by Sam Masters
The young detective picks up within a couple of rings. “Yes, Lieutenant.”
“Annie, I’m out at Allapattah, south of the park, near the YMCA building. I need a young woman by the name of Melissa Clay brought in for questioning in relation to the dog that killed the Steiner kid. She’s the girlfriend of Dwayne Artunes—correction, the ex-girlfriend of Artunes—and looks like she’s the owner of the dog.”
“I’ll have uniforms there in a minute.”
“Get a doctor to look at her as well. She’s in orbit at the moment, which is why I can’t interview her.”
“Gotcha.” Cheekily, she adds, “How’s it going with your CIA friend?”
“Could be worse. Turns out she’s a hotshot at Call of Duty. Kicked the asses of Artunes’s homies. The ride was worth it just to see that.”
“The world is full of surprises, Lieutenant.”
“Mercifully it is.” He hangs up and wanders outside.
Melissa is asleep again and Harries is on the phone. Ghost watches her and can see she’s stressed. She writes furiously in her notebook and then looks surprised when she catches him staring. She finishes the call and walks over. “You find anything?”
He holds up the vet’s records. “Julio’s in Overtown—the same place the Wood dog was treated and the girl was attacked. I’m going to call in there as soon as a squad car comes for sleeping beauty.” He nods to the end of the yard where Harries had been standing. “You looked busy over there.”
“Yeah, I was.” At first she’s not sure whether to tell him what’s on her mind, but guesses he’ll find out soon enough. “Seems there have been a number of other dog-related deaths today in Florida. A correctional officer killed at a prison in Jacksonville, a jogger and two local Labrador breeders over Tallahassee way. And we’ve just had reports of some old guy, plus a realtor and a couple she was showing around his farm, being bitten to death on Merritt Island.”
“Hell, there’s some strange shit going down.” He looks at her suspiciously. “Do you know what’s happening? I mean, there has to be some reason the CIA were so quick to jump into this.”
She poker-faces him. “I don’t know any more than I told you on the phone the other day.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, really.”
“I’m not buying that.” He reads her eyes. She’s good at blanking off, but not perfect. The fixed stare shows she’s not being natural, which in turn tells him he’s hit a nerve. “Tell me, Agent Harries, are there dog-related deaths like this all over the country, or only in Florida?”
“Far as I’m aware, only Florida.” She walks closer to him, her eyes still not blinking. “But listen, you’re right—it’s strange as hell that I’m here on this fact-finding tour. Strange to you and even stranger to me. And if you’re thinking that even if I did know what was going on I wouldn’t tell you, then you’re right about that too.”
55
New York
Danny puts in six hours before the others arrive and settle down to work.
They’re a motley crew.
Kayoz is a twenty-year-old black Kylie Minogue. A pocket rocket of edgy female attitude from Brisbane, who insists her singing voice is actually better than the Aussie star’s. Those who’ve heard her on an open mic night in Greenwich Village would argue that she has a point. A Pepsi Max to her left is Word, the planet’s most introverted twenty-five-year-old. His nickname comes from the fact that the long-haired, bearded six-footer can go an entire day not speaking a single word. Then there is Right, whose real name is Wong, a twenty-eight-year-old Korean computer genius with the body and chiseled looks of Bruce Lee, but sadly for him, none of the martial-arts expertise to go with it.
They’re all working on “Jolly Roger,” a campaign they started to further the cause of global piracy. They’re creating free links into Hollywood pay-to-view film sites, distributing mail that advertises how to access the movies without paying a dime and breaking the geo-locks that prevent local TV programs and sports events from being shown freely all over the world.
Danny has personally been creating his own brand of chaos on an Asian content network, by disabling their pay systems and creating windows of free access that take the authorities weeks to shutter.
Now he’s bored.
He grabs a soda from the fridge and finds a quiet corner to call his girlfriend.
“Hey, babes, what’s up?”
“Not much.”
Jenny McCann has taken the day off because it’s her birthday and she is running on slow. Real slow. Right now she’s soaking away her pains in bathwater hot enough to cook a lobster. “I’m just lying in the tub, listening to music, wondering what presents you got for me and exactly how much you’re going to spoil me tonight.”
“Yeah, well, I am gonna spoil you big-time, but listen, ’fraid I’m going to be a little late doin’ it.”
“Late?”
“Sorry.”
“Oh come on, it’s my birthday, Danny.” She sits up in disgust and sloshes suds over the sides. “You can’t be late on my birthday.”
“I know. I’m really sorry. I’m going to make it up to you. I need an extra hour, that’s all.”
She sinks back in the warm water again and sulks. “An hour’s okay. Providing it is only an hour and not a Danny hour.”
“A regular sixty minute hour, I promise.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks.” He takes a breath and says words he’s only recently learned to say. “I love you. Love you to pieces.”
“Do you? Really? Or are you just trying to get your sorry ass out of the shit it’s in and get yourself in the running for the best fuck of your life?”
He laughs. “No. I really do. But don’t get me wrong, my ass still wants to be in the running for that—you know, that other thing.”
She’s amused by his coyness. “For a fuck. Can’t you even bring yourself to say it?”
“Yeah, I can, but it doesn’t seem right saying it you.”
“Why not?”
“Coz I don’t want to think of it like that. I want to think of it as love, not sex.”
“Oh my God, you are so sappy. Not that I’m complaining.”
“Make no mistake, Jenny McCann, I really, honestly, love you.”
She knows what he wants to hear. Needs to hear her say it back. “And I love you too, idiot boy.”
“You’d better. I have to go, babes. Have a good day and I’ll see you tonight. Then we’ll go downtown somewhere special, okay?”
“Cool.” She doesn’t let him get off the line that quickly. “Where we going?”
He laughs at her nosiness. “I’m going to surprise you.”
“Not Mexican. I don’t want Mexican again.”
“No Mex, I promise. I have to go.”
He rings off and is still smiling as he goes back to the rest of the hackers. Soon they’ll be gone. Then he can start his other work. The stuff they can’t see. Must never see.
The stuff that does more than just pay the rent.
56
Eisenhower Executive Office, Washington DC
The whole world knows what the White House looks like, the iconic building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that for two hundred years has been the center of the U.S. presidency. Few, though, are aware that there’s an even more impressive slab of architecture right next door to it.
The Eisenhower Executive Office boasts two miles of black and white tiled corridors, eight monumental curving staircases of granite with four thousand individually cast bronze balustrades, four skylight domes and two spectacular stained-glass rotundas. It’s got a four-story library, individual rooms of cast iron, marbled walls, extensive gold leaf ornamentations, intricately stenciled ceilings, and painstaking marquetry. When it was completed it became the biggest office building in Washington and h
ome to the State, War, and Navy departments. It is from here that most of America’s foreign policies have been drafted. But these days it’s also used by the Vice President of the United States and his huge contingent of executive members.
Pat Cornwell has dedicated rooms in the West Wing next to the President, but this is where he prefers to be. Not just because of the splendor of the building but because it gives him some vital distance from the President, enough space and privacy for him to form his own views on things.
It’s here, in an office that in its time was used by sixteen Secretaries of the Navy, that he meets privately with Don Jackson. “I don’t have long, Don. I have to put in a fleeting appearance for cocktails drinks before this French dinner then I have to go eat with the Board of Governors of the Fed.”
The NIA director takes a seat on the opposite side of the large antique desk and gets straight to the point. “Going back to the cases I mentioned this morning, it wasn’t a gator that killed the young couple and the woman jogger at Millers Landing. The Sheriff’s Office shot dead a Labrador that had half chewed its way through an iron and mesh fence at a kindergarten and was snapping at people even while it was stuck. There was a collar on it saying it belonged to the Coopers at Millers Landing—they’re the dog breeders who died.”
“I wish it had been a gator.”
Jackson plows on. “We did some phone interviews with the guard and the prisoners who survived the German shepherd attack at Montgomery Correctional. They all say the dog didn’t respond to any attempts by the handler to control it. It even continued biting and attacking long after another guard laid into it with a rifle stock.”
“Jeez.”
“And all this from an animal that won obedience trials.”
Cornwell puts a big hand to his shiny forehead in despair. “Anything else?”
“Afraid so. There have been several more dog attacks during the day.” He takes a breath. “And these are even worse.” He places a briefing sheet on the desktop. “A realtor, a farm owner, and a couple being shown around the property have been killed by rottweilers on Merritt Island. A delivery guy found their bodies inside the home. Or should I say what was left of their bodies. Local cops discovered the animals roaming the land and shot them. It looked like the dogs had chewed clean through the front door of the farmhouse to get out.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Jackson puts a final sheet down on the desk. “Last and least, this is a list of minor attacks in Florida, resulting in people needing ER treatment for dog bites.”
Cornwell nods tiredly. “And the press is all over this?”
“They’re getting there. For now, commentators seem to be blaming the heat wave. Goddamned temperatures hit 103 the other day. They’ll work their way closer to the truth.”
“Then we have to lead them astray. I’ll have the White House press office brief on it. Have you met Jay Ashton, the new secretary?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll fix for him to call you. Jay will get his spin teams to work. I’ll talk to the President about how much we should tell him—re Zhang, etcetera.”
“As little as possible, sir.”
“I take your point, Don, we just have to make sure he has sufficient information to do his job properly and stamp out any fires that the news organizations might be lighting with their speculation.” He drums his fingers on the leather inset of the desk while he considers what else needs to be started. “Right after this meeting, I’ll get my office to roughly brief the White House heads of Science and Health and ask our advisors to give us some insight into whether this dog weaponization is actually possible. I’ll try to fix an early session for tomorrow. I guess you’ve already got your intelligence people crawling all over China to see if there’s anything to flag up?”
“Not just China, all of Asia, sir. As you know, we’ve been on high alert in the region since Obama’s days.”
The comment makes Cornwell reflective. “That sonovabitch was right about the next threat coming from Asia. Just a shame he cut the Defense and Intelligence budgets so fucking deeply we almost can’t afford to stage a fistfight in a schoolyard.”
Jackson places another briefing sheet on the VP’s desk. “I’ve had an agent in Miami checking on the early dog deaths. The veterinary physician out there says that two of the canines that killed people had abnormally high levels of adrenaline.”
“You got anything to compare that to?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“I mean, wouldn’t all dogs test like that right after a kill? They get all worked up during the fight, I suppose.”
“Apparently not to this level. If you look at those notes, sir, you’ll see that the vet believes the dogs may have somehow been given some highly concentrated adrenaline drug that tipped them into hyperaggression.”
“You mean like an injection?”
Jackson shrugs. “We don’t know. It could be intravenous, maybe given by a vet as medicines, or perhaps through foodstuffs that have been poisoned at the point of manufacture or display.”
“Like baby food contamination on supermarket shelves?”
Jackson was cautious about committing himself. “Possibly. At this stage we’re just shooting in the dark.”
“Then we need to do better.”
“I know, sir. But only this morning you and President Molton were dismissing Zhang as mad.”
“Zhang is mad. Of that we’re sure. We just can’t take chances that his madness is limited to his mind. It may now have crept past Xian and into Chinese military operations as well.”
57
Bar Francais, New York
Four French waiters are approaching the brunette at table twelve. There’s a glowing birthday cake in their hands and on their lips the first chorus line of “Happy Birthday.”
Twenty-three-year-old Jenny McCann buries her face in her fingers, “Oh my God. Oh no, I don’t believe you did this.”
“Happy birthday to you! Happy—”
She punches the shoulder of the man at her side. “Danny, you shouldn’t have. Oh goodness.”
“—birthday, dear Jenny, happy birthday—”
Candlelight flickers on her face as she leans across and kisses him. Cheers break out as she smooches the man in her life.
“—to yooooo!”
The whole restaurant is now clapping, immersing the couple in a crashing wave of sound that fizzles and disappears as quickly as it came.
Crimson-faced, she blows out the candles and makes her wish. The waiters move in and slice cake as quick as a corner kid cutting coke.
Danny Speed takes his girlfriend’s shaking hand. They’ve been together for only a short time but he wants it to be for the rest of his life. No one’s ever made him feel like she does. “I have another surprise.”
Her brown eyes are as big as saucers. She’s never been to a restaurant as expensive as this. Never had anyone other than friends and family sing “Happy Birthday” to her.
Danny dips into his pocket and conjures up the little square box of magic that his mom told him all girls dream of. He flips open the brown faux-leather lid and reveals a modest speck of diamond on a nine-carat band. “Jennifer Louisa McCann, will you do me the immense honor of being my wife?”
Her eyes fill with tears and her heart bounces like a jackrabbit in a carrot field. Danny’s a great guy. Good-looking. Smart. There are so many reasons to say yes.
And as many to say no.
She knows what he does, the hacking and the wheeling-and-dealing—and she knows it’s not right. The kind of not right that can end in jail time.
He can see her hesitation.
And so too can other diners.
People at surrounding tables have spotted the outstretched hand, the ring proffered on the sweating palm of the young man with a desperately expectant look on his
face. What was once a white-clothed dinner table is now a stage, an intimate moment in a very much public performance.
Danny takes her hand and squeezes it. “Jen, I love you. I’d cut pieces from my soul to just spend the rest of my life with you.”
She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath.
The power of the words and pressure of the moment are too great to resist. She opens wide and smiles at him. “Yes. Yes! I’d love to be your wife.”
58
Police HQ, Miami
Six hours after Melissa Clay was brought in for questioning, a police doctor rules she’s fit to be interviewed.
Ghost does the Q&A with detective Annie Swanson. Partly because he wants her to watch and learn but also, because of Melissa’s drug problems, he’s keen to have a sympathetic female in the room for her.
They start off real slow, with all the formalities and chitchat, then the lieutenant lays out pictures of the dead rottweiler faceup on the table like they were picture cards. He looks across to the wreck of a woman in a yellow V-neck T-shirt and ragged blue jeans. “This your dog, Melissa? Is this Tyson?”
She stares but doesn’t touch the print, or show any emotion. Drugs and depression have dried up all of her feelings. Her voice is slow and slurred, “Yeah, that T. Wad ’appened to him?”
He ignores her question. “When and where did you last see him?”
She closes her eyes and takes an eternity to answer. “Hell, I don’t know. He gone, that all I figure.”
“Try harder.” He leans over the table and shakes her gently. “Melissa, stay awake and you might just stay outta jail. Dwayne said you drove to his place at Miami Beach and took the dog after you guys split up. Is that right?”
She nods. “Yeah. That motherfucker said he loved me.” She licks dried lips. “Told me that over an’ over. ‘Love you, baby.’ And what does he do? He makes up this shit that—”
Ghost doesn’t want to hear it. “I’m not interested in you and Dwayne, Melissa. The dog, Tyson—you picked him up and then what?”