B Larson - Spyware

Foghorn: I’ve been watching you for awhile, fellow hacker. Snowflake/Santa/elf-boy, whatever your handle of the day is, I like your predatory style.

Again, Snowflake fell silent. Ray would have crossed his fingers, but he dared not take them from the keyboard. He decided to prod further. Ray tried to think like Jake, to sound like him. It had only been ten years ago, and he had been Jake. Funny, how quickly time changed someone. He went on the attack.

Foghorn: Come on, Snowman! Are you scared? Do you think you’re the only one who ever talked big on the net?I know all about you already.

Snowflake: What do you think you know?

Foghorn: You’re male, for one thing. Too willing for a confrontation. Not playful enough for a female.

Snowflake: Your attempts have been commendable, but think I must go now.

Foghorn: Scared, Santa?

There was another pause.

Snowflake: Yes. And you should be too, Vance. Remember that ugliness, like beauty, is also in the eyes of the beholder.

The connection was broken. Snowflake had logged off. Ray sat back in deep thought. Now that he had played out his only firm lead, he felt near despair. Surely, Santa would never log onto this bulletin board again.

He didn’t even notice when the lights were flicked off and on again, signaling to all the patrons that the library was closing. It wasn’t until a single, light finger tapped his shoulder that he noticed the timid librarian. She snatched back her finger and furrowed her brow. She looked at him with the eyes of a postman who has found a big dog on the wrong side of its master’s fence.

“You’ll have to leave now, sir,” she said.

Ray nodded, gathered up his equipment, and walked out into the fading light of day with a stream of sleepy, homeless men.

There were more National Security staffers hanging around now at the operation’s makeshift headquarters. They had taken up temporary residence in the Yolo county meeting hall. There wasn’t even a school district board meeting until next week, so the space was available. Phones, desks and grim-faced suits had sprouted seemingly from the very walls themselves. There were even some people around from the California State Emergency office in Sacramento. That made her smile, this was no earthquake or flood, but the feeling in the air was similar.

“You know what gets me?” asked Johansen, moving up behind her. He was always at her side, like a big, protective shadow.

“How quickly we’ve lost control of this investigation?”

“No, that’s not surprising, really. What gets me is how quickly the net has become indispensable to this world of ours. It’s part of the infrastructure of our nation now, like the highways or the phone system.”

She nodded slowly. “It’s like some giant has come along and kicked over an anthill.”

Then some of the higher-ups in the more expensive suits noticed them. Italian shoes clacked on the tile as they approached. Introductions were made and a quick briefing was asked for, which she delivered. Gray heads nodded in approval of her play with Sarah Vance. Vasquez could tell that they were being given free rein for now, but if things didn’t move quickly enough, they would be tossed aside in an instant.

Less than a hour later they were walking out into the fresh spring evening. Everything was hot and still. The Delta breezes that normally cooled the region at night were peculiarly absent. The trees stood motionless. Only the chirruping insects seemed happy and full of life.

She looked down at the writ in her hands. She hefted it, then put it into her purse. Beside it was a letter, giving her written permission to investigate the disappearance of Vance, Justin, minor age 6.

“That was really something, wasn’t it?” she asked Johansen.

“The powers that be have taken notice of us lowly mortals,” he replied.

“Wiretap warrants are supposed to be hard to get. And they didn’t even balk at giving us the missing persons case.”

“Not today. There’s a blue-light special in aisle five.”

“You know, I think that if we had gone in there with a request to tap the whole block, we would have gotten it without even a raised eyebrow.”

Johansen nodded as they reached the car. “Some of those guys have a judge in each pocket.”

She looked at him sharply, not liking that kind of talk. “Let’s hope that you’re wrong about that.”

He shrugged and they climbed into the car.

“Just burying the kid’s body would’ve been a lot easier,” muttered Spurlock to himself. He hadn’t worked so hard since the joint. Come to think of it, the joint had been less work than this.

Santa had left the backhoe right where he said it would be. The keys were in it, and there were almond trees everywhere, providing cover. Spurlock had learned to operate these things almost ten years ago when he had tried a rare spurt of honest work. The trend hadn’t lasted, but the skill was still there. It took him only a minute or two to prime the old engine and fire it up. Working the levers carefully, he began to dig. With less than another hour’s work, he would have a hole big enough to bury the van.

The big diesel grunted and strained, farting so much blue smoke that the cloud reached forward into the bright cones lit up by the headlights. Black-trunked almond trees stood in guardian rows, and somehow they made Spurlock feel more at ease, more hidden. Overhead, a green canopy covered his deeds from the prying eyes of the stars.

It was a warm spring night that hinted of the blazing Central Valley summer that was to come. The air was absolutely still. He sweated over the controls, wiping his forehead often with a filthy red bandana he’d found tied to the steering wheel. He’d learned all too well why the bandana was there. Each time he wiped he also drank a shot from his squirt-bottle of water. The van was parked on the side of the road, about a hundred yards behind him. Laying beside the growing wound in the earth were two eight-foot lengths of white PVC pipe and a giant roll of duct tape. All he had to do was drive the van into the hole, put the PVC pipe through the little pop-up dome on the top of the van, then bury the whole fucker. The pipe would provide fresh air and allow him to drop food into the van. The duct tape was to seal the pipe so dirt wouldn’t fill the van’s interior.

Spurlock had gotten this idea from an old crime he had read about back in the early eighties. Down in the southern half of the Valley, in a town called Chowchilla, some players had hi-jacked an entire school bus loaded with kids and buried the lot of them in a hole for safe-keeping. They had demanded a ransom, but had eventually blown it and gotten caught. The crime had always impressed him with its simplicity and sheer balls. Spurlock, of course, had no intentions of demanding a ransom. All he wanted was to get the kid out of his hair for awhile so he could move without being hampered.

Running the big scoop up the side of the hole to widen it, he heard the engine strain and rev-up as something resisted the blade. Another big root, he figured. The root snapped and the whole rig rocked a bit. A shower of almonds and twigs fell from the disturbed tree, pelting the cab and Spurlock in discriminately.

“The crazy shit I go through to avoid Murder One,” complained Spurlock, scowling back toward the van. He dragged the filthy bandana across his forehead again and lowered the scoop for another bite of earth.

Brenda sucked in her breath suddenly and gave little yelp of surprise and fear.