The press. That’s the answer. The greasy-looking guy with the spiked-up hairdo—he said he was some kind of TV personality. He’ll go have a chat with him. That’s as good an insurance policy as any.
Chief Carbonneau notices Murphy looking up at them and stops talking.
The D.A. has the gall to wink at him. Motherfucker. He blows a kiss at the two men and trots over to the door leading back to the ICU. Let those self-important, elected assholes whisper. Politicians—that’s what they are. No commitment to the force or anything else.
But they’ll get theirs. He’ll see to that.
The chitchat begins to swell. The mood is tense and fraught.
Prescott Henderson holds up a peremptory finger. “While I’d love to catch up with everybody,” he says, commanding the attention of the other five parents in Soren Wexford’s study, “I think it’s important that we get down to business.” All eyes are now on him, the way he’s used to. The way he likes it. “While I’m sure we all have different information about what transpired last night, as well as different interpretations of those events—”
“Screw your interpretations,” says Simon Grayson, rising from his seat. “I want to know how the hell your son put my son up to this.”
“Marcus is a good kid,” says Simon’s ex-wife, Tammy.
“I don’t doubt it,” says Prescott.
“Elliott is on track to be valedictorian,” says Jude Rylance in his chewy, Connecticut baritone. “A suspension from school would ruin that.”
A moment later, they’re all talking over one another, hurling questions and accusations around the room.
Prescott puts his hand up. “People, please! I understand your concerns. Believe me, I share them with you, one hundred percent. That’s why I requested that we all meet.” He turns to Rylance. “Honestly, Jude, a suspension is the least of Elliot’s worries right now. We’re looking at lawsuits, possibly even criminal proceedings if our sons’ involvement in this business is found out. Luckily, Soren’s son Shane came to his parents and told them what had happened. That provides us an opportunity to get out ahead of the situation. Otherwise, it might have caught us unawares. Now, as I understand it, the only people who know about this are the boys themselves and the people in this room. And I want to keep it that way.”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m not talking to my lawyer,” Grayson says.
“If you feel you need to do that, Simon, fine. Go ahead. But I would urge the utmost discretion. My objective here is to keep this thing from getting to the point where our children will even need legal representation. My plan is to bury it.”
“And how are you going to do that?” says Tammy. She leans forward, giving Prescott a distracting view of her cleavage.
“I have ways of keeping things under wraps,” he says. “Avenues I can use.”
“What does that mean, ‘avenues’?” says Rylance. God. For the owner of a local media conglomerate, the guy can be a little dense.
“Oh, Jude,” says his wife, Patricia, “would you get with it? It means he’s connected to the mob.”
Prescott responds patiently. “It means that in the conduct of my business I’ve met certain persons who know how to deal with this sort of thing.”
Simon Grayson shakes his head, “I always knew you were up to some shady stuff, Henderson.”
Soren Wexford steps away from the old-fashioned bar, where he’s been steadily draining his supply of Johnnie Walker Black. “And if you are right about that, Simon,” Soren says, “you ought to be grateful for it at the moment.”
“Gentlemen, please,” Prescott says. “There’s no need for any more harm to come from this. But we all need to be on the same page if we’re going to contain the situation. As soon as someone here gets the bright idea to strike out on their own, everything goes to hell. All I’m asking for is your assurance that you won’t do that. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Grayson scoffs. “And how do we know you won’t just throw our kids under the bus to save your son’s ass?”
“Because my son has more to lose than any of yours.”
They all look at him skeptically.
“How’s that?” says Tammy, leaning so far forward now that he can almost see her navel.
Prescott sighs. “The FBI has a file on Rich. They’ve been watching him. If they think he’s been committing telecommunications fraud, he could end up facing federal charges.”
“There you go,” says Grayson, speaking mostly to the Rylances. “He’s shady, just like his old man. I say we give him up. Ask for immunity for our boys if they agree to take down the ringleader.”
Soren Wexford starts toward Simon Grayson, but Prescott intercepts him. “Please, Soren.”
“What are you gonna do, Wexford?” says Grayson.
“I’m gonna shove a bottle of Scotch up your ass.”
“You’re too busy drinking the whole thing to do that.”
“Gentlemen, please!” says Prescott, a little exasperated. He turns to Grayson. “Simon, I know you’re upset. Understandably. But the fact is, even if you could work out the kind of deal you’re talking about—which there’s no guarantee of—there would still be the possibility of civil proceedings. A lawsuit like this would wipe you out.”
“He’s already having trouble with the alimony.”
“Shut your damn mouth, Tammy!”
“The point is,” says Prescott, “we are not going to let it get to that. We’ll nip this in the bud, and no one will ever be the wiser.”
After they’ve concluded their meeting—more or less to everyone’s satisfaction—Tammy Jordan stops Prescott in the door to the study. “I want to thank you for taking the lead on this very difficult matter,” she says. He looks over her shoulder. Soren is showing the Rylances to the door. Tammy’s ex, Simon, has already left.
Prescott smiles at her. “I pride myself on being a man of action.”
“I’d love to hear more about that.” She pulls a business card from her purse and hands it to him. “Call me sometime.”
She winks at him and turns to leave. He looks at the business card, which identifies her as a “Holistic Decorator,” whatever the hell that means. It doesn’t matter. It’s not a business consultation he’ll be calling her about.
A moment later, Soren comes back into the study. He heads straight for the bar. “Scotch?” he says.
“Please,” says Prescott. Soren is visibly drunk, but who could blame him. This business would make the Dalai Lama reach for a Xanax.
“I’m sticking with the Black Label myself, but you strike me as a single-malt kind of guy.”
“You got me.”
Soren pours two fingers of Lagavulin into a tumbler and slides it over to Prescott. They drink and lean against the bar. Prescott looks around the study, noticing for the first time how well-organized and clean the place is, like it’s lifted out of a somewhat tacky but meticulously curated museum exhibit about the Golden Age of America.
“What do you make of all this?” Soren asks, swirling his glass.
“How do you mean?”
“What do you think was behind this? What motivated them?”
Prescott chuckles. “You act like we never got in trouble when we were teenagers.”
Soren eyes his drink. He sets it down on the bar. “We drank and went joyriding. But nothing like this. People could have gotten killed in there. By the sound of it, one of the intruders might not make it. Forget how they pulled it off, how’d they even get the idea in their heads to start that kind of trouble?”
“They got in over their heads. I don’t know. Do you have a theory?”
Soren has a distant look in his eyes. “My grandpa worked in the old Montello Mill before it closed down. His brother was a bricklayer—real working class stock, you know? My dad was the first in the family to go to college. He appreciated what that meant. And he instilled in me a sense of responsibility for what I was doing, the choices I made. I grew up feeling that I was acco
untable for my own actions, that I couldn’t palm it off on anybody else.”
“My dad was about the same,” says Prescott.
Soren laughs. “Fuck you. Your grandparents owned half this town. Blue-collar, my ass.”
“I meant about personal responsibility.”
“Yeah, well…” Simon sighs. “I’m thinking maybe our kids are the opposite. Like they don’t want to own up to anything. They’ll take any credit you want to give them—even when it isn’t due—but they refuse to take the blame for anything. I don’t know how we let them get this way.” His eyes are red and misty. “Ironic thing is, my son Shane—for all the flack I’ve given him over the years—he was the only one who acted… what’s the word I want… nobly.”
Prescott takes a sip of Scotch. He starts to respond but settles instead into silence.
When he gets home, Prescott finds Rich sitting at his computer, as usual. His backpack is tossed on the floor by the bed, a couple of barely cracked textbooks peeking out of the main pocket. Prescott knocks on the door lightly as he enters.
“I’m busy, Dad,” says Rich, his eyes peeled to the screen. Prescott strides over to the desk and flicks the switch on the power strip. The screen goes black.
Rich throws up his hands. “What the hell are you doing, man? I didn’t even save my work!”
“You’re not going to have any work to save for a while.”
“What are you talking about?” Rich sits back in his rolling chair, his posture proclaiming his impatience and incredulity at the interruption.
Prescott puts his hands on his hips. “When you’re eighteen, you can move out and get in whatever kind of trouble you want. You want to become some kind of cyber-terrorist, by all means, be my guest. But as long as you’re living under this roof, I’m not letting you dig yourself any deeper into this hole you’ve gotten yourself in.”
Rich looks askance at him. He laughs and shakes his head. “Whatever, man.”
“No, not whatever,” Prescott says. “Playtime is over. You’re gonna hit the books and try to finish out your high school career with a modicum of dignity. You will use your computer for schoolwork only, and then under the direct supervision of me or your mother.”
“Oh, yeah, because Mom is like a virtuoso of supervision.”
“Fine, then under my supervision.” He points to the computer. “I’m taking that thing out of here, and I’m keeping it under lock and key for the rest of the school year.”
Rich shrugs. “You know I can just get another one. I’ve got money.”
“I’ve already put a hold on your accounts.”
“What? You can’t do that!”
“Yes, I can. And I have.”
“Whatever,” says Rich, “I’ll just hack into them from one of my friends’ computers.”
“I’ve spoken to your friends’ parents. We’re all on-board together.”
Rich begins to seethe visibly. “Then I’ll use the computers at school. You can’t stop me.”
“Yes, I can. I’ve spoken to Principal Connors. You’re not going anywhere near the computer lab.”
Rich’s eyes flare. He sits up in his chair. “I turn eighteen in six months. What’s to keep me from just taking off and riding it out until then?”
Prescott sighs and sits on the bed. “Listen, Richard, I’m trying to help you. I don’t think you realize how much trouble you and your friends almost got in last night.”
Rich rolls his eyes. “Oh, please.”
“I’m serious. Now, I am doing my best to cover your tracks, but if you’re not careful—”
Rich laughs uproariously. “You’re… you’re covering my tracks? You’re covering my tracks? Oh, Dad… that’s a good one.”
“Don’t you dare laugh at me.”
“Fuck you.”
Prescott goes silent. For a moment, he tries to imagine what his father would have done if he’d said those words to him, but it’s literally unthinkable.
“You’re ‘covering my tracks,’” Rich says again. “That is a hoot.”
“Why is that funny?”
“Because there are no tracks to cover, Dad. I’ve already cleaned everything up. On my computer and the other guys’ computers. The videos, the chats, the phone calls, everything. There’s not a single trace. It’s all gone. Bye bye. There is not one goddamn bit of data linking us to what happened other than the word of Jay’s spastic little brother. So just keep a lid on that little fuck-tard, and we’ll be golden.”
The temperature in the room seems to have jumped about five degrees. Prescott feels his hands beginning to tremble. A bead of sweat rolls down his temple. In twenty-four years of doing business, he hasn’t had so much as an elevated heartbeat in a negotiation, no matter how tense it’s gotten (or what threats were thrown around), but right now, he’s nervous as hell.
“Relax, Dad,” says Rich, sensing Prescott’s perturbation. “I’m telling you, nothing’s gonna happen.”
Prescott swallows. He tries to keep his voice steady. “What about these forums you were frequenting? That’s how you got in touch with the intruders to begin with, I take it?”
Rich nods, a big grin creeping onto his face. “That was kind of fun, to tell you the truth. You see, I went with a double redundancy there. First, I made sure to wipe out anything posted by me or the targets. But just in case I missed anything, I went ahead and barraged the forums with so much noise that it broke the servers.”
“Noise?”
“Random data,” Rich says, savoring the words. “Well, not exactly random. It was generated from words and phrases commonly found in postings on the forum so as to mimic the tone of a real post, but basically meaningless. A few terabytes worth of text jammed into the system did the trick. Even if anyone decided to take a look through that data, it would be like searching for a needle that might not exist in a haystack the size of Mt. Everest. It would take literally thousands of hours to sort it out, even if they knew what they were looking for.” Rich leans back, amused. “But I didn’t stop there, though. In the interest of being thorough, I went ahead and dropped some really nasty malware on the forums’ host computers. The folks running them must be losing their minds right about now. My guess is they’ll be scrapping the servers by the end of the week. And just in case that didn’t work, I went ahead and sent a couple of bogus blackmail-y things to the guys who run the site, just to distract them, keep them off-balance.”
Rich plucks a Twizzler from a big container on the desk and starts gnawing at it contentedly.
“But I’m sorry,” he continues, “I interrupted you. You were telling me about how you’re covering my tracks. Please. Enlighten me. I would love to pick up some tricks from his eminence, Prescott Henderson.”
Prescott feels an unfamiliar pressure in his throat and behind his eyes.
Rich leans forward. “Oh, Dad, are you about to cry?”
He is. His eyes are welling up. He hasn’t cried since he was about Rich’s age. He didn’t cry at his own wedding. He didn’t cry when his father died. But it’s coming on now.
He shakes his head listlessly and says the only thing he can think to at the moment: “Why?”
“Why what? Why is the sky blue? Why do bad things happen to good people?” Rich shakes his head, feigning confusion. “Ohhhhh, you mean why’d I do it?”
Prescott nods.
“Because,” Rich says in a tone that is somehow both arch and deadly serious, “I asked Clara Lavando to come with me to the big end-of-the-year bonfire last spring, and the bitch laughed at me. Right in front of the whole cafeteria. Then she ended up going with this total d-bag, Timothy.”
Rich looks at him flatly.
“That’s all?” Prescott says.
His son shrugs.
“Rich, people could have died.”
Rich’s chest puffs up. His cheeks flush. “She laughed at me! In front of people!” He shakes his head, disgusted. “That bitch is to blame for what happened to her own fucking family.”
Prescott stares at his son in disbelief.
Rich blinks. “Are we done here?”
Unable to muster a response, Prescott stands and goes to the door, quaking with an incandescent dread.
Stanley wakes with a start. He isn’t surprised to find his wrist handcuffed to the hospital bed, but he is startled by the view beyond the handcuffs—a young woman with long, dark hair, wearing denim overalls.
He’s more lucid than he was when he went down, and the pain in his back and in his head has returned. The young woman holds up her hand, revealing the reason—she’s folded his IV line and holds it pinched between her fingers, stopping the flow of morphine into his arm.
“Who are you?” he says.
“I have some questions for you, Jason,” she says. “Is it Jason? Or Jay?...”
“Most people call me J.S. Or Stanley. That’s my middle name.”
The young woman nods. A bolt of pain shoots through Stanley’s back. He grimaces.
“Must be getting a little uncomfortable for you,” the young woman says. “I’m just looking out for you, though. You gotta be careful with these pain meds. They have a high risk of dependency.”
“I’m aware,” he says. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you, Stanley,” she says, “I have some questions for you.”
He squints at her. “Are you a cop? You don’t look like a cop.” The young woman glances down at her clothing. “But if you are, I don’t have to talk to you without a lawyer. I know that much.”
The young woman smiles and sits back in her chair. “I’m not a cop.”
“Then how’d you get in here?”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
Stanley glances at the door to the room.
“If you’re thinking about calling for the guard,” she says, “don’t bother. He’s taking his lunch break. And the nurses have been advised not to respond to the call button, either.” She leans in close to him. “I wanted to make sure we had our privacy.”
Stanley swallows, trying to tamp down the pain. “What kind of questions do you have?” he says.
The young woman pulls a phone out of her pocket. She pulls up a sound-recording app and presses play. A distorted voice begins to speak—it’s Dresden. The call they made to the TV station. When the recording is finished, the young woman puts the phone back in her pocket.
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