Michael Connelly - The Poet

He raised his finger to make the point.

"What if you already have all the extras and all you want is the camera? No cable. No software. None of that stuff. What if you just shelled out six grand for bail and a lawyer and you're hurting for cash and not only don't need all those extras but can't afford them?"

"You special order just a camera and save a lot of money."

"That's right. That's my hunch. I think that if making bail came close to busting our friend Gladden just like that shyster lawyer said it did, then he'd be looking to save a dollar here and there. If he replaced the camera, I'm betting he made the special order."

He was juiced and it was contagious. I had caught his excitement and was beginning to look at Thorson in perhaps a truer light. I knew these were the moments he lived for. Moments of understanding and clarity. Of knowing he was close.

"McEvoy, we are on a roll," he suddenly said. "I think you might be good luck after all. Just make it good enough that we're not too late."

I nodded my agreement.

We drove for a few minutes in silence before I questioned him again.

"How do you know so much about digital cameras?"

"It's come up before and it's becoming more prevalent. At Quantico we have a unit now that does nothing but computer crime. Internet crime. A lot of what they do bleeds over into pornography, child crimes. They put out bureau-wide briefings to keep people current. I try to keep current."

I nodded.

"There was this old lady-a schoolteacher, no less-up near Cornell in New York checks the download file in her home computer one day and sees a new entry she doesn't recognize. She prints it out and what she gets is a murky black-and-white but clearly identifiable picture of a boy of about ten copping some old guy's joint. She calls the locals and they figure out it got into her computer by mistake. Her Internet address is just a number and they figure the sender transposed a couple digits or something. Anyway, the routing history of the file is right there and they trace it back to some gimp, a pedophile with a nice long record. Out here in fact, he was from L.A. Anyway, they do the search-and-bust and take him down pretty neat. The first digital bust. The guy had something like five hundred different photos in his computer. Christ, he needed a double hard drive. I'm talking about kids of every age, persuasion, doing things normal grownups don't even do… Anyway, good case. He got life, no parole. He had a digiShot, though that might've been a 100 model. They put the story out last year in the FBI Bulletin."

"How come the picture the teacher got was so murky?"

"She didn't have the printer for it. You know, you need a nice color-graphics printer and high-gloss paper. She had neither."

The first two stops were dead ends. One store hadn't sold a digiShot in two weeks and the other had sold two in the last week. However, those two cameras had gone to a well-known Los Angeles artist whose collage portraits made of Polaroid photos were celebrated and displayed in museums around the world. He now wanted to dabble in a newer photographic medium and was going digital. Thorson didn't even bother writing down notes for further follow-up.

The last stop on our list was a street-front shop called Data Imaging Answers on Pico, two blocks from the Westwood Pavilion shopping center. After pulling to the curb in a no-parking zone out front, Thorson smiled and said, "This is it. This is the one."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Walk-in store on a busy street. The other two were more like mail-order offices, not storefronts. Gladden would have wanted the storefront. More visual stimulation. People passing outside, people coming in and out, more distractions. It would be better for him. He doesn't want to be remembered."

It was a small store with two desks in the showroom and several unopened boxes stacked about. There were two circular counters with computer terminals and video equipment on display along with stacks of computer equipment catalogs. A balding man wearing thick glasses with black frames was sitting at one of the desks and looked up as we entered. There was no one at the other desk and it looked unused.

"Are you the manager?" Thorson inquired.

"Not only that, I'm the owner." The man stood up with proprietary pride and smiled as we approached his desk. "Not only that, I am the number one employee."

When we didn't join in his guffaw he asked what he could do for us.

Thorson showed him the inside of his badge wallet.

"FBI?"

It seemed incomprehensible to him.

"Yes. You sell the digiShot 200, correct?"

"Yes, we do. Top-of-the-line digital camera. But I'm out of stock at the moment. Sold my last one last week."

I felt my guts seize. We were too late.

"I can have one in three or four days. In fact, seein' that it's the FBI I might get them to ship two-day. No charge extra, of course."

He smiled and nodded but his eyes had a quizzical look behind the thick glasses. He was nervous dealing with the FBI, especially not knowing what it was all about.

"And your name is?"

"Olin Coombs. I'm the owner."

"Yes, you said that. Okay, Mr. Coombs, I'm not interested in buying anything. Do you have the name of the person who bought your last digiShot?"

"Uh…" He creased his brow, probably wondering if he should ask if it was legal for the FBI to ask for such information. "Of course I keep records. I can get that for you."

Coombs sat down and opened a drawer in his desk. He looked through a hanging file until he found what he was looking for, pulled out a sheet of paper and laid it flat on the desk. He then turned it around so Thorson didn't have to read it upside down. Thorson leaned over, studied the document and I saw his head make a slight turn to the right and then back. Looking at the receipt, it looked to me as if numerous pieces of equipment had been purchased along with the digiShot camera.

"This isn't what I'm looking for," Thorson said. "I'm looking for a man that we believe wanted to purchase a digiShot camera only. This is the only one you've sold in the last week?"

"Yes-uh, no. It's the only one with delivery. We've sold two others but they had to be ordered."

"And they haven't been delivered yet?"

"No. Tomorrow. I'm expecting a truck in the morning."

"Either of those two just order the camera?"

"The camera?"

"You know, none of the other stuff. The software, the cable, the whole kit."

"Oh, yes. Uh, as a matter of fact, there is…"

His words trailed off as he opened the drawer again and pulled out a clipboard with several pink forms on it. He started peeling them back and reading.

"I have a Mr. Childs. Just wanted the camera, nothing else. Paid cash in advance. Nine ninety-five plus California sales tax. Came to-"

"Did he leave a number or address?"

I stopped breathing. We had him. This had to be Gladden. The irony of the name he had given was not lost on me. I felt a chill roll across my back.

"No, no number or address," Coombs said. "I wrote a note to myself. It says Mr. Wilton Childs will call to check on the equipment's arrival. I told him to call tomorrow."

"Then he'll come pick it up?"

"Yes, if it's here by then he'll come pick it up. Like I said, we don't have an address so we can't deliver it."

"Do you remember what he looked like, Mr. Coombs?"

"Looked like? Uh, well, yes I suppose so."

"Can you describe him?"

"He was a white fellow, I remember that. He…"

"Blond hair?"

"Uh, no. It was dark. And he was growing a beard, I remember that."

"How old?"

"About twenty-five or perhaps thirty."

That was good enough for Thorson. It was in the ballpark and the rest of the information fit. He pointed at the empty desk.