John Sandford - The Devil's Code

With LuEllen gone, I walked six blocks to a drive-in phone on the edge of a gas station parking ramp, checked in with Lane, and afterward got online with my dump box.

Lane was almost as cranked as LuEllen.

"What'd you get? How come you're not up here?"

"We don't know what we got. It's in a safe and we've got to cut it open. LuEllen's taking care of that tonight, but she won't be back until morning."

"How about the computer?"

"We should be online with him. I'm going to check in a few minutes."

"Damn it, Kidd, it freaked me out, even though we were outside. Freaked me out. Something for the memoirs."

"Better fuckin' not," I said. "This is not even for your memories."

The dump box was a mailbox I'd set up especially to take everything Corbeil typed on his computer terminal. There was nothing in the box. I hadn't expected anything. Corbeil, the social butterfly, the model-dater, wouldn't be back until late, if at all, unless somebody found the broken door.

Finally, I went out to Bobby. He had nothing more to offer on Jack's Jaz disks, but was certain that the attack on the IRS was coming from Europe.

got some numbers in germany and id'd zombie computers here in states that are feeding attack. will pass along to nsa contact and try to steer her from old names.

she's no wizard. you may be putting too much hope in stupid people.

must push them off. they still thrash after old names.

take care.

and you.

I got to bed a couple of hours before dawn, still worrying about LuEllen. I got three hours of sleep, and, still groggy but unable to keep my eyes closed, got out of bed and nearly fell on my face. I'd felt a little creaky the night before, but now every muscle in my body was screaming at me. That goddamned safe. I know what muscle-pulls feel like, and I had what some docs called micro-pulls, the kind you get shoveling snow off a sidewalk. No major muscles, but hundreds of tiny pulls.

I hobbled into the bathroom, took six ibuprofen out of my dope kit, swallowed them, shaved, and then spent fifteen minutes in a scalding shower. You're supposed to use ice, rather than heat, but this was ridiculous: I'd have to bury myself in a snow drift to chill everything I'd pulled. The heat made it feel better, anyway.

I was toweling off, slowly, when I got the sudden feelinga premonition without the negative vibethat LuEllen had just gotten back. I walked over to a window, opened a slit in the curtain, and looked down at the hotel parking lot. Yet another wonderful day, sunny, but with that early-morning dryness that we don't see in Minnesota. LuEllen was not in sight.

So much for premonitions. As I finished toweling off, I had another one: I'd just seen something important, but I didn't know what. What was it? I wandered around, looked out the window again, looked at myself m the mirror, looked at the towel. What the hell was it?

I couldn't figure it out, gave up, and got dressed, slowly. My back and underarms hurt the worst, and the inner thighs weren't good. My hair didn't hurt at all, but that was the only bright spot I was leaving the room, going for breakfast, I had a third premonition, this one about LuEllen again. I went back to the window, looked out, and saw the black Pontiac GrandAm rolling into a parking spot. An accurate premonitionif you have enough of them, and look often enough, you'll always have a good one. I watched her walk into the hotel, and five minutes later, opened the door as she came down the hallway

"Saw you in the parking lot," I said. "How'd it go?"

"You got a big industrial lathe, cutting a safe is like cutting cheese," she said. She pushed the door shut. "If you can mount it and turn it, you can cut it." Then she stepped up to give me a big kiss, and I winced.

"What's wrong?"

"That fuckin' safe. I pulled every muscle in my body."

"The penis is a muscle."

"It's pulled," I said. Then. "You seem pleased. Maybe even chipper."

She dug in her pocket and took out something glittery, held out her fist, and I cupped my hand underneath it. She dripped a platinum-and-diamond necklace into it "Remember that model chick we saw going into his place? She wasn't wearing it going in. She kept touching it coming out. Looked too nice to be an outright gift. I thought it might be in there."

"How much?"

"Lots. I called my guy in Georgia, and he said he could probably get me a hundred and a half. They're all small, one-carat, but they're top quality, like the necklace was made to sell. A bank account."

"That was it? The necklace?"

"Nope." She grinned. "He had forty thousand in cash, all in hundreds."

"Computer disks, printouts."

She shook her head. "Nothing like that. Some personal papersa mortgage, birth certificate, his passport. I brought it all back, but I don't think there's anything for you. There was enough to make it worthwhile for somebody like me to hit him."

"So maybe he'll be less likely to look at the computer."

"Maybe. I'll tell you, Kidd, you've gotten me in some shit over the years, but we've always made money, huh? Every time."

"Just lucky, I guess."

She tagged along for breakfast and then said she needed a nap. Having her sleepy made me sleepy, and we went back to her room, put out the "Do Not Disturb" sign, and slept into the afternoon. Green called at three o'clock and asked what the hell we were doing.

We ate dinner together. Green took a look at Corbeil's passport as we were waiting for the meal, and said, "Travels a lot. Extra pages." He folded the extra pages out like an accordion. "Travels in the Middle East. And India."

"One of those been-every where, done-everything guys," LuEllen said.

The food arrived and Green started looking at the mortgage, which he said wasn't a mortgage at all, but a contract-for-deed, which I said was the same thing, and LuEllen said, "Not quite."

Finally, during the dessert, Green folded up the mortgage paper, tossed it on the table, and said, "He's got something strange going with a ranch."

"A ranch?"

"Yeah. A private sale, looks like. A contract-for-deed. He paid seven hundred and fifty thousand up front, and then a thousand a year for ten years, and he can pay the last ten thousand anytime."

"That sounds weird," I said. "He paid three-quarters of a million up front, but couldn't come up with the last ten grand?"

"Makes no sense," Green said.

"Sure it does," said LuEllen. She had a glob of ice cream on a spoon and was licking it, like an advertisement for fellatio.

"Well, tell us, Miss Sucking on a Spoon," Lane said.

"If you get a contract-for-deed, the final ownership doesn't pass to you until you make the last payment."

"So?"

"So that means the ranch is still in the seller's name. What's his name?"

Green picked up the contract-for-deed and looked at it: "Fred Lord."

"See, Fred Lord sells it to Corbeil, and Corbeil still has to pay a few bucks to totally own the land, but he gets the full use of it, but only Lord's name appears on tax records, land records, and so on. It's a dodge."

"He doesn't want people to know he's got a ranch?" I asked. "We ought to look at it. Where is it?"

"McLennan County, wherever that is," Green said. "Twelve hundred and eighty acres. Two square miles. Corbeil-land."

Lane wanted to go take a look right away. "What else are we going to do?"

"Monitor my drop box," I said. "We need that computer more than we need a ranch."

"How do we know that?" Lane demanded. "I feel like we're getting bogged down. It's been three weeks since Jack was killed. I don't think anybody cares anymore. Except us."

"And the people chasing after Firewall," I said.

"Ah, Firewall," she said. She batted the thought away, like a gnat. "They'll find these kids, and that'll be it."