The Broken Window

Mameda shrugged. “Some things in life you have to get used to. It’s unfortunate. The land of the free is also the land of the prejudiced. I…” His voice faded as he glanced past and above Pulaski, as if someone were standing behind him. The cop turned slightly. No one was there. Mameda said, “Andrew said he wants full cooperation. So I’m cooperating. Could you ask me what you need to, please? It’s a busy evening.”

“People’s dossiers-closets, you call them?”

“Yes. Closets.”

“Do you ever download them?”

“Why would I download a dossier? Andrew wouldn’t tolerate that.”

Interesting: the wrath of Andrew Sterling was the first deterrent. Not the police or the courts.

“So you haven’t?”

“Never. If there’s a bug of some sort or the data are corrupt or there’s an interface problem, I may look at a portion of the entries or the headers but that’s it. Only enough to figure out the problem and write a patch or debug the code.”

“Could somebody have found your passcodes and gotten into innerCircle? And downloaded dossiers that way?”

He paused. “Not from me they couldn’t. I don’t have them written down.”

“And you go to the data pens frequently, all of them? And Intake too?”

“Yes, of course. That’s my job. Repair the computers. Make sure the data are flowing smoothly.”

“Could you tell me where you were on Sunday afternoon between twelve and four?”

“Ah.” A nod. “So that’s what this is really about. Was I at the scene of the crime?”

Pulaski had trouble looking at the man’s dark, angry eyes.

Mameda put his hands flat on the table, as if he were going to rise in anger and storm out. But he sat back and said, “I had breakfast in the morning with some friends…” He added, “They’re from the mosque-you’ll probably want to know.”

“I-”

“After that I spent the rest of the day alone. I went to the movies.”

“By yourself?”

“Fewer distractions. I usually go alone. It was a film by Jafar Panahi-the Iranian director. Have you ever see-” His mouth tightened. “Never mind.”

“You have the ticket stub?”

“No…After that I did some shopping. I got home at six, I’d guess. Checked to see if they needed me here but the boxes were running smoothly so I had dinner with a friend.”

“In the afternoon did you buy anything with a credit card?”

He bristled. “It was window-shopping. I got some coffee, a sandwich. Paid cash for it…” He leaned forward, whispered harshly, “I don’t really think you asked everybody all these questions. I know what you think of us. You think we treat women like animals. I can’t believe you’d actually accuse me of raping someone. That’s barbaric. And you’re insulting!”

Pulaski struggled to look Mameda in the eye as he said, “Well, sir, we are asking everybody with access to innerCircle about their whereabouts yesterday. Including Mr. Sterling. We’re just doing our job.”

He calmed slightly but continued to fume when Pulaski asked his whereabouts at the times of the other killings. “I don’t have any idea.” He refused to say any more and with a grim nod, stood and walked out.

Pulaski tried to figure out what had just happened. Was Mameda acting guilty or innocent? He couldn’t tell. Mostly he felt outmaneuvered.

Think harder, he told himself.

The second employee to be interviewed, Shraeder, was the opposite of Mameda: pure geek. He was gawky, the clothes ill-fitting and wrinkled, ink stains on his hands. His glasses were owlish and the lenses smeared. Definitely not in the SSD mold. While Mameda was defensive, Shraeder seemed oblivious. He apologized for being late-which he wasn’t-and explained that he’d been in the middle of debugging a patch. He then embarked on the details, speaking as if the cop had a degree in computer science, and Pulaski had to steer him back on track.

His fingers twitching, as if he were typing on an imaginary keyboard, Shraeder listened in surprise-or feigned surprise-when Pulaski told him about the murders. He expressed sympathy and then, in answer to the young officer’s questions, said he was in the pens frequently and could download dossiers, though he never did. He too expressed confidence that nobody could get access to his passcodes.

As for Sunday he had an alibi-he’d come into the office around 1 P.M. to follow up after a big problem on Friday, which he again tried to explain to Pulaski before the cop cut him off. The young man walked to the computer in the corner of the conference room, typed and then swiveled the screen for Pulaski to see. It was his time sheets. Pulaski looked over the entries for Sunday. He had indeed clocked in at 12:58 P.M. and didn’t leave until after five.

Since Shraeder had been here at the time Myra was killed Pulaski didn’t bother to ask about the other crimes. “I think that’ll be all. Thanks.” The man left and Pulaski sat back, staring out a narrow window. His palms were sweating, his stomach in a knot. He pulled his cell phone off its holster. Jeremy, the sullen assistant, was right. No damn reception.

“Hi, there.”