Roycroft had been a high school dropout with no real aptitude for technology. He couldn’t have created the trigger.
No one at Perelman fit the FBI profile. Assuming that Roycroft’s accomplices had designed the trigger, then Tristan’s choices made sense. Everyone he ran background checks on could have possibly created the device. He focused mostly on the teachers who had military backgrounds. Tristan, though, was unfamiliar with the school. He didn’t realize that there was only one person with unlimited access to the one piece of equipment necessary to make the trigger: the 3D printer in the technology annex. When Louise had checked the print history a few days after the bombing, Mr. Kessler was the only teacher who had printed anything for weeks prior to her creating the magic generator.
On the day of the bombing, Mr. Kessler had dashed up twelve flights, in a rush to start a program running on his desk computer. Of all the teachers, only he had been overcome with horror, unable to react. Was it because he was responsible for all the carnage he could so clearly see from the annex window? He’d carefully designed a humane bomb, one that was careful not to kill anyone, and instead he’d unleashed it on children.
If he had made the trigger, then the record should be in the print history.
Louise logged into the school’s administrative system via their back door and accessed the printer. It had been wiped clean. Nothing remained. The lack of evidence was just as damning.
Louise felt Tristan’s stare. She made the mistake of glancing up and meeting his eyes. He looked puzzled. She realized that her reactions to what she’d found must have shown on her face.
She ducked her head, heart pounding. Mr. Kessler was a horrible, self-centered man but she didn’t want to be responsible for getting him killed. What were they going to do?
First period, they had their final in Math. Louise raced through the questions, scribbling out the work with her stylus. She turned in the test slickie ten minutes into class.
“What? No artwork this time?” Mr. Nakagawa asked. Normally she spent the entire class doodling in the margins when they had a test; it amused her that the software allowed an array of colors and line thicknesses.
“Can we use our tablets?” Jillian joined her at his desk. For some weird reason they weren’t allowed to use their phones at school, but tablets supported the same texting software.
Mr. Nakagawa flicked his fingers, indicating that they could sit down. “No talking.”
Tristan watched them with eyes narrowed, stylus poised over the questions. Surely he was just making a show at struggling with the test. He was old enough to get a doctorate degree. Why was he even taking the test? He’d only been in class for a day!
Mr. Nakagawa tapped on his desk loudly. “Eyes on paper.”
Tristan focused back on his test, answering faster than before.
The twins sat down and Louise texted Jillian what she had figured out.
“Obviously we turn Kessler over to the authorities and let them deal with him,” Jillian texted.
“We need evidence,” Louise texted back.
“We could restore the data and then send it to the police,” Nikola offered.
Louise eyed her tablet. She hadn’t thought it was possible for someone to “overhear” text messages between two people, but the babies were bored. They’d obviously figured it out. “Yes, do that.”
Jillian
“We need to know if he made more than one trigger,” Louise typed. “There could be a second bomb.”
Jillian flinched as if hit. “Okay, okay, restore the data but don’t send to police!”
“We could delete our stuff back off,” the babies offered.
It seemed like a simple fix, but most likely the FBI would seize the printer and examine it every possible way including under a microscope, because they would need evidence to convict Mr. Kessler. If the twins turned Mr. Kessler in, then the magic generator would be found. Erasing the info would only make them look guilty — guiltier.
Louise shook her head. “We need something else as evidence. Something that ties him to Roycroft or the bomb.”
Jillian leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling a moment before texting, “Maybe we could get him to confess. If he tells the police that he was involved, they don’t need evidence.”
“He’ll never confess,” Louise texted. “He’d be facing the death penalty.”
“New York doesn’t have the death penalty,” Nikola stated.
“It’s an act of terrorism,” Louise texted, while Jillian replied with, “It’s a federal case.”
But perhaps Jillian had the right idea.
“We could send Kessler an anonymous letter saying that if he didn’t confess to creating the trigger to the bomb on his 3D printer, that we—”
