CAN MEET U 4 LUNCH. EATS. 12. C U.
OK, Joshua responded.
He turned off the computer, unplugged it, and wrapped the power cord around the plastic casing. He carried the machine downstairs and slid it inside a canvas satchel.
He remembered Rachel’s cell phone. Her address book or call history might also yield some valuable information. He took the phone out of its charger on the kitchen counter, and pressed the ON button.
The first screen on the tiny LCD display requested a pass code to proceed.
The security precautions seemed extreme. This was her personal cell, and she only used the laptop at home, for the most part.
What have you been hiding from me, Rachel?
He switched off the phone, and dropped it into his bag, too.
Chapter 27
Going all night without any sleep, Dexter arrived in Atlanta shortly after sunrise on Wednesday morning.
He’d visited Hotlanta many times. During his college days, he’d made the annual sojourn to Freaknic, the now-defunct, legendary black Spring Break party that invariably would degenerate into a sort of Bacchanalian bash: people dancing in the streets, falling down drunk, and fucking with wild abandon. Needless to say, he had fond memories indeed of the ATL.
It had been several years since he’d been to the city, however, and it had grown a lot. As he wove through the heart of downtown on Interstate 75/85 South, new, gleaming skyscrapers dominated the skyline, reminding him of Chicago. Giant electronic billboards advertised airline companies and athletic events. The day was young, but traffic clogged the roadways, too, crawling at a maddening pace.
In a metro area this vast and populous, tracking down his wife would prove a formidable challenge. He was certain that she had chosen to relocate here because she doubted he could find her in an unfamiliar city.
What she failed to realize was that while he didn’t know the city, he knew her. Knew her habits, her idiosyncrasies. Her likes and dislikes. Her particular way of viewing the world. It would not have mattered if she’d chartered a boat to sail to the most remote island on the high seas. He possessed the map to her soul, and it would eventually lead him directly to her.
Before he began, he had to eat again. He was so hungry his stomach was croaking as if a frog had taken up residence in his gut. He was feeling weak, too. Not the kind of weak that sleep could banish, but a sort of muscle exhaustion, like he’d often felt after putting himself through a grueling weight-lifting workout. A fatigue that only a large quantity of hearty food could alleviate.
He left the highway, and after a short search, found a Waffle House, an inexpensive diner that specialized in artery-clogging meals.
He ordered enough food for two men. Six scrambled eggs. Two sides of sausage, two sides of bacon. A side of hash browns, scattered, smothered, and covered. A bowl of grits. A stack of waffles. Coffee. Two large glasses of orange juice.
“You real hungry this morning, huh?” the waitress asked, after delivering the hot plates to his table. She was a chunky sister with streaks of red in her permed hair, a gold tooth, and a tattoo of a rose on her forearm. Her name tag read Vernethia.
“I could eat a whole pig,” he said thickly, and quite seriously. “Where’s the closest library, sweetheart?”
“Hmm.” Her gaze was fuzzy, and she scratched her head. “Umm . . . I don’t know.”
What a travesty. A grown woman didn’t know the location of the nearest public library. No wonder black folks were losing ground to everyone else; their priorities were all fucked up. She was clueless about an institution of learning, but he was willing to bet she could give him precise directions, complete with landmarks, of every shopping mall within a hundred miles.
“Do you have a phone book here, Vernethia?” he asked. “In the back office, perhaps?”
Her dumb eyes brightened. “Let me check.”
A couple minutes later, as he was working through the food, she returned with a Yellow Pages directory. He placed it beside his plates and thumbed through it, until he found what he was looking for.
He memorized the address, and finished his meal, leaving nothing left. He had to stop himself from licking the plates clean like a dog. He’d never in his life had such a voracious appetite.
Invoking the cloak of invisibility, he left the restaurant without paying—his way of punishing Vernethia for her ignorance.
Outside, he was strutting toward the Chevy when he saw one of those delivery vans cruising past. Infinity Delivery Services. It looked exactly like the other two vehicles he had seen.
The van waited at a red light on the street in front of the restaurant. Dexter could not see the driver—the windows were heavily tinted, concealing the interior.
They’re following me. Those people are IDS, the motherfuckers who left me in the Buick on the side of the road. I know it’s them . . . .
He started across the parking lot, toward the van.
The light switched to green. The van peeled out, as if the driver knew his cover was blown, and swerved around the corner. Dexter ran, but quickly lost sight of the van. He returned to his car.
Maybe he was being paranoid. It was a delivery company, after all. He’d last seen the van in Illinois, but the company might operate nationwide. It was a logical conclusion to draw.
But why didn’t it satisfy him?
* * *
Twenty minutes later, with the aid of the StreetPilot, he found Southwest Regional Library, on Cascade Road. The library had just opened.
Inside, a bank of several, free-to-use computers stood against a wall. Dexter sat in front of one of the machines and logged onto the Internet.
Before his incarceration, using a computer had been a regular part of his day at the law firm. But at the maximum security prison where he’d done his time, inmates weren’t allowed access to the Internet. It would have given them contact with Outside, and restricting exposure to the outside world was one of the primary purposes of imprisoning an individual in the first place.
Nevertheless, last week, in preparation for his release, he had conned a prison administrator into letting him use a computer that was connected to the Web, under the guise of wanting to aid his job search for his post-parole life. The administrator had granted Dexter three hours online. Dexter couldn’t recall how he had wound up in the Buick a couple days ago, but the days prior were vivid in his memory.
Three hours online was all the time he’d needed. He’d been reading the tech magazines religiously to stay informed of developments in technology. He knew where to look.
He’d perused a Web site he’d learned of in his readings: Omega Search. Omega Search was a free search engine for people. It pulled data from public records and government sources: court documents, county and state property records, and the like. You could find a person’s addresses for the past ten years, their phone numbers during the same period, and date of birth. Another feature actually allowed you to access an overhead satellite photo of the target’s residence.
In the age of information, nothing was private. Many companies were in the business of compiling, generating, storing, and selling confidential personal information. Even an unlisted phone number, while not accessible in directory assistance or a phone book, could be sold for other uses. Information trafficking was an international, billion-dollar industry—something for which Dexter, with his important mission, was deeply grateful.
By the use of violent persuasion on his wife’s friends and family, he’d narrowed her general location to metro Atlanta. All he needed was her home address, and the key to finding her address on Omega Search was her name.
He’d thought about the name his wife might be using in her supposed new life. She wouldn’t be going under her married name, of course. She foolishly believed that she had divorced him. He was going to prove otherwise, once he found her.
In the meantime, he’d guessed that she might be using her maiden name, Williams, and her first name, Joy, or her middle name, R
achel.
He entered “Joy Williams” in Omega Search, and restricted results to the state of Georgia. The site returned fifty-seven hits.
That was far too many. It would take him a week to investigate all of those.
He entered “Rachel Williams” and the results weren’t much better. Thirty-nine results. Days of tedious legwork.
The surname “Williams,” was the problem. It was far too common, a typical last name for a black person, like Jackson or Washington. In a metro area with as many black folks as Atlanta, you were going to be inundated with possibilities.
He tapped his lip with his fingers, gazing at the display. He had to think like his wife. What would she do?
She would want something familiar to her, and comfortable, but not too obvious. Williams, her maiden name, was too obvious. She would assume that he would think of that one right off the bat.
He decided she would choose a surname that she could reasonably assume he might not know, or remember.
Like a computer accessing data stored on a hard drive, he recalled their marriage certificate, which he’d last seen years ago but would always remember. The certificate included the names of their parents, listing their mothers by their maiden names. Although he had never known his wife’s parents—both of them had died long before he’d met her—he remembered their names.
Her father’s name was Charles Williams. Her mother’s name was Shirley Hall.
The mother’s surname, “Hall,” was less common than “Williams,” and she would think he had forgotten her mom’s maiden name. It seemed like an assumption she would make; she’d always thought she was smarter than him.
So that gave him Joy Hall, and Rachel Hall.
Rachel Hall sounded good. She would think it was exceedingly clever. Most importantly, it stirred butterflies in his gut, a sensation he experienced whenever his intuition was on the money.
He typed “Rachel Hall” in the search field, and waited.
The site returned eight results. Five of the hits were “R. Hall,” which could have stood for anyone with a first name that began with the letter “r.” Of the remaining three, one of them used the alternate spelling of Rachel, “Rachael.” There were two Rachel Halls.
All of the entries included street addresses and phone numbers. One of these hits was the right one. Had to be.
His fingers tingling, he sent the document to the printer.
As he stood at the printer waiting for the document to arrive, a librarian, a young black woman, walked past. Dexter smiled at her, and she smiled back—but she wrinkled her nose, as if she smelled something rank.
“The fuck is her problem?” he said. But he sniffed his armpit. It was true: he was funky. He’d been so focused on his objective that he’d neglected his personal hygiene, and he’d been tearing through people with little concern for his appearance.
He was now in unfamiliar territory. If he needed to finesse information from someone, the effort would be more successful if appeared clean and neat.
He took the print-out to the car, and returned inside the library with his duffel bag. He holed up in the men’s restroom, where he washed up with soapy water, changed into fresh clothes, brushed his teeth and hair, applied deodorant, and shaved.
Afterward, he gave himself a once-over in the mirror, and smiled at the handsome, charming man reflected in the glass. Now he was ready.
Back in the car, he studied the list, running his index finger across each entry, as if the correct one would give him an electrical charge. He didn’t experience such a sensation. Therefore, he decided that he would start at the top, and work his way down the list. There were only eight possibilities.
By the end of the day, he would find his wife.
Chapter 28
Eats was located on Ponce De Leon, in Midtown. It was one of Eddie’s favorite haunts, for three reasons: the food was good, the décor was Spartan, and best of all, it was inexpensive. They specialized in jerk chicken and pasta dishes, an odd combo, but for less than ten bucks you could leave with a full belly and have leftovers for the next day.
Seating was a battered collection of wooden benches arranged on a faded concrete floor. Ductwork was visible above. Random scribblings covered the walls. It was like eating in a college dorm.
The lunchtime crowd was mostly locals—twenty and thirtysomethings living alternative lifestyles, Emory students, artistic types, and police officers. The noise level was high, the frenzied kitchen staff barking to one another, customers chatting to each other and shouting on cell phones.
At the front counter, Joshua and Eddie both ordered the jerk chicken, black beans, rice, and a chunk of cornbread. A cashier with numerous facial piercings shoved the hot food to them on plastic trays. They carried their meals to a bench in a quieter corner of the dining room, near a window that overlooked a side street.
Eddie rolled up his sleeves. “Now this is what I’m talking about. Good eating, dawg, and on a shoestring. You can’t beat that with a stick.”
Joshua had brought his satchel inside. Pushing away his plate, he opened the bag, removed the laptop, and placed it on the table.
“I want you to crack Rachel’s log-on password so I can have access to this computer.”
Eddie dropped his knife and fork. “What?”
Joshua realized that he hadn’t told Eddie what was going on. Eddie had no idea that Rachel had left. Joshua was in such a rush to get answers that he hadn’t thought to give Eddie any background on the situation.
“I’m sorry, I got ahead of myself,” Joshua said. “You know how I said Rachel’s been acting weird lately?”
“Yeah, you said that yesterday. What’s new?”
“She’s gone.”
“What?” This time, Eddie was so loud that a few of their fellow diners turned and looked.
Lowering his voice, Joshua summarized what had happened, in a clipped, factual manner. He didn’t dwell on his emotional responses to the situation. Doing so would have strapped him back on a roller-coaster ride of heartache, and he didn’t want to go there again.
He also omitted mention of Rachel’s pregnancy. Honoring his promise to Rachel, for all the good it would do him.
Eddie was shaking his head. “Damn, that’s . . . unbelievable. I never saw this coming. I’m so sorry, man. That’s just really fucked up.”
“Yeah, it is.” Joshua nodded tightly.
There was a long, awkward pause. Joshua ended it by tapping the laptop with his finger.
“Like I was saying, Eddie, I need your help. She’s in trouble, and I want to find out what’s going on. I think there might be some answers on her hard drive somewhere.”
Eddie’s gaze zeroed in on the computer. Already, Joshua could sense the pistons firing in his friend’s techno-geek brain.
“You’re stuck at the log-on screen, you said?” Eddie asked.
“Yeah. I’ve tried a whole bunch of passwords, and none of them work. You think you can crack it?”
“Should be doable.” Eddie picked up his jerk chicken thigh and tore into it, but his attention remained riveted on the laptop, as if he’d already begun devising a strategy to hack into the system. He swallowed. “Any idea what you’re looking for?”
“I don’t know, really. I want to skim through her files and her emails, see if anything gives me a lead.”
“If she was covering her tracks, she might have deleted everything, dawg.”
“I know. But it’s all I have to go on at this point. Oh, and this, too.” He took Rachel’s cell phone out of his satchel. “She’s got a password on the cell, too.”
“Damn, Rachel believed in keeping private things private, looks like. I can crack the celly too, no problemo.”
“How long do you think it’ll take you?”
“A few hours.” Eddie glanced at his Blackberry, checking the time. “I’ve got a couple appointments, but I’ll postpone them for this. You’re my boy. This is priority number one.”
“I appre
ciate it, man.”
Eddie licked his fingers. “Hey, you gonna eat your chicken?”
“You can have it. I don’t have an appetite.”
Eddie speared Joshua’s chicken with a fork and dropped it onto his own plate. “What’re you gonna do while I’m working on this stuff?”
“Hang out at home, maybe. Go through her file cabinet. I looked in there yesterday and didn’t find anything, but . . .” He shrugged. “My state of mind was pretty messed up at the time.” Still is, he thought.
“Talk to her girls. That’s what I’d do next.”
“Rachel doesn’t have any close girlfriends. There’re the women she works with at the salon, but she keeps people out of her private life. I used to think it was weird that she never really had any girlfriends she’d hang with. Maybe it was by design.”
“Even so, it’s worth a shot,” Eddie said. “Chances are she told something to at least one of those sistas. How about the woman who co-owns the salon?”
“Tanisha? I could try her.”
“Women love to gab, you know that,” Eddie said. He was quickly working his way through the food; he’d already devoured most of his own chicken, rice, beans, and cornbread, and started on the chicken he’d taken from Joshua. He poked Joshua’s plate with his fork. “You want any of this, dawg?”
“It’s all yours.”
Eddie dragged the plate in front of him. Joshua wondered where Eddie put all of the food. The guy had a bottomless pit for a stomach, never gained an ounce.
The people sitting around them also were enjoying their meals. Joshua was the only one not engaged in the act of eating. The realization made him feel strangely abandoned, though he was surrounded by other people.
Why did you do this to me, Rachel?Why did you leave me alone to deal with this crap? What did I do to deserve this?
After he and Eddie parted ways outside the restaurant, Joshua walked to his Expedition, which he’d parked around the corner on a residential street. A silver Acura sedan sped past on Ponce De Leon. He almost lost his balance in his attempt to twist around and see the driver.
The Darkness To Come Page 14
