Micro. Michael Crichton

up, somehow, somewhere—there was always a faint chance. Or had Eric been…murdered? Finally he couldn’t stand being in his room any longer, and he went outside.

      He sat on the beach in front of his hotel, watching the red streaks of the setting sun darken to black over the ocean. Why hadn’t he told the police officer that he recognized her in the video? It had been a kind of instinct to say nothing. But why? What had made him do it? When he and Eric had been younger, they had looked out for each other. Eric had covered for him. He had covered for Eric…

      “There you are!”

      He turned to see Alyson Bender approaching in the evening light. She wore a blue Hawaiian print dress and sandals, looking quite different than she had in Cambridge, when she’d worn a business suit and pearls. Here, she looked like an innocent young girl.

      “Why didn’t you call me? I thought you were going to call me right after you were done with the police. How did it go?”

      “It went okay,” Peter said. “They took me to that point—Makapu‘u Point—and showed me where it happened.”

      “Uh-huh. And is there any news? I mean, about Eric?”

      “They still haven’t found him. Or the body.”

      “And the boat?”

      “What about it?”

      “Did the police check the boat?”

      “Oh, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “They didn’t say.”

      She sat on the sand beside him, put her hand on his shoulder. Her hand was warm. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that, Peter, it must have been awful for you.”

      “It was difficult. The police had a videotape.”

      “Videotape? Really? Did you see it?”

      “Yes.”

      “And? Was it helpful?”

      Had she really not seen the video camera in the hands of the couple seated just below her on the hillside? Was it possible she was only looking at the boat? Her eyes scanned his face in the twilight. He said, “I saw Eric jump…but he never came up.”

      “How awful,” she said softly.

      Her hand moved to squeeze his shoulder, rub it. He wanted to tell her to stop, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. The whole thing was incredibly creepy.

      “And what do the police think?” she said.

      “About what?”

      “About what happened? I mean, on the boat.”

      “They think it was a clogged—”

      His cell phone rang. He fished it out of his shirt pocket, flipped it open. “Hello.”

      “This is Jorge.”

      “One moment.” He stood, said to Alyson, “Excuse me a moment, I have to take this.” He walked some distance down the beach. Stars were starting to come out in the darkening sky above. “Go ahead, Jorge.”

      “I have the information you want for the phone number you gave me. The number is registered to the Nanigen MicroTechnologies Corporation of Honolulu. Attached to the number is the employee name Alyson F. Bender.”

      He looked back along the beach; Alyson was a dark shape on the sand. “Go on,” he said.

      “At three forty-seven p.m. yesterday afternoon local time, she called the number 646-673-2682 three times in a row.”

      “Whose number is that?”

      “It’s an unassigned number, for one of those junk phones you can buy and use until the prepayment runs out.”

      “She called three times?”

      “Yes, but very briefly—three seconds, then two seconds, then three seconds.”

      “Okay…Meaning she didn’t think she was getting through?”

      “No, she clearly got through, no answering message, it went right to the beep. She knew she connected. Two possibilities. Either she kept calling because she was expecting the person to pick up, or she was triggering a device of some kind.”

      “A device… ?”

      “Yup. You wire a cell phone to set off some device when there’s an incoming call.”

      “Okay, so three calls in a row. What then?”

      “At three fifty-five she called another number at Nanigen, assigned employee name Vincent A. Drake. You want to hear that call?”

      “Sure.”

      Ringing, then the click of a pick-up.

      VIN: Yes?

      ALYSON: (breathless) It’s me.

      VIN: Yes?

      ALYSON: Listen, I’m worried, I don’t know if it worked or not. There should have been smoke or something—

      VIN: Excuse me.

      ALYSON: But I’m worried—

      VIN: Let me stop you there.

      ALYSON: You don’t understand—

      VIN: Yes, I do understand. Now listen. You are on the phone. I need you to speak…more exactly.

      ALYSON: Oh.

      VIN: You understand what I am saying?

      ALYSON: (pause) Yes.

      VIN: Okay. Now. Where is the object?

      ALYSON: (pause) Not available. Vanished.

      VIN: Okay. Then I don’t see a problem.

      ALYSON: I am still worried.

      VIN: But the object did not reappear?

      ALYSON: No.

      VIN: Then I suggest there is no problem. We can discuss this further in person but not now. Are you coming back now?

      ALYSON: Yes.

      VIN: All right. See you soon.

      Click.

      Jorge said, “There are two other calls. Want to hear them?”

      “Maybe later.”

      “Okay. I’ve e-mailed them to you as .wav files. You should be able to listen to them on your computer.”

      “Thanks.” Peter looked back at Alyson, and shivered. “Can I take this to the police?”

      “No way in hell,” Jorge said. “You need a court order to access this stuff. You take it to them, you ruin any chance of prosecution. Illegal search and seizure. Also—you’ll, uh, put me in a jam.”

      “Then what should I do?”

      “Hm—yuh,” Jorge grunted. “I don’t know—get them to confess.”

      “How?”

      “Sorry, can’t help you there,” Jorge said. “But if you need more phone records, call any time,” and he hung up.

      Peter walked back to Alyson, feeling a cold sweat on his body. It was getting dark now, her expression impossible to read. She sat very still on the sand. He heard her say, “Is everything all right?”

      “Yes, fine.”

      In fact, Peter felt as if he was drowning, overwhelmed by onrushing events. All his life he had been a student, and until now, he felt his life experiences had given him a clear—even cynical—sense of his fellow human beings and what they were capable of. Over the years, he’d had to deal with cheating students, students dispensing sexual favors in exchange for grades, students falsifying their results, and with professors who appropriated student work. In one bizarre instance, there’d been a