North Carolina, and then I used the cursor to zoom in on the western part of the state. As I moved the cursor, the images tipped horizontally, and the cursor glided like a tiny plane over the three-dimensional mountainous landscape.
I heard someone behind me. “It’s like Google Earth—on steroids.” Chuckles rolled around the room.
“Yeah,” I said, “and lots of them. This is one of the most powerfully integrated geographic information systems in the world. We call it F.A.L.C.O.N.”
“What’s that stand for?” someone asked.
I smiled and glanced at his name tag. “I don’t know, Officer Stilton. We haven’t come up with that part yet, just the acronym. That’s the way government works.” I got a couple grunts of acknowledgment for that. Not many, but it softened the mood in the room a little. “It’s a cooperative venture between the NSA and the FBI—with a little help from our friends at NASA and a certain animation company. I’m not supposed to tell you the name yet, though, not until the software is released.”
I heard Ralph’s voice. “Animation company?”
“We needed someone who actually knew what they were doing to help us with the graphics. They were happy to get a juicy government contract, and we were happy to get the best computer graphics minds in the world. Anyway, using this software, we can pinpoint any place on the earth’s surface down to half a centimeter or so. The team is still working on ways to see through cloud cover—don’t have that quite nailed down yet, but it’s coming. This is just the beta version. We’re hoping to have the prototype available to law enforcement agencies worldwide within the next two years.”
One of the officers I didn’t know spoke up. “Is that a live satellite feed?”
“Not quite,” I said. “Four-minute delay.”
I tapped the remote control, and a three-dimensional map appeared on the projection screen behind me. As I clicked on the screen, new layers overlaid on top of the previous ones, each layer with another array of circles, diamonds, or triangles. “This first map shows where we found each of the bodies,” I explained. “The next one, here”—I clicked the screen again and the diamonds appeared—“ has the residencies of the victims. If we know the abduction sites, I’ve made those appear as ovals.” Once again I clicked, and another layer appeared. “And when the murder site has been identified, you’ll see those in yellow diamonds.”
By now the screen looked a little overwhelming.
“Now, look when I overlay the roads, emphasizing the routes that provide the quickest and most convenient getaway and then compare that to the distribution of homes in the residential areas we’re looking at . . .” A series of glowing lines threaded together, connecting the clutter of symbols and figures, making sense of them, bringing order. “Then, if we impose what we know about the victims’ life patterns and travel routes at the time they were abducted—”
“How do we know those?” Margaret asked.
“Cell phone companies can track the location of each call placed and received through global positioning technology,” I said. “Most new cars also have GPS systems, including Mindy’s Corolla. I downloaded the routes Mindy traveled in her car as well as the time, duration, and location of her phone calls over the last couple of days before her murder. I found something interesting.”
“What’s that?” Agent Tucker asked.
“Based on what we know about the travel patterns of the other victims, you can see that they intersect in four distinct areas: out near the Stratford Hotel, the park next to Mission Memorial Hospital, the downtown district, and over near the university. It’s very possible our killer is trolling those locations looking for his prey.”
I clicked the screen again, and this time the screen had several pulsing, red, wedge-shaped regions. “We can see that the most likely locations of the
I heard someone behind me. “It’s like Google Earth—on steroids.” Chuckles rolled around the room.
“Yeah,” I said, “and lots of them. This is one of the most powerfully integrated geographic information systems in the world. We call it F.A.L.C.O.N.”
“What’s that stand for?” someone asked.
I smiled and glanced at his name tag. “I don’t know, Officer Stilton. We haven’t come up with that part yet, just the acronym. That’s the way government works.” I got a couple grunts of acknowledgment for that. Not many, but it softened the mood in the room a little. “It’s a cooperative venture between the NSA and the FBI—with a little help from our friends at NASA and a certain animation company. I’m not supposed to tell you the name yet, though, not until the software is released.”
I heard Ralph’s voice. “Animation company?”
“We needed someone who actually knew what they were doing to help us with the graphics. They were happy to get a juicy government contract, and we were happy to get the best computer graphics minds in the world. Anyway, using this software, we can pinpoint any place on the earth’s surface down to half a centimeter or so. The team is still working on ways to see through cloud cover—don’t have that quite nailed down yet, but it’s coming. This is just the beta version. We’re hoping to have the prototype available to law enforcement agencies worldwide within the next two years.”
One of the officers I didn’t know spoke up. “Is that a live satellite feed?”
“Not quite,” I said. “Four-minute delay.”
I tapped the remote control, and a three-dimensional map appeared on the projection screen behind me. As I clicked on the screen, new layers overlaid on top of the previous ones, each layer with another array of circles, diamonds, or triangles. “This first map shows where we found each of the bodies,” I explained. “The next one, here”—I clicked the screen again and the diamonds appeared—“ has the residencies of the victims. If we know the abduction sites, I’ve made those appear as ovals.” Once again I clicked, and another layer appeared. “And when the murder site has been identified, you’ll see those in yellow diamonds.”
By now the screen looked a little overwhelming.
“Now, look when I overlay the roads, emphasizing the routes that provide the quickest and most convenient getaway and then compare that to the distribution of homes in the residential areas we’re looking at . . .” A series of glowing lines threaded together, connecting the clutter of symbols and figures, making sense of them, bringing order. “Then, if we impose what we know about the victims’ life patterns and travel routes at the time they were abducted—”
“How do we know those?” Margaret asked.
“Cell phone companies can track the location of each call placed and received through global positioning technology,” I said. “Most new cars also have GPS systems, including Mindy’s Corolla. I downloaded the routes Mindy traveled in her car as well as the time, duration, and location of her phone calls over the last couple of days before her murder. I found something interesting.”
“What’s that?” Agent Tucker asked.
“Based on what we know about the travel patterns of the other victims, you can see that they intersect in four distinct areas: out near the Stratford Hotel, the park next to Mission Memorial Hospital, the downtown district, and over near the university. It’s very possible our killer is trolling those locations looking for his prey.”
I clicked the screen again, and this time the screen had several pulsing, red, wedge-shaped regions. “We can see that the most likely locations of the
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