Chat - A Novel Part 20

He turned to look at her, surprised by her presence. A glance over his shoulder revealed his mother's absence from the room, as well as how deeply in thought he must have fallen.

"Bathroom trip," Gail explained.

He returned to his viewing and answered her question. "I was trying to figure out how to revive him using ESP, or maybe a ray gun."

"It's weird seeing him like that," she said. "A guy so famous for his energy. You learn anything new? I heard you talking with Weisenbeck outside."

"No," he answered simply. He considered sharing some of the thoughts he'd entertained as a result, but held back, realizing that he didn't have that kind of bond with her anymore-a continuing revelation, which jarred him still, and which, he knew, was inhibiting his taking any great steps forward with Lyn. He and Gail were friends now-old and deeply intertangled friends, to be sure. But they weren't what they'd once been, and he now found a governor restricting the things that he'd never held from her in the past.

As if to cover his own embarra.s.sment, he added, "It boiled down to no news being good news."

"No news is becoming agony, if you ask me," she said softly. She then checked her watch and added, "I better get going."

They both turned as the door opened and his mother rolled in. Gail crossed to her and made her farewell, giving Joe another brief hug, and was gone before they knew it.

And before she noticed that she'd left her cell phone behind.

Joe grabbed it and jogged for the elevator banks, finding n.o.body there. He mimicked Weisenbeck earlier and headed for the stairs, taking two steps at a time and hoping the elevator had lots of stops.

When he reached the lobby, he saw her in the distance, swinging through the bank of doors to the driveway outside. He broke into a jog that wouldn't also alarm the small army of people milling around him, and reached the doors in under a minute.

From there, he saw her approached by the well-dressed driver of a fancy waiting car, its exhaust plume thick in the cold air, and greeted with a hug and an intimate, almost lingering kiss.

He stopped dead in his tracks, a.s.sessing what to do.

In his training as a cop, public and personal safety were the priorities, followed by tactical considerations-level of threat, availability and nature of countermeasures, and on down the line.

Here there was none of that. The adrenaline rush was similar, but the situation was absurdly benign. He stood rooted where he stood, people jostling him to use the doors before him, and tried to unscramble his synapses.

Fortunately, or perhaps not, Gail ended his dilemma by glancing over her shoulder as she broke away from the embrace and began circling the front of the car.

She, too, froze in place, transparently nonplussed.

Lamely he held up the cell phone he still clutched in his hand, and pushed the door open before him, hoping his expression was within a mile of normal.

The car's owner, one foot already inside his vehicle, was arrested by Gail's abrupt immobility and glanced in Joe's direction, giving the latter more purpose.

This was perfectly reasonable, Joe was thinking as he approached-reasonable and logical. Wasn't he seeing someone else? Hadn't he and Gail both moved on?

He smiled as he reached them. "Can't live long without this, I bet," he told her, sticking out his right hand to the man and adding, "Hi. Joe Gunther. Glad to meet you."

Gail had, by now, returned to that side of the car, a black BMW, her face red and pinched as if from a steady blast of cold air. "This is Francis Martin, Joe. He works with Martin, Clarkson, Bryan."

Joe laughed. "Top of the masthead. Good going."

Martin smiled back, his eyes betraying that he'd figured out what was going on. "Not that tough when you created the company. I'll never have a reputation like yours-or deserve it."

Joe gave his hand a last squeeze and dropped it. "I guess that depends on the reputation and who you're hearing it from."

Martin nodded. "Good one. You'd make a good lawyer. I promise, I've only heard the best." Here, he glanced at Gail, who was standing quietly, her eyes blank, fingering her cell phone.

"You all set?" he asked her. "We'll have to beat feet to make that meeting."

Nicely done, Joe thought, and stepped back. "Have a safe trip," he said, waving to them both, and added to her, "I'll let you know if anything changes, one way or the other."

He stayed standing there, the polite host after the party, until they'd both settled in, slammed their doors, and the dapper Francis Martin had driven halfway down the drive. Gail's pale face was still visible through the back window as Joe finally turned on his heel and went back inside, his heart beating somewhere in between relief and sorrow.

Sammie Martens parked her car on the street, across from the bus depot parking lot on Liberty Street, and paused before getting out, surveying the surrounding bleakness. Springfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, was huge in comparison to anything in Vermont, or, as most Vermonters saw it, huge and crowded and blighted and depressing. Sammie had personal knowledge of the social troubles this area visited upon her state. She'd gone undercover in nearby Holyoke for a while in a vain attempt to stifle some of the drug flow heading north.

Of course, she knew that her prejudice was unfair. Springfield was an oversize urban center, no more or less saddled with its ills than most places of its kind. And no bus terminal that she'd known was located in a town's upscale section. This one was wedged against two interstate overpa.s.ses, surrounded by industrial-style low buildings and adjacent to the train terminal, which looked as though it dated back to when robber barons called the shots.

Barely visible in the gray, flat daylight, a strung-up sign of extinguished lightbulbs was attached to the low, arching stone overpa.s.s that carried the railroad tracks between the depot and the rest of the city, to the south. The sign spelled out, "City of Bright Lights."

Sam popped open her door and got out into the kind of harsh cold that only miles of concrete can exude, the wind whipping between the nearby buildings and shredding the warm coc.o.o.n around her. She stood next to the car, getting her bearings and noticing the contrast between the bland, towering, modern Ma.s.s Mutual building in the distance, and the ornate, Italianate campanile beside city hall behind it-the only sign of grace within sight. Her contact had told her, on the phone, to park where she had and that everything else would become obvious.

It did. She saw, over the tops of a row of salt-streaked, dirty parked cars, a clearly marked police van, the glimmer of some yellow tape, and several cold human shapes standing around, most nursing coffee cups. She crossed the street and walked down the length of cars to join them.

As she drew near, a tall, white-haired, red-faced man in a down jacket that made him look like a tire company mascot broke away from the small group and approached her.

"Agent Martens?" he asked. "Steve Wilson, Springfield PD."

She nodded in greeting, not bothering to shake, with everyone wearing gloves. "How'd you know?"

A wide smile broke his craggy face. She imagined he was old-school-hard at work, hard at play, and no stranger to the bottle. Some stereotypes existed for a reason. "You walk like a cop."

That made her smile. A cop was all she'd ever wanted to be. She pointed to a small, dark sedan parked almost nose to nose with the police van and surrounded by the yellow tape. "Don't tell me-that's the car, right?"

He laughed. "I wish I could tell you we'd wrapped the wrong one on purpose, but that's it, all right. Good detective work."

Several of Wilson's companions chuckled in the background, eavesdropping and, she knew, checking her out. Not that she minded especially. Guys she could handle. Women cops were tougher to figure out.

She stepped up to the car's hood and looked at the vehicle straight on-a dark blue Ford Escort, several years old, but in pretty good shape. A middle-cla.s.s car, economical and dependable. Its inspection sticker was up to date and issued from Connecticut.

"You run the registration yet?" she asked.

Wilson nodded. "Frederick Nashman. A couple of old moving violations, nothing big. That's a.s.suming the car wasn't stolen to get it here."

She looked at him.

"It's not reported stolen. I'm just saying . . ."

"Got ya." Sam went back to studying the car, slowly walking around it, her hands in her coat pockets. "Anybody notice it out here before we raised the alarm?"

Wilson was walking with her. "Nah. Would've happened eventually, but they can be parked out here a long time."

She finished her tour and straightened to give him an eye-to-eye, as best their relative heights allowed. "This when you tell me you've gone through it all already and have everything bagged and tagged in the back of the van?"

His eyes and eyebrows expressed theatrical shock, but his laugh gave him away. "It did cross our minds, what with the weather, but given the respect we have for . . . What do you call yourselves again?"

She gave him a friendly sneer. "Cute. You got the paperwork at least?"

He nodded, adding, "And we popped the lock, just to make sure we wouldn't be screwed after you got here. Thing opened like a soda can. No one's been inside yet, though."

Sam nodded. "That was nice-I do appreciate it."

"No sweat," he said, liking her more and more as this went on. He made a gesture to the people behind them before saying, "And now that you are here, we got a little extra comfort to throw you."

She looked over at the van as the others swung open its rear doors and pulled out a long, bulky, brightly colored tarp with bundled aluminum tubing, a generator, and an oversize s.p.a.ce heater. She recognized the package immediately and smiled at her host. "A heated tent. Sweet."

Steve Wilson bowed. "We try."

Some 250 miles to the south, following a seven-hour drive from Vermont, a stiff and tired Lester Spinney crossed a sidewalk in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, and entered the Lower Merion Police Department, where he'd been told to check in on arrival.

"Help you?" the man behind the bulletproof gla.s.s asked.

Les pulled out his badge and held it against the window. "I'm here to see Detective Cavallaro. Lester Spinney from Vermont."

He studied the man's face, expecting the usual Vermont-directed one-liners, but got nothing for his effort. The dispatcher merely glanced at the ID, picked up a phone, and said over the tinny loudspeaker between them, "Have a seat."

Five minutes later, a tall woman with short-cropped hair stepped into the lobby, smiling. "Agent Spinney? Detective Cavallaro. Call me Glenda. You have a good trip?"

He shook her hand. "Lester-Les is okay, too. And the trip was fine. More people than I've seen in a while, though."

She looked at him quizzically. "Where? On the road?"

"The road, the streets, the towns, even the sidewalk outside. We only have about half a million in Vermont, and a third of them are cl.u.s.tered around one town."

She visibly had no appreciation for what he was saying. "Huh," she said. "Interesting. I was born and brought up around here. Never saw it as crowded. New York-that's bad. Most of what you drove through is tied into there, one way or the other." bad. Most of what you drove through is tied into there, one way or the other."

Spinney chose to drop it. No one outside Vermont could be expected to understand a setting where starlit skies, complete silence, and empty downtown streets at four in the morning were the norm. Except maybe far out west. He'd heard that even a Vermonter could get lonely in Wyoming.

"You want to find a motel and start on this tomorrow morning?" Cavallaro was asking him.

Lester checked his watch. It was five o'clock. "Seems a little early," he murmured.

"Not a problem," she said immediately, with enough enthusiasm that he took her word for it. "Let me get my coat and bag and we'll head out."

It was barely a minute before she reappeared.

"I can't believe they didn't put you on a plane instead of making you drive down," she said, slipping into her coat as they crossed the lobby.

"We don't have much of a budget," he admitted.

"Really?" She looked at him. "The Vermont Bureau of Investigation? Sounds rich enough."

"Yeah-well, we're kind of new. Still muscling our way into the pack."

She turned right out of the door and headed for a parking lot to the side of the building. "Where did you work before?"

"State police."

"No kidding? Didn't like them?"

"Loved them. But I thought I was running out of options. Numbers again."

She pulled keys from her pocket and aimed toward what was clearly an unmarked cruiser-the kind of thing street kids love to decorate with "Narc," written on the dusty side panels.

"How so?" she asked.

"They hover around three hundred and fifty people in uniform, depending on the year and the budget," he told her. "Upward mobility gets tight. When the Bureau came up, it looked more interesting, less bureaucratic, and now I'm working with the field force commander. Plus, I keep all my benefits and retirement."

She was already laughing. "Three fifty? We've got almost half that in this department alone."

She unlocked the doors and they both got in, their bodies jarred by the frozen hardness of the seats. Apparently, the car hadn't been out all day.

She started it up as he changed the subject. "You said on the phone that the IP address I gave you for Mr. Rockwell was an Internet cafe. You ever have any problems with them before?"

Glenda Cavallaro shook her head. "Nope. And I checked every database we have. Nothing. Just for kicks, I also looked up N. Rockwell. There're more than a few with that name, but nothing for any cyber crime or s.e.x stuff. That's what you're looking for, right? Child predator s.h.i.+t?"

"We think so," Spinney answered cautiously, looking out the side window as they pulled into traffic and headed west along Lancaster Avenue.

He watched the buildings slide by, mostly brick clad and older, few above a couple of stories tall. Soon, on the left, the view opened up, and a large, deep expanse of cold-bitten lawn appeared, with a frozen pool in the middle and a row of imposing buildings skirting its borders.

"Haverford College," Cavallaro explained. "Pretty good place."

He'd noticed it earlier, having come this way to reach the police department from the interstate. He'd also gone by both Villanova University and the village of Bryn Mawr, home to that college, where he'd also noticed dealers.h.i.+ps for Ferrari, Hummer, and Maserati. Despite the main drag's almost pedestrian, weathered brick appearance, there was obviously serious money lurking just beyond sight, here and there.

Cavallaro snapped him from his reverie. "The cafe is up ahead." She pulled into a shopping area parking lot and killed the engine, pointing through the winds.h.i.+eld. "Over there."

They got out and crossed the asphalt to the place she'd indicated, its windows fogged by moist heat and the presence of a sizable crowd. Spinney suddenly realized that coming at this time of the early evening was probably not a good idea. His companion, however, didn't seem fazed.

She walked up to the counter and asked to see the manager, showing just a glimpse of her s.h.i.+eld. As they waited, Les took in their surroundings-a sprinkling of small tables, each adorned with a computer, catered to by a counter stuffed with coffee choices and sweet comestibles. Adrenaline times three, he thought, watching the largely young crowd, the majority of them men, quietly hunched over their keyboards. The room was filled with the tinny clatter of fingertips stuttering across plastic keys.

"May I help you?" a smooth voice said from behind him. "I'm the manager, Bruce Fellini."

Cavallaro was already staring at the short, goateed man in a black turtleneck who'd appeared from the back room. She displayed her s.h.i.+eld again, along with a folded piece of paper. "I'm Detective Cavallaro of the Lower Merion PD. This is Agent Spinney of the VBI, and this"-she waved the doc.u.ment-"is a subpoena for the contents of one of your computers. We have reason to believe that one of your customers was using your place to s.e.xually pursue underage girls."

She placed the subpoena in front of him. Fellini looked down at it, otherwise not moving.

"How's this work?" he finally asked. "I've never been involved in something like this before."

Both cops looked at him carefully, their instincts immediately sharpened by the line.

Spinney removed another piece of paper from his pocket before slipping out of his coat. It was hot to stifling for him in here, although he noticed that Cavallaro hadn't even unb.u.t.toned hers yet. Cultural differences, once more.

He laid the sheet beside the subpoena and placed his finger on the line that John Leppman had highlighted in yellow, back in Vermont. "This is the computer's address, along with the time and date it was being used."

Fellini studied the line of type briefly. "Officers, I'd be happy to help. I'll show you the computer and do whatever else you'd like me to, but I gotta warn you: You're not going to find anything. Our computers get used all the time, by dozens of people a day, and that's day after day. You might get a time-date stamp somewhere from the guy you're after-I'm not saying that." He tapped the sheet of paper with his finger. "But you got that already. Otherwise, that computer's going to be blank, or covered with gibberish. We set the temp files to be overwritten immediately, and I also happen to know that the settings on that particular instant-messaging program are defaulted to wipe the record clean whenever the user exits the program. It's what we do to keep clutter to a minimum."