John Sandford - The Hanged Man’s Song

This last memo said that the time difference between the killing and the burning seemed to suggest that they were not part of the same act, and the motive for the act may have been computer theft, since an expensive computer was known to be missing. Huh. They had at least one perceptive guy on the job.

There was also a reference to some unwashed intelligence about the local lads of the KKK, most of which was apparently canned Jackson Office file stuff.

“LET’S GO,”LuEllen said.

“Not yet,” I said. We were outside a convenience store, and a large man in a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops, carrying a brown shopping bag, was walking toward us. His face was obscured by a pale straw hat and big sunglasses.

“Look at this guy.”

“Not yet,” I said. “Just a minute.”

I stayed online for another five minutes-the guy in the Hawaiian shirt went on by and never looked back-saving everything to my laptop. LuEllen got increasingly nervous the longer we were hooked up. The last document was saved and I unplugged.

“All done.”

“We’re gone,” LuEllen said. She put the car in gear and turned slowly onto the street, her turn signals working. LuEllen would never be caught in a routine traffic stop. She continued up the street for a hundred yards, then pulled into a strip shopping center and parked in front of a store that sold Levolor blinds and Barrister bar stools.

“What are we doing?”

“Watching.” We sat there for ten minutes, watching the phone a block away, to see if any cops showed up. None did. She backed out and turned toward the street.

“Probably watching us by satellite,” I said.

“Funny man.” She leaned over and sniffed me. “You know, we ought to fool around more often. You really smell good.”

I won’t tell you where she’d splashed the Coco when we finally got out of the shower, but hey: when she was right, she was right. I did smell pretty good.

BACKat the motel, we read the memos again, talked about them, then, as it began to get dark, changed into some running clothes and went for a jog. We did three miles in nineteen minutes, running around the edges of a golf course. When we finished, I felt better than any time since we first walked into the Wisteria and started dropping coins in the slot machines.

We ate a quick dinner and then I went back to the DVDs; and a little more sex. And finally, after one of the longest days I’d had in a while, we crawled into bed.

“Would you like me better if I was more boobilicious?” LuEllen asked as I began to drift away.

I mumbled at her.

“What was that? What?”

I pushed myself up from the pillow. “I’m nowhere nearly stupid enough to answer that question,” I said. “Go to sleep.”

AS Anews service, CNN is pretty predictable: bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, weather, sports, bullshit, bullshit. The next morning, though, things were more serious. We turned on the tube a few minutes after 7:15, to a professionally cheerful guy just finishing up the sports.

The next thing up was a silent film showing a man in blackface, wearing a stovepipe hat, with an open black umbrella overhead, doing a vaudeville-style softshoe with two other guys, who were similarly dressed.

There was no commentary for a full five seconds, then one of the talking heads, speaking with his Voice of Doom, said, “You are looking at a videotape of a racially charged fraternity show in which one of the participants was National Security Advisor Lyman Bole, the man with the black umbrella. The videotape was sent to a number of news outlets this morning by a man identifying himself only as ‘Bobby,’ who said that many more such revelations would be coming in the next few weeks. CNN has learned exclusively that while Mr. Bole has yet to comment, the film is genuine, and that the fraternity party took place approximately nineteen years ago at Ohio State University, Bole’s alma mater.”

“Oh my God,” LuEllen said, goggling at the TV.

I was already rolling across the bed. I picked up my cell phone and dialed John. He came on, sounding sleepy, and I asked, “Have you seen it?”

“What?”

I told him, not using the name Bobby, and he said, softly, “Oh, no. The guy’s working the machine, whoever he is.”

“Yeah. And I’ll tell you what-I’m coming up empty on the DVDs. There’s not a thing about who might have the laptop. I’ll tell you what else: the big guys don’t know, either.”

“You got in, uh…”

“Yeah. And they don’t know.”

After a long moment of silence, he said, “I’ve been thinking…”

“You’re gonna retire to Guam.”

“No, I’m serious. Our friend was crazy about his security. There are only three ways somebody could have gotten to him. One: the asshole knew who our friend was, and where he lived, because our friend knew him and trusted him. Two: the asshole tracked him somehow, by computer. Three: it was purely local and purely random, done for money or something we don’t know about-something that doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”

He was using the “our friend” circumlocution because we’d shared an earlier difficulty involving Bobby and had learned about the government’s ability to intercept and sort meaningful phone conversations from billions of words of garbage.

“That last one’s out,” I said.

“It is now. That leaves the other two. But who knew our friend better than we did? That leaves the computer. If they tracked him by computer…”

“I know one guy who knew him better than we did,” I said. “I was looking at some information from the big guys. There’s a memo that says he had a caretaker. The caretaker lives in Jackson. I’ve got his name.”

More silence, and I heard a woman’s voice-Marvel, John’s wife-in the background saying, “It’s on right now,” and then John said, “I’m looking at the tape. We’ve got to talk to the guy in Jackson. Personally.”

“Hate to go back there,” I said.

“No choice-unless you can figure out how the asshole tracked him over the computer.”

“I can’t figure it out,” I said. “I tried a couple of times, really carefully, and I’m pretty good at it. Our friend called me up and told me to knock it off. I tripped some alarms I never saw. I think he was amused-he seemed amused. I bet everybody on the ring, except you, went looking for him at one time or another.”

“So either the guy who found him is a lot better than you ring guys are, or it’s somebody who knew him.”

“That would be it-and I don’t think it’s somebody who’s better than us. That’s not vanity, it’s just that there are a limited number of ways that you can track somebody online, and there’s no way to know whether you’re stepping into a trap unless you step in it. In other words, if somebody was tracking him, even if it’s like… the really big guys… they’d still set off his alarms.”

“Maybe some technological thing not having to do with computers?”

“And somehow it falls into the hands of a fruitcake who uses it to cut up government bigshots? John…”

“I know, I know. Can you get up here?”

“If we had to,” I said.

“Come on up, bag out here. You and I can go down to Jackson and talk to this friend.”

“Ah, man.”

“No choice.” Then he laughed. “I’m looking at this blackface thing. They are gonna stick this movie so far up the guy’s ass he’s gonna have videotape coming out of his nose.”

“Hang on.” I turned to LuEllen, who was sitting on the end of the bed, watching the TV, and told her what John had suggested.

She shrugged. “Always happy to see those guys.”