The following morning, I left my office in Georgetown and drove down the Dulles high tech corridor to the world headquarters of Helms Technology in Vienna, Virginia. John’s state of mind still concerned me. I should’ve been more concerned with my own.

On the surface, the multinational corporation that John founded a quarter century ago is nothing like the high tech firms of the movies, or the wackier outposts of Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco—lands of facial hair and ponytails and Hawaiian shirt-clad CEOs with popcorn machines and nerf basketball hoops in their offices. At HT, people carry on like adults.

Geeky adults. I can recall, for example, one of John’s top marketing executives bragging that his business suits had metal fiber woven into them to stave off electro-magnetic pollution.

“Have a seat, I’ll be right back,” John said, after greeting me in his corner office. He disappeared inside the alcove leading to his private bathroom.

His office bordered on the palatial, with floor-to-ceiling windows ushering in the urban skyline. I sat down on a leather sofa. The spot offered a good view of John’s prodigious ego gallery: framed photos of himself posing with other famous people. There he was at Sun Valley with fellow computer industry giants Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. At Camden Yards with Cal Ripken. Dining with basketball’s Michael Jordan. And shaking hands or hugging shoulders with every American president going back to Bill Clinton.

On the end table beside me was a pair of Google glasses. I picked them up because, you know, I was momentarily bored.

“Pet project,” John said, returning. “They’re ordinary Google glasses, but what makes them unique is the app I’ve had developed for them.”

“New product?” I guessed.

“No, strictly for private use. It’s a lie detection app.”

“Come again?”

“The camera records whomever it is I’m looking at, and tests them for truthfulness.”

“A bit extreme, isn’t it?”

“Why? Just think of the value of knowing when my suppliers are feeding me bull shit. My employees. My wife, if we should ever divorce. One lie can be worth millions.”

I stood, handed back the glasses. “How does it work?”

“The software took years to develop. It’s based on neurological studies with receptive aphasics: stroke victims and people with other brain injuries who share a unique gift for detecting falsehoods. Because they can no longer grasp human speech, or at least not very well, these victims of brain injury adapt by picking up on nuances of facial expression—momentary and minute emotional flashes that the rest of us miss because we grasp human speech, we’re busy attending to the words.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

He smiled, pleased, I think, by my strong reaction. “Put a group of aphasics in front of a television set while a politician is giving a speech and you’ll hear more laughing than inside a comedy club. They understand not a word, typically, but they find all the fibbing hysterical.”

“You doing okay, John? Not obsessing about the other day?”

“No, I’m fine. You told me there’s nothing to worry about, and I believe you. One lone mental case, right?”

“Right,” I said. I had to admit John did seem like he’d snapped back, like he belonged in his Armani suits again.

“But I’m glad you stopped by, Argus. I was going to call you. What’ve you turned up about that unexplained backdoor we found in the new software?”

“My investigator’s still interviewing the programmers and running background checks. I’ll keep you posted.”

“You do that. Also, something new’s come up.”

“What?”

“Jeremy Crane, my chief technology officer, he’s missing.”

The name was vaguely familiar. “Missing how?”

“Absent from work. He hasn’t shown up for two days straight. No calls, not a word. Can’t reach him on any of his devices.”

“What about family? Did you—”

“He lives alone.”

“Maybe he thought he had some time off and went out of town.”

“No, it’s not like that. Jeremy’s never out of touch, not even on vacation. He’s dedicated, he’s loyal, he’s anal-retentive. The perfect employee.”

“Until now.”

“Right,” John said. “I’m worried about him, Argus, I really am. Could you handle this for me? Personally?”

Did I mention John was demanding? (I don’t think I have to mention he was also eccentric to the point of being scary.) I agreed to find the missing geek myself.

But once I’d returned to my own headquarters in Georgetown I assigned a junior investigator to do the initial legwork. I had to attend the weekly staff meeting that afternoon with my principals and managing associates.

The headquarters of my firm were conveniently located within half a mile of my townhouse in a converted brick warehouse down by the Potomac River. A boardwalk, just outside the window of our conference room on the first floor, connected us to a cluster of restaurants and other office buildings. Five or ten minutes into the meeting, I noticed from my seat a man on the boardwalk peering in at us.

He stood alone, leaning a bit against the railing that faced the water. He was tall and stood out sharply, dressed, not in a business suit, or touristy apparel, but in denim overalls, his thumbs hooked beneath the shoulder straps. His cotton shirt was checkered red and white, and his black cowboy hat was mashed on top, comically misshapen.

He’s a farmer, I guessed. But why is he here? And why is he staring in at us?

I was about to point him out to the others when I sensed something familiar about him, though it wasn’t the farmer’s face, half hidden by hat shade.

Suddenly, I put it all together: the man’s build, his clothes, his hat—Especially that hat!—even his stance. I’d seen it all before, in an old photograph of my father. Of which there weren’t many. My father had disappeared decades earlier.

I found myself rising from my seat and rapidly circling our horseshoe-shaped conference table, the group discussion wading by my ears without meaning. I was chasing a ghost now.

I raced outside to the boardwalk. The ghost fled, in a most conventional way, on foot, at a brisk walk, but I aimed to chase it down. I aimed to until I heard a voice barking at me from somewhere nearby, calling my name over and over again.

My eyes located Henry Mercer, the vice president of my firm, standing at a newly opened window inside our conference room. Some of the others were on their feet too, pressed to the glass, staring at me in wonder.

Next Chapter: Chapter Six