Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,16
the elite who can afford the ridiculous tuition. The criminal justice system will give liberal breaks to affluent white people but trample the rights of minorities and the poor and disenfranchised. In every way big and small, the powerful keep their power, and the rich keep the poor down.
David versus Goliath, only this David, whoever he is, has more than a slingshot. He has money, resources, and sophisticated technology.
One of his talents is hacking. He hacked into the admissions system of an Ivy League university to reveal how little merit went into merit-based selection and how many students were admitted because of the size of their parents’ wallets.
He hacked into the computer system of a pharmaceutical company and leaked e-mails showing that the company knew but never publicly admitted that an ingredient in one of its hepatitis vaccines caused renal failure.
He hacked into the computers of a minimum-security prison in Georgia and popped open all the cell doors at once to protest the incarceration of a young African-American man whom an all-white jury had declared guilty of the murder of a white teenage girl in what many critics believed was a wrongful conviction.
But he hasn’t limited himself to cybercrime. He was responsible for the bombing of several buildings in the United States. A bank in Seymour, Connecticut, accused of discriminating against minorities in its lending practices. A fast-food restaurant in Pinellas Park, Florida, after reports came out about the franchise’s cruelty to the chickens it slaughtered. A city hall in Blount County, Alabama, where officials had refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
The bombings always occurred in the middle of the night and always after a bomb threat was called in, ensuring that nobody was around when the explosives detonated.
Citizen David is part Robin Hood, part Edward Snowden, part Bernie Sanders, part Black Lives Matter, and part Unabomber.
Some people call him a hero. Others call him a reckless anarchist. The Bureau calls him a domestic terrorist.
But the FBI agents don’t know where he is, and they don’t know who he is. Citizen David uses anonymous networks so his crimes can’t be traced to him, effectively shielding himself from view.
That’s where Emmy was supposed to come in. They wanted her to try to predict his next move, to discern some pattern in what he did. It was right up her alley.
“You think Emmy’s leaking the details of your investigation to the person who calls himself Citizen David?” asks Books. He asks the question with disbelief, even scorn.
But he has a sinking feeling in his stomach.
Because he’s remembering that quiet Sunday morning a few weeks back when there was a big front-page profile in the Washington Post about the anonymous Citizen David, and Books had read it while making comments on it to Emmy. Saying the kinds of things he always said: We have laws, we have rules. Protest and dissent are important, commendable, but you can’t do it by blowing up private property and invading confidential computer files. If people are breaking the law, report them or sue them, but we can’t have a nation of anarchists who take the law into their own hands or who create their own rules and punish anyone who doesn’t abide by them.
He doesn’t remember his exact words. But he remembers every word Emmy said in response.
He’s scaring the people in power, she said. Maybe that’s the only way to get them to change. Nothing else has worked.
That was it. It was one of those lazy mornings where conversations started and stopped and shifted. He never followed up. It didn’t stick out in his mind at the time. After all, Emmy had always been a protester at heart, ever since she was in high school, the sober, socially conscious girl, nothing like her popular-cheerleader-girl twin sister.
It gnaws at him now. Emmy might not approve of all of Citizen David’s tactics, but deep down, all things considered, she might be quietly rooting for him.
And that isn’t even the worst part.
“We don’t know how yet,” says Dwight Ross, leaning back in his chair, “but she’s leaking to that reporter.”
That was the worst part. Books had forgotten, but now it slams against his chest like a stiff forearm. The reporter who wrote the Post piece was Shaindy Eckstein.
Does the Bureau know that Shaindy and Emmy are close? That Shaindy is quite possibly Emmy’s only friend these days?
Shaindy, the one who learned about Emmy being rushed to the hospital after taking a combination of painkillers and amphetamines a