A young woman sat cross-legged in the center of the floor, curled over a laptop, between towers of hard drives. Blue hair hung over her teary eyes, glowing neon green from her screen. A fairy circle of crumpled energy-drink cans was scattered around her. Her typing was furious, her cries gentle.
In lieu of a name, her security badge read onlyINTERN.
She unplugged a drive, tossed it aside, and grabbed the next, only then noticing the police. She shrieked, dropped the drive, and raised her hands. Tin cans jumped where the drive landed. “No, no, no, this can’t be happening,” she said.
Beate holstered her gun, crouching to the girl’s eye level. She pulled her laptop away, then slid her headphones down. “It’s okay, dear. You work here?”
“Not if I don’t finish this,” whimpered the intern.
“I think it’s time to admit this job isn’t working out. What are you doing?”
“They told me to erase the drives. Then my phone went dead.”
“What’s on them?”
The intern sniffed. Techno pounded from her headphones. “I’m not supposed to say.”
“Let me guess, top of your class, but you need this job to graduate?” said Beate, her tone cushioned with compassion.
The intern wailed by way of confirmation.
Beate pouted, and gently said, “Don’t fret. You know, our digital forensics unit needs a new assistant. The department head, Sarah, isverynice. How about you bring these in, explain what you know, and we get you an interview?”
Her wailing ceased. “You’d do that… for me?” she said through stuttered breaths.
“Yup. I promise,” said Beate.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” said the intern meekly.
“That’d be a huge help. Let’s get you out of here.”
Andreas scavenged a paper cup of water from the abandoned break room. The poor girl was so overcaffeinated, she could fuel a power plant. As she sipped, the clock hit twelve and Haydn’s “Kaiserhymne” blasted, echoing through the chamber. The cup burst from her hands, splashing Andreas.
Back at the station. Sarah, interminably perky head of digital forensics, questioned the intern. Within an hour, she summoned the detectives to see something. “She’s clever. I can’t recover what she cleaned, but this is what’s left. You know how David Goldfinch wanted to put hidden cameras all over Vienna? Turns out, Glass House was running illegal beta tests.”
“Oida,” said Andreas, clasping the back of his neck.
“The drives contain beta test footage. Your intern spotted that certain files were accessed recently. Footage filmed about two weeks ago, the early hours of January twelfth.”
“Night of the murder,” said Beate.
“Tell meGlass House was surveilling the Hotel,” said Andreas, his expression hungry.
“Close. The Maria am Gestade Cathedral around the corner,” said Sarah, shaking messy short hair from her eyes as she clicked a video of David Goldfinch and Hedy walking down the church steps at 1:15 a.m. David, even drunk as he was, staggered to the edge of the frame, avoiding his own camera. Only Hedy was visible as they rounded the corner onto Tiefer Graben.
The next clip was from 2:50 a.m., at the opposite end of Tiefer Graben, where Fernando stood beneath the bridge. Across the road from him, the Professor’s escort Luisa walked by. She looked back.
“She was checking out the mystery man who let her out, said he went towards the canal,” said Andreas.
“This him?” said Sarah, starting the next clip, filmed a minute later by the Maria Cathedral’s steps.
Andreas recognized the dead man they’d found in Sterling’s storage unit, who she’d deemed the Third Man. He wore a white shirt and black trousers, and had his winter coat draped over his elbow and sweat stains on his chest. He scratched under the comically large mole on his chin.
“Watch closely,” said Sarah, as he neared the church. He dipped beneath an archway and emerged a moment later wearing a red shirt, a mustache, and no mole. Same guy, new disguise.
“How’d he do that?” asked Beate.
Andreas recalled the clothes Rita discovered on the stairs.
