John Sandford - The Devil's Code

He'd been angry about the necklace, but that had only been thieves. Lord knows he'd paraded the stones around enough, hanging them off the necks of half the models in Dallas. But they'd used him, they'd known how he'd think.

Then, that same night, they'd looted the computer. They would not have been found out if Woods hadn't been watching, hadn't seen, the next morning, the odd groping-about in the files. He'd come in to ask about it, and Corbeil knew instantly what had happened.

Suckered.

"Lane Ward," he said.

"She wouldn't have the resources," Hart protested. "Whoever went into your apartment was a pro. That safe wasn't ripped out of the wall by hackers. That took special gear. They goddamned near destroyed your apartment and nobody in the building heard a thing."

"Then who is it? The FBI doing a black-bag job? Not anymore, it's not. The CIA? They're the most gun-shy intelligence agency in the West. The NSA? They have fewer resources in the dark than we do. So who? Somehow, it's Ward. Or if it's not Ward, she can tell us who it is. Look at what they did with the bug in San Francisco. She's got help." He turned and looked at Hart. "Find her. Take her. We'll talk to her out at the ranch."

"Mr. Corbeil, if she disappears, the shit's going to hit the fan. I'm already tied to the Morrison killing."

"Look, we can make her out to be a member of Firewall. We've already started the groundwork on that. I'll have Woods do an entry from the outside, using the stuff from my apartment, just like they did itbut they'll go into Clipper files, and we'll call the NSA and the FBI in. We'll lead them back to her, somehow."

"What? She drops her driver's license on the motel floor?" Hart asked skeptically. "And she's got somebody with her."

"Yeah, and that's another guy we want to talk to. I'll bet it's some little Stanford computer genius who happens to know how to hack into anything. One of those goddamned pencil-necked hundred-and-sixty-IQ smart-asses who might even be able to pull a safe out of a wall."

Hart shook his head, and then Corbeil said, "Fingerprints, maybe."

"What?"

"A computer attack's launched from a motel room. When the FBI investigates, it finds her fingerprints all over the place."

"How're we going to get her to do that?"

"We'll talk to her first in a motel room. Rent a room, talk to her there, make sure there are plenty of prints around, then take her out to the ranch. As soon as she's gone, we have Woods make an intrusion call from the motel room. The Agency can still trace that kind of crap."

"Sounds too complicated. If she broke away, if she started screaming."

"So if it's too complicated, take her right out to the ranch," Corbeil snarled.

"Then we can't."

"We'll have her hands," Corbeil said. "She won't need them. Not when we're done talking to her."

"Jesus," Hart said.

"No, he's not here," Corbeil answered.

"I just think, I'm starting to feel."

"What?"

"This is out of control."

"William, you're right. You're absolutely right. We've got to get it back under control, or we're dead meat. You did a year in the softest prison in Texas. How'd you like a real hard place, the kind of place they reserve for traitors? That's what they'd call us: traitors. William, we would spend the rest of our lives up to our necks in shit."

"But if we just."

"Do nothing? We've been trying that, William. It's not working. We need to know what's happening. If worse comes to worst, we at least need the time to run."

"Run." Hart clasped his head in his hands. "Ah, Jesus. Running."

"So you get Lane Ward. And the geek who's driving her around, whoever it is. In the meantime, I'll sit here, behind this desk" he pointed to the cherrywood desk in the corner"and try to think of a way to pin the whole thing on Firewall. Pin it hard enough that we won't go down for it, anyway."

"We should shut down the Old Man of the Sea."

Corbeil shrugged. "If you insist, but there's really no point. They're not close to it; they have no hint of it."

"I would just feel easier about it," Hart said.

"I'll talk to Woods," Corbeil said.

We slept late the next morning, LuEllen later than I. At ten o'clock, I rolled out, stretched, cleaned up. When I came back into the main room, LuEllen was still half asleep. She'd thrown the blanket off, and from one angle, near the bathroom door, her face was nicely framed by one outflung arm, and was just risingfrom that perspectiveover a thigh, with her foot in the foreground. Feet are always nice to draw, especially when you get to see them from the bottom. I tiptoed around to my briefcase, got out my drawing book, eased a chair over to the bathroom door, sat down, and drew for an hour.

Finally, growing aware of the total silence, she pushed herself halfway up and looked around. "Kidd?"

"Right here."

"Drawing my butt again?" She pushed herself all the way up, stretched and yawned.

"It's in the picture, but it's not the focus; it's sorta half cut off."

She came to look as I worked some shading in around her toes. "My feet aren't that big," she said.

"From this perspective."

"They're not that big. They're fives."

"From this angle."

"Bullshit. Not that big. And my toe isn't that bent."

"You're right. I'm sorry. I apologize."

"No, you don't," she said. She stretched again. "You don't care whose fragile ego you crush. All artists are like that."

"Somebody once said that a portrait is a painting where there's something not quite right about the mouth," I said. "It might have been Sargent. Anyway, nobody's ever said that about the foot."

"I'm the first."

"Go take a shower," I said.

She went to take a shower and I struggled with the foreshortening of her leg and foot, and with her face in the back, rising over her thigh, and the pillow behind that. When I was done, I took the drawing out, ripped it up, and tossed it in the wastebasket. Something not quite right about the foot. With all that in my head, waiting for LuEllen to get out of the bathroom, I looked out the window down at the parking lot.

And understood what I hadn't understood before.

Why I had looked down at the parking lot and thought I'd missed an important thought.

Understood the AmMath photographsor something about them, anyway. It all came out of the perspective of LuEllen's foot.

The shower was running and I could hear her humming to herself in the bathroom as I brought the laptop up, and one of the photos.

"Jesus." I was right. I sat staring at it, then brought up another one. Ripped a piece of paper out of my drawing book, got a pen, and began making comparative measurements on the computer screen. I was still doing it when LuEllen came hobbling out of the bathroom with a towel around her head. I glanced at her and looked back at the computer.

"Thanks," she said. "I'm here with my nice pink."

"Shut up. I gotta get online with Bobby. Get dressed."

"What?"

"Look at this photograph."

She looked over my shoulder. "What?" she asked again.

"Look how this shadow comes down from this light pole? The shadow from the sun?"

"Yeah?"

"Look how it comes down from this light pole," I said.

"All right."

"And this one."

"I see all the shadows and all the light poles, Kidd. So what?"

"All the shadows are in exactly the same perspective. Exactly, as close as I can measure. Doesn't it look weird to you?"

"No. And so what?"

"It's impossible, that's all. Well, not impossible, if the camera was far enough back."

"We were thinking it might be a surveillance camera up on a roof. It'd have to be, to get that high angle."

"Still not high enough," I said. "I gotta get with Bobby. He could make some better measurements and do the numbers."