A muscle beneath Miranda’s left eye twitches. “Hardly anything, really. Only what I’ve learned through this investigation. I’d never heard of the man until a few weeks ago.”
Downs smiles his government-issue, “we’re all buddies here,” totally untrustworthy interrogator smile. “Understood. Just whatever pops into your head. I’m trying to get a more rounded picture. Everyone recalls different things, but when you put them all together, the puzzle begins to take shape, so to speak. Whatever you recall will be helpful.”
Miranda’s lips tighten, but then it seems she forces herself to relax them into a neutral shape. “Let’s see. Well, he’s obviously an expert at computer hacking.”
Downs chuckles like an affectionate uncle. “You can say that again!”
Miranda offers him a hesitant smile. “And judging by his demands and other communications, I’d say he’s quite well spoken. Intelligent, clearly. Educated.”
Downs is nodding, saying in a friendly way yep, uh-huh, that’s for sure, but at the same time, he’s slowly moving around to the front of her desk so he can get a better look at her expression as she speaks.
My gaze glued to her face, I turn on my heel and pace left.
“What was your reaction when you received his first demand for money?”
“Panic, quite frankly. I called Connor immediately because I thought it merited a thorough investigation. I saw what happened to Sony when they were hacked.” She shudders. “I wanted to avoid that.”
“And what did Connor find?”
When she looks to me as if for confirmation of what I might have told him, Downs says, “Unfortunately, he’s a bit too upset at the moment to provide anything useful.”
When he says the word “upset,” he makes a motion toward his head that’s supposed to be only for her, a conspiratorial gesture that suggests my mental function is sketchy right now on account of the recent relationship between my skull and the butt of a shotgun. Miranda’s mouth makes an O. She nods solemnly in understanding.
“After an initial scan of the network, there appeared to be nothing amiss. Connor then worked in conjunction with my internal IT team to tweak a few things, make the system bulletproof, et cetera.”
“But as it turned out the system wasn’t bulletproof.”
“That’s correct.”
“What happened?”
“Information was stolen. Proprietary information pertaining to the workings of the studio, our projects and the like, along with highly sensitive personnel files, electronic communications—”
“Emails, you mean,” clarifies Downs.
Miranda nods.
“Anything else?”
“Oh, the list was extensive. I’ll have my IT guys catalogue it for you.”
“That’s all right, I just wondered if there was anything else of particular value that came to mind.”
Miranda pauses for slightly longer than seems natural. “Yes, actually. My software was stolen.”
Downs lowers his rangy frame into one of the angular modern chairs in front of Miranda’s desk, crosses his long legs, removes the bottle of Tums from his pocket, and shakes a few out. As if only half listening, he says, “Oh?”
She drums the fingers of her left hand on the desktop. “InSight. It’s a statistical analysis product I developed myself to measure and predict audience engagement.”
Downs tosses back the antacids.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
“Huh. Developed it yourself? Impressive.” Over his shoulder, he asks the quadruplets, “Guys, did we know about this InSight thing?”
The one who’d been chewing the toothpick in the other room—at least I’m pretty sure it was him, they all look so freakily alike—says, “It’s in the report, Deputy Director.”
Downs turns back to Miranda with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Ms. Lawson. You’re not a stickler for titles, I’m not a stickler for reports. I like to leave the paperwork to the bean counters, if you know what I mean. I more of a big-picture guy.”
“I do know what you mean. I’m the same way myself. Leave the details to the underlings, I always say, it’s the big picture that really matters.”
“Exactly! That’s exactly what leadership is!” He slaps his palm on the metal arm of his chair. “Well, I can certainly see why you’re the big boss around here, I’ll tell you what.”
When Miranda smiles, pleased by his compliment, I realize Downs is doing his Columbo impression to soften her up, make her think he’s a bit of a doofus, get her to let her guard down.
It seems to be working.
Hurry, Downs. Hurry. I turn and pace the other direction.
“All right, Ms. Lawson, I’ll get out of your hair in just a moment. Sorry to bother you again, we’re almost done. Let’s recap. A few weeks ago, this Killgaard individual contacted you via email with a threat of extortion, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And after you received that threat, you took the appropriate precautions to prevent any breaches in your network, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And then he somehow got in anyway, yes?”
“Yes.”
His questions are coming faster. Her answers are easy, automatic. They’re getting into a rhythm.