The Hanged Man’s Song

by John Sandford

  “It’s gonna be tricky,” I said. We drove past an open space with orange security lights inside, and a chain-link fence around the perimeter. We couldn’t see much of the buildings, which were huddled low and gray, as if depressed by the rain. “If we call the Jackson police, we’re gonna get a homicide guy with a notebook or maybe a desk computer, but most of what he figures out he’ll keep in his head. Calling up people on the phones and so on. There won’t be any way to track the investigation. If the killer-guy is a sophisticated outsider, which he probably is… they’re not going to come up with anything.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I’ve gone into enough places to know the signs. The guy didn’t leave much. Besides, I was dating a cop, remember? And I’ve done some, mmm, preliminary research into the Minneapolis cops’ computer system.”

  “That’s cold, Kidd.” He was a romantic, and offended.

  “Hey, I wasn’t dating her to get at the system,” I said defensively. I fumbled around for the defroster and turned it on, blowing hot air on the windshield. All the heavy cogitation was steaming things up. “I was dating her because I liked her. It just happens that the system was sitting there.”

  “All right.” He wasn’t sure he believed me. “So what do we do?”

  “If we call in the FBI and tell them that the dead guy is the Bobby that everybody’s been looking for, they’ll be all over the case. Then, we might be able to track the investigation-half the people in the ring are inside the FBI system. But what if they find the laptop? The worst thing that could happen to us is to have the laptop land at a computer forensics place, and have it turn out that the files aren’t encrypted.”

  “Even if they are encrypted, the FBI’s got those big fuckin’ computers. They’ll crack it like a walnut.”

  John’s not a computer guy. I said, “No, not really. If Bobby encrypted the files, and kept the keys in his head, they’re safe.”

  “Really?” A little skeptical. “What about the CIA and the NSA and the FBI and those other three-letter agencies?”

  “Some of the software that Bobby used-that everybody uses, now-can encrypt stuff so deeply that if the entire universe was made of computers, and they did nothing but try to crack the message, there wouldn’t be enough time in the life of the universe to do it.”

  He thought about that, then laughed. “You’re bullshitting me.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why would anybody encrypt something that deep?”

  “Because they can. It’s easy. So why not?”

  “Okay. But still, the idea of calling in the feds is scary,” he said. “I hate messing with those guys. If we only knew what was on the laptop…”

  “That’s the problem,” I agreed.

  “Maybe, as a security thing, Bobby kept all the good stuff on the DVDs.”

  We bumped across a set of railroad tracks. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I was lost. I did a U-turn and headed back the way we’d come. I picked up on John’s suggestion: “I don’t think so. Access is too slow. No computer guy wants to thumb through a stack of DVDs and then wait for ten seconds for something to load when he can get it in a half-second. That’s just the way it is. He’d keep the good stuff on the laptop.”

  “Then maybe he backed up the laptop on the DVDs, so we can figure out what’s on it, without finding it.”

  I shook my head. “There are what, seventy DVDs? That’s a huge amount of stuff. You could probably put the Library of Congress on those things. There’s so much stuff that we won’t even have time to read the indexes, if there are indexes.”

  “I could take some time off…”

  John used to work on a law firm’s computer system, and he was about as far into computers as a typical high school teacher. He didn’t have any notion of what I was talking about, and I struggled around to find an explanation.

  “Look,” I said finally. “A few weeks ago, I put the Encyclopaedia Britannica on my laptop, since I had lots of space. Okay? That’s seventy-five thousand articles, thirteen hundred maps, ten thousand photos. That’s what the advertisement says. Something like that. It sucked up about 1.2 gigs. That means you could put about, uh…”-I did some quick calculation-“something like thirteen Encyclopaedia Britannicas on one DVD. And we have seventy DVDs. They might not be full, but if they are, that’ll be like paging through what, sixty-seven million articles and eight million pictures, looking for your name or your picture. You don’t have enough time left in your life to do it.”

  “Then what use are they?”

  “Bobby didn’t look piece by piece. He knew what he had. I’d bet he’s dumped whole databases to the DVDs and the index is on the laptop. It’s like a hacker’s reference library. When he needs something, he can look it up.”

  WE FORDED a couple of low cross streets and came up to a well-lit intersection. I took a left on a major street, no idea what it was. John had been silent for a few minutes, then said, “So we gotta get the laptop.”

  “Yup. Or destroy it.”

  “But we gotta get the guy who killed Bobby, too. That’s just as important-to me, anyway. The local cops won’t do it. I think we’ve got to call in the feds.”

  “Yeah,” I said reluctantly. Then, after a few more minutes, “I wish there was some way to get the feds interested in Bobby, without them knowing that he’s Bobby. Some way to get them chasing the killer. Like seriously on the job.”

  More thinking, then John half-laughed, looked at his watch, and said, “Well, I know one way. If we got the time.”

  John’s a smart guy. When he told me his idea, it made me laugh, as it had made him laugh, the heartsick sound you make when somebody presents you with an insane proposition that would probably work, and that you’re probably gonna do.

  After a little more talk, I said, “Ah, boy.” I couldn’t think of anything nearly as good. I told him so, and added, “Or as fuckin’ nuts.”

  WE FOUND an all-night convenience store where I bought some cookies and candy and a couple of cans of motor oil and two gallons of spring water from a sleepy clerk. John dumped the spring water out the window as we drove along, poured in the oil, and, after wiping them clean, threw the oil cans out the window into a roadside ditch. We stopped at an edge-of-town gas station, parked so the filler cap was away from the station, filled the tank with gas, and then added gas to the two water jugs until they were three-quarters full.

  Then we went back to Bobby’s, nervous as cats, cruised the neighborhood, saw only two lights-it was past four in the morning now, and working people would be getting up in the next hour or two. Everything around Bobby’s was quiet, though, so we pulled in and went inside.

  Tried to ignore the body, though John said, talking to him, “This is for you, Robert.”

  We were planning to use clothes-hanger wire if we had to, but Bobby had a long roll of picture-hanging wire that worked just fine. We used the heavy side boards from the bed for the main frame, and the picture-hanging wire to strap a couple of old cotton blankets around the boards.

  We’d been working frantically, gloved again, fumbling everything so we had to do everything twice, but we were ready to go by four-thirty. I carried our creation outside and soaked it with the gas, then threw the empty jugs in the backseat of the car.

  “I’m going to hell for this,” John said to me across the yard, as he wired it to a front-porch upright.

  “Think of it as performance sculpture,” I said. “Don’t light it until I’ve got the car in the street.” I backed the car out of the driveway, got it pointed, pushed open the passenger door, and John struck a match and threw it at the gas-soaked rags.

  I can tell you from experience that when you’ve got a lot of gas, it doesn’t just flame up, like paper: it goes with an audible whump. The thing was burning like crazy, even with the rain, and John was running and then he was in the car chanting, “Go, go, go,” and we were out of there.

  We planned to stop a mile or so away and call the fire de
partment, but by the time we got to the pay phone, we could hear sirens and they were getting closer. So we kept going. But I’d looked back from the corner as we’d gone slewing around it, and even in the driving rain, the fire looked like a bad dream out of Revelation, or out of Jackson, Mississippi, in 1930.

  John had been right. For bringing in an FBI investigation, nothing worked quite as well as a dead black guy and a great big stinking Fiery Cross.

  Chapter Five

  AT TEN O’CLOCK that morning, the bedside alarm went off. I sat up, disoriented for a moment, in a bed at the Days Inn across Interstate 55 from the La Quinta. I ’d dropped John just before five, then crossed the highway and rented a room.

  When I checked in, I told the clerk that I’d intended to arrive earlier, but I’d gotten stuck in a casino, and then in the rain. He did a desk-clerk’s indifferent chuckle-nod-and-shuffle-he could really give a shit what I’d been doing-and told me I had to be out by noon anyway, or they’d have to charge me for another day.

  That was fine. I’d just wanted to get on the record, at the same time hoping I didn’t smell like gasoline. When I woke up at ten, I slapped the clock to kill the alarm, turned the TV to the Weather Channel, and called LuEllen on my cell phone.

  LuEllen answered just as a satellite picture of Hurricane Frances came up on the TV. “Where are you?” she demanded. “Is everything okay?”

  “Well, our friend is gone,” I said. “We went into his house and found some DVDs.”

  “I know he’s gone.” She wasn’t shouting, but she was emphatic. “I assume that’s him that’s been all over CNN and Fox. Was that you? My God, what were you thinking?”

  We were not mentioning names or actual incidents. “Hey, hey. Slow down,” I said. “I just got up. I’ll tell you everything when I see you. The hurricane looks like it’s getting closer.”

  “That’s the other thing. They’re saying landfall in twenty-four hours, somewhere between New Orleans and Panama City. We’re right in the bull’s-eye. People are closing up.”

  Rule of thumb: bad weather always comes at the worst possible time. “What about the casino?”

  “They’re open until six o’clock tonight,” LuEllen said. “I called them, but I haven’t been over today-I was too worried about you guys, I was afraid I’d miss your call. Why did you turn off your cell phone?”

  “I didn’t want it to ring last night, in the middle of things. I forgot to turn it back on.” I started clicking around the channels on the television, and stopped when I got to Headline News.

  “Jesus, I was afraid you were in jail or something,” LuEllen said.

  “Listen, this thing up here is a mess-I might have to get more involved. But we’re close on the slot-machine research. Get the assignment notes and get over there and start dropping coins. I can be there by two o’clock, I think. You oughta be about finished and we’ll throw our shit in the car and get out.”

  “Where’re we going?”

  “I don’t know. Figure something out. I’ll be in the car on the cell phone. You say there’s a lot of TV?”

  “Can’t get away from it. The big guys have been called in.” She meant the FBI.

  “We were hoping for that,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll see you in three or four hours, and explain.”

  DONE with LuEllen, I called John on his cell phone. “I’m on my way to an Office Depot,” he said. “Buying supplies for the city. Just got up, tried to call, but I kept getting your answering service.” He was out establishing an alibi. He added, “If you look at TV… it worked.”

  “That’s what I hear. I haven’t seen it yet-have you called Marvel?”

  “Not yet. Should I?”

  “Probably. I just talked to LuEllen and she’d about laid an egg. If Marvel sees it before you call…”

  “I’ll call her now. The report is on CNN and Fox.”

  “CNN’s stuck on sports,” I said. “I’m heading back-I’ll call you at home when I figure something out. I’ll be on the cell phone full-time.”

  “Good luck,” he said. “Oh, one other thing. I was thinking about it last night.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You oughta jump back in the sack with LuEllen. You’re acting like a kicked puppy and it can be pretty fuckin’ tiresome.”

  I WAS shaving when the Bobby story came up, and I stepped back into the main room to watch. The anchorwoman, who was wearing an amazing lilac shade of glitter lipstick, had one minute earlier been laughing excitedly about the lame excuses of a Hollywood celebrity charged with drunken driving, and had now wrenched her features into a semblance of solemnity as she told about the cross-burning. Though she took almost a minute to relate the story, she had nothing but the fact that a cross had been burned and a dead man found. The FBI was investigating. I finished cleaning up and took off.

  In the daylight, Jackson didn’t look too much better than it had at night, though I’m probably not giving it a fair shake. All I saw were the highway sights, the usual run of discount stores and fast-food joints and quick-lube garages, and that was it for Jackson.

  Going south, into the hurricane-all right, into a ten-mile-an-hour breeze-was a lot quicker, even with the rain, than the drive up the night before. I was in my sort-of-new car, an Olds Aurora, the most anonymous V- 8 in Christendom, and not a bad car except for the soggy suspension, numb steering, and underpowered engine. I’d had it modified at a tuner shop in Wisconsin, squeezing maybe 300 horses out of it, and the suspension was now reasonable and the custom seats were actually good. A new passenger, riding in a straight line, with his eyes closed, might think he was in a BMW 540i. Cornering, though… you can only do so much with front-wheel drive.

  I pushed hard, out of the motel by 10:20, staying on the gas, and pulled up to the Wisteria at 1:30. Now the coastal highway looked like hurricane season. Pickup trucks full of plywood, and even sedans with plywood roped to their roofs, were rolling up and down the beachfront, and people were boarding windows and moving boats. Big rollers were coming in from the Gulf, kicking up chest-high spray.

  I’d had a pack of chocolate-covered doughnuts and a Diet Coke for breakfast, so I was an unhappy camper when I boarded the Wisteria. LuEllen was back in the slots, four machines down from a guy who looked like he’d just climbed off an oil rig.

  “How’re we doing?” I asked.

  “Another hour,” she said, slamming a quarter in the slot. “Another half hour, with you here.”

  “I gotta get a sandwich,” I said. The oil-rig dude was giving me the hard eye. “Are they still talking about closing at six?”

  “They’re talking about five, now. The hurricane is picking up speed.” She slammed another quarter, the last in her bucket, dug a notebook out of her pocket and entered a number.

  “Just a quick sandwich.”

  “I’ll come with you. Won’t make any difference on the time. We’re almost done.”

  “You’re gonna bum out your fan club,” I muttered.

  “I know,” she said, with a smile. “He’s kinda cute, too, in a razor-fight way.”

  We went back to the aptly named poop deck, where I got a meatball sandwich and I filled her in. She’d done something to change the look of her hair, or maybe she’d just gone to smaller earrings, little diamonds that sparkled against her dark curls. She was curious about Bobby, since he’d been involved in two or three incidents where she’d nearly gotten her ass killed. I told her how fragile he looked and about the wheelchair.

  “So we’re dealing with some kind of incredible asshole,” she said when I finished.

  “Yeah. An incredible asshole with a laptop that’s got God-knows-what on it.”

  “I gotta believe that Bobby was careful.” One of the reasons LuEllen hung out with me was that I was careful. She worried when people weren’t careful. She was perfectly willing to break into a jewel merchant’s house in the middle of Saddle River, New Jersey, at three o’clock in the morning, knowing that pla
ce had more alarms than Wells Fargo… but she was careful about it. “He always seemed careful-you didn’t even know his name or where he lived, and you guys have been working together for years.”

  “I hope he was,” I said. “But we can’t take the chance. He knows all about Anshiser, about what happened in Longstreet, about the whole deal down in Dallas-and if Microsoft ever finds out about the XP trapdoor, about that whole thing up in Redmond, they’ll probably hire a couple of killers.”

  “Fuck Microsoft. I’m more worried about the people in Washington.” She wouldn’t even say the initials.

  THE meatball sandwich met the Wisteria standard, which wasn’t good but at least filled some space. When I finished, we went back to the slots. To avoid the notice of cracker thugs, we’d been carefully taking our time and moving around. Now we just pounded quarters, and nobody noticed. We had our numbers and were out of the casino at 2:30, and out of the motel by three o’clock. I resisted the urge to pee on the carpet before I left, though it would have given the place some character.

  Because the hurricane had taken a bit more of a northeasterly track, we headed west on I-10. Until recently I’d had a condo in New Orleans, but the place had been taken over by a group of Ohio retirees, who’d begun messing with the association rules, and I’d sold out. I’d been planning to buy another one, but got distracted and hadn’t. Now I would have given my eyeteeth to have the old place back, to be where I was comfortable and had really good gear to use on Bobby’s files.

  As it was, we were homeless. We took I-12 north of the city, stopped at a CompUSA in Baton Rouge, and bought a heavy-duty external DVD box that I could hook into my laptop. Because LuEllen said she couldn’t stand the rain any longer, we got back on I-10 and pushed on into the night. We finally stopped at a motel in Beaumont, Texas, just over the Louisiana border, still under a cloud deck, but no longer in the rain; the weather stations were promising sunshine in the morning.