McKean S04 The Re-Election Plot

  Kyle Smith’s body lay sprawled along the gutter in front of Immune Corporation when I came out the front doors into the cold Seattle drizzle. Two cops, freshly arrived at the scene, had yet to cordon off the area or control anything. Blood running from Kyle’s cracked cranium mingled with the rainwater on the pavement and the sight of it oozing toward a storm drain made my stomach flip flop. I got on my cell as frantically as my worst day in Baghdad and phoned upstairs to Peyton McKean like I was calling for air support.

  “Get down here, quick!” I shouted. “Smith’s been shot, just like he said would happen.”

  McKean hurried down from the third floor, still in his white lab coat, arriving just as a second police car pulled up with its lights flashing. We got a close look at Smith before the officers pressed back the crowd, which at first was just us and the woman who made the 911 call but soon swelled to dozens of people attracted by the squad car lights. Tourists and businesspeople walking along the piers of the waterfront spilled across Alaskan Way, over the trolley tracks and under the concrete span of the viaduct with its roaring traffic overhead, drawn by morbid curiosity.

  Kyle Smith had fallen facedown in a splayed-out posture like he was dead before he hit the ground. A small gunshot entry wound penetrated his skull behind his left ear. He lay in the gap between two parked cars, one of which was my Ford Mustang. The midnight blue paint on its right front fender and hood was spattered with Smith’s blood.

  McKean approached a young female cop tying crime scene tape to a street tree and said, “I know this man.”

  “Knew him,” the officer corrected tersely. She was a short woman with short brown hair and a nametag above a breast pocket that read STANWOOD. She tented up the tape, standing on tiptoes to allow McKean to duck his lanky six and a half foot frame under. I followed McKean, saying, “I knew him too,” though that stretched the truth as much as she was stretching the tape to let us through.

  Two other cops were interviewing the female 911 caller, using the unsullied top of my Mustang’s trunk as a desk for their paperwork. She explained that she’d come out of a furniture store and heard a muffled shot and saw a heavyset man in a navy blue pea coat and dark stocking cap hurrying away.

  Stanwood interrupted the interviewers. “These guys knew the victim.”

  In a moment we were talking to three cops at once. McKean explained that Kyle Smith was a University of Washington Professor of Computer Science, and that he and McKean were collaborating on the molecular imaging of DNA and protein molecules in McKean’s biotechnology labs. “Smith was a top-flight imaging programmer,” McKean explained. “We hoped our collaboration would lead to medical breakthroughs.”

  McKean tends to digress into scientific detail, so I cut to the point and said, “Dr. Smith just told us a short while ago that if he got killed, somebody ought to talk to Ali Yamani.” The officers barraged me with questions, and I explained that I was a medical news reporter covering the collaboration between McKean and Smith, until this horrific event terminated our tidy little undertaking.

  “So, who’s this Yamani character?” asked Officer Stanwood.

  I shrugged. “No idea.”

  McKean said, “I’d never heard his name before Smith mentioned it today.”

  “Did you ask what he meant by the remark?” Stanwood asked.

  “He seemed to think better of it,” McKean replied. “Said he took it all back. Never should have brought it up. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Not a lot to go on,” said Stanwood.

  After more questioning about our recollections of Smith’s remark, I asked when I could take my car out of their perimeter.

  “Not any time soon,” Stanwood replied. “Ballistics and Evidence are going to want to go over it with a fine-toothed comb.”

  Watching her colleagues cover Smith with a yellow plastic sheet while traffic droned drearily above us on the gray concrete roadway of the viaduct, she said, “Yamani sounds like an Arab name, and this sure as hell is a homicide. So tell me doc,” she asked McKean, who was indulging one of his curious habits, rocking gently from his toes to his heels with his hands knit behind his back like an impatient schoolteacher waiting for class to end. “Do you see any connection here to terrorists?”

  “Answer: no,” McKean asserted. “Smith never mentioned Arabs or terrorists. I took his remark about his impending murder to be a joke of some kind. Our interest was keyed on science, not assassination or international intrigue.”

  * * * * *

  An hour later, Kyle Smith’s body left in a coroner’s van. Officer Stanwood followed us into ImCo, wanting to see the last whereabouts of Smith before his demise. McKean showed her around the labs, ending at Smith’s temporary office, which was a Spartan space with a view of traffic rushing past on the viaduct. The shelves were bare with the exception of a few thick books on computer programming and computer graphics.

  “A rather meager space,” McKean explained, “loaned to him begrudgingly by ImCo’s head honchos for his computer programming while collaborating with me. I thought you’d be particularly interested in it, because this is the very place where Smith mentioned the death threat while Fin and I sat in those two guest chairs, discussing molecular modeling.”

  Stanwood looked around the bare walls and shelves, and then her eyes fell on the computer, a modest-sized but, as I knew, highly powered machine centered atop the small desk. She touched the radio handset clipped to her shoulder and said, “Captain, tell Evidence they should send a team up after they finish with the crime scene.”

  The desk was, like the room, nearly devoid of clutter: just a few books, pens, pencils and scribbled-upon notepads, not surprising given that Smith had occupied it for only two months. Stanwood sat in Smith’s chair and rummaged through the sparse drawer contents and thumbed through a computer manual lying on the desktop without remark. Then she pressed the spacebar of the computer keyboard and its screen lit up with a background photo of Mount Rainier. Across it were scattered a dozen icons representing Smith’s projects at ImCo.

  “Any idea what all this is?” Stanwood asked.

  “Answer: yes,” McKean responded. “They’re computer programs that produce animated molecular models of proteins.”

  “Proteins?” Stanwood puzzled. “You mean, like food or something?”

  “Or something,” McKean replied. “Proteins are the active molecules of the body. The molecules that make muscles move, or that make your liver burn off alcohol.”

  Stanwood seemed interested, so, as will happen with scant provocation, Dr. McKean went into lecture mode.

  “Kyle Smith and I have been developing a new imaging software capable of producing movies of protein molecules in motion. For example, here is a proteinase.” He took the mouse and clicked an icon and the screen displayed a very complex looking molecule. “In this image, he’s rendered a digestive enzyme made of literally tens of thousands of spherical billiard-ball shaped atoms clumped together in an over-all form that is approximately Pac-Man shaped. A prodigiously intricate image I might add, and one Dr. Smith and I were quite proud of.”

  McKean clicked on a toolbar at the bottom of the screen and the image went into motion. Its knobby surface of thousands of atoms rippled and flexed and it began a slow tumbling motion set against a clear blue watery background. As we watched, another equally complex protein floated onscreen. “That’s lactalbumin, a milk protein,” McKean narrated. Watching the new molecule, shaped rather like a kidney bean, float toward the proteinase, he said, “You are witnessing the digestive process on a molecular level.” When the two molecules collided, the Pac-Man-like proteinase bit into the lactalbumin molecule and tore loose a large chunk, which floated
away from the molecular victim like a dismembered body part after a shark strike. The proteinase continued cutting slices loose from the lactalbumin molecule, which shrank with each attack. “In the end,” McKean expounded, “proteinases reduce the milk protein to its component parts, which are amino acids, rendered here in fine atomic detail by my, er, late colleague, Kyle Smith.”

  At his mention of the dead man’s name we fell silent, watching the proteinase complete its molecular murder, rendered by Smith in such fine, high-definition detail that I felt I’d been reduced to atomic size to witness the event.

  “I’m impressed,” Stanwood said, “but I don’t see anything that looks like a clue to Smith’s murder.”

  “Nor do I,” McKean agreed as the film ended and reverted to the desktop image. He leaned near the computer and eyed the screen along his straight, shepherd-dog nose for a moment and then murmured, “Now, what’s this file?” He pointed the mouse arrow at an icon representing a movie canister with a coil of film hanging out. It was named, simply: “Yamani.”

  McKean doubled clicked and when the film segment started, we all caught our breath. At a podium, lecturing reproachfully in Arabic was the too-familiar bearded and robed figure of Osama bin Laden.

  “Bingo!” exclaimed Stanwood. “Evidence is going to want to see this.”

  As if on cue, a voice came from behind. “We’re here.”

  Two cops, one male and one female, entered the room, making the small place so crowded that McKean and I were obliged to step outside. Our curiosity about the video clip was frustrated as the trio of officers shut down and unplugged the computer and packed it into a large clear plastic evidence bag.

  Minutes later, as they were leaving with Smith’s computer in hand, Stanwood said, “That’s it, gentlemen. If we need anything else from you, we’ll be in touch.”

  Watching the three cops troop down the hall to the elevator, I said to McKean, “That may be all they need from us, but I want to see the rest of that bin Laden tape.”

  “I can cure your frustration, Fin,” McKean responded with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

  “How?”

  “Let’s call for backup.”

  Mystified, I followed him down a hall to his office, where he summoned Terrence Wimple, ImCo’s Information Technology geek. A small, round-shouldered, unprepossessing guy with coke bottle glasses, Wimple sat at McKean’s computer and keyed in commands to retrieve backup copies of Smith’s files from ImCo’s main computer. Smiling smugly, the way IT guys do when showing simple tricks to the uninitiated, he said, “If you need anything else - “

  “We’ll call,” McKean completed the thought, and Wimple got up and gave back his seat. A moment later, Wimple was gone and bin Laden was sternly lecturing on the screen. “I recognize this video,” McKean said. “It’s the one that appeared two days before the presidential election in 2004.”

  “I remember it too,” I exclaimed. “The terrorists were trying to hurt George Bush’s chances of re-election.”

  McKean shook his head. “I subscribe to the theory that the video helped re-elect him by creating fear in the American public, causing them to vote for the status quo. Probably helped a number of other incumbent candidates as well.”

  He clicked on a toolbar, freezing bin Laden in mid-sentence. “Look here,” he remarked, pointing at a line written in a data table at the side of the image. “File Source: Ali Yamani. That’s interesting.”

  He used the computer’s search engine to find another file with Yamani in its name and clicked it open. It was an email from Yamani to Kyle Smith. It read:

  Professor Smith,

  If anyone questions you regarding that video, I warn you to deny knowing anything about it. Otherwise, your life will be in danger. - Ali Yamani

  “An ambivalent statement,” McKean observed. “Unclear if it’s a threat but it’s certainly the cause of Smith’s remark. Its wording suggests Yamani and Smith knew each other and had seen or discussed the video at an earlier time. But we still have no notion why their acquaintance, or the video file, would lead to murder.”

  McKean opened a few other files but found nothing of interest. After a while I left him at his computer and went down to the street.

  The police had finished with the crime scene and left a single officer on guard, wearing clear plastic rain covers on his hat and coat. One of the day’s intermittent rain showers had washed Kyle Smith’s blood off my Mustang and the gutter was running clean again. The officer pulled back the tape and let me drive away.

  At home that afternoon in my Belltown apartment, I composed an eyewitness account of Kyle Smith’s murder and Ali Yamani’s video and emailed it to the editors of the Seattle Post Intelligencer Online newspaper.

  The TV news said nothing about the incident that night but while I was fixing eggs and toast the next morning, the local news showed a photo of Ali Yamani the police had obtained. While the newscaster dispassionately described the murder scene and details of the killing, memories of the day before set my guts churning and I chucked the eggs down the disposal. Seattle’s police chief was shown at a podium issuing an all-points bulletin for the arrest of Yamani, a Microsoft computer programmer who’d vanished from his suburban condominium in Redmond.

  The chief explained, “Yamani’s wife gave him a good alibi. She said he was at work all day yesterday and came home immediately afterward. But we haven’t had a chance to interview Mr. Yamani because he went missing last night. We’ll find him and we’ll bring him in.”

  The phone rang and it was Peyton McKean, asking me to join him at ImCo.

  * * * * *

  I brought along a printed copy of my Seattle PI article to show McKean. “Medical Collaboration Cut Short By Murder,” he read the title aloud, and as he went on to silently read the text, a visitor showed up whom McKean and I had met before: Vince Nagumo, a field agent of the Seattle FBI branch. His green eyes sparkled with interest when he read the article after McKean had finished. “Sure sounds like Yamani’s the guilty party,” he asserted.

  “Apparently,” McKean agreed. “And I hope for your sake, Fin Morton, that he’s not so desperate as to read your byline and come after you for knowing too much. However, I suppose his biggest concern right now is evading the police.”

  He turned to his computer and clicked a file. “I overlooked this yesterday because it didn’t have Yamani in the title.”

  The new file was a copy of an email Smith had saved. “Note the date,” McKean remarked. “November tenth, 2004, just a few days after the election. And note the addressee: Congressman Feebus, Smith’s U.S. Representative. Smith writes, ‘In light of the recent release of an Osama bin Laden tape, I feel I must inform you of something I discovered two years ago among the files of Ali Yamani, a computer graphics student of mine. It is a tape very similar to the bin Laden release, but I have noticed several discrepancies. First, the lips and voice are not well synchronized. Second, the image occasionally jumps, as if the creators of this file were re-using samples of film footage over and over again. This suggests my student was trying to use computer graphic techniques to synchronize bin Laden’s facial movements to a new voice recording. I had not wanted to cause trouble for my student, who has since graduated and taken a job at Microsoft. I thought this was just a college prank in extremely poor taste but now, having seen the same tape on TV during the elections, and having seen how sophisticated the final result was, I thought it best to inform you. A copy of the original crude file is attached. Please advise me what I should do next. Professor Kyle Smith.’ ‘

  McKean asked Nagumo, “Have you ever seen any of this before?”

  “Not in the Seattle office,” Nagumo replied. “This sort of thing would normally be handled by the D.C. office, especially if it came to us via that congressman. I’m sure the agency had its authentication people explore the question of a fake when they first got hold of the tape.”

  McKean searched the web and found a copy of the finished tape. As we wat
ched bin Laden give his pre-election discourse, his lips and goat-bearded jaw seemed to move in perfect synchrony with his words, at least as far as my Western eyes and ears could discern.

  McKean clicked his mouse to pause the tape. “Now,” he said, “let’s do a comparative study.” He clicked the Yamani file and bin Laden began the same lecture, but this time the lack of sync was obvious.

  “Smith had it right,” remarked McKean. “His student’s prank file doesn’t get close to matching lips with words. But on the other hand, the sound track seems to be exactly the same voice, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Sounded identical to me,” Nagumo agreed. “Tell you what, I’ll get our voiceprint lab to make a comparison. But I’m confused about one thing: how is this in any way a motive for Smith’s murder?”

  “Answer: not obvious,” McKean reponded, restarting the video and watching bin Laden’s face move in herky-jerky, amateur animation. “Although the thought strikes me that more than one bin Laden video may actually have been a phony.”

  “Concocted by terrorists to strike fear into us,” I concluded.

  McKean shook his head. “Given that this one helped swing a close election in favor of Bush and other incumbents, your logic seems backward, Fin. If terrorists released this video at that crucial time, then they were their own worst enemies, keeping their greatest nemesis in power.”

  “If terrorists didn’t release it, then who?”

  “Someone who wanted to get re-elected.”

  We all pondered that one for a while. Then McKean asked Nagumo, “What was the buzz at the FBI at that time, regarding the bin Laden video?”

  “I once talked to a guy in authentication in D.C. There were multiple theories about the thing’s origins, but top brass ultimately told people to quit pursuing it. It doesn’t take a genius to know that if a video like this could help re-elect the president and some congressmen, there wasn’t going to be a lot of interest at the top in debunking its source.”

  “More germane to Smith’s murder,” McKean observed, “is the notion that he was bringing up something considered buried and forgotten after 2004.”