Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

“You’re terrific,” he said. “You help me see clearly.”

“If you have a problem, solve it the old-fashioned way.”

“And that would be?”

“The way your people and my people always solve problems. Hard work. Hard, hard work. Now hang up, have lunch, and get to work. Good-bye. Call me on DEROS.”

All right.

It was clear now: he had to locate some kind of connection between Tom Constable and the deaths of Jack Strong and Mitzi Reilly. Something real, something palpable, something authentic.

What do I know?

I know that Strong and Reilly knew Tom Constable; I saw the picture of the four of them, Joan Flanders being the fourth, at some dinner. But that proved nothing. That proved only that in a glittery, jet-setty kind of life lived by minor celebrities, people whose pictures got in magazines, these two couples had known each other socially. That indicated nothing meaningful, mere acquaintanceship. They were both strong left; why shouldn’t they have had a social relationship?

The question was, did Strong have a way of reaching Constable, an e-mail address, a special cell phone number, a contact? That would indicate something more than a casual relationship.

The second question was, how does a guy in a hotel room in Indianapolis with no powers, no contacts, no sponsorship, no authority, no resources, find that out-fast?

Impossible.

Can’t be done.

It took him three minutes.

He went to the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Web site, clicked on the Department of Education, found that of course it hadn’t been updated since the deaths; then he went to the departmental secretary, a Eustace Crawford, number given. He reasoned that secretaries know things, they see things, they get things. But nobody has talked to this one, because Jack Strong was never investigated; he was the victim of the obviously mad marine sniper who simply chose him for his symbolic value.

Bob made the call, thinking, concentrating, ordering himself: verb-subject agreement. No ain’t , no don’t , no profanity. You are some mealy little nobody who makes his living doing things for other people.

“Education, Ms. Crawford. May I help you?”

“Ms. Crawford, I wonder if you remember me,” he lied. “My name is Daryl Nelson and I’m a special assistant to Mr. Tom Constable. I spoke to you many times in the last few weeks before the tragic passing of Jack Strong.”

A pause indicated she didn’t, but there is a certain something in people that makes them reluctant to disappoint strangers.

“Uhhh-Well, I suppose, Mr., uh, Nelson, you know it was so terrible around here, the deaths, they were such wonderful people.”

“Yes ma’am, and I’m sorry to interrupt at this time of tragedy. Actually, I put this call off as long as I could.”

“Yes sir. Well, I suppose, is it something I can-”

“Ms. Crawford, you know that Mr. Constable was a friend of the Strongs, I’m sure; you’ve seen the picture in the house, the four of them, when Mr. Constable was married to the late Joan Flanders?”

“I have seen that picture, actually. I loved Mitzi. The Strongs knew so many people. There was something so magnetic about them.”

“Yes ma’am. Well, here’s the problem: Jack and Mr. Constable had a friendly e-mail relationship. Maybe too friendly. You know that Mr. Constable has a weakness for speaking his mind in public and he sometimes says unfortunate things.”

“Yes. I remember that time he called George Bush a war criminal on Jay Leno.”

“Yes, that sort of thing. Well, in private, it’s even worse. Here’s what he’s afraid of-that somehow some of the private e-mails Mr. Constable sent to Jack could get into the newspapers or, worse, onto the Internet; you know all these terrible blog people. It would be very embarrassing and I don’t think Mr. Strong would have wanted that.”

“No, I’m sure he didn’t.”

“Now, I know his e-mail has a secret code, of course, a sign-in. Obviously, I don’t know it. But I’m guessing, in the normal course of actions, someone such as yourself in daily contact with him might have noticed what that code was. He might have even called you and asked you to check for messages that came into that account.”

“I have some idea.”

“Of course I’m not at all suggesting you give it to me. What I am asking is a favor. If you could get into his e-mail account and run a quick scan or a search of some kind; you might search for ‘Tom,’ or you might try the name ‘Ozzie’ or ‘O. Z. Harris,’ he was a friend of theirs in bad health in Chicago over the last few months. If you come up with a batch of messages, again, don’t open them.”

“Do you want me to delete them?”

“No, I would prefer if you would change the entry code, to something of your own preference. Our firm will make an official petition to the university to recover them, but their existence right now is very troubling to us, and to know that the code had been changed would be a very good thing.”

Don’t let her say, Oh, I’ll just forget the e-mails and change the code now. It’s a very good idea irrespective of Mr. Constable’s wishes.

But that seemed not to occur to her.

“I’ll check,” she said.

Two minutes passed, and then he heard the phone being picked up again.

“Well,” she said, “if Mr. Constable was TomC@Starcrostdotcom, then there were quite a few. They turned up when I searched for the Ozzie Harris name. Quite a few in fact, as if they’d been talking heatedly about Ozzie.”

“This would have been in September, just around the time of Ozzie’s death on September third?”

“Yes, exactly. Just to check, I did open the first. Mr. Strong was going to write a book about the seventies, and he’d found some items or relics that he thought might be of interest to TomC and he hoped they could continue their discussions, which he thought would have an excellent outcome for both of them. That was Mr. Strong, always trying to help. He had such a feeling for the underdog.”

“Ms. Crawford, that’s great. So you will change that code, and our conversation will be private, and I might say, you have earned Mr. Constable’s appreciation. He will reach out in some way to show that appreciation; that’s the kind of wonderful man he is.”

“It was my pleasure, Mr. Nelson.”

He put the phone down, exhausted at the effort of sounding so well-spoken for so long. But he had it. Tangible, objective proof of a contentious relationship between Tom Constable and the Strongs immediately prior to the killings. It wasn’t something he’d made up, some “interpretation” that an old man who saw conspiracies in the choice of public restroom toilet paper had come up with. It was real.

Also real: “items” or “relics” of interest to TomC. That would be whatever it was that had been taped to the frame of Ozzie Harris’s box spring for thirty-odd years, which now, in play, had the power to change lives and move mountains-of Tom Constable’s money.

It was clear what had to happen next.

Whatever it is, Constable has it.

So I’ll go get it.

It had been a quiet few days as David waited for the return of the photo and the report from the Rochester lab. He’d broken a minor item: his friend Bill Fedders-boy, was that guy wired or what?-had heard from somebody that Nick Memphis had a somewhat neurotic relationship with another sniper, a man named Bob Lee Swagger, who had, briefly, been the number one Most Wanted man in the country, fifteen or so years ago, and who, when the case against him for the murder of a Salvadoran archbishop was disproved, disappeared. Evidently this Swagger and Memphis had had adventures and engaged in some barely legal shenanigans, which somehow redounded with great credit to Memphis and got his career back on track.