F Wilson - Deep as the Marrow

Damn you if that’s true, he thought. I might not get another chance.

“No. I told you everything I knew. And I haven’t heard a word from Snake.” That much at least was true.

A pause before Decker responded. “All right. But let us know the instant you hear anything. Every little scrap is important.”

“Of course. But what happens next?”

“I meet with our little task force in about an hour. I’ll keep you informed.”

As John hung up, he wondered: Was it just his imagination, or had Decker put extra emphasis on the “you?” Who gave a good goddamn? He was worried about Katie. Where was she? What were they doing to her?

2

“But I want to go home! I want to see my Daddy!” Poppy watched Katie’s lower lip push out. She looked like she was going to cry. Poppy couldn’t bear the thought that she’d caused that.

“You will, honey,” she said, giving Katie a one-armed hug. “It’s like I told you: You fell asleep last night and I didn’t want to wake you. But you know what? We’ll call him again today and you can talk to him. Okay?” Katie nodded.

“ ‘Kay.”

“Great. How you feeling?”

“Fine.”

The poor little thing had had a bit of a Valium hangover this morning. Good thing Katie had been zonked out last night because after getting into bed beside her, Poppy had got to thinking about Paulie, and Katie would have had to listen to a ton of crying. Paulie was like the best thing that ever happened to her. And now he was dead. And it was her fault because she’d got him to break Mac’s rules. If she’d kept her damn mouth shut…

But then what would have happened to Katie? Why couldn’t life be simple?

Yeah, well, maybe it could have been simple if they hadn’t got involved with Mac.

She’d clung to Katie all night. Poppy didn’t know how she’d have made it to the morning without her.

Dawn had broken gray and cloudy, but they’d both perked up after a stack of waffles at the Denny’s across the highway. And now, back in the room, she wished she could find some cartoons to distract Katie, but the tube was like totally filled with talking heads, and if they weren’t blabbing about legalized drugs they were speculating about like why the President was in the hospital.

As if anybody cared.

“How come your hands are all red?” Katie said.

Poppy looked down at her hands. Black fingernails and blood-red fingers.

Very weird.

She stood and stepped toward the window. “C’mere and I’ll show you.” She pulled back the curtain. “Check out the truck.”

Katie pressed her face against the window. “It’s red!”

“Sure is. Did it myself last night.”

She’d pulled the truck around the back of the motel and parked near a storage shed. There, out of sight of pretty much the whole parking lot, she’d emptied like can after can of spray paint. Her fingers still ached from pressing those nozzles. Sure as hell wasn’t pretty, but anyone scanning the freeways for a white panel truck would probably skip right over this one. She hoped.

Poppy dropped the curtain and turned back to the motel room. They couldn’t stay here. She’d charged it on Mac’s bogus plastic, thinking he was dead. But Mac wasn’t dead. And what if he had a way to trace her through the card?

They had to get out of here.

But first they had to make some changes.

“Good,” Poppy said. “Let’s play a game, then. How about”—she made a show of trying to decide—“oh, I don’t know… how about a game of let’s pretend?” Katie’s pout of a moment ago seemed to be history.

“What are we going to pretend?”

“Let’s see… why don’t we pretend we’re boys? Won’t that be fun?”

“Boys?” Katie didn’t seem to be too sure about how much fun that would be. “How do we do that?”

“It’s easy. We change our hair and change our clothes and we act dumb. You know…” Poppy made a face. “Duh.”

Katie laughed. “Duh! That’s easy.”

“But we gotta look like boys.”

A wider grin. “You mean dress in boy clothes?”

“Right! And cutting our hair.”

The smile vanished as Katie’s hands darted to her hair. “Cut my hair? Oh, I don’t—”

“Yeah, we’ll cut it, color it, comb it different. This’ll be the most fun we’ve ever had!”

But Katie still wasn’t buying.

She has to buy it. Poppy thought. I’ve changed the color of the truck, and I’m going to change license plates and change motels, but if we’re both going to get through this in one piece, I’ve got to change us.

She’d stopped at a Giant Foods on the way back from Denny’s and picked up all the necessary materials. Now she had to sell Katie.

“Look,” she said, grabbing a pair of scissors. “I’ll go first.” She grabbed a fistful of her own hair and began cutting.

3

Dan Keane sat stiffly in his chair in the cramped back office of W-16 and listened with growing horror as Gerry Canney updated the task force on the latest developments from the FBI Crime Lab.

“And here’s the latest finding: two different types of blood on the carpet in the Falls Church house. Both fresh. One belongs to the dead man, Dicastro. The other is unidentified, but it is definitely not Katie Vanduyne’s.”

Everything’s unraveling, he thought. He wanted to flee the room.

Decker took over. “Okay. Now, in the U.K. Jim says he’s found the guy who runs the anonymous remailer Snake’s been using.” Jim Lewis cleared his throat. “His name’s Steve Fletcher but he refuses to tell us where he hides his computer. The easiest solution would be to follow him to it and steal it. Then we run through his hard drive to find Snake’s e-mail address. Snake’s got to have an account with an online service or a private server to get on the Internet, and we track him through that. But stealing the CPU would shut down the remailer service and cut off communication from Snake. So we’re working with British Intelligence to pressure Fletcher into giving up the information. If it looks like there’s going to be too much red tape, we have other options.”

“Like what?” Decker said.

“I’ll get into that when and if.”

Dan steadied himself. If they can trace this Snake to Salinas, we’re screwed.

Decker nodded. “Fair enough.” He turned to Dan. “And finally, what’s DEA got?” Dan licked his dry lips. Truth was, he’d gone through some motions but hadn’t done much of anything. But he couldn’t tell Decker that.

“We’ve got all our ears open. I wasn’t specific about kidnapping or assassination plots, but I put the word through to check all our informants and inside people about any rumors as to how the traffickers and the cartel are reacting to the threat of decriminalization.”

“And?”

“And nothing yet.” Which was true. It was too early to hear much of substance, but the little that was filtering back was negative.

Salinas had done a good job of keeping his operation under wraps, but it looked as if he’d hired a bunch of rank amateurs to pull it off.

“All right,” Decker said. “That’s where we stand. We’ve got lots of leads, lots of new information, but also the damnedest set of new questions. If the toe Vanduyne received isn’t his daughter’s, then whose is it? Or rather, whose was it? Why send someone else’s toe?

We know Katie was in the Falls Church house at one time, but where is she now? And why was she moved? Why was a small-time thug named Paul Dicastro murdered in that house? Was he part of the action from the outset or someone trying to horn in? Who does the other bloodstain on the carpet belong to? Another of the kidnappers or an outsider? And where is this wounded person? Is this a small-time or big-time operation? Did the kidnappers have a falling out? Is the conspiracy busted? Who was the woman that called Vanduyne and offered to return his daughter—for no ransom—and then never showed. What the hell is going on?“