Page 32 of Cruel Lies

With the push of a button, the supply-chain slide dissolves. In its place, a fresh timeline begins to draw itself across the screens from left to right, eighteen months wide.

I keep my voice cool and instructive. Emotion won't help me here. These men wantfacts.

Lucky for them, I have plenty.

Eight, to be specific.

"The subject here believed his activity was untraceable. He believed that because each individual data point was, on its own, perfectly mundane. A school pickup line sign-out log." Click. "A song played on a shared account at 2:51 in the afternoon." Click. "A smart-scale reading from a bathroom that should rightfully have been empty."

The room is attentive. Somebody's chair stops squeaking. I have a very good guess whose chair that might be.

"Each one looks innocent," I say. "Easily explained away. But, as I said, the human eye can't hold them all at once."

Click.

"… The engine can."

The streams snap toward each other across the timeline. I turn to face the table, and I let my gaze land, just for a heartbeat, on Todd.

"Is this built off vendor data?" another MD asks.

I shake my head. "No. I used a personal contact of mine."

"Oh," he says, "so, like, a volunteer?"

I smile viciously. "… Not exactly."

Todd whimpers, then turns it into a coughing grunt.

But he gets it.

Even in this dark room, with only the glow of the screen to illuminate his face, I can see how ashy and sickly he looks. He knows what the next slide contains. In one more click, everything he knows turns to shit.

"Cali," he growls, in that hushed mutter he uses in public whenever he thinks I'm embarrassing myself—or, worse, embarrassinghim. "I don't think this is the— Maybe we step out and?—"

"This data set is comprised of eight streams in total," I announce over him. "Let me walk you through them."

Click.

The dashboard rebuilds itself.

Gone are the trucks and invoices. In their place, eight rows snap into view, color-coded, stacked, every one timestamped, every one cross-referenced against the others.

"Stream one," I say. "A smart bathroom scale. Mine, to be specific. But how was I weighing in from three thousand miles away? And weighing in atforty pounds lessthan my actual weight? Strange, right?"

The room has gone quiet in a new way. I think Todd might vomit before I reach the end.

"Stream two. On the Spotify account I share with my husband, Todd Bradshaw, a single song has been played repeatedly, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon for the last three weeks.Wonderful Tonight,Eric Clapton, in case you're curious. I love that song. Well, I used to. A little less so, these days."

Click.

"Stream three. The location history of my husband's iPhone, rendered as a heat map. You'll notice a few anomalies that the program caught. For instance, what's an investment banker doing athomeon Tuesdays and Thursdays? Why does a man with a brownstone on the Upper West Side seem to regularly visit a one-bedroom bachelor pad in Murray Hill? Better yet, why was he therean hour ago?"

"Cali." Todd is growing paler and paler with every slide. "Stop."

"Stream four." I'm looking right at him now, merciless. "Starting eighteen months ago, Todd suddenly seemed extremely eager in picking up our kids from school. He used to suggest we make them Uber home. What could be drawing him to PS 234? Will the engine find out? Let's see."

Glover has uncrossed his arms. He's looking between me and Todd with equal parts irritation and disgust.