Sitting on the pew was a phone. Not a cell phone. A freaking landline phone. Cord and all! She was leaning over trying to figure out what it was connected to when she heard Angus speaking on it.
“1-800-854-4568.” She heard him say as though it were voice-activated.
“Hey, that number rings a bell,” she said.
“Cute, times two, Cass. Ooooo. I could just squeeze ya.” He gave her cheek a pinch.
She was stymied. Still wondering where the phone came from, she began to stare at Angus, who was now dressed in a suit, a bow tie, and a straw hat, the phone to his ear.
“Hello,” he said. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Shewster, please…Oh?…Well, I think he’ll make an exception in my case and take the call…okay. If you insist. Ya got a pen? I wanna make sure you get the message down just right. Good! Here’s the message. Tell him Abigail was still wearin’ the strap-on when we propped her up on the pole…. That’s right. Pole. Strap-on. S as in Sam, T as in Texas, R as in Roger—you got it? Strap-on. What’s that? Sure. It’s 858-734-6523…. Nah. He’ll know who it is. Tell him it’s a toll-free call. Not to worry. It won’t cost him a cent.”
Angus hung up, put the phone on the pew, and said. “See, Cassie. Now I’m gonna be a millionaire. Actually a millionaire three times over! Boy, oh boy! I can’t wait. Why I—
A high-pitched whistle sounded.
“What? What is it? What?” she screamed, bolting upright in the bed. Wiping beads of perspiration from her brow, she spied Angus, still seated at the computer. “Only a dream. Thank God. It was only a dream.”
Laying back down, she heard the pounding of her heart and the tap, tap, tapping of keys.
Chapter 78
Malcolm Shewster was good at a lot of things. Through the years he had mastered the art of baiting a hook for deep-sea fishing. It is an art, he’d been told. Not merely a skill. He was also adept at setting steel traps for catching critters. And he took pride in the fact that he could take down quail with a twenty-eight-gauge shotgun without inflicting injury to anyone standing nearby. He even possessed the dexterity needed to lasso a calf.
Admittedly, he was a younger man when he acquired and honed these skills, but he had discovered he could capture just about anything, if he put his mind to it.
As Friedrich Gernsheim’s Concerto in C minor, Op. 16, emanated in absolute clarity from the fifth-generation iPod, Shewster was scanning the PC Haven receipt onto his computer.
He swayed his hands in maestro fashion, waiting for the image to appear on his own notebook, a Pegasus 330.
“Voilà!” he said, pleased with the transfer, which he quickly minimized so as not to interfere with his online conversation with Kyle Rogers, an associate of sorts, and CEO of Bengal Enterprises in Los Angeles, California. He, like Shewster, was an ambitious industrialist. He was also a man in demand. It was only last year that he’d been asked to chair the board of trustees for a nationally based corporation. He accepted the designation graciously, promising to comply with the record-keeping and disclosure requirements of federal law. The corporation he was asked to help govern wasn’t going to turn into another Enron or Tyco International. No sir. As long as he was in at the helm, no stockholder or employee of PC Haven, Inc., need worry. He was a man of conviction. A man of character. A man who knew the intricacies of corporate America.
One of those intricacies involved favors.
“Ready when you are, Malcolm.”
By simply tapping on a touchpad, Shewster placed the image of Angus’s purchase on the WiFi expressway. Before the pharmaceutical mogul powered off, Rogers was viewing it.
Chapter 79
“Lieutenant, we’re all at the mercy of physics,” said Danny O’Brien, leaning against metal shelving inside TARU as Driscoll examined what the tech had placed in his hand.
“You think this has a better chance of staying onboard?” Driscoll examined the black device that looked like a cigarette holder Hitler might have used. “It feels so light.” “Cedric tagged the Lincoln with a Qicktrack. It’s a good GPS, but maybe too heavy for a chauffeur who likes to ride the rumble strips. What you’ve got in your hand is a Protrack. Granted, it’s lighter. Thinner too. But those are pluses. Cedric will need more time and a ratchet, but I think he’ll be able to wedge it between the limo’s fuel tank and its support straps.”
The technician disappeared. When he returned, he handed Driscoll a three-eighths-inch drive ratchet set and a laptop.
“What’s with the laptop?”
“It’s configured to work with the Protrack.”
“You mean I can follow him myself?”
“If you want to.”
Driscoll looked pleased.
“One more thing, Lieutenant.”
“What’s that?”
“You might want to hold on to Cedric’s cigars when he tags the vehicle. He’s gonna be working under twenty gallons of gasoline.”
Chapter 80
A knock sounded at the door to Shewster’s suite. Muttering something unintelligible, he went to answer it.
“Hmm…showdown time, huh?” he said to Driscoll, who looked like he’d come to conduct a hanging. “I’d figured you’d drop by sooner or later. Come in. Come in. We’re not going to air our grievances in the hall.”
Driscoll barreled past the man and entered the room. “You’re crowding me, Shewster. I’m an inch away from arresting you for interfering with a police investigation.”
“C’mon. We both know that’s not about to happen.”
“No?”
“You reach for a set of cuffs, Lieutenant, and you’ll be back to pressing a uniform.”
“You threatening me?” Driscoll asked, looking like he was about to put Shewster through the wall.
“Sit down.”
“I don’t know who the hell you think you’re talking to. I’m not some goddamn—”
“Please, Lieutenant. Have a seat,” Shewster said, motioning toward the sofa. “It hasn’t been my best day either. You can put away the sword. I’ll tell you what you came to hear.”
Driscoll didn’t move.
“Please. No more threats. Miss Crenshaw wasn’t as big a help as I thought she’d be.”
“What’s with the store receipt?” Driscoll asked.
Shewster sat down. “Do you like cookies, Lieutenant?”
Driscoll thought he’d stepped into an episode of The Twilight Zone. “Suppose we cut to the chase,” he said.
Shewster gestured like he was telling a child it was okay to cross the street and offered a smile.
The Lieutenant straddled a wooden chair, facing him.
“Good. Good. See, we’re making progress.”
“I didn’t come here to be toyed with, Shewster.”
“What we’re both seeking, Lieutenant, is one and the same.”
Yeah, right. “What’s with the store receipt?”
The business man used the palms of his hands to massage his face, his fingers to rub his eyes. He then looked squarely at Driscoll. “You know as well as I do anonymity isn’t always as Webster defines it. Thanks to the Internet and to the resourcefulness of tech-literate people, privacy is another word that has an asterisk next to it.”
“PC Haven. Rita Crenshaw. The store receipt. You wanna tie those into where you’re heading?”
“My plan to help the police apprehend these killer twins is to include a Web site, for use by folks who prefer the Internet for communicating. Not everybody trusts Ma Bell anymore. The site will enable the net-only enthusiasts to stake their claim to the bounty. There will be a blog to keep visitors up to date on the latest developments in the chase. If I were the target of that chase, I’d be checking that blog every hour. That’s where the PC Haven receipt comes in. Sure, any owner’s manual would give me the specifications and capabilities of the notebook this killer purchased. But I’m a businessman who deals in products. A variety of products. Pills, syrups, inhalers, vaccines. Each one designed for a specific purpose, but each
one unique. I’m the type of adversary, Lieutenant, who needs to know everything about his opponent. Right down to the dates on the coins he’s carrying in his pocket. Like I said, an owner’s manual would give me the notebook’s capabilities. What it’s not going to tell me is how vulnerable it is to privacy invasion. More to the point, that generic manual is not going to tell me how vulnerable his notebook is. I need to know every miniscule detail of the workings of that particular computer. Right down to whether the guy who installed its hard drive had a hangover at the time!”
“And a store receipt’s gonna tell you all that.”
“I’m a resourceful man. Placed in the right hands, the receipt’s SKU and barcode will help reveal the computer’s path from assembly line, to packing, to shipping, to—hell, you know where I’m going with this. If the damn thing was dusty when our young predator carried it to the cashier, I’ll know about it.”
All this from a store receipt? “Frankly, Shewster, I’d say that’s a stretch.” What Driscoll didn’t tell him was that he thought he’d had gone off the deep end.
“He killed my daughter, Lieutenant. The word stretch doesn’t exist in my dictionary.”
Yup. He’s lost it.
“Once I know that computer better than Hewlett-Packard, the rest is child’s play. Are you familiar with the word cookie in a purely computer sense?”
“If you’re talking about a means for, say, a retailer to tag onto a Web site visitor, I’m familiar.”
“Were you aware that if used properly, a cookie can establish the visitor’s Internet Protocol address and gather sufficient personally identifying information to uniquely ID and locate a particular person, or in this case a pair of twins?” It appeared to Shewster as if Driscoll was weighing the possibilities. “If the police academy is using a twenty-first-century syllabus, it may not be such a stretch.”
“Some view such activity as illegal or at least deceitful. I’d hate to see some liberal lawyer convince a similarly slanted jury that it’s actually entrapment. That could lead to an acquittal.”
“There’ll be no acquittal.”
There’ll be no trial is what you mean. “When were you going to share this with me?”
“I no longer see the need. Do you?”
“Am I to interpret that to mean I’ve been informed through this conversation?”
“You got it.”
“The launch of this new Web site? When’s that happening?”
“That depends.”
Cagey bastard. “On what?”
“Any big-game hunter studies all aspects of an expedition before turning the key in the caravan’s lead vehicle. No?”
“I’m sure he does. I’m just hoping the twins are the only ones who view this savagery as part of a game, Shewster. Not the game hunter himself.”
Shewster stood, signaling the conversation was over. “I have a suspicion we have more in common than one would imagine, Lieutenant.”
“How’s that?”
“I sense neither of us likes to being threatened. Veiled or otherwise.”
“Your suspicions are just shy of the mark. I never use a veil.”
Driscoll checked his watch as he exited the plush hotel and headed for his cruiser. When he opened the door, the vehicle’s dome light illuminated Margaret’s face.
“The GPS get planted?” he asked, sliding behind the steering wheel.
“And then some,” came a voice from the backseat. “Now, how ’bout that cigar?”
Chapter 81
Driscoll, Aligante, and Thomlinson were sitting inside the Lieutenant’s cruiser, parked a hundred feet from the hotel. They had no reason to go anywhere. The electronic shadow was keeping track of Shewster’s limo, which was moving, but hadn’t gone very far. The GPS configuration on TARU’s laptop featured a map, currently displayed as a grid of the local streets surrounding the hotel as well as the area where their subject was now circling.
“What the hell is he doing?” said Margaret. “This is his third trip through Central Park!”
“Maybe he’s a nature fanatic,” Thomlinson said from the backseat.
“Then he’d be sitting in his hotel room watching National Geographic,” said Margaret.
“Don’t encourage the man, Margaret. Cedric’s prone to wit.”
“He’s leaving the park.”
Driscoll started the car. There was no need to tailgate Shewster. The GPS was doing a good job of that. The Lieutenant would simply tag behind at a safe distance.
“Whaddya suppose he was doing circling the park?” Margaret asked.
“I’m bettin’ he was talking to someone on his car phone.”
“Aren’t we tapped into that?”
“No. TARU determined he was using a hard-wired line. They’d have to get inside the car to properly tap it. We’re only on the hotel landline and his cell.”
“Any guess as to who he might have been talking with?”
“Don’t know. But if we keep our eyes fixed on the laptop, he may lead us to him.”
“I’m glad he’s on the move,” Margaret griped. “I was getting dizzy watching him circle.”
Chapter 82
When Cassie opened her eyes, she found she was alone in the bed. It didn’t surprise her. It was like Angus gave up sleeping. For the past week and a half, she had fallen asleep while her brother labored on the notebook. At first, the constant tapping was annoying. It was an effort to fall asleep. Last Tuesday, she had wrapped herself in bedding and headed down the stairs to stretch out in the old recliner. She had escaped the tapping sound, but the coils in the recliner stabbed her, and after a few minutes the noxious horse smell forced her back up the stairs to the loft.
“We’re gettin’ the hell outta here,” she had griped, only to have Angus tell her, “We’ll start looking tomorrow. Can you hold out ’til tomorrow?” She said she could. But goddamn it! They were still in the freaking loft!
She eventually grew accustomed to the tapping. As a matter of fact, it had become soothing. Like those audio-tapes of babbling brooks or waves hitting the shoreline.
Cassie had also become accustomed to waking up to the sound. How the hell Angus could spend night after freaking night pounding away on the laptop was beyond her. And why? When she asked him, he’d wave the gun and shout
“Bang! Bang!” She thought he had lost it. What could be so interesting on the goddamn computer?
But when she awoke this morning, she thought they had finally moved. There was no tapping of keys. Angus wasn’t sitting on his stool. And the place smelled like eggs and bacon.
“What the…?”
Swinging her legs over the side, she pressed her fists into the mattress and got up.
That’s when she spotted him.
Angus was standing at the stove and flipping eggs.
“How come you’re not typing, and what’s with the cookin’? You never eat breakfast.”
Something isn’t right. What the hell is going on? Is this a dream?
She covered her ears, certain the whistle would sound. It didn’t.
“Angus? What gives?”
“Found her,” he mouthed.
“What? Speak up for Chrissake!”
“I found her!” he hollered.
That she heard. “Found who?”
He lowered the flame under the pan and headed for the laptop. Only he didn’t just walk there. He crouched down and slithered toward the unit. When he got there, he bolted upright, pouncing, like the laptop was prey. Grinning, he pointed at the screen and said, “Her.”
Cassie hurried over. What she saw was the black-and-white image of a woman’s face. “Who is she?” she asked, studying the image like it was a specimen in a cage. “She looks familiar. Do we know her?”
“Not yet.”
“Whaddya mean ‘not yet’? Why does she look so familiar?”
Angus depressed the laptop’s down arrow, raising the photo. The woman’s name appeared below it.
Cassie’s eyes wid
ened. “Wow! Way to go, Angus!”
Chapter 83
Driscoll was heading down Ninth Avenue. The laptop Margaret was monitoring had placed the Shewster vehicle a safe distance ahead, traveling south. Ten minutes ago it had passed the cutoff for the Lincoln Tunnel and its driver had headed for West Street, where he made a left and continued south.
“A man on a mission,” Thomlinson remarked.
“What kind of mission?” asked Driscoll.
“He’s passing Ground Zero. Still heading south.” Margaret raised her head and looked to Driscoll. “I hope you’re up to date on your E-ZPass account. He just went under the overpass, which will take him into the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.”
“Call Dispatch. Have them alert Highway Two.” The Lieutenant applied pressure to the gas pedal, glancing at the fuel level gauge.
“You want Highway to assist?”
“No. Just let them know we’re tailing him through their borough. We don’t want him stopped.”
Chapter 84
The F train twisted hard to the left after exiting the underground station at Carroll Street, just east of Red Hook in Brooklyn. The screech of metal resonated throughout the subway car, as lights flickered within. Daylight then greeted the train as it climbed toward an encasement of steel girders supported by massive concrete columns that formed a bridge over the Gowanus Canal.
The woman was having an exceptionally good day. Now, if she could only discover how to string them into a week, a month, a year. She adjusted the leather strap of her shoulder bag, preparing to exit the train three stops ahead at Ninth Street in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. She had resided in the upscale neighborhood most of her life, occupying the third floor of a four-story brownstone on Sixth Street. Thanks to urban gentrification, the rent for the one-bedroom apartment had quadrupled over the years, but so had her income. A tradeoff. It allowed her to remain in the neighborhood, where she had amassed a trove of wonderful memories. If she closed her eyes, she could still experience the feeling, the very smell, of her first-grade classroom at Saint Saviour’s Elementary. Just last week she marveled at the panorama of pure visual delight at Brooklyn’s Botanical Garden. The Slope, as it had come to be called, featured a host of fine restaurants to accommodate everyone’s palate, an expansive array of boutiques, and a number of cozy coffee shops along its main thoroughfare, Seventh Avenue.
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