by David Cole
“So nice to know how to find you.”
The immaculate, surgically enhanced blond news-reader was talking about continued fallout of the Enron scandal, but at the bottom of the screen I could read the text scrawl that briefly summarized the border shootings. They showed my face. I saw my name, a large title underneath. And my name appeared in the textscrawl.
“It was hokey, calling you Clarice. I wanted you to identify with Lecter, but then you’d wind up identifying with Clarice. Now I know your real name.”
And suddenly I was looking at myself. Slumped against the side of Meg’s car, LynnMay’s bloodied head cradled in my arms.
“I have some messages for you. Some pictures. Stay tuned.”
Don called. He rarely gets upset, anxious, rarely shows emotion. This time, he was almost over the edge with worry.
“I made a mistake,” he said.
“What mistake?”
“You know we agreed that we’d put up a website for our computer forensics company. But after we went over the web pages, we agreed not to have an email address? Just the post office box number?”
“So?”
“So in the web page coding, I thought I’d deleted the entire email hot link. But I screwed up. I deleted what people see on the web page, but the email address is still buried in the coding. Anybody who knows how to look at the hidden coding could find the email address.”
“But we’ve never received any email, Don.”
“The same message is now coming every hour.”
“What does it say?”
“Just two words. ‘You’re next,’ and that’s all.”
“This has to be the same guy, or at least working with the guy who’s been leaving the breather messages on the office phone. Send it to me.”
“You didn’t disconnect the phone?”
“No. Just the computers. I wasn’t thinking.” He sighed.
“I’ve already forwarded it to your personal email address. Maybe you can make sense of the email message headers, but I doubt it.”
“What do we do about this?”
“Have to think it through. I’ll talk to you later.”
victorio
sestrichka,
the second woman is using the old name…laura winslow…i have searched the tucson phone and data banks, but nobody is listed by that name, so now i will start with businesses and tie her to the phone number of her business…she is very private, but accidents happen, like television cameras, and i identified an email address for her business, i send regular messages to her now, trying to get her response, then hope she answers from another account so i can track her down.
the second woman, the arizana woman, is still in nogales, still held by the drug cartel, there is nothing i can do right now, the man-hunt is spread too wide and deep on both sides of the border, so i can not move her to the campo.
where are you?
my last two web log messages have not been answered and i want to harvest the two people at the campo, i don’t care any longer about waiting for the ransom money, we have enough money, now it is time for revenge. after the storm comes fair weather, after sadness, finally, comes joy.
in her memory,
v
18
Don still not available.
Stalking is all about invasion of privacy.
But this email…this went to the email address on my website, it got forwarded to me through three anonymous remailers…and whoever sent it connected Meg with me.
Why?
I now had three different people telling me three different versions of why Meg was taken at the border crossing. Erasing my large whiteboard, I got out a whiteboard ink pen and wrote three items.
HOSTAGE—Rey
KIDNAP VICTIM—Jo
Cruz—??
I couldn’t write down that Cruz told me Meg would be killed. It was too freaky a thought for me to take in. But it was what it was. I added a word, but to make it less freaky, I added more words to explain the difference between the three possibilities, and after staring at them for a while, added a fourth item.
HOSTAGE—Rey—Meg released when men get away
KIDNAP VICTIM—Jo—?? why?
DEATH—Cruz—??
ME—why email?? from who??
Then, as I always did with any contract, I added two more lines
RISK FACTOR??
IGNORE??—can’t, promise to Meg
Time to figure out my “walk-away” factor, my safety net.
Should I get away from all of it, should I stay involved, should I be worried, concerned, scared, freaked out? Should I walk away from it? My gut said yes. But no, I couldn’t walk away from it, because of my promise to Meg. Frozen with indecision, I made some phone calls.
“It’s me,” I said when Rey answered.
Silence. A buzz that came and went, poor cellular connections.
“It’s Laura.”
“I know who it is,” he said finally. “What do you want?”
“Meg…do you have any news?”
“None. I’m helping to coordinate a sector search of some colonias in Nogales. The Peraza cartel set up the whole shootout at the border crossing. They wanted to kill LynnMay Martinez. Meg got in the way, they took her hostage.”
“You know where she is?”
“Maybe…”
Voices shouting at him.
“I can’t talk anymore.”
“Rey! Rey! Don’t cut me out of this.”
Buzz buzz buzz, the cell connection still open but fading.
“Rey. She’s my best friend. Please. Don’t cut me out of this.”
“Okay,” he said finally. “Okay. Give me your number.”
I gave him five.
“Give me an hour,” he said. “I’ll call in an hour.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Come on, man!”
A shout in the background, a shout from across the border.
Rey closed the connection.
I hit Redial, but it just rang and rang and rang.
I decided to go to Nogales, go to Rey’s house, go find Rey.
Don called.
“Sorry,” he said. “Alex was in a school play. I had to go, my cell phone battery had run down, then the wheelchair lift on the van got stuck, then—”
“He’s sending more email,” I said.
“What do you mean?” he said after a long pause.
“I saw the hidden email address for our agency, and I set up a way to read it from my house. I answered his message.”
“Oh, Laura, Laura.”
“No problem. I used an anonymous remailer. Just like him.”
“But…Laura. Now he knows that he’s contacted you.”
Ah! There’s the moment, when you cross over the line, when you move from what was to what’s going to be, and there’s no space in between to hide.
“I realize that, Don.”
“Then, for God’s sakes, why?”
“He’s got to find me.”
“You don’t want him to find you.”
“I promised Meg I’d look for her. If this man kidnapped her, if this man wants us both, then he’s got to know how to find me. But I’m safe. There’s no way he can trace me to my house. No way he can do anything but read my email, and maybe he’ll slip up and I can locate him.”
“You’re taking an awful chance, Laura.”
“You have any other ideas? His first messages just said I was next.”
“No. The message said, ‘You’re next,’ but didn’t mention you.”
Silence. I could almost hear the gears whirring inside his head.
“So, Laura, you figure that you’re the other woman he wants?”
“Yes.”
“That he wants both of you?”
“Yes.”
“He wants revenge.”
“Say what? How did you get to revenge?”
“Has to be one of your clients…”
“One of our cl
ients, or one I handled by myself?”
“Something involving you and Meg. Nothing you and I worked on, can’t be that or he wouldn’t have used that language. How many different…what would you call them, jobs? Whatever you did with Meg?”
“We go back three years. I’ve helped her a hundred times with abused women. I’ve been to most of her safe houses, I set up her whole computer network, all the hardware, the email accounts. I sweep her email traces once a month, I use different anonymizers—”
“Whoa,” he said, “you’re a little frantic today.”
“I’m the one this guy is after. Don. What are you working on?”
“Nothing special.”
“Can you travel?”
“Ah, Laura, you know I hate to do that.”
“Alex can take care of herself.”
“It’s not Alex, it’s…well, going through airports in a wheelchair, I’m getting really tapped for security checks. With the extra three hours before check-in, I get tired.”
“Private jet,” I said. “No waiting.”
“We’re talking a cash cow?”
“We’re talking a client with both money and connections.”
“The bank accounts you ran over the last months. We talking about that? You never told me why you needed the information.”
“Kidnapping fraud. I can’t go through all the details on the phone, Don. You’ve got to come down here. When can you be ready?”
“How much gear should I bring?”
“Laptop. Loaded with whatever goodies you want.”
“You’re providing some extras? I’ll need more than a laptop.”
“Whatever you need. Make a list, send it to me from the Lear.”
“Is this important?” he asked. “’Cause I really wanted some time with Alex.”
“Important.”
“How long?”
“I’ve got something set up here in Tucson. You’ll live there, eat there, work, won’t ever have to leave if you don’t want to.”
“Can I order whatever I want?”
“Big Macs, Krispy Kremes…anything.”
“Yuk yuk yuk, I’m laughing, I’m laughing. Equipment, girl. What’s our budget for this?”
“No budget.”
“Okay. Southern Arizona to Milwaukee, I figure five hours’ flight time, give or take. When can the plane be here?”
“Crew is supposed to be onboard at Tucson, waiting to take off. All I have to do is call the pilot.”
“Who’s the customer?”
“Way too complicated,” I said, thinking he didn’t need to hear about Jo just yet. “Client works for CNN. Didn’t you see me on the news?”
“Never watch. What happened?”
I described the shootout at the border crossing, but he said nothing. After we went through a minute of silence, I heard him clear his throat.
“About those email messages” he said. “We might have more problems.”
This time he was silent for a long time as he ran down for himself the possibilities of somebody actually being able to identify either of us just from the information on our website.
“Sorry. I was trying to access Pima County business databases. When you set up our Computer Forensics business, did you file with the state?”
“Yes. But I used fake identities.”
“Did you file a DBA? Doing Business As, that kind of form?”
“Yes.”
“And did you list any of our phone numbers, or did you make some up?”
“Yes. Don, remember, I told you about four others. Johnstone Morgenstern. Billie Holiday. Clarissima Douglas Bisbee. Margaret Admiral. I only found out about her five days ago. Don, I had to call the INS, I had to report it.”
“So is all this tied together?”
“All this is a mess. What do you think?”
“Not enough data,” he finally said. “But I’ll run some checks. Okay. To save me another hour, have the Lear go directly to Waukesha County Airport. I’ll leave instructions with the tower. See you then.”
I knew he wanted more details, but you never know, talking on the public phone system, you never know who’s listening in.
“That’s a roger, good buddy.”
“We’re not done yet. I want you to go back to the office.”
The room behind the stir-fry take-out restaurant, the room with nothing in it except two computers and a black velvet curtain.
“I don’t want to go there again. Everything’s disconnected, Don.”
“Not the phone. If I’m going to be able to trace the source of that email, I’ll need the computer hard drives. I wrote some programs for those computers to save information on everybody who visited the website. You know, cookies, info from any forms they filled out. Even to save email, although when I deleted the actual email address, I never bothered to clean up the code. So everything is on the hard drives. I’ll bring software with me to read the drives. You’ve got to get me those computers. Okay?”
“No. Not okay. What if this weirdo is waiting there?”
“It’s a risk,” he said after a long beat. “I did a check of Pima County records. Our business was filed as a DBA. All details for ‘Doing Business As’ were fake identities, but we made one mistake. We listed the address of the Chinese place.”
“I’m not going.”
“Can you send somebody?”
“Nobody here I trust.”
“Stake out the place for an hour. Go in through the back. When are they busiest, figure that out, go there then.”
Lunch hour. Once more, I parked down the street from the strip mall, waiting this time for a whole hour. Once more, I walked the one street over, and came along the alley and through the back door of the stir-fry.
A battered hand-dolly stood tilted against the bathroom door. I caught the owner’s eye, nodded at the dolly, and she grunted an okay.
Inside the room, I quickly loaded the two computers onto the dolly. It was heavy, one of the dolly wheels didn’t move easily, so when I got out into the alley I decided to just walk around the front of the stir-fry to my car.
“Wait,” the woman said, fumbling on a metal shelf under the sink. “For you.” She brought out a small package. “Man left yesterday, for you, he says.”
Wary, I put the package on top of the two computers, got to my car and stored the computers, put the dolly on the sidewalk, and started to drive away. But I’d placed the package on the passenger seat, and I had to see what was in it.
Two meticulously wrapped layers of brown paper. A small white box with no lettering. I opened it and, repelled, flung the box out the open window.
A finger. A whole finger.
Two students across the street stared at me, stared at the finger lying on the road. I got out of the car, used one edge of the box cover to scoop the finger inside, and clamped the box shut.
Ten minutes later I was out on US 10 and again headed to Nogales, but when I got to the US 19 turnoff an unmarked car pulled up almost on my rear bumper and a red light started flashing. I quickly checked my speedometer, but I was at least ten miles an hour below the speed limit. I pretended that the car behind me really wanted somebody else, so I slowed down and pulled halfway onto the shoulder, waved at the driver to go past.
But no, he wanted me.
The scary part of this, the totally freaky part, was that my driver’s license was totally clean, I had no violations, my rental car was totally legal and brand-new, with no faulty tail or brake lights.
The car pulled directly beside me and the man behind the wheel just pointed for me to pull completely onto the shoulder and stop. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, he didn’t even have sunglasses. I had no idea who he was and in moment of panic realized I didn’t even know if he was a policeman. But any thoughts I had of getting away from him disappeared when he abruptly cut his car across in front of me, forcing me to stomp on my brakes.
Stopped, I waited until he got out of his car, and then jammed the gearshift
into reverse, but he realized what I was doing and pulled a dull metallic handgun from his belt and leveled it at me, turning slightly in the Weaver stance, motioning at me with the gun to get out of my car.
I slid the box with the finger under my seat and got out.
19
He took me to the U.S. Government building, the rear entrance, through two different key-coded security portals, knocking finally on an unmarked office door.
“Come,” a woman’s voice said.
Cruz opened the door for me from inside, waited until I walked in.
“I’m Michelle Gilbert,” the woman said. “INS Office of Internal Affairs.”
The woman in the desert.
She waved her hand at Cruz in dismissal. He closed the office door behind him gently, as though he wanted no trace of antagonism in the act. Gilbert cocked her head, watching me look around the office, waiting until I sat in the wooden chair facing her.
Everything on her desk was completely squared and aligned with the desk itself. A marble base for two pens, a complicated phone system, the handset rectangular in shape, several piles of papers, their edges tightly stacked. Directly in front of her, a stack of dark brown accounting folders, tied with yellow ribbons. She tapped them with a long, manicured fingernail. No nail polish, which I found odd since her short, spiky hair was obviously dyed blond, her silk blouse had a line of very carefully sewn ruffles down the button line, and her suit jacket was an off-white, almost pearl color. I wondered what kind of shoes she wore, I wondered what kind of hair gel she used, I wondered…what am I doing here?
“Laura Winslow.”
She tapped the folders again.
I looked at a duty roster on the wall behind her. All the names were Hispanic, aligned according to different stations in the Tucson Sector.
“We’re not all Hispanic,” she said, watching my eyes run down the list of names, reading my thoughts. “I’m a Hungarian Jew.”
“We?”
“Say what?”
“You said…‘we’ aren’t all Hispanic. I know you’re with La Migra, but…”
“Actually, I’m from Washington. From the home office. Actually, I’m working with the Department of Justice. Actually—”