She scanned quickly through his school assignments. Essays she’d helped him with, a few he’d tackled on his own. There was another folder of Web pages he’d downloaded from the Internet. Scanned photographs of animals and comic book heroes and a couple of all-girl groups in slinky, revealing costumes. His computer address book was empty and she quickly exhausted his other personal folders. No E-mail addresses anywhere she could see, no old mail stored to his hard drive. She opened some of the general program files and read the file names but nothing struck her as suspicious.
Hannah sat for a while staring at the screen. If Randall wanted to conceal something from her on his hard drive he certainly had the ability to do it. It wouldn’t even represent a challenge for the boy. In only five minutes Hannah was close to exhausting her computer skills.
The only other possibility she could think of was his Internet service provider’s storage system where Stevie’s old E-mails might be saved. She clicked through the steps and the modem dialed into the system. Fortunately he’d stored his password and in a few seconds the opening page appeared.
Welcome Randall.
As Hannah was locating Randall’s E-mail log, an electronic trill sounded from the speakers. She stiffened.
In the corner of the screen a small white box appeared. An instant message from Stevie. Apparently some kind of buddy system alerted him that Randall Keller was on-line.
“Hey Randall. Where you been?”
Hannah sat there for several moments staring at the empty message box below Stevie’s welcome. The cursor pulsed inside the box, waiting for a response.
She settled her fingers on the keyboard and typed.
“Hey Stevie.”
She waited but no reply came. Thirty seconds, then a minute.
Finally the trill of another message.
“You’re not Randall.”
Hannah didn’t hesitate.
“I’m not?”
“No. He doesn’t talk that way.”
“Okay,” she typed. “That’s true. I’m not.”
“You’re Hannah, his mother.”
“Good guess,” she typed.
“I’ve read your books.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I like Erin Barkley. She’s a real tough lady. And sexy.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m ready for the new one. What’s taking so long?”
“You sound like my editor.”
“So Where’s Randall?”
Hannah considered it for a moment.
Then she typed, “He’s sleeping over with a friend tonight.”
“Gisela? The houseboat.”
“That’s right.”
“So how come you’re on his ’puter?”
“Just playing around. I couldn’t sleep.”
“I know the feeling.”
“I was wondering,” Hannah typed. But then she hesitated, not sure where to take this. How much she could trust this kid. If he was indeed a kid.
“Yes?”
What the hell. Frank had failed her, his buddies at the FBI were fumbling or stalling for reasons of their own.
“I was wondering if you could help me with something. A computer problem.”
“I could try.”
Hannah sat there a minute more, debating it. Then finally, she began to type, telling this total stranger what she needed to know.
When she was done she waited for several minutes before his reply came back.
It was a street address on Star Island. And below it he’d typed, “Stop by before noon. I’ll show you what I’ve dug up.”
“You don’t go to school?”
“Home schooling,” he replied.
“I’ll be there,” Hannah typed back.
“Now you should probably get some sleep,” Stevie said.
“You too,” she responded.
“Fat chance.”
Hannah sat there a moment more after Stevie had signed off. This was her first instant message conversation and she was shivering at the strangeness of it Disembodied words passing back and forth through the black vacuum of cyberspace. It was nuts, laying out this private matter for some complete stranger. It was something only a totally reckless, totally desperate woman would do. Someone like Erin Barkley. Someone like herself.
Spunky rustled in his shredded newspapers. He poked his nose through the thin bars of the birdcage. Hannah took down the carton of food pellets and dumped a few in his feeding dish. Spunky wriggled his nose at her and went to work, munching ravenously on the brown pellets.
She turned back to the computer and just as she was beginning to run down the list of Randall’s recent E-mails, she noticed that in the corner of the screen, the red flag on his mailbox was popped up.
Hannah hesitated a moment, then moved the cursor and clicked on the mailbox.
The message was from someone calling herself Barbie-girl. Another insomniac pal of Randall’s orbiting the electronic void.
Hannah clicked open the mail.
Barbie-girl had typed, “Hi, Rando. Here’s a recent snap so you have a better idea what I look like. Better shred this when you’ve finished looking. Wouldn’t want Mommy to get the wrong idea. Barbie-girl.”
There was a file attached to the mail. Hannah double-clicked to download the attachment.
Slowly, a photographic file resolved into view, a girl’s face filling the seventeen-inch screen.
She had metallic red hair and very pale skin, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two years old. She had dull green eyes and used a garish array of blues and browns in her makeup. She had a longish nose and was squinting back over her shoulder into the camera lens. Her chin rested on her shoulder blade in a Marilyn Monroe cootchie-coo pose. The smile on the girl’s narrow lips was probably meant to be coquettish, but it had all the subtlety of a hooker’s come-hither leer.
Hannah sat still. It was half a minute before she managed to draw a breath. She got up from the desk and paced back through the house to the kitchen. From an open bottle in the refrigerator she poured herself a glass of Chardonnay, gulped it down, and poured another. She carried it back through the silent house and took her place again at Randall’s desk.
She had another sip of wine, then set it aside and went back to the E-mail log and clicked on the icon to open the folder. Three other folders were stashed inside. Once was titled Stevie, one called Barbie-girl, and the last one Dad.
Hannah fumbled with the mouse, nearly knocked it off the desk.
“That fucking bastard.”
When she regained control of her faltering hand, she guided the cursor to the Dad folder and clicked. There were a couple of dozen files inside, each one dated, starting back in January, ten months ago. About the same time Randall had created his Web page and hung it out on the Internet, a virtual post office box. Making himself available to anyone searching for the name Randall Keller. Which is how his father, Pieter Thomasson, that goddamn son of a bitch, must have located him. And for the last ten months the bastard had been courting her son, engaging him in some kind of E-mail relationship, no doubt trying to plant seeds of discontent or betrayal.
Hannah chose the first file, a message dated the seventeenth of January.
But when she clicked it twice, the file wouldn’t open. A small gray box appeared instead, asking for her password. She tried typing Randall, but that wasn’t it. She tried Keller, then Spunky, but was refused. Pieter was rejected and Thomasson was as well.
She sat back in the chair. A screech owl was hooting in the neighbor’s yard. The sea breeze had stiffened and she could hear the rattle of the palm fronds outside Randall’s window, and the quiet tick of the wood house resisting the steady pressure of the wind.
In the middle drawer of his desk she found a box of floppy disks. She punched one of them into his disk drive and in a few seconds she’d copied all the Dad E-mail files to the floppy. She backed out of the Dad folder and then opened the one named Barbie-girl. Twenty-odd files starting back in July. Th
e Barbie files were password-protected as well, so she exited the folder and copied it to the same floppy disk.
The Stevie files did not require a password. But it only took her a couple of minutes, scanning through the first four or five, to see that the conversation that passed between these two was innocuous, the talk of boys who shared an obsession for computers and the arcane intricacies of software programming.
She got up slowly from the desk and carried her wine through the dark house. In her bedroom she switched on the small reading lamp perched on her bedside table. She opened the top drawer. Beside the .357 Smith & Wesson lay the copy of First Light. She plumped the pillows and propped herself against them and opened the book to page 276.
There was only a single phrase underlined.
She closed the book, lay it on the bed beside her and reached over for the phone.
Frank Sheffield answered on the first ring.
His voice was husky, as if he’d been screaming at the bare walls ever since she’d left him.
“Are you all right, Hannah?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine. What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I’m fine.”
The line was empty for several moments.
“Hooked up page 276.”
“And?”
“Fifty-yard line at the Orange Bowl.”
“That’s all it says?”
“That’s all.”
He was quiet for a second or two, then said, “So does this mean you’re back on the case?”
“I’m back.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it.”
“How about noon, Frank?”
“The Orange Bowl at noon. Okay, sure. I can be there.”
“You starting to see the pattern?”
“Pattern?”
“The Bayshore house. Stiltsville. The Orange Bowl. A place in plain view. Exposed. Easily monitored.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Frank?”
“Yeah.”
“Does the name Helen Shane mean anything to you?”
She thought she heard him swallow.
“Helen Shane?”
“Never mind, Frank. I’ll see you at noon. North entrance. We can go in together.”
“Fine,” he said. “Noon, north entrance. And listen, Hannah.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll get on those computer guys. Crack the whip. I agree, it shouldn’t take this long to locate the source of a Web address. They may even have something by now.”
“Good, Frank. You do that Crack the whip.”
She hung up and sat there for a while staring at the phone, listening to the push of the steady breeze against that old wood house.
TWENTY-SIX
Hal Bonner was changing planes in Atlanta. It was six in the morning and the plane that was to take him to Nashville was parked at the gate just about to start boarding. Hal was talking to a man in a brown corduroy suit. The man was red-haired and gangly and he had huge feet inside his huge wingtip shoes. His portable computer was perched on his lap and his fingers were still resting on the keyboard, but a few minutes earlier he’d stopped working on the memo he was typing. The man wasn’t looking at Hal. He wasn’t looking at his computer screen. He wasn’t looking at anything at all. The gangly man hadn’t so much as twitched since Hal started letting him know about the feeding practices of the bearded vulture of Eurasia.
How it lives on a diet of bone and marrow. How it spots a carcass from above, and circles in and lands, then waits patiently near the carrion while all the other jungle scavengers strip away the meat and gristle and lick up all the blood. When they’re finished with their meal the bearded vulture hops forward to take his turn, and consume the skeletal remains.
But the femurs of antelope or gazelle are not easy for a bird to crack open. So the bearded vulture had to discover a way to take advantage of the one skill that is his greatest strength—flying.
With a bone grasped in its talons, the bearded vulture flies around till it locates a slab of rock. Then after it gains a little altitude, it dives at the rock at speeds of more than fifty miles an hour, turning away at the last second and letting the bone go so it smashes against the boulder. The vulture might have to repeat the trick two dozen times to pulverize a single bone. Though the splintered parts don’t have to be all that small because the bearded vulture can swallow a ten-inch piece of bone without any trouble.
“Like a sword swallower,” Hal said to the businessman. “Only this bone goes in, but never comes out.”
The man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and after a moment he turned his head to take a look at Hal.
“I think it’s time to board,” Hal said.
By 6 A.M. Central Standard Time Hal was in his rental car going west past the Grand Ole Opry. Using a different credit card than he’d used in Miami. One of the dozen or so he got in the mail every month from South America. Nice new credit cards with nice new names.
Fifteen minutes later he passed Vanderbilt University and kept on heading west till he came to a small road on his right that led up a hill to a neighborhood of large white houses with big columns across their fronts.
He’d been there a few times before. Just parked down the block to watch the house and the comings and goings of Hector Ramirez. The trucker who’d gotten Hal started in the murder business wasn’t driving a truck anymore. These days Hector owned a white Cadillac and he lived in a big Nashville house with seven white columns across the front.
Two years earlier the DEA had tried to throw Hector in jail on an interstate transport of narcotics charge, but Hector hired the best lawyer in Nashville and beat the case. That’s how Hal found him. Just by chance, seeing Hector’s picture in the paper, him and his lawyer standing on the Nashville courthouse steps holding up their hands in a victory celebration.
Hal had forgotten all about the guy until last night, sitting in the parking lot watching the guys who were watching Hannah Keller. That’s when he had the idea. Hector Ramirez was going to be Hal’s distraction. His old friend helping him out one last time.
Hal drove up Hector’s driveway and parked in front.
He was wearing his Florida tourist clothes. The yellow shirt with speedboats on it and a light blue windbreaker over it. Blue jeans and tennis shoes. Hal walked up the stairs and rang the doorbell.
The man who answered the door was an African-American. He was tall and had wide shoulders and long arms. He was dressed in a black shirt and black pants. He had a gold tooth in his smile.
“I’m here to see Hector,” said Hal.
“Everyone wants to see Hector,” the man said. “But only a few get to.”
“Tell him it’s Judy Terrance’s boy,” Hal said. “He’ll remember.”
The black man slanted his head and peered at Hal for a few seconds. Then he stepped back and shut the door in Hal’s face.
Hal waited. He stared at the white paint on the door. It was glossy and looked like it was many layers thick. Someone had spent a lot of time painting the door. Over and over and over until the door was thick with glossy white paint.
Hal could feel someone looking at him through the peephole. Then he heard a voice behind the door and a moment or two later the door swung open and Hector Ramirez was standing there in a white robe and a black cowboy hat. He was wearing shiny gold slippers.
“Hey, kid.”
“Hello, Hector.”
“Tell me right now, no bullshit. Is this a business call? ’Cause if it is, then I can tell you flat out, it isn’t going to happen. I got serious protection right inside this door.”
“You mean did they send me to murder you?”
“That’s what I mean, yeah.”
“No,” Hal said. “I just wanted to see you again. To say hi.”
“Is that right?”
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Hal said.
Hector looked at Hal for a long time, then he turned his hea
d and looked to his right and nodded.
Hal saw the big black man step away. He was holding a large automatic weapon. Hal didn’t recognize it or know its brand name. He didn’t care about weapons or their names or calibers. He had his thumbnail and his hand and that’s all he needed.
“You wanted to see me again? What, like to reminisce about the good old days in Judy’s roadside trailer?”
“I brought you something. A present.”
“What’re you talking about, Hal?”
“I owe you, Hector, for getting me started in this business. It’s turned out to be very lucrative.”
“Yeah, I heard they’re keeping you busy. I should’ve taken a referral fee, or a cut on your future earnings, boy.”
“Well, I brought you something. It’s something I found in my travels and when I saw it, I thought of you, Hector. I thought of how much I appreciated your help, getting me started.”
“What kind of bullshit is this, Hal?”
Hal turned around and walked back to the rental car. He sat down in the driver’s seat and he honked the horn. Then he honked it again and again and then held it down for several seconds. Hal waited there, looking across the street, until he saw a woman in a blue dress and white hair come to her front window, a neighbor concerned about the noise in this expensive neighborhood. Hal continued to tap the horn.
As Hector came down the sidewalk, he screamed at Hal to stop that fucking racket.
Hal continued to honk.
Hector came up to the open door and ducked down and reached out to pull Hal’s hand away from the horn.
Hal turned in the seat and with one hand he grabbed Hector by the throat and with the other he reached inside Hector’s robe. Hector’s cowboy hat tumbled off his head and fell to the asphalt.
Rough Draft Page 25