Seven Ways to Die by William Diehl Page B

constantly scanning for viruses or hackers. Nobody can bust through, we got better security than the CIA. And all our cell phones and laptops are interfaced and simul-recorded with my main frame up front.
    “I can tape phone conversations, tape recorders, video, still photos off the laps. Everything. Also the vehicles are all bugged so whoever’s driving them can push a foot-button and tape anyone in the car and it transmits back to me immediately. All vehicles are GPS connected so we track them twenty-four seven. In short? Instant communication and no repetition. And nobody ever gets lost.” He stopped and smiled, as if awaiting applause.
    “Turn around,” he said.
    She turned to face the front of the room. Mounted in the middle of the wall was a huge eight-foot screen on which was displayed a satellite scan in real time of Manhattan and part of the lower Bronx. On each side of the main screen, mounted vertically, were three flat 42-inch TV screens.
    Near the bottom of the map of Manhattan squeezed in among the tightly interwoven streets near Little Italy was an oblong block outlined in black. Using a complex remote controller, Hue zoomed into the area. The block slowly morphed into the headquarters building and filled the screen. Then the image tilted and she was looking at the front door she had entered.
    “I can’t see through walls,” Hue said. “But I can put you on the doorstep of any building, house, park or structure in the city, from the Battery to the Bronx Zoo.”
    He zoomed back until the screen was filled with a photograph of lower Manhattan. A green icon was moving south down Broadway.
    “That’s Cody,” he said. “Heading home.”
    The scanner panned up to Central Park and to the right to 73rd Street and zoomed down to Madison Avenue and then to the east. Hue settled the screen on a single house and zoomed and tilted the satellite image until the front of the brownstone nearly filled the screen.
    “That,” he said, “is the scene of last night’s crime. Now I can overlay the still shots of the interior that Wolf emailed me from his laptop and that’s how we brief the squad.”
    “You’re working a case now?”
    He pointed to a timer in the upper corner of the big screen. It read: “01:43:” and the seconds were clicking off.
    “Cal Bergman made the case at 7:02. We’re an hour and forty-three minutes into it already. When that timer hits 48:00 it turns red and we’re on the killer’s time.”
    “Not a job for sissies,” Kate murmured, remembering what Phyllis Martingale had told her when she decided to interview for the position Phyllis was leaving.
    “That’s about it,” Hue answered.
    Kate looked back at the big board with astonishment.
    “And you designed all this?”
    “Yeah,” Hue said. “Took about eighteen months to get it running, another six to work out the bugs. The side screens are used to exhibit the case in progress. One lists suspects, another, evidence, one for the timeline, etcetera. Every aspect of the case in progress can be accessed as it develops. The same information is available to each of the squad members on their desktops and laptops as well as audio of interviews or comments by the investigators.”
    “Is everybody as smart as you are, Vinnie?”
    He shrugged. “All I did was the dog work. The concept was the Captain’s.”
    “You call this dog work?” she said, sweeping her hand toward the huge display.
    “Oh, I don’t mean it negatively,” he replied quickly. “I’m not thirty yet. Most guys in my business would never have a chance like this. I mean, to have the resources and opportunity to do something this ambitious? Hey, that’s the dream of a lifetime.”
    “How long have you known Cody?”
    “Since the beginning. Six years ago. I was one of the first guys he hired. I was in the Master’s Program at Rensselaer. One of my teachers is Cap’s best friend. He knew what the Captain wanted to do and he recommended me. Cap flew up to