“He was on your team? Did he work on anything sensitive?” Kyle asked.
“Everything we work on is sensitive, but he was working on the audio system. It’s considered glitter. You know, like sprinkles on a cupcake. Clarke doesn’t need a voice to talk to home base, but it’s one of those things that makes the project more interesting to the public. It’s like those freaky robots that look like hellhounds that are going to kill the world so they make sure they can do goofy dances. Justin was in charge of giving Clarke a human voice.”
“Maybe he can sing to us before he takes over the world and nukes us all from space,” Ian said with a shake of his head. “Sorry. I watched too much Terminator. Please proceed.”
Taggart wasn’t the only person who had reservations about what she did. Her father questioned her all the time. It made for fun holidays. “Three weeks ago, Pam Dodson went missing. I don’t believe for a second that she would up and quit and walk out on her kids. She has two, and I know she and her husband were having trouble, but I can’t buy the idea that she left a note saying she needed to find herself. She wasn’t that person.”
“Sometimes people do things that seem out of character,” Charlotte mused. “We can’t truly know what’s going on in a person’s head. Does the husband believe it?”
“I went by their house after she disappeared. He gave me some song and dance about how she’d been talking about taking a sabbatical from her boring life and going hiking.” She hadn’t bought anything Matt had told her.
“Okay, I understand that two people going missing in the same company in such a short amount of time seems odd, but I don’t see how they connect except that you knew both of them.” Deke had sat back, studying her.
“Pam was also working on audio.” How did she explain that this was an instinct? She was a scientist who believed in logic and hard facts, but she knew something was wrong with the project. Something dark. “Specifically on the way Clarke targets the transfer of audio, how he changes frequency for private messaging. When I tried to access her work, I found out someone had wiped it off her laptop. Everything. All of her notes. Her messages—even the ones to me—were all deliberately erased. She’s not working on new tech. What Pam does has been around for a long time. Why erase her background work? She wasn’t finished. Someone has to take over and now they have to start from scratch.”
“Why do you think it wasn’t an accident?” Taggart asked. “I know most research and tech companies have protocols including securing data when an employee leaves or is fired.”
“There’s no reason to secure this data,” she countered. “None. It actively hurts the project, and it wasn’t an accident. I was able to find the order to erase her systems. It came straight from Byrne himself.”
“How did you find the order?” Deke asked.
“I was left in Byrne’s office alone for a few minutes and I rifled through his notes,” she admitted. “He doodles a lot. He’s the kind of guy who’s always got to be in motion. He’s never still. Even when he’s in a meeting, he’s got a notepad and he’s drawing or sometimes making notes to himself. I looked through his notebook and he reminded himself to erase Pam. As far as I know he’d never met Pam. Why would he be concerned with a fairly low-level employee working on what was a basic system?”
“I agree that seems odd, but all of this is circumstantial. Pam is not an uncommon name. He could have been talking about a voicemail or some project notes you don’t know about. What do you think he’s doing?” Taggart asked.
There was a level of disbelief in Taggart’s tone that made her gut twist. “I’m not sure, but it has something to do with the audio team, and I think it’s curious that he’s been to Beijing five times in the last year. I know he works with manufacturers there. Most of the processors used in tech come out of Asia. But he lied about where he was going at least twice. He told me he was going to be in South Korea meeting with investors. I know he was in Beijing. I know it because of some texts he sent me.”
“He texts you personally?” Deke asked with a frown.
“Like I told you, we’ve gotten to be friendly in the last couple of months. In this case, he was sending me pictures of a dinner he was having. Like I said, he was supposed to be in Korea, but I know the restaurant he was in. I recognized it. He was in Beijing at a place where the manufacturers always take clients. I’ve been several times. He was drinking their signature drink.”