John Sandford - The Hanged Man’s Song

“What are they doing in Carp’s computer?” LuEllen asked.

“Must’ve transferred it from Bobby’s,” I said. “A backup, or something, before he started messing with the other files.”

“Okay,” John said, still looking over my shoulder. “Oh my God, look at this. This guy’s a cabinet guy, he’s what? HUD? HEW? Something like that.”

We talked about the effect of the photos for a while. LuEllen thought they’d be revolutionary, but John shook his head. “You read those books about people finding the body of Christ and it ends Christianity, or somebody finds out that the President likes to screw little boys, and that leads to an atomic war. It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “Nothing is simple. Stuff like this ruins careers, it might change the way things work for a while, but the world goes on.”

“You’re an optimist, John,” LuEllen said. “I’m going back to the pool. There are a whole bunch of guys from Texas up there.”

“That’s a blessing,” John said. “Wouldn’t want to miss that.”

I went back to the computer and John finished with the paper. A half hour later, sitting in a dwindling pile of scraps, he said, “Ah, man.” He was holding a slip of paper, shook his head and passed it to me. It was a phone bill for cable repair service, made to Robert Fields. Bobby’s address was right there. “Took it out of Baird’s file,” I said.

“Gotta be,” John said.

LuELLENhad come back, glowing with the sun, took her bikini-ed self into the bathroom to clean up and dress, and when she came back out, turned on the TV. A little while later, changing from Oprah to CNN, she said, “Look at this.”

The Norwalk virus story was exploding: the President, in person, was promising a full investigation. If the so-called test had actually taken place, he said, the persons responsible would be prosecuted. He added that the government had no evidence of such a test and suggested that this “supposed revelation” might be a new kind of terrorist attack intended to discredit the American military and shake up financial markets.

“Getting ugly,” John said.

I went back to the laptop. In a file called Carly , I found thirteen letters to a woman. The earliest ones were friendly technical advice on printing photographs from a new digital camera. They gradually became more personal, and he began trying to cajole her into a date. That apparently didn’t work. In a file called Linda , there were six letters to another woman, with the same tone. There were other files named Shannon and Barb that were a bit more businesslike, but still had that feeling of attention that would make most women nervous.

Another file contained unremarkable glamour shots of super-models, along with a major selection of hard-core porn. Half of it seemed to be young Japanese schoolgirls in plaid skirts; or out of plaid skirts. Given the resolution of the photos, it appeared that most of it had been downloaded from the ’net.

In a file called Contacts , I found addresses and phone numbers for Thomas Baird and Rachel Willowby. In his Microsoft address book, there were several hundred e-mail addresses, and in a PalmPilot sync file, there were thirty or forty home addresses and phone numbers for people I’d never heard of.

Then I stumbled over a file called DDC Working Group-Bobby , and inside, a list of names, e-mail addresses, and a half-dozen phone numbers and a few memos. One of the memos referred to a Deep Data Correlation working group, which explained the “DDC.” I showed it to John and LuEllen.

“What the heck would that be?”

“I don’t know, but we better find out, if we can,” I said. To John: “Anything else?”

“Most of it can be tossed,” he said, patting the pile of paper on the bed. “It’s just bullshit.”

“So toss it,” I said. “I’m gonna call one of these numbers, and then get online, see if there’s anything new from the guys on the ring.”

BACKto the truck stop. From a phone inside, I called the first of the phone numbers for the Deep Data Correlation working group. After the usual long-distance clicking, I got a computer tone, and hung up. Called another number, got another tone. All right: computer access, but no way to get in, not yet.

Then I checked my blind addresses and got an alarm from the address I’d given to Rachel Willowby. It said, “Jimmy James Carp is parked outside-4:17 P.M.”

I looked at my watch: a few minutes past 4:30, so the note had just come in. I fired the car up, took it back to the motel in a hurry. John and LuEllen were flipping cards at a waste basket when I came in.

“We gotta go get her,” John said, when I told them about the note.

“If there’s trouble…” I remembered what Marvel had said about his fingerprint status. “And he’s got a gun.”

“Gotta go anyway,” he said. He was already headed toward the door.

“Made a mistake not bringing a gun with us,” LuEllen said, a step behind him. “Every asshole in Louisiana has a gun in his car except us. And when you need one, like the NRA says, you need one.”

“I’m not sure the NRA would want me to have one,” John said.

“Let’s figure this out on the way over,” I said. “There’s gotta be something we can do. Besides trying to tackle him in the street.”

WE WORKEDthrough a series of harebrained plans as we drove into New Orleans, but there wasn’t time, and there just isn’t much you can do when the other guy has a gun and you don’t.

“One big thing is that none of us can get hung up with the cops,” LuEllen said. “We can’t just jump him in the street and then haul him away. That’s kidnapping and it looks like kidnapping and somebody’s gonna get the license plate number and then we’re toast.”

“Track him, get him inside, wherever he’s staying…”

“But what about the kid?” John asked. “There’s only one reason he’s after the kid, and that’s to find out who tracked him to the trailer.”

“Two reasons,” I said. “The other one is, to shut her up. She can connect him to Bobby.”

“Ah, Jesus. And since he already killed Bobby…”

“You better drive faster, Kidd,” LuEllen said.

“We still gotta figure out the gun.”

“Catch him in the open, and he might be afraid to use it,” I said.

“Gotta get to the girl, though,” John said. “That’s the number-one thing.”

WE WENTstraight into Rachel Willowby’s. Didn’t see a Corolla, nothing but the usual beat-up full-sized Chevys and Oldsmobiles; one guy far down the street was washing off the floor mats of his car, but he was the only person we could see moving around outside.

At the Willowby place, John was out on the street before the car stopped rolling, heading for her door. I was out and called, “Take it easy, take it easy.” LuEllen was trailing, hurrying to catch me, and I was hurrying to catch up with John, but he was a dozen steps ahead of me and I didn’t want to run, because running attracts the eye.

Then he was at the door, and instead of knocking, pushed it, and then was inside and the shouting started, “Hey, hey, hey…” and then I was in, blinking in the sudden darkness of the interior. John was halfway across the small front room, Rachel Willowby was sitting at the kitchen table in front of her laptop, and Carp stood beside the table.

He had the gun.

“… are you motherfuckers?” Carp was shouting.

“Friends of Rachel’s,” John was saying over the top of Carp’s question. “We’re friends of Rachel’s and she says she’s in trouble.”

“Is this a friend of Rachel’s?” Carp asked, waving the gun barrel at me. “Where in the hell did he come from? And who’s that?” He looked past me, and I half turned. LuEllen peeked around the door frame and said, “We called 911, they’re on the way.”