Clean

by Tom Lytes

  “Wait, wait,” Peggy said. “He could start the program on one computer and it jumps around when it finds a better computer, and settles there until something better comes along?”

  Finley said, “That kind of simplifies the process, but yes.”

  “Leonard worked at Boeing. He used Boeing’s computers?” Peggy asked.

  “No, the security was too tight, I think. That’s why he quit the job. The security expert at Boeing told me the risk of discovery would be extremely high on their system. I think Leonard thought Boeing would be a good bet, but when he started messing around on their mainframe, he got spooked and changed his mind.”

  “I don’t understand, then,” Peggy said. “If he needed a big computer, where did he find one?”

  “On a whim, I looked for other local computers possessing high computational capacity, but much less security. I sent pictures of Leonard, along with the resume he used to get hired at Boeing to a couple other companies in the Charleston area.”

  “Where did he get hired next?” Peggy asked.

  “Volvo.” Finley said with satisfaction. “There’s a new Volvo plant in North Charleston. Leonard Roberts worked there for fifteen days and then stopped showing up for work.”

  “So where is his jumpy program now?” Peggy asked. “If you think he launched it at Volvo, couldn’t you find it and put an end to it?”

  “I don’t know,” Finley said. “If Leonard launched the program at Volvo, it toiled away completely out of sight from their IT people. We’ve got a guy going to Volvo now, but my guess is the program jumped to another host.

  “Ah, shoot,” Peggy said.

  “Now the program is alone somewhere in the shadows, working with whatever available data it encounters. If we are to believe our suspicions about what Leonard’s been doing, it’s finding new people and eradicating the guilty. It’s working around the clock to clean up society and ridding it of evil.”

  “It sounds like a comic book,” Peggy said, “not real life.”

  “It seems like Leonard designed the program to hide and move from computer to computer so nobody could stop it. It can’t be stopped if it can’t be found.”

  “So, we can’t find it.”

  “Not easily,” Finley said, “not yet.”

  Peggy caught motion in her peripheral vision and was surprised to see a uniformed officer in a tan uniform walking quickly across the weed-filled grass, approaching her with purpose.

  “Hey Fin,” she said before pushing buttons on her phone and turning her back to the ocean, “I’ve got to go.”

  Behind the officer, a patrol car from the Sullivan’s Island Police Force was visible at the front of the house, pulled across the driveway with its lights flashing. Behind the lights of the police car, and just inside the bushes at the front of the property, were the young, inquisitive faces of the neighbor boys. They had surf boards on their backs and looked like they might have been heading back out to the beach when they stumbled upon the developing scene outside the house where Peggy was staying.

  Peggy was greeted with cheer that seemed in contrast to the policeman’s flashing lights and parking maneuver.

  “Hello, my name is Officer Pincus.” He smiled broadly, covering the distance between them and towering over Peggy.

  Officer Pincus took off his hat and looked apologetic.

  “Are you Peggy Whitfield? Barbara Pelman said I might find you here.”

  “Barbara—” She pulled herself together and said, “Yes sir, what can I do for you?”

  “Well now, that might be a hard question to answer, Ms. Whitfield.”

  “Please call me Peggy.”

  “Can do,” Officer Pincus said. “You mind coming with me to the old police station?” He jerked a thumb to indicate it was on the island, not in the ocean.

  “What’s this all about?” Peggy asked.

  “I’d rather talk about it down the station,” he said. “It’s informal. The police unit and town hall moved down to the park, but we still use the old station. I miss it to tell you the truth. Ya’ll just relax and come down there with me now.”

  Officer Pincus was comfortable, clearly, and when he guided Peggy towards the house, she didn’t object. What could she do?

  The officer waved at the boys from down the street. The older brother was tugging on the younger boy. It took several seconds for them to move out of sight, with the tug of the older boy wanting to leave finally overcoming the littler one’s desire to watch what might happen next. Their surfboards stuck up over the hedge and Peggy could see them gradually moving along the roadway, long after the boys disappeared from view.

  When they were alongside the house, Officer Pincus nodded towards her police cruiser.

  “Peggy, you have a firearm in your car?”

  “I do,” she said, and suddenly fleeing the search warrant didn’t seem like the wisest move. The emanating heat from the pavement made her feet hurt. They paused outside her car as Officer Pincus responded to a blast of static from the police radio on his belt.

  “Officer Pincus, here,” the policeman said into the device. He turned to Peggy and asked, “Keys in it?” She shook her head and after a minute of fumbling she handed him a single key from a small purse. He took it, unlocked her police car and dropped the key on the front seat. Then he turned back to the radio and said, “Send Ralph down to get Ms. Whitfield’s patrol car over to the old town hall, okay.”

  “Are you arresting me? Do you have a warrant to look in my car? What’s happening here?” Peggy asked insistently.

  “Relax,” Officer Pincus said as he squared his body to her. “Everything here is fine between us. Get in my damn car already.”

  Peggy hesitantly sat in the back of Officer Pincus’s car, and they drove a few blocks up Middle Street before taking a left on Station 16. They pulled up to a short end of a rectangular brick building. A walking door and garage door were both open.

  Officer Pincus didn’t speak, but true to his word he didn’t look worried at all about Peggy. He strode away from her and stepped through the garage door and stopped in front of what looked like an old jail cell. Taking hold of a spray hose, he freshened the water in a bucket, inspected the cell, and came back out of the garage. Peggy was leaning against the back of the Sullivan’s Island police car, and Officer Pincus joined her there.

  “I needed to get down here before Whitney arrives,” Officer Pincus said. “We didn’t have time to talk on the beach or I would have missed the appointment here.”

  Peggy’s squad car pulled up alongside the building and they were joined by a younger deputy. He tossed the key to Officer Pincus, who put the key to the vehicle in his pocket.

  “How long have you been in town,” Officer Pincus asked Peggy.

  “I got here yesterday,” Peggy said.

  “What are you doing? Why are you spending time on my island?”

  “My brother passed away, and I have a few days off from work,” Peggy said. “My Mom is in Florida and I stopped off here on the way down.”

  Officer Pincus nodded and seemed to be thinking.

  “You know an FBI agent who goes by the name Finley?” he asked.

  “What?” Peggy asked. “I mean, yes I do know him. What does he want?”

  “Evidently, he cares about your well-being. He has asked our department to keep an eye on you,” he said. He paused, as if to gauge reactions to the statement, “Which is unusual. Somehow, he must have known you were here. Then I got an APB for your squad car, issued by somebody else at the FBI. Evidently, it’s involved in a criminal search. Seems like you may have left town before you knew about the warrant. I’ve been asked to impound it.”

  “Oh,” Peggy said.

  “Well, that seems to be a lot of attention for somebody to garner in such a short time on the island,” the officer said. He was leaning agai
nst the side of his car and looked like he might even be amused. “You’ve been here less than a day, is that correct? I think it is.” Officer Pincus looked at Peggy appraisingly and rubbed his chin. “I decided to handle the car impound and meet the lady who has so many people whipped up for myself. Did I mention a District Attorney from New York called me down here? It makes you wonder.”

  Peggy looked inside the garage and saw the rudimentary jail and the bucket of water in the corner.

  Officer Pincus wiped sweat off his brow and said, “But then it really got me wondering who Officer Peggy Whitfield was, when an email came to my personal email account at home.”

  “An email?” Peggy asked. “What kind of an email?”

  “Well it came from a new email account,” Officer Pincus said, “that was hard to trace. In fact, it doesn’t seem to connect to a living person, at least that’s what my tech guy said. Which is unusual, especially because of the content of this email. It was pretty personal.”

  “What did it say?” Peggy asked.

  “It said the only way I could stop you from telling everyone on Sullivan’s Island about my mistress’s child was if I killed you,” Officer Pincus said to her. “Excuse me a second.”

  Officer Pincus walked a few steps down the short street and waved at a bright red Cadillac Escalade that pulled up in front of the old police station.

  Peggy whispered to herself, looking around, “I don’t like this one bit. Did he just say he was going to kill me to keep his mistress’s child a secret in the community? It’s got to be Clean’s work.”

  Officer Pincus looked completely relaxed as he shook hands with the lady driving the red Cadillac and she thanked the officer. Walking around the car, he stopped at the rear door and opened it. In no time, a dog with caramel colored short hair leapt out with his paws on the officer’s chest. Officer Pincus was smiling, and the dog seemed to smile too. That changed when the dog took a second or two off from the jumping to realize where he was. Almost instantly he dropped to the ground with his tail between his legs and started to whine.

  Officer Pincus muttered to the dog as he led him into the garage and closed him in the old cell. Turning in a circle of defeat, the canine lay with a sigh. After another brief conversation between the lady and Officer Pincus, the red Cadillac took the turn onto Thompson Avenue and drove out of sight.

  “That, there dog has the most unbelievable amount of energy,” Officer Pincus said to Peggy.

  “I thought you were going to put me in that cage,” Peggy said, laughing with discomfort and pointing to the old jail cell.

  Officer Pincus didn’t acknowledge her, but continued saying, “Name’s Whitney and he used to run away from home occasionally. One of our officers would inevitably find him getting into something he shouldn’t. We are on an island after all – there’s only so many places a dog can run off to. Anyway, we’d bring him over here until Celia could come pick him up. Thing is, he behaved better after he spent a little time over in our old jail cell. Nowadays, as a deterrent for future bad behavior, Celia drops him off for a little tune-up when he starts acting unruly. A night in there makes him appreciate home.”

  “Isn’t that a little unusual?” Leonard asked.

  Officer Pincus shrugged, “It’s not unusual to have a dog get out of a fenced yard, so we use the old jail to keep them safe while we locate their owners.”

  “Huh,” Peggy said, wondering if he answered the question, or maybe didn’t. “When you told me about the email and blackmail, I thought you might have it in for me. I’d like to know what’s going on around here.”

  “Me too,” Officer Pincus said. “Why don’t we go to my house and eat some lunch and try to figure it out? Just two cops hashing out the situation. I’d imagine you and I might just have some luck doing that if we can keep the FBI, District Attorney, and everyone else at bay for a little while. My wife will have made some sandwiches and I’ve asked my mistress to meet us over there too.”

  “Uh, is that going to be a problem for your wife?” Peggy asked.

  “Well, I sure hope not. She should be all right if she made enough sandwiches,” Officer Pincus said. “It would really piss her off if we ran out.”

  19

  Officer Pincus directed baby talk at the dog named Whitney as he switched off the lights of the old jail. The dog began wailing softly and built up to a crescendo as the garage door slowly shut. Then Whitney started up on round two with a new burst of energy. Officer Pincus locked up the walking door and motioned for Peggy to follow.

  “We’re walking,” he said.

  “What about my car?” Peggy said.

  “It’s impounded until further notice,” the officer said. “I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

  “Can I get anything out of it?” Peggy asked. In New York impounding a vehicle meant a tow truck, lots of paperwork and putting the car under lock and key behind spirals of barbed wire fence.

  “Nope,” he said.

  “That’s it?” Peggy asked again pointing at her car parked on the side of the road. She moved her hands away from her body in exasperation, palms up. “You impound cars by parking them on the street?”

  Officer Pincus stopped abruptly and turned towards Peggy.

  He said, “There isn’t anyone within a five-state radius that has any interest in your police car from New York State. This is Sullivan’s Island. You’re in South Carolina and we do the important things absolutely by the book. Putting your car in an impound yard in North Charleston seems like an unnecessary overreaction to the current situation.”

  He glared at Peggy for a good few seconds. When it didn’t look like she was going to say anything more, he looked at her police car like it might give him some lip.

  When he apparently stared down the vehicle sufficiently, the cross look faded from Officer Pincus’s face and he again looked jovial. “Now, let’s have lunch.”

  Walking without looking to see if Peggy was following, he took a left on Middle Street where Peggy caught up to him as they passed in front of Fort Moultrie.

  He pointed to the brick walls of the fort.

  “It’s open to the public and run by the U.S. Park Service. It’s fun to spend a day in there learning about the rich history of the military on Sullivan’s Island. The fort is all that remains of what once was a formidable federal presence on the island. The entire southern end of Sullivan’s was used as a base, and the north was used for training soldiers in special operations. That, and for target practice.”

  From half a block away, Officer Pincus pointed out a church. Gone completely was the challenging tone and stern look, as he sounded more like a tour guide in love with his town than a police officer.

  “There’s the oldest Catholic Church in the south, named Stella Maris,” he said. “It was built back in the days of triangular trade when the island was full of disease and served as a major port for incoming slave boats.”

  Down the block beyond Stella Maris, a few houses away, was a tiny little cottage with a silver painted door and a silver metal roof. It wasn’t a huge house by any standards, especially compared to the expensive new construction on the island. The house did have a look of permanence though, and it was flanked by two large pecan trees. Off to the side of the home, and behind it, was the marsh and a rickety dock that stuck out into the wetland like an outstretched finger. At the entrance to the dock, a gate had weathered until it looked like driftwood.

  Upon entering the yard, a little boy came running down the steps to greet Officer Pincus.

  “Daddy,” he said as he buried his head in the officer’s pants.

  “Hello, Sullivan,” he said to the boy. “Did my Miss Tress show up yet?”

  The boy nodded into the pants. Officer Pincus walked up the front walk with the boy firmly attached to his leg.

  When he opened the screen door and pushed at the o
ld wooden paneled door behind it, they heard the voices of two women. The entrance to the cabin opened to a living room, which connected to a kitchen with a pass-through serving window.

  There was a conversation in full swing when they arrived, and it didn’t stop for them, either.

  “Well, you know it’s the first week of July when the figs are ripe,” a large woman with a small hand fan was saying. “That man down the street named Woolens. He’ll come and sit on my doorstep until I’m done putting them up. He takes a jar before they’re even cool. He’s tellin’ me he spreads it on the bread he keeps. Insistent to have it as soon as I’m finished. I’m not complaining though. He’ll help me plenty when the water rises, or when a tree limb falls.”

  Officer Pincus entered the conversation by saying, “Here’s a police officer from up north.” He pointed. “Peggy, meet my wife Lisa Anne and our friend and neighbor Miss Tress. Her real name is Theresa but everyone calls her Tress.”

  Peggy looked at the large African American woman in front of her and laughed at her own word play. She muttered, “Mistress and Miss Tress.” Then she thought about the blackmail email Officer Pincus received referencing an illegitimate child as leverage. Peggy looked at the cute African American Boy that didn’t look at all like Officer Pincus, Lisa Anne, or Miss Tress.

  “We adopted Sullivan when he was born,” Lisa Anne Pincus said to Peggy, as if she knew what Peggy was thinking. “He’s a delight. Miss Tress has taken to him, and fondly calls him ‘her boy,’ but he’s our adopted son.”

  “Ha, and I adopted all of you, now, didn’t I?” Miss Tress said to the Pincus family as she waved a cooking ladle around the kitchen.

  “It’s true,” said Officer Pincus, “and we have been forever blessed. And that is the truth. What’s for lunch?”

  “She-crab soup,” Lisa Anne said, “fresh cornbread from the farmer’s market, and tomato cucumber salad. Oh, and sweet tea.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” Officer Pincus said to his wife. “We’ll let you ladies continue your conversation as we step out back.”