hand, we were engaging as peers about some pretty high-level applied math. On the other hand, it was though he was talking to a pair of breasts, not a person.”

Rain nodded, wondering whether what he was thinking was too much of a long shot.

“Look,” Evie said, “I think I see where you’re going. But remember, even if Grimble architected Schrader’s video system, the dead-man switch, all that . . . there’s still the biometrics. And the passcode, which would be Schrader’s.”

“Unless . . . ,” Maya said.

Evie looked at her. “Good point.”

Rain looked from one to the other. “What?”

“Unless he created a back door,” Evie said.

“Would he have?” Rain said.

“I would have,” Maya said. “Any hacker would.”

Evie nodded. “That’s right. Or if not a back door, he might have just kept a spare set of keys.”

Rain wondered whether they had both decided to dumb down the references for his benefit. If they had, it probably wasn’t a bad idea. “Then it sounds like Grimble could be the solution,” he said.

Delilah looked at Maya and Evie. “You found out where Rispel was holding Schrader. Can you find Grimble? And determine the extent to which he might have helped design Schrader’s system?”

Evie said, “There’s almost nothing Guardian Angel can’t find. And I’ve never seen anyone use it like Maya.”

Maya smiled. “Thanks.”

Delilah looked at Rain. “All right. Assume Evie and Maya can find him. And that we’re confident he’s the architect. We can ask for his help. But what if he says no?”

“We’re not going to ask,” Rain said. “Larison is.”





chapter

sixty-two





RISPEL


Rispel sat at her desk, the late afternoon sun slanting through the windows.

Schrader’s house had been yet another disaster in what was turning out to be the most cursed op she’d ever been involved in. Four more contractors killed. And Schrader, dead. Police reports said there were signs he’d received medical attention. Had he given Kanezaki’s people the keys to his system before he died? Shown them how it worked?