“Hear me out,” Kaori said. “NSA has trawled all of Holtzman’s comms now. And it turns out he was doing a lot of encrypted and anonymous data routing. Almost all of his personal comms were that way, actually. Especially the last couple months. But he didn’t do it at the office. Big risk, right, doing that on a DHS campus? Except the night he died. Two data calls, terrible bitrate because of Zoe, but he did it. Twenty-eight minutes in total. And the second call terminates at the same timestamp as the video of his death does.”

Kaori sat there, looking proud of herself.

Pryce shook her head. “That provides some validation for the video. Some. But nothing about the files.”

Kaori nodded. “Next point.” She tapped a surface, and the wallscreen advanced, showing one of the memos that purported to create the PLF. “The files released. They’re not text. They’re not data. They’re images. And they show signs of having been taken slightly off angle, and then rotated and keystoned to fix that. And the image quality is better…” Kaori tapped again. A roughly circular red highlight appeared in the middle of the image. “In an area consistent with the higher resolution of a human fovea.”

“Hmm,” Pryce said. “Possibly. Circumstantial, though.”

Kaori shrugged. “My gut says this is it, boss.”

“Let’s say you’re right. Holtzman dies. The video and files appear online hours later. Is he working from the grave? Deadman switch?”

Kaori shook her head. “My guess is he had help. You asked me to pull his calls from NSA. He did a lot of encrypted data connections. But he made one or two odd unencrypted calls. And one was to this woman.”

A face appeared on the screen. Late thirties, perhaps, red hair, green eyes.

“Lisa Brandt,” Kaori said. “They had an affair at MIT when she was his grad student. Would have been a scandal, but no one ever found out, including his wife. Except NSA, of course. No contact for eight years. Then he runs into her on the Capitol steps. Two weeks later he calls in sick to work, takes the train to Cambridge to meet her.”

Pryce looked at her deputy. “Could be nothing. Maybe they were just starting up their affair again?”

Kaori nodded. “Could be. But three special things about Dr Brandt.” Kaori turned and looked up at Pryce. “One, she lobbies for CogLiberty, for Nexus legalization.”

Pryce raised an eyebrow at that.

“Two,” Kaori said, “There’s quite a lot of encrypted, anonymized traffic on her accounts as well.”

Pryce nodded.

“And three,” Kaori said. “FBI put her home under direct surveillance five days ago, following up on this. And they found Nexus transmissions.” Kaori tapped the screen, and the image changed again, to an interior view, a bedroom, a crib, and inside it, a tiny bundle, a small human inside.