Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon

by Donna Andrews

  “And you think this thing is connected with the murder?“ he said finally.

  “Of course,“ I said. “Don't you see what it is?“

  He lifted his eyes from the paper and looked over his glasses at me.

  “It's his list of people he was blackmailing!“ I exclaimed.

  “What makes you think that?“

  “Look at the notations in the far right column,“ I said. “Stuff like 'coughed up' and 'caved' and 'won't pay' – doesn't that sound like blackmail to you?“

  “Maybe,“ the chief said, studying the paper again.

  “For heaven's sake, you're the one who's so excited about the blackmail note you found in Rob's office,“ I said. “If the guy would try to blackmail one person, why not several? And here's his whole list of victims.“

  “It doesn't have names,“ the chief pointed out.

  “Of course not,“ I said. “I expect even Ted knew better than to leave evidence of his crime lying around for anyone to find. But I bet if you figure out who these names match, you'll be a lot closer to convicting the killer.“

  I'd said convicting rather than catching because I suspected the chief thought that by arresting Rob he'd already caught his man. He stared at the list a little longer and then reinforced my suspicion.

  “You realize your brother's probably on this list,“ he said.

  “He may be,“ I said. “And ten other people, too.“

  “Maybe he's the Ninja,“ the chief mused.

  “In his wildest dreams, maybe,“ I said. “More like the Space Cadet.“

  “One of these columns looks like dates,“ he said. “You have any theory on that?“

  “No,“ I said, trying to peer over his shoulder to see the column in question.

  “We'll look into this, then,“ he said, curling the paper so I couldn't see the contents.

  Of course, I had to wait until after he left to pull out my own copy of the paper. Dates? What did he mean, dates?

  “Oh, by the way – “

  The chief. Standing right in front of the reception desk – I'd been so absorbed in scanning the printout that I hadn't heard him come back in. I nearly fell out of my chair, and if I were the chief, I'd have been highly suspicious of the way I was acting, and would have demanded to see the paper I was so quick to hide with such a guilty look. Fortunately the chief's mind wasn't on the case. He was holding an Affirmation Bear.

  “Damned thing turned up down at the station,“ he said, slapping it down in the desk.

  “I gladly accept new challenges and new situations,“ the bear chirped.

  The chief scowled and walked out again.

  “What's that?“ I looked up to see Frankie standing near the entrance.

  “Here,“ I said, tossing him the bear. “Whack it in the belly.“

  “I am not afraid to show my feelings,“ the bear announced when Frankie whacked him.

  “Cool – I've got to show this to Rico.“

  “Be my guest,“ I said to his departing back. I turned back to the spreadsheet.

  Damn, die chief was right. There was a column that probably contained dates. I hadn't realized it because I usually separate the month, year, and day with slashes or hyphens, rather than periods, but once he suggested the idea of dates, I realized that's what they had to be. And they were all this year – within the last three months, in fact.

  Of course, I wasn't sure what good this new insight did, since I still had no idea what he was tracking – the first time he approached his victims? The last time the victims had paid? Their most recent turn to bring doughnuts for staff meeting? No way of telling.

  Let's tackle something else, I thought. Ted's house, for example. I made a few phone calls to the Caerphilly Courthouse and found out where I could go to find out who owned the house.

  “Meg?“

  I looked up to see Frankie.

  “Okay if we keep this for now?“ he asked, brandishing the bear.

  “As long as you like,“ I said. “It belongs to Dr. Brown, but I don't think she'd mind. There's a whole box of them in the closet.“

  “Really?“ Frankie said. “What are they doing there?“

  “Getting in my way,“ I said. “Why don't you stash them someplace else until Dr. Brown needs them?“

  Frankie left, dragging the giant box of bears.

  For the next hour or so, I heard a great deal of squeaking from the rest of the office. Squeaking and laughter. Then Cubeville grew suspiciously silent.

  I thought of going back to see what was going on, but I was lying in wait for Luis. I didn't see him until lunchtime. He nodded as he passed through the reception area, but I was stuck on a call until after he'd disappeared.

  Damn. I mentally cursed the temp agency. Then with a sudden inspiration, I punched in the code that would let me change the answering message and recorded a new version – instead of “Our offices are closed now“ it said “Our switchboard is closed now“ and reminded people that they could reach whoever they were calling if they knew their party's extension. Then I put the phone in night mode, grabbed my purse, and raced for the stairs.

  Luis was strolling at the languid pace most people adopted if they had to go out in the near hundred-degree heat. By walking briskly, I caught up with him when he was only half a block away.

  “Fetching lunch?“ I asked.

  “Want something?“

  “I'll stroll along with you, if you don't mind,“ I said.

  Luis nodded, and I fell into step beside him. I'd been planning to bring up the subject of the Robin Hood Hacker in casual conversation, but I was having a hard time figuring out how to start a conversation that I could drag in the right direction. And Luis wasn't one for casual conversation, anyway. We had already ambled on half a block, and I got the feeling he was perfectly capable of walking all the way to whatever carryout he planned to visit and then back again without saying another word.

  Forget subtlety, I told myself. “Luis,“ I said. “I know what Ted was up to.“

  Luis frowned and glanced at me, but said nothing.

  “What he was trying to do to you, I mean,“ I added.

  “I don't think he deliberately mangled the code so I'd have to clean it up, if that's what you mean.“

  For Luis, that was a long speech.

  “Dammit, Luis. I know you were the Robin Hood Hacker,“ I said, Luis seemed to shrink a bit, and he hunched his shoulders as if expecting a blow.

  “And Ted knew,“ I continued. “And he was trying to blackmail you with it. I don't know why – all the charges were dropped and almost everyone thinks you were a hero. I mean that's where the Robin Hood nickname came from, right? But I knew you were paying him blackmail, and I want to know why.“

  “I don't want to lose my job,“ he said.

  “No reason why you should,“ I said. “I mean, it's not as if you were convicted of a crime.“

  “Yeah, but the bank – the one I hacked? They'll never let it go.“

  “What could they possibly do to hurt you?“

  “They've gotten me fired from two jobs already.“

  “Rob wouldn't fire you for that.“

  “He might not want to, but what if the bank figures out a way to put pressure on him? What if suddenly his line of credit gets canceled? Or one of our competitors' systems gets hacked and word leaks out that I work here. Stuff like that happened, my last two jobs.“

  “So that's why you changed your name?“

  “Yeah,“ he said. “Changed it back, actually. That's the funny part. Mike Crews was me trying to be somebody I wasn't, when I went away to college. Luis is my middle name. Miguel Luis Cruz.“

  “Does anyone else know?“

  “Jack,“ Luis said. “He hired me for my first job when I got out of college. One of the two I lost. He was the one who recommended me to Rob. And suggested going back to my real name.“

  “What did he say about Ted trying to blackmail you?“

  “I didn't tell him about t
hat,“ Luis said. “I was afraid of what would happen.“

  “Afraid of something like what did happen?“

  “No,“ Luis said. “If you mean you think Jack killed Ted, no, that's not what happened. I just figured he'd come down hard on Ted, and Ted would find some way to get even.“

  “Like what? What could he possibly do to get even with Jack?“

  “I don't know,“ Luis said. “If there was anything you wanted to hide, Ted would find out about it. He had this thing about knowing everything, all the dirt, even if he didn't do anything with it.“

  “And you think Jack has something to hide?“

  “Everyone has something to hide,“ Luis said with a shrug.

  We walked along for a little while in silence. On the one hand, I was feeling a little triumphant. My suspicions had been correct – Ted was blackmailing people. One person, anyway, and it stood to reason that if it worked on one person, he'd try it again. I was making progress in unraveling the secrets behind Ted's strange little cache.

  But I wasn't altogether sure I liked what I'd found. I couldn't imagine quiet, self-effacing Luis as a murderer, but I had a hard time imagining him as a daring hacker, either, and he certainly had been that. And he had a motive for the murder. For that matter, I couldn't see calm, sardonic Jack as a murderer, but he had motive, too. He was Luis's friend and mentor – if someone threatened Luis, I could see Jack intervening.

  “What are you going to do?“ Luis asked.

  “I don't know yet,“ I said. “Depends on what else I find out.“

  He nodded. I thought some more and decided, what the hell. I needed someone computer savvy to help me. Why not Luis? Now that I knew his secret, I had some influence over him.

  “You could help,“ I said.

  “How?“

  I dug into my bag, pulled out my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, and ripped out a sheet of paper. I flipped through it until I found the URL of the porn site I'd seen Roger tending and wrote that down on the sheet. Then I flipped through some more until I found where I'd stuck the sheet of paper with the IP addresses I'd found in Ted's basement, and copied those down, as well.

  “Here,“ I said. “Check these out.“

  “What are they?“ he asked.

  “Porn sites,“ I said.

  He looked up, surprised.

  “At least two of them are,“ I said. “I have a feeling maybe they all are. I want to know for sure, and I don't want to look at them if I can help it. And I want to know everything you can find out about them.“

  “Like what?“ Luis asked, puzzled.

  “Who owns them,“ I said. “Where they're located. And most important, whether anyone at Mutant Wizards has any connection to them.“

  “Okay,“ he said.

  “And don't tell anybody,“ I said. “Not Rob, or Jack, or anyone else at Mutant Wizards, or even your own mother.“

  “Right,“ he said. “This has something to do with the murder?“

  “Maybe,“ I said. “Or maybe I'm just on a crusade to stamp out pornography.“

  “You going to stamp out Nude Lawyers from Hell while you're at it?“ he asked with a rare, fleeting smile.

  “Maybe,“ I said. “Do you know who programmed it?“

  He didn't say anything for a moment, and it suddenly hit me that I might have solved another of the small mysteries that plagued Mutant Wizards.

  “If I knew, it probably wouldn't be smart to tell you,“ he said finally. “Look, on this porn thing – how far do you want me to go?“

  I was opening my mouth to say, “As far as you need to go to get answers, for heaven's sake,“ but something stopped me.

  “I'm not sure I understand what you mean,“ I said instead.

  “Do you just want me to get what I can from legitimate sources?“ he asked. “What we could turn over to the police without getting in trouble? Or do you want me to go all the way? As far as it takes?“

  “See what you can get legitimately first,“ I said. “If that's not enough – well, we'll worry about that later.“

  “Right,“ he said. He looked relieved.

  I wondered if he'd have agreed if I'd said, “As far as it takes.“ Did he now have qualms of conscience about illegal hacking, or was he just running scared?

  And what should I do if he couldn't find out everything I needed from legitimate sources? I confess, I didn't feel too guilty about using any means necessary to stop Roger's porn operation, which if not illegal was certainly distasteful and potentially risky for Mutant Wizards. But could I live with myself if I got poor Luis into trouble? Was encouraging a supposedly reformed hacker to relapse as morally suspect as, for example, serving bourbon balls to an alcoholic aunt?

  And, of course, what if Luis was in cahoots with Roger?

  “By the way,“ I asked. “What exactly does Roger do, anyway?“

  “He's the sys admin,“ Luis said.

  “And that is –?“

  Luis blinked as if it had never occurred to him that someone might not know what a sys admin was.

  “That stands for systems administrator,“ he said. He was talking in the same overly loud, slow way tourists talk when they can't quite believe that the hapless foreigners around them don't understand English. “He's in charge of all the hardware and software that runs the network.“

  “Oh, is that why he's always sitting around in the computer lab?“ I said.

  “Yeah, that's more or less his job,“ Luis said. “Not that it really should take as much time as it seems to take him. He even had Ted helping him with some of the stuff lately, and it still seemed to take him forever to do anything.“

  “Are you suggesting that perhaps Rob needs to hire a more competent sys admin?“ I asked.

  “Don't quote me on that,“ Luis said. “But yeah. Roger's pretty lame, not to mention a head case. As you found out last night.“

  Interesting. Maybe Ted had been the one in cahoots with Roger.

  I was still pondering this when we arrived at Luis's destination. Good thing I'd finished interrogating him. He was heading for the College Diner, a Caerphilly institution most people outgrew by their senior years, except for the occasional trip down nostalgia road. Or the occasional case of munchies at 3 A.M. since the diner was the town's only twenty-four-hour restaurant.

  “Catch you later,“ I said. I continued on to a small deli that made an edible ham-and-swiss sandwich.

  Then I headed over to the courthouse to joust with bureaucracy.

  In the office of the Recorder of Deeds I learned that the house where Ted had lived – if you can call his basement lair “living“ – was still listed as belonging to Mrs. Edwina Sprocket.

  “How often are these records updated?“ I asked the clerk.

  “They're updated as soon as we get the information.“

  “This property is listed as belonging to someone who died a couple of months ago,“ I said. “At least I think she died.“

  “Then it probably still belongs to her estate,“ the clerk suggested.

  “How can I find out for sure if she's dead,“ I asked.

  “Environmental Health Office,“ he said. “Room 414.“

  “Why the Environmental Health Office?“ I asked. “As far as I know, she died of old age, not pollution.“

  “That's the name of the office that keeps all the death certificates,“ the clerk said with a shrug.

  For eight dollars, the ominously named Environmental Health Office gave me a copy of Mrs. Sprocket's death certificate. Cause of death was heart failure, which wasn't particularly helpful, but at least I had the attending physician's name and could sic Dad on him if it seemed useful.

  And then, down in the Circuit Court office, I managed to find out the name of the attorney who was handling her will.

  It all took an hour and a half, which seemed maddeningly long to me, even though I had the feeling it would have taken twice as long if Caerphilly were a larger, busier county. Of course, a larger, busier county m
ight have bothered to air-condition its offices. I felt I'd done a whole day's work and had an overlong stay in the sauna by the time I headed back to the office to eat my wilting sandwich.

  The world hadn't come to an end while I was away from my post, so I decided I'd repeat the experience later in the day. As soon as I figured out something useful I could do with my time away from the switchboard. And I could check out what kind of construction was going on; I'd heard hammering from someplace in the back when I walked in.

  But for now, I cleared out the accumulated messages and started on my sandwich. I'd picked up a copy of the Caerphilly Clarion while I was out and I opened it to – well, not my favorite section, but the section with which I'd grown most familiar: the real estate section.

  Slim pickings as usual.

  “Damn, and here I was going to see if I could whisk you away to the steak house for lunch.“

  I looked up to see Jack in the doorway.

  “Thanks,“ I said. “But I'm trying to stick pretty close to the office except for really important things. Like going to visit any houses for sale or rent.“

  “I'm house-hunting myself,“ he said.

  “Isn't everyone?“

  “Everyone at the Pines, anyway,“ he said with a shudder. “Anything interesting?“

  “Nothing Michael and I didn't already see this weekend,“ I said, handing him the paper.

  “You didn't like the 'luxurious lakeside retreat'?“

  “You mean the million-dollar starter castle on the handkerchief lot?“ I said. “A little steep for our budget.“

  “Especially since they're asking two million for it,“ Jack agreed. “The 'dynamite fixer-upper' was a holdover from last week, too. What's wrong with it?“

  “They had a serious house fire,“ I said.

  “Needs a whole lot of fixing up?“

  “Needs bulldozing, if you ask me,“ I said. “It's a charred shell – no way you could ever make it habitable. You'd need to bulldoze the ruins, haul away the rubble, and build a new house.“

  “You're not interested in building?“

  “Maybe, if we could find a reasonable lot,“ I said. “We're not interested in paying the cost of a house for a lot that would still need thousands of dollars of demolition work before we could even begin building.“