Another cab flew by.
‘Holidays is when squirrels like Gault got no place to go and no one to see, so they entertain themselves the way he did the other night. And half the rest of the world gets depressed and leaves their husband, wife, blows their brains out or gets drunk and dies in a car wreck.’
‘Darn,’ I muttered, searching up and down the busy street. ‘If you’d like to assist in this endeavor, it would be appreciated. Unless you’d like to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.’
He stepped out into the street and waved his arms. Instantly, a cab veered toward us and halted. We got in. The driver was Iranian and Marino was not nice to him. When I returned to my room, I took a long hot bath and tried to call Lucy again. Dorothy, unfortunately, answered the phone.
‘How is Mother?’ I said right off.
‘Lucy and I spent the morning with her at the hospital. She’s very depressed and looks horrible. I think of all those years I told her not to smoke, and look at her. A machine breathes for her. She has a hole cut in her neck. And yesterday I caught Lucy smoking a cigarette in the backyard.’
‘When did she start smoking?’ I said, dismayed.
‘I have no idea. You see her more than I do.’
‘Is she there?’
‘Hold on.’
The receiver bumped loudly against whatever Dorothy set it on.
‘Merry Christmas, Aunt Kay,’ Lucy’s voice came over the line, and she did not sound merry.
‘It hasn’t been a very merry one for me, either,’ I said. ‘How was your visit with Grans?’
‘She started crying and we couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell us. Then Mother was in a hurry to leave because she had a tennis match.’
‘Tennis?’ I said. ‘Since when?’
‘She’s on another one of her fitness kicks.’
‘She says you’re smoking.’
‘I don’t do it much.’ Lucy dismissed my remark as if it were nothing.
‘Lucy, we need to talk about this. You don’t need another addiction.’
‘I’m not going to get addicted.’
‘That’s what I thought when I started at your age. Quitting was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was absolute hell.’
‘I know all about how hard it is to quit things. I have no intention of putting myself in a situation that I can’t control.’
‘Good.’
She added, ‘I’m flying back to Washington tomorrow.’
‘I thought you were going to stay in Miami at least a week.’
‘I’ve got to get back to Quantico. Something’s going on with CAIN. ERF paged me early this afternoon.’
The Engineering Research Facility was where the FBI worked on researching and designing highly classified technology ranging from surveillance devices to robots. It was here that Lucy had been developing the Crime Artificial Intelligence Network.
CAIN was a centralized computer system linking police departments and other investigative agencies to one massive database maintained by the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or VICAP. The point was to alert police that they might be dealing with a violent offender who has raped or murdered elsewhere before. Then, if requested, Wesley’s unit could be called in, as we had been by New York City.
‘Is there a problem?’ I asked uneasily, for there had been a serious problem in the recent past.
‘Not according to the audit log. There’s no record of anyone being in the system who isn’t supposed to be. But CAIN seems to be sending messages that he hasn’t been instructed to send. Something strange has been going on for a while, but so far I’ve been unable to track it. It’s as if he’s thinking for himself.’
‘I thought that was the point of artificial intelligence,’ I said.
‘Not quite,’ said my niece, who had a genius IQ. ‘These are not normal messages.’
‘Can you give me an example?’
‘Okay. Yesterday, the British Transport Police entered a case in their VICAP terminal. It was a rape that occurred in Central London in one of the subways. CAIN processed the information, ran details against its database and called back the terminal where the case had been entered. The investigating officer in London got the message that further information was requested on the description of the assailant. Specifically, CAIN wanted to know the color of the assailant’s pubic hair and if the victim had had an orgasm.’