But she had eluded him once before. It galled him to have been cheated of her not once, but twice. To leave their relationship unconsummated.
Well, perhaps all was not yet lost. Anything was possible. And he was patient. He could wait for her. He had already waited so long.
43
No way out.
C.J. had sprinted past blocks of lightless buildings, across swards of brown grass, until she reached the chain-link fence at the edge of the complex. From a distance it didn’t look like an insuperable barrier. Only when she drew close did she see the coils of razor wire cresting the fence like spiked, unruly hair.
The wire would cut her to pieces if she tried to climb over.
Next she skirted the perimeter in search of a gap in the fence or an open gate. She found no gaps, and the gate, when she came to it, was padlocked.
Pick the lock? She didn’t have any tools. Cut the chain or the hasp? Not without a hacksaw.
Craning her neck, she peered up at a sign over the gate, which read “COMING SOON—MIDVALE OFFICE PARK.”
Below the words was an artist’s rendering of an immaculately landscaped commercial development on narrow, winding streets. The colors were bright and clear, and the picture had the wholesome appeal of a storybook illustration. But it was streaked with dirt and rain, and she guessed that construction on the project had halted some time ago.
She looked through the steel mesh of the gate at the surrounding darkness. There had to be a road or a home nearby, some sign of habitation or activity.
There was nothing. The office park lay in an unpopulated wasteland of sere desert hills, an environment that reminded her a little of the Mojave Desert where she had grown up. In the congested sprawl of the LA basin, Adam had managed to find that ultimate rarity—a secluded place.
She leaned against the gate, fighting for breath, trying to decide what to do.
Well, there was one option. She could bust her way out.
Adam must have parked his car near the garage, although she hadn’t seen it during her escape. If she could find it ...
Maybe she could hot-wire the engine. All she needed was a tool to pry off the ignition cylinder—any bit of scrap metal would do. Then ram the gate and blow it off its hinges.
The difficulty lay in defeating the BMW’s antitheft system. But maybe she would get lucky. Maybe Adam had left the car unlocked. Even if he had, the system might automatically lock the doors and arm itself after a set period of time. Well, she would face that problem when she came to it. For all she knew, Adam had left the doors open and the key in the ignition. She could dream, couldn’t she?
At least it was a chance. A plan.
Carrying it out meant returning to the vicinity of the garage. If Adam had anticipated her strategy, he might still be there, lying in wait.
No, that was crazy. He couldn’t read her mind, for God’s sake.
Anyway, she had to risk it.
She headed back toward the garage, hoping Adam wasn’t smart enough to set an ambush there.
44
Adam had hated his ex-wife for a long time, but until tonight that hatred had been impersonal, driven by the conviction that she had wronged him, that justice demanded retribution.
Now he knew what real hatred was. He knew it with the agonized throbbing of his genitals, where she had shocked him—Jesus, shocked him like some prisoner in a Third World jail with his nuts hooked up to a car battery. He knew it with the complaint of his left knee, already stiffening up. She’d struck him with the flat of the plank, hard against his lower thigh, close to the knee, and though he didn’t think there was any permanent damage, he could feel the swelling of a nasty bruise.
She had hurt him.
He repeated the thought in his mind, trying out different emphases—she had hurt him, she had hurt him, she had hurt him.
No matter how it came out, it sounded equally incredible.
For her to hurt him had never been part of the plan. He was the one who was supposed to inflict pain and punishment. Hell, he was entitled to.
Now here he was, limping through the dark streets of Midvale Office Park, his balls aching, his knee on fire, and she was out there somewhere, uninjured as far as he knew, having equalized the contest.
He was pretty sure she couldn’t escape. That was one reassuring thought. He knew the complex well, and with the gate locked, it was a giant cage.
A cage. That was the first thought to strike him on the night when Roger Eastman had shown him this place.
Eastman was another attorney at Brigham & Garner, but unlike Adam he was no newcomer to the firm. He’d been there fifteen years, developing a healthy roster of clients and an even healthier paunch, which hours on the golf course did nothing to reduce. For some reason he had taken Adam under his wing.
One day three weeks earlier, Eastman asked if Adam had plans for the evening. “Nothing important,” Adam said, aware that the only item on his personal agenda was a visit to the Web site he had discovered, the one showing C.J.’s bedroom.
“Great.” Eastman smiled. “I want to show you something.”
He was very mysterious during the drive out of town. He refused to answer any questions. “You’ll see” was all he would say as he steered his Lexus away from the last remnants of the January sunset.
It was fully dark by the time they reached his secret spot. Adam remembered the moment when the Lexus turned onto the unlighted asphalt road that seemed to lead nowhere—and then Eastman flicked on his high beams to illuminate a construction-site sign.
“Midvale Office Park?” Adam asked. “This is where you wanted to take me?”
“That’s right, kid.” Eastman often called him kid. Adam hated it. “And you know why?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Because it’s mine.”
From his coat pocket Eastman produced a ring of keys—not his regular keys, but the kind of heavy chain a night watchman would carry. He unlocked the gate, pushing it open, then returned to the Lexus and drove into the complex, past shells of three-story buildings, lightless, bare of trees or other foliage. The artist’s rendering on the sign over the gate showed a Tudor architectural motif, but the facades had not been put up, leaving only featureless wood-frame walls with dark, glassless windows.
“Mine,” he said again. “Well, partly mine anyway. I’ve got this client. Tommy Binswanger—I’ve mentioned him.”
“Sure.”
“Tommy’s a broker. Handles commercial real estate. He tipped me off about this place. Prime investment opportunity. The original developers hit a financial snag, had to shut down construction, declare bankruptcy, unload all their assets. Tommy put together a group of investors, and we snatched this place for a song. To ante up my share, I had to burn through my portfolio, take out a second mortgage, pay IRA penalties for early withdrawal. The wife didn’t like it, let me tell you. Well, fuck her. She never approves of anything I do. This deal’s gonna make me rich.”
You already are rich, Adam thought. But he merely said, “Wow.”
“Wow is right. The developers were so desperate for ready cash, they were in no position to bargain. Tommy estimates this facility will be worth a minimum of twenty million when completed. We paid a fraction of that.”
“Has construction resumed?” Adam asked, looking at the dark avenues gliding past, the empty windows, the excavations and dead ends.
“Not till next year. March is the tentative start date. We need to work out a few details first. Legal matters, tax issues, all that crap. Tommy’s handling it.” He waved his hand vaguely.
It was clear to Adam that Eastman had no idea what the details were or how long they might take to work out He had put his faith in the infallible Tommy. Adam hoped his trust was misplaced. It would be amusing to see Roger humbled by financial ruin. He could imagine the fat blowhard crying over his martini—he still drank those—and cursing Tommy Binswanger and the injustice of the world.
“Looks like you l
ucked into something big,” Adam said. “Wish I’d known about it.”
Eastman laughed. “You? On your salary, you couldn’t get on board a deal like this, kid.”
Kid again. “Guess you’re right.”
“But I’ll tell you what. When we have our grand opening, you’re invited.”
Eastman completed his tour of the office park. He drove through the gate, then got out and padlocked it again.
“Gotta protect my investment,” he said as he drove away. “Not that there’s any risk of vandalism. Got no neighbors except a few horse ranches a mile away or more. Anyway, the place is sealed up tight. Ten-foot perimeter fence topped with razor wire. Nobody can get in.”
“Or out,” Adam muttered, thinking of the complex for the first time not as an office park but as a huge steel cage.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. Say, Roger, I’m developing a thirst. What do you say we stop off for adult beverages on our way home?”
“The wife’ll kill me. I’m late enough as it is.” Eastman shrugged. “What the hell. I feel like celebrating. Every time I visit that place, I see dollar signs, kid.”
Adam didn’t even mind being called kid now. He laughed along with Eastman, laughed at his locker-room jokes and his anecdotes about golf and the firm and “the wife,” who evidently had no actual name. He laughed when they shared a table at a tavern on Melrose, and he laughed when after several drinks Eastman fumbled with his coat.
“Let me help you with that, Rog,” Adam offered, still laughing as his fingers slipped into the coat pocket and closed over the ring of keys.
He found the key ring now, in his pants pocket, and fingered it for reassurance. As long as the place was locked up, C.J. was trapped. He could hunt her down. She couldn’t fight him.
Or could she? Already she’d proven more dangerous than he had expected. He’d thought it would be so easy. He’d rehearsed her death for days. He’d killed her a thousand times in his thoughts.
And always his mantra played in counterpoint to the stream of images, the mantra he recited now, through gritted teeth.
“Nobody fucks with me. Nobody makes me their bitch. Nobody—”
Another stab of pain in his knee. Damn. He wouldn’t be able to walk much farther.
To track her down, he would have to use his car.
45
Gader had made good on his threat to call an attorney. Around 1:30 A.M., a grim, bearded, bespectacled young man arrived at the house and ordered Rawls and Brand to leave. His client did not wish to extend further cooperation to the federal authorities until they returned with a search warrant.
“It could be an arrest warrant,” Rawls said, getting in a parting shot. Gader paled, but the attorney was unmoved.
So now, at twenty minutes before two in the morning, Rawls and Brand were speeding back to the FBI field office. Rawls was at the wheel of the sedan. Brand in the passenger seat with his notebook computer on his lap. He had pulled up a copy of the tip-off e-mail message, which he had stored on a floppy disk.
Agent Rawlz,
Something phunny going on. Do you like to watch? Say you’re Bluebeard. You have to find the key.
“Any ideas?” Rawls asked as they pulled onto 1-695.
“Maybe. I don’t see any clues to who he is. But there may be a clue to who he isn’t.”
“Translation?”
“This hackerspeak he uses—it seems kind of phony, like it’s a persona he’s putting on.”
“He isn’t a real hacker?”
“Well, he found a way inside Gader’s server. Got Bluebeard’s user name and password. He must have some skills. But it’s not who he is, if you get my drift. It’s not what he’s all about.”
“You’re saying he probably isn’t a teenage kid hanging out in chat rooms, bragging about his latest hack.”
“Right. He just wants to be seen that way.”
“How does that help us?”
“I wonder.” Rawls lapsed into silence as the car sped through the frigid night.
It was Brand’s comment about coincidence that had turned their attention to the anonymous e-mail message. If a visitor to the Web site had figured out what was going on, why wait until the day of the next abduction before alerting the authorities? It was almost as if the e-mail was part of a game someone was playing. But who? The killer himself? Or somebody close to him?
No way to know. But Rawls and Brand were now convinced that the tipster must not be allowed to remain anonymous.
Rawls thought about what Brand had said. The informer wasn’t a true hacker. He was only masquerading as one. Yet he’d known enough to send the e-mail through a remailing service that scrubbed off all routing information and made a trace impossible. And he’d known enough to bypass the field office’s email address in favor of Rawls’s personal account—
His personal account.
“We’ve been going at this backward,” Rawls said.
“How so?”
“It’s not the message that matters. It’s how he got it to me.”
“Sure, but we can’t trace—”
“We don’t have to. He obtained my e-mail address. Now, how would he do that? How would you do it?”
Brand considered the problem. “First I’d have to get your name. It’s not listed on the field office’s Web site, so I’d probably have to look in archived newspaper stories. The Baltimore Sun ran a story on the Myers case a few months ago. You were mentioned.”
Rawls nodded. “And identified as part of the computer crime squad.”
“He could have found that article in a database search. Okay, so he’s got the name of an agent in Baltimore who knows computers. Now he needs the e-mail account to go with it. So he searches e-mail directories—”
“Right. That’s how he got to me. And that’s how we’ll get to him.”
“Will we?”
“Those directories keep logs of searches and hits. We can find out who’s searched for my name—”
“And with any luck, the search will be linked to the searcher’s IP address. But maybe he thought of that. He might have used a public terminal or routed his search request through an anonymizer.”
“I don’t think so. If he’s just playacting as a hacker, he won’t know all the ins and outs. He’ll think he’s more anonymous on the Web than he really is.”
“Worth a shot, anyway.” Brand was already hooking his data-capable cell phone to the laptop to get online.
By the time the sedan pulled into the parking lot of the field office. Brand had searched for his partner’s name on the half-dozen largest e-mail directories. Only two listed a Noah Rawls.
In the office, Rawls got on the phone to the first directory’s technical assistance number, identifying himself as a federal agent, while Brand used his own phone line to contact the other service.
Strictly speaking, a warrant was required to force the system operator to relinquish private information to law enforcement agents. But the directory services were mainstream, commercial operations, and unlike remailers and anonymizers, they were not eager to force a confrontation with the FBI. The sysop at the first service checked his logs immediately, no questions asked.
“Sorry, sir,” he reported. “I see zero hits on the name Noah Rawls during the past three weeks. We don’t keep records longer than that.”
“Thanks anyway.” Rawls hung up, wondering if they’d reached another dead end.
Then he saw Brand scribbling on his desk blotter, and he knew they had something from the second service.
“The FBI appreciates your cooperation,” Brand said into the phone, then cradled the handset. “One hit, ten days ago. We got the IP address.”
“Trace it.”
“Will do.” Brand searched a CD-ROM containing millions of known Internet Protocol addresses. He reported that it was a dynamic IP address assigned by a major Internet service provider.
Most providers maintained huge blocks of IP addresses and assigne
d a new address to the user whenever he dialed in. The addresses were doled out at random, and the same user would have a different address every time he established a new connection.
Even so, the specific user could be traced, if the date and time of the connection were known.
“We’ve got the date stamp and the time stamp on the e-mail directory search,” Brand said in response to Rawls’s unvoiced question. “If the ISP will open up their logs, we’re golden.”
Brand phoned the provider and got through to the sysop. Rawls waited, wondering if they would encounter resistance. The big providers were sensitive to protecting customer privacy. Sometimes they demanded a warrant.
Then Brand covered the phone’s mouthpiece and said, “They’re cooperating.”
“Hallelujah,” Rawls breathed, and for a moment he was back inside the hot, overcrowded church in East St. Louis where his mother had dragged him every Sunday, wearing his only suit, a threadbare hand-me-down from his cousin Theo.
Praise be to God, the congregation would announce. Hallelujah, oh, hallelujah!
He asked himself if God was watching over him now—and over C.J. Osborn.
46
C.J. found Adam’s black BMW a few yards from the parking garage, near a pile of lumber blocking the entry ramp. For the first time that night, she actually felt lucky—because the door on the driver’s side had been left open. It hung ajar, inviting her inside.
A trap? More likely, Adam had been in too much of a hurry to close the door. That meant the antitheft system had never been activated.
If the key was in the ignition, she might start to believe in miracles. She slipped inside and checked.
No key. Well, she could get the car started anyway. She’d picked up a long steel screw from the roadside while doubling back to the garage. It would make an adequate prying tool. She set to work digging the screw into the ignition cylinder, trying to find purchase on the slippery metal ring.
Last Breath Page 22