Skillful Death by Ike Hamill Read Free Book Online Page B

into the chair in front of my desk. I have him hooked up to the sensors while his eyes are still blinking away sleep.  
    “What are we doing?”
    “We’re going to do a polygraph. You’re familiar?”
    “They don’t work,” he says.
    “The results are not dependable, especially when the test is executed by an under-trained operator. I’m a highly trained operator, with hundreds of hours of experience, and an impeccable track record. What’s your name?”
    I set my baseline with an endless stream of questions. The machine records the audio and readings, and I type notes into the log, annotating each question and answer. Gradually, I start to mix in questions about the dream emails. His answers about the emails look pretty clean. To my eye, there’s no deception regarding them. This means he didn’t use a computer or other technology to send the emails to me while he was awake.  
    “Did you communicate the facts I told you to another party so they could send me those emails?” I ask.
    “No,” he says. I stare at the log for several seconds, not believing the results. He should be lying, but the readings say he’s not.  
    “Who sent me those emails?”
    “Me,” he says. A tiny blip shows, but no more than when he told me his name. A lot of people show this same bump in their readings when you ask them about their identity or agency. I think of it as a tiny schism between id and ego.
    “Did you send me those emails from your dream?” I ask.
    “Yes,” he says, but this time there’s a jump. He’s lying.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Ted.” Bump.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Ted.” Bump.
    “Last name?”
    “Jointer,” he says. No bump.
    “Full name?”
    “Ted Jointer.” Bump.
    “Who sent me those emails?”
    “Me.” Bump.
    “Did someone else send them?”
    “No,” he says. No bump.
    What the hell? He’s not sure who he is, or whether he sent the emails, but he’s damn sure that nobody else did. This is starting to feel like a logic puzzle, like the ones I’m always listening to on podcasts. My brain starts to spin up a chart comparing his answers to all the possible scenarios. Down the left side, I’m thinking of the list of questions about his identity and the activities of the night. Across the top, I imagine all the scams and weirdos I’ve experienced through the years: sleight of hand, master liars, implanted wireless communications devices, schizophrenia, eidetic memorizers, and just plain crazies. On my spreadsheet, there’s only one column with any checkmarks. It’s the “just plain crazy” one. How else can I explain the night’s events compared to this man’s answers?
    I explained the facts I wanted emailed, they showed up in my inbox, and this guy never touched a computer and never left my sight. How can he tell the lie detector that he didn’t communicate the facts to anyone else and still pass the test?
    But wait, did he never leave my sight? I did send him into the bathroom.  
    “Go back in the other room for a minute,” I say to Ted.  
    He sighs, rolls his eyes, and then begins plucking the sensors and straps from his body. I have to help him unbuckle the chest strap and then he goes back to the sleeping closet.  
    I sit back and pull my little laptop to my lap. The building’s security cameras are only accessible from one of the machines down on the desk in the lobby. To get into those, you have to know the password that they change on a monthly basis. None of the guards are allowed to write down the password and leave it in the desk. The manager thinks that writing down a password will compromise its integrity, so he makes the guards memorize it. One of the guards, Jessie, can’t remember shit. He always emails the password to himself. Like I said, I’m no computer expert, but I know how to capture unencrypted port twenty-five traffic. Within a few minutes I’ve scoured the logs, come up with the latest password, and remotely logged in to the primary