V. Larson - Spyware

Taking a deep breath, Ray closed his eyes to the count of five, then pulled Ingles’ pistol out of his pocket. He half-hoped he would be forced to shoot the bastard, although he doubted that it would help his case any.

He stepped around the corner like a cop in any good crime movie. He stood with both hands on the gun, his legs spread apart. He had no more training with a gun than what he recalled from childhood, plinking endlessly at birds with his daisy. After the initial rush of victory, he had felt bad the few times he had actually hit one. He couldn’t help wondering at that moment how it would feel to kill a man.

The sight that greeted him was unexpected. Instead of cool, calm Ingles, his cigarette thrusting from his mouth, he saw Nog. Or rather, he saw Nog’s hindquarters. The man was doubled over, digging through boxes in the garage. There was an air of frantic energy about him that Ray had never seen before. He wore a striped tee-shirt, yellow rubber kitchen-gloves and a vast blue stretch of cloth that served him as shorts.

Brenda had always been something of a packrat. The garage, like much of her house, was stuffed with junk. Books, disks, dolls, paint cans, tools, broken furniture, garden implements and towering stacks of magazines were strewn about in wild profusion. Nog went through the disks more carefully, than the rest, but still, everything he touched was soon tossed aside as if in disgust.

Ray watched him dig for perhaps a minute. Every so often Nog lurched up and gazed about him, checking the window that gave a view of the front porch. He didn’t look directly behind him, however, and so missed Ray’s presence at the doorway. After a quick, furtive look around, he put his hand on his flabby back and moaned as if exhausted and strained. Then he doubled over again, rummaging through yet another box that he had pulled down from Brenda’s dusty shelves.

“What’cha looking for, Nog my man?” Ray asked him casually.

The effect was electric. Nog straightened from a large box of cords and computer parts. He half-whirled, half-fell as he turned to face Ray. Junk flew from his gloved fingers. A ribbon cable dangled from his left hand like a scrap of uneaten spaghetti.

“Oh shit,” breathed Nog. “You almost gave me a heart attack Vance, you asshole.”

“That makes twice in one week,” acknowledged Ray.

“You should just get the fuck out of here while you can, man,” said Nog, breathing hard.

“What are you doing here?”

“Look, you stupid mother-” here, Nog halted. He seemed to notice the gun for the first time. Ray had loosened up his cop stance and now held it nonchalantly.

“Oh, hey man,” stammered Nog. He shuffled back a step and almost fell into a stack Vogue magazines as high as his waist. “I didn’t do Brenda, man. That’s not why I’m here.”

“Let me ask you again, Nog,” said Ray earnestly. He let his fingers work at the grip of the gun while he spoke. “Why are you here?”

“I’m just looking for-stuff.”

Ray took two steps forward. He watched the other’s reaction as Nog noticed the bloodstains that ran down his neck from his head wound. “What kind of stuff?”

Nog worked his tongue nervously. “Stuff like, ah-disks and chips.”

“Incriminating stuff?” asked Ray, he nodded, taking Nog’s shrug as evidence enough. “So why would it be here? Was Brenda in on all this then?”

Nog snorted. “Of course not,” he snapped.

“No, no, of course not. She was no hacker,” said Ray, “In fact, she hated your kind, didn’t she? The festering spiders out there on the web. The ones that dream up ways to lure teens to bus stations and vandalize the honest work of others.”

“You going to shoot me or what, Vance?” asked Nog.

“You have more balls than you know, asking that question,” said Ray.

Nog opened his mouth. His ancient braces glinted, but he shut up again, saying nothing.

“Good. All I want to hear from you is answers. Let’s see now, you came here to find evidence. The evidence must incriminate you, or you wouldn’t bother to leave your lair. Besides which, I’ve never seen you work so hard in your life. With me so far?”

Nog wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his yellow glove. He nodded and glanced out the front window again. “We have to get out of here, Vance,” he said.

“All I can think of is the source code of the virus, something linking you to it. Am I on the right track?”

“Yeah, you’re a regular no-shit-Sherlock, man. I couldn’t find it, and I’ve been at it all night. We have to get out of here now though, man.”

“Why’s that?”

Nog pointed out the window. Ray sighted along the rubber finger. He saw a small black plastic box. It sat outside the window in the branches of a small liquid amber tree. On the top of it, a red light blinked.

“What the heck is that?”

“A cop-detector,” explained Nog. “It detects radio emissions on the cop bandwidths. Any car that transmits inside of a half-mile is picked up.”

“So, you’re telling me that the cops are coming.”

“Bingo,” said Nog, heading for the side door he had forced.

“I’m coming with you,” said Ray.

“What if I don’t want company?” asked Nog.

“Then I’ll have to blow your guts out.”

“In that case,” said Nog with a snort, “be my guest.”

… 31 Hours and Counting…

Spurlock was exhausted by the time he finished burying the van. The PVC pipe stuck up about two feet above the mound of sandy earth. It looked like some kind of drainage system for the orchard, however, not like the tip of a tomb. As an afterthought, he shoved a half-eaten bag of cheetos down the hole. The bag stuck part way down, but he followed it up with his water bottle and the weight of it forced both of them down. He laughed, then called down the tube to the kid.

“Don’t eat and drink everything at once, kid! Otherwise you’ll be eating the vinyl off the car seats before I get back here with another little snack for you.”

“Mister,” he heard faintly come up the tube. Spurlock raised his eyebrows, the kid had rarely spoken. “Don’t leave me! It’s dark down here!”

Spurlock looked down the tube into the earth. He could see nothing. It was indeed as dark as the devil’s own eyeball down there.

Spurlock hawked a big one and fired it down the pipe. He couldn’t tell if the kid caught it in the face or not, but he hoped so. “See now, you don’t want to be calling up this pipe, boy. You never know what might come down to get you. Snakes would love this pipe, if they hear you. So, you just keep quiet until I bring you more food. If you’re real good, I might even let you out. If you’re not, I’ll cover up this last hole and you’ll suffocate down there in the dark. Now, shut up.”

With that, he walked back toward the road. There was still plenty of business to be done today.

#

Nog had plenty of snacks in his white Lincoln Town Car and Ray was so hungry that he couldn’t help himself. He felt vaguely ill to eat from the same bags of corn chips and boxes of cellophane-wrapped cakes that Nog had been pawing. Listening to Nog wasn’t helping his stomach, either.

“Where to?” asked Nog.

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, you’ve got the gun, Vance.”

“Right,” said Vance, feeling dazed. So much had happened today. He ate another chip, trying to think. “Let’s get out of here before the cops come. Just drive, Nog.”

Nog did a wide sweeping U-turn to get out of the dead-end circle. The big white car heeled over like a boat. The thought of Moby Dick, the great white whale, came unbidden to Ray’s mind. Kids on bikes scattered before their wake. Nog stomped on the pedal and they rolled quickly and quietly away from Brenda’s.