The Grid

by Harry Hunsicker

  The house had been furnished by the owner, down to the books on the shelves, a collection of airport thrillers. The only personal touches were my clothes in the closet, the items for an infant in the back room, and a framed eight-by-ten photograph by the coffeemaker. My daughter, Elizabeth, age one month, with her mother, Piper Westlake. The snapshot had been taken a few months earlier, before Piper had decided to cut and run.

  Whitney picked up the photo. She tracked my eyes as they drifted toward the phone.

  “You’re expecting a call. The mom?”

  “Every few days about this time,” I said. “She doesn’t say anything. Sometimes I can hear my baby in the background.”

  “You trace it?”

  I nodded. “Piper, that’s the mother, she’s exceptionally good at hiding her tracks.”

  “That’s a pretty baby.” Whitney put the photo down. “Bet she’ll be a knockout like her mom.”

  I didn’t reply. We puttered with the coffee and kolaches.

  A few minutes later, the phone rang. Caller ID read “000-000-0000.”

  “I’m gonna hop in the shower.” Whitney grabbed a kolache and left the room.

  I waited for another couple of rings and then picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Anybody there?”

  Nothing.

  “Piper, is that you?”

  A faint echo on the line. Then, the sound of breathing. Or perhaps that was my imagination.

  “How is Elizabeth?”

  More breathing.

  “Our daughter. Tell me how she’s doing?” I tried not to let myself get angry. “You owe me that, Piper.”

  Nothing. A few seconds passed.

  I took a deep breath. “Next time you call, I may not be at this number.”

  In another part of the house, the sound of water running.

  “A couple weeks, tops. I’m, uh, taking a leave from the county.”

  The echo on the other end grew louder, electrons reverberating in an open space.

  I lowered my voice as a tingle of excitement ran up my spine. “I’m back in the game. A federal gig.”

  Silence.

  “Piper? You there?”

  The line went dead.

  Thirty minutes later, Whitney and I were showered and dressed. We were in the kitchen, drinking the last of the coffee.

  I wore civilian clothes—a pair of khakis, a white button-down shirt, and heavy work boots. On my hip was a Glock .40 caliber in a tooled leather holster opposite my sheriff’s badge fastened to the belt. The credentials Whitney had given me were in my back pocket.

  She handed me a sheet a paper. “The information you wanted. Sudamento’s plants.”

  I skimmed the list, nineteen different facilities, each in a rural area.

  “McCarty.” She pointed to one in the middle. “That’s where the first attack occurred. Four days ago.”

  McCarty was in East Texas, nearly halfway to Louisiana.

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody shot out the main transformer for the plant,” she said. “They used the same type of gun. A thirty-thirty.”

  “Is there a record of who comes and goes to the plant?”

  She didn’t reply. Instead she went into the living room and packed her things.

  I followed. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I didn’t find out about McCarty Creek until two days ago.” She paused. “Price mentioned it in passing. He said since there wasn’t an outage, it wasn’t worth calling in the cavalry.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Whitney zipped her bag shut. “That’s when I decided to find someone like you.”

  “Someone off the books.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But the credentials I gave you are legit. You’re a federal agent.”

  I turned off the lights. We headed to the door. On the front porch, I locked the dead bolt and heard Whitney say, “Crap.”

  I turned.

  A Lincoln Navigator was parked in front of my house. Leaning against the side of the SUV was Price Anderson.

  “Well, look what we have here.” He crossed his arms.

  Whitney said, “What do you want, Price?”

  “I was about to head to the plant.” He spoke to Whitney. “I asked the manager where your room was. Thought maybe you’d want to ride along.”

  “They didn’t have a place for Whitney last night,” I said. “So she stayed here. On the couch.”

  “You’re a piece of work, Cantrell.” He shook his head.

  “I’ll need to get with you later,” I said. “We’re gonna have to go over the security procedures for Sudamento’s facilities. Each one.”

  He shook his head again and spat in the dirt. Then he got in the Navigator and drove away.

  I sighed. “That went well, I think.”

  Whitney headed toward her Suburban. “Call me when you get to McCarty.”

  - CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE -

  I parked my squad car behind the county courthouse, underneath an old sycamore tree. The government Suburban that I was to borrow was in the front, the keys on my desk, according to Whitney. I headed to my office on the ground floor, one of several surrounding an open area where an administrative assistant usually sat. This early, the admin’s spot was empty.

  The paperwork on my desk took about twenty minutes to plow through. I sent a half-dozen e-mails to the county admin and then dropped several files on his desk, notes attached.

  The office of the deputy who’d been murdered was next to mine. A strip of yellow crime-scene tape cut diagonally across the door.

  I stepped under the tape and entered the room.

  The deputy had been a big fan of Texas A&M University, and his work space was full of memorabilia, everything maroon and white. Commemorative footballs, pennants, framed posters.

  I sat at his desk and turned on the computer.

  A yellow Post-it note was taped to the bottom of the monitor. The note contained the phrase “12thM4n!” I entered those characters when prompted for a password.

  The computer came to life. So much for network security.

  I opened his e-mail program first. A dozen unread messages were in his inbox, all of them regarding county business. A quick scan of old messages indicated nothing out of the ordinary.

  Next, I clicked the browser icon and tapped the History button.

  A moment later, all the sites the deputy had visited in the past week displayed.

  None of them appeared to be what I was looking for. The most frequently accessed location was a forum devoted to discussing Texas A&M’s football team. He’d also visited Amazon, Weather.com, Yahoo, three Ford dealerships in the area, and a website for law-enforcement officers in rural areas.

  I closed the browser, drummed my fingers on the desk.

  The deputy was using either a different computer or his phone to visit the sites that Kelsey had mentioned. Or he’d enabled “private browsing” on this machine.

  The phone was part of his personal effects, which were now with the McLennan County coroner’s office. I could get access to the device, but that would take time, something that was in short supply since I now had two jobs.

  My to-do list for the day: Investigate an attack on the power plant in McCarty, nearly two hours away. Talk to an old drunk an hour in the other direction from McCarty, a person who might or might not have seen the woman who murdered my deputy. Avoid Price Anderson.

  From the desk chair, I surveyed the office, trying to imagine what else might be hidden amid all the collegiate knickknacks. There were too many pieces of kitsch to search, too many nooks and crannies.

  I turned my attention back to the computer, clicked open the folder “My Documents.”

  Inside, I saw what you’
d expect to find there. Arrest reports, files on crime stats, interoffice memos, and the like.

  Nevertheless, I clicked on each one and scanned the contents. The documents were what their names indicated—routine, nothing out of the ordinary.

  I closed the computer folder and searched each drawer in his desk. Nothing there that aroused any suspicion.

  The top drawer stuck a little when I tried to shut it. So I pushed harder until it slammed home, shaking the desk.

  The disturbance caused a small ceramic figurine to fall over. The figurine was shaped like the Texas A&M mascot, a border collie named Reveille, and sat by the phone. It had been designed as a card holder. The dog held a basket in its mouth; cards fit into the basket.

  A stack of the deputy’s business cards splayed across the desk.

  I returned the figurine to its regular position, picked up the cards, started to put them back in the basket.

  I stopped.

  The last card in the stack, the one at the rear, had two lines of handwriting on the back. Line one: “RockyRoad35.” Line two: “12thM4n!”

  I got back on the deputy’s computer, opened a browser, and googled both phrases, individually and together.

  Nothing.

  Then I googled “websites for affairs” and got back a long list of Internet locations devoted to infidelity. The first seven required an e-mail address as the username. The eighth, an anything-goes kind of place with the phrase “I want to screw a stranger” in the URL, asked for a username instead. I entered the name from the back of the business card and then “12thM4n!” as the password.

  That was the magic combo. A few seconds later, I was logged on as RockyRoad35, and a picture of my late deputy wearing sunglasses and a straw cowboy hat appeared, the photo taken from about twenty feet away.

  The top bar was a list of possible search parameters—“M4M,” “M4F,” etc.—a pretty fascinating and all-encompassing strata of human behaviors, at least until you got to the drop-down menu on the other side: “Favorite Sexual Activity.”

  I scanned the list, more than a little taken aback. There were a lot of freaky people out there.

  On the left was Rocky’s profile, a mishmash of Penthouse Forum outtakes and Cosmo sex advice. Just to set the record straight, however, under “About Me” he indicated that he was looking for a “real woman who’s not into playing games.”

  On the right side of the screen were the private messages.

  The last five were between RockyRoad35 and a woman who called herself SarahSmiles. They were flirtatious, full of double entendres. Evidently, a separate conversation was also occurring via e-mail, as both Rocky and Sarah referenced information that was not in the string of messages I was reading.

  Sarah asked if Rocky had gotten the pictures. Rocky replied in the affirmative, saying she was “hawt” and that he was looking forward to seeing her in person.

  Sarah told him “the room’s all lined up.” Then: “Check your e-mail for the details, stud. Can’t wait to meet in person! See you tomorrow. ☺”

  That message, the last one, had been sent two nights ago at 10:27 P.M.

  The room’s all lined up . . . See you tomorrow.

  I clicked the link for SarahSmiles’s profile.

  A picture of a woman appeared, her body visible from the neck down, wearing a black bra and panties. She was fit, arms toned, stomach flat. Below the photo was her profile.

  Age/Gender: 35; female

  Height/Weight: 5'8"; 125 lbs.

  Status: Married, seeking males for short-term fun.

  About Me: North Texas hottie looking to step out. Financially secure. Not looking for sugar daddy, just fun and adventure. The past doesn’t define me. It’s all about what’s to cum. Will that be you?

  About My Match: Men, white or Latino, age 30 to 50. Height-weight proportionate. No fatties! Must be financially secure. Mandatory that you be drama, drug, and disease free as I am. No mama’s boys either. If you can’t stand the heat, then don’t message SarahSmiles. Cuz you’ll get burned!

  I called Irving Patel, the clerk at the hotel where my deputy had been murdered. He answered after one ring. We greeted each other.

  “Two nights ago,” I said. “The woman who booked the room, the one with the red hair.”

  “Yes?”

  “What time did she check in? Exactly.”

  Keys clicking. Then: “10:23 P.M. Exactly.”

  “Thanks, Irving. I’ll be in touch.” I ended the call.

  The woman with red hair had checked in four minutes before SarahSmiles sent the message to my deputy, telling him the room would be ready for their encounter the next day.

  Four minutes seemed to be about the right amount of time it would take for the woman to leave the lobby of the hotel, get into her car, log on to the website, and leave the message.

  My phone rang, Price Anderson calling. I sent him to voice mail and left for McCarty.

  - CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX -

  Sarah’s head feels like it’s in a bucket lined with steel studs and somebody’s banging on the outside. The Starbucks latte she’s drinking tastes bitter despite the milk and sweetener, and it makes her stomach queasy.

  Fucking tequila. Never again.

  Dylan stirs in her hospital bed. Sarah puts the coffee down and takes her daughter’s hand.

  It’s nine o’clock in the morning, the day after her drunken encounter with Elias.

  In a few minutes, Dylan will head off to surgery for her leg.

  The nanny dozes in an armchair across the room.

  “Mommy, I don’t feel good.” Dylan’s voice sounds tiny.

  The pain meds are making her tummy upset.

  “It’s okay, baby. The doctors are gonna make everything better.”

  Dylan wipes a tear from her eye. “Where were you last night? I missed you.”

  Sarah hesitates, the old, familiar self-loathing washing over her. She doesn’t want to lie. Nor does she want to say that she was drunk, just like her own mother had been the night before Sarah had her tonsils out.

  Six-year-old Sarah, alone in a hospital room much like this. Her mother passed out at home. Her father shacked up at some hotel with his latest pretty boy.

  Papa, her grandfather, had been with her, however. He’d spent the night in the hospital room, sleeping on a recliner, one hand grasping hers through the bars on the bed. The old man had fully comprehended the weakness of his son, Sarah’s father. He’d known that no adult would be present for what was sure to be the most traumatic event up to this point in his granddaughter’s life.

  Rosa walks over, yawning. “Your mother, she was sick. That’s why she wasn’t here.”

  Dylan looks aghast. “Are you all right, Mommy?”

  “Mommy’s fine.” Sarah strokes the child’s head. “Just a touch of the, um, stomach flu.”

  Rosa’s and Sarah’s eyes meet. The nanny’s expression is blank.

  “Where’s Daddy?” Dylan asks.

  Sarah doesn’t know. Walden had picked her up after Elias left, driven her home in silence. Sarah had passed out on the bed, fully clothed. This morning, the other side hadn’t appeared to be slept in.

  “He had to go to Houston,” Rosa says. “Business.”

  “Today?” Sarah tries not to sound incredulous. “He’s not going to be here for her surgery?”

  No one speaks. Dylan whimpers softly, plucking at the IV in her arm.

  “That’s what mothers are for, yes?” Rosa heads toward the door. “I’m going to get breakfast.”

  Sarah doesn’t respond.

  “Mommy, I’m scared.” Dylan fidgets in the bed.

  “When will you be back?” Sarah calls out after the departing nanny.

  No response. The door shuts, and Sarah is alone with her daughter.

  Dylan looks up.
“If I die, will I go to heaven and see Papa?”

  - CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN -

  I started the government Suburban Whitney Holbrook had provided and cranked up the AC. When the cold air started blowing, I called the Texas Rangers and relayed the information gleaned from the deputy’s computer. Told them to get an IT specialist to the dead man’s office as soon as possible and to check the cell phone at the McLennan County morgue. Gave them the username and password to the website.

  Then I left town, driving in the general direction of Louisiana, away from the stony hills and scrub brush that most people associated with the Lone Star State, heading toward the thickets of East Texas.

  Two hours later, I arrived at McCarty, a tiny town between Palestine and Lufkin, deep in the piney woods, not far from the Davy Crockett National Forest.

  The town was not much more than a cleared patch among the trees—ten, maybe twelve blocks in either direction. Old wood-frame houses topped with satellite dishes. A Dollar General store and a Dairy Queen.

  Not counting the power plant, I figured the town’s three biggest industries were food stamps, bass fishing, and diabetes.

  The McCarty Creek Generating Facility was located on the eastern edge of the metropolis, just past a mobile-home park that looked like it had been recently hit by a tornado.

  The plant was smaller than Black Valley, only one tower—what’s called the boiler, according to Whitney Holbrook.

  Four guards were at the gatehouse. All of them were in their twenties, fit and alert. They were carrying machine guns and wearing black tactical vests marked on the back with lettering that read, SUDAMENTO SECURITY.

  I stopped at the gate as the head guard stepped in front of my SUV, one hand held up even though I wasn’t moving. After a moment, he walked around to the driver’s side.

  “May I help you?” He stood about two feet from the window, fingers on his gun.

  I displayed the FERC badge. “I need to speak with the manager.”

  He gave me and the Suburban a long look and then disappeared into the gatehouse. A moment passed, and he came back out, handing me a visitor badge and a one-page map of the facility. The gate swung open.