by Jeff Gunhus
If he was a local, then he was exactly what Harris was looking for.
“Don’t think anyone’s here,” Harris called. The man looked at him strangely, like he was making fun of him. “I mean in the gas station. At least, I haven’t seen anyone.”
“Nah, Earl’s in there somewhere. Probably jacking off in the back room.”
Harris noted the man wasn’t wearing a hunting jacket. It was military camo with a name patch on the front pocket that read “Doyle”. Harris made a mental note that he ought to have picked up on that detail earlier. Not for the first time in the past year he considered the dubious idea that he might be losing a step. He didn’t like that thought at all.
Doyle spit a gob of chew at the ground and gave Harris a once over. “Where’re you from?”
“Nowhere special,” Harris said. “You?”
Doyle laughed. “Me too. You’re looking at it. Born and raised.” He spit again, looked him over again, then walked to the convenience store. Harris followed behind, limping on his right leg and wincing. It wasn’t a very convincing performance but it got the job done. Doyle noticed.
“Hey, you think you could give whoever’s in there this forty bucks?” Harris said, hitting his leg with his fist. “Got a bum leg here.”
Doyle squinted as if trying to figure out the scam. He looked around again as if there might be a band of robbers ready to set on him if he reached out to take the money. Seeing nothing, he reached out and grabbed the bills.
“Thank you,” Harris said, slumping his shoulders forward. “Appreciate it. That’s pump two.”
“There are only two pumps here, pal.” Doyle laughed. “I got you covered.” He turned and marched to the small building. “Earl!” he shouted, beating the window beside the door before he opened it and walked in. “Put your dink back in your pocket and get on out here.”
Harris returned to his car, careful to keep the gas dispenser between him and the building. A plan was coming together. And having the guy working the night shift see him wasn’t part of it. He considered that Doyle might force the guy to come out to gawk over the dead buck in his pickup bed. If so, it would change the plan a bit. Nothing major, but it would make things messier.
He limped over to the pickup and looked inside the cab. Just as he hoped, there was a shotgun and a box of shells on the passenger seat. He smiled as he worked his way down to the end of the bed to look at the deer. For a second, he worried that he might have forgotten which leg he’d faked the limp on, but he was pretty sure it was the right one. Losing a step. That was the constant worry.
The buck stared up at him with lifeless black eyes and his blood-covered tongue hung from the side of his mouth. The exit wound right behind the buck’s foreleg was a crater of torn flesh.
He peered around the edge of the gas pump and saw Doyle talking to someone in the store, must have been Earl. There was a pudgy girl with too much makeup standing next to him. Harris smiled. Looked like Earl hadn’t been jacking himself off after all, but had found someone willing to do it for him.
But then Harris frowned. Three people. Things were starting to get too complicated. Like many things, this one was out of his control. He just needed to wait and see who came out of the store with Doyle.
He gripped the buck’s antlers and gave them a tug. They were thick and gnarled, perfect for fighting other bucks over a piece of ass, basically a buck’s driving force in life. Holding the animal’s antlers, smelling the unique scent of musk and blood, took Harris back to his times hunting with his dad.
His dad had warned him there were a lot of people in the world who didn’t like hunting. No, more than that, some people hated it. Were absolutely repulsed by the idea. But these hamburger-eating, steak-loving assholes were pure hypocrites. According to his dad, strict vegetarians had a legitimate argument, but everyone else just needed a heavy dose of shut-the-hell-up.
Harris’s dad wasn’t a big religious guy, but he did like the part in the Bible about how man was meant to be lord over the earth. He’d never actually read that part in the Bible, but his old man, Harris’s grandfather, had told him it was there and that was good enough for him. It was right next to the part where it said slaves were all right to have, that gaywad-ass-suckers would burn in the fires of hell and that if a woman cheats on you, it was fine and dandy with the Lord of Hosts if you beat her senseless. The Bible actually said you could throw stones at her until she was dead, but Harris’s dad warned him that law enforcement was filled with non-believers, so they didn’t look kindly at that sort of thing.
His dad thought the rule about man’s dominion over things, the words as handed down by God Himself, extended to every living creature walking the earth. That included his wife who, because Harris’s dad was not in his words a faggot or butt-muncher, was definitely of the female persuasion. As Father Tom at the local Baptist church liked to say, God had handed the keys to the kingdom to men, not wo-men. What that meant to Harris’s dad was that when your wife talked back to you or didn’t cook a good enough dinner, or if she screwed up in any of dozens of other ways, then it was the man’s job, hell it was his duty, to set things right.
Harris’s mom spent a lot of time explaining to emergency room technicians and social services how clumsy she was, how the stairs into their cellar were too steep, how she should have known better than to walk on ice without decent shoes on. Harris thought his dad only had things part right. Man was meant to lord over the Earth, including over women. Sometimes they got what was coming to them for bad behavior. What his dad hadn’t figured on was that a boy’s mother wasn’t just another woman; she was something else entirely. She was a figure to be revered. She was something a boy, especially a boy like Harris, would do anything to protect.
“You all right there, hoss?” Doyle said, startling Harris.
The man was at the pump. Harris hadn’t even noticed him coming toward him.
Jesus, get yourself together, he admonished himself. Allowing himself to daydream like that wasn’t losing a step, it was damn near incompetence.
“Sorry, just thinking about the last time I went hunting with my dad,” Harris said.
“You a hunter?” Doyle said, pushing the gas nozzle into his tank.
Harris checked the store. Earl and his fat little girlfriend were nowhere to be seen. Probably back to porking away in the back room, making a little mutant baby. Perfect. No one had seen his face.
“Yeah, I’m a hunter,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I shot a deer though. I moved on to other things.”
Doyle’s phone rang in his jacket pocket. He held up a hand toward Harris and excused himself as he answered it.
Harris faked his limp back to his car, put in the fuel pump and eavesdropped on snippets of the conversation.
“…got to butcher the deer tonight…”
“…nah, I’ll just shack up here. Probably hunt all day tomorrow…”
“…I tol’ you I was huntin’ this week…”
“…whatever, Bess. Go ahead an’ do what you want. I tol’ you I was huntin’…”
There was a long pause and Harris sneaked a look. Doyle held the phone to his ear, his face slowly twisting in anger. Whatever Bess was saying wasn’t sitting well.
“…I don’t have to explain shit to you, OK…Bess? Hello? Shit.”
Doyle looked at his phone, finger poised to dial, then he closed the phone case and slid it into his pocket.
Harris replaced the pump and screwed the gas cap back on.
“Sorry to bother you,” he called out. “But Harlow is that way, right?” he said, pointing down the dark road.
“What do I look like, your damn tour guide?” Doyle snapped. After a beat, he held up one of his hands as if to apologize. “Sorry, man. Goddamn girls, right?”
“Can’t live with them,” Harris said.
“And you can’t kill them,” Doyle said.
Well…technically…
“You got that right,” Harris said. “So,
Harlow…”
“Yeah, man, another six miles,” Doyle said. “You’ll think you’re lost, nothing but forest and darkness, and then you’ll hit town. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m heading that way if you want to follow me. Just give me ten minutes to fill up and hit the john.”
“No, I’m good,” Harris said. “Good to meet you. Congrats on the buck.”
“Thanks, man. Take it easy.”
Harris limped back to his car and climbed in. He watched as Doyle lit a cigarette, either oblivious to the giant no smoking sign right in front of him, or just not giving a shit about it.
“Yeah, man, see you around,” Harris said quietly to himself inside the car.
Harris started the engine and turned left toward Harlow. It was only six miles away but he suspected it would take him an hour or two to get there.
26
Allison pulled off at a truck stop with about a hundred miles left to drive. They needed gas, but she was also eager to check the information Jordi sent her. The place was one of those big interstate jobs. Fourteen pumps, double-sided so that twenty-eight cars could fill up at a time was small compared to the other side of the complex where dozens of big rigs guzzled fuel or sat silent in parking lots while their drivers slept.
A metal canopy soared over their heads, piping in a local country station. The whole place was brightly lit and dozens of TV monitors embedded in the pumps told travelers how good the hot dogs, Slurpee’s and beer was waiting inside the convenience mart that was larger than the grocery store in most small towns.
There was also an ad for a “State-of-the-art Internet Café.” She sent Mike to try to find them some halfway healthy food while she went looking for it. In a Wi-Fi world, Internet terminals were fast becoming an artifact of a different time like the payphone booth or beeper. But it was exactly what Allison needed to check Jordi’s info. She’d considered using her phone to access the data, but even with Jordi’s encryption, once it was on her device, it was vulnerable. One thing Jordi had done well was instill in her a sense of paranoia.
The computer terminals were through the store and out the back, down the twisting halls of the truck stop complex. It was nicer than she had imagined, with gleaming linoleum floors and freshly painted walls. Signs pointed to showers, a TV room and a lounge area. There were even sleeping rooms available to rent for the truck drivers tired of stretching out in the narrow space behind their seats. A sign listed the rates and insisted that patrons strictly adhered to the one occupant per room policy. Allison grinned and wondered whether the idea to charge for bedrooms by the hour at a truck stop was the worst business idea ever or the best. She guessed it depended on how serious management took their own rule about one person per room. And how soundproof the rooms were.
She found the bank of five computer terminals, each with its own semi-private area with a cubicle half-wall on either side. None of them were in use. She tried to imagine who the customer was for the terminals nowadays. Probably limited to people who had lost their phone recently. She didn’t think the Internet café would last much longer in the world, but she was glad it hadn’t disappeared quite yet.
Allison logged on and was asked to slide her credit card. She heard Jordi’s voice insisting that every electronic transaction was bagged and tagged by the feds, ensuring that if she used her card then her location would be known. Still a hundred miles from their destination, she wasn’t too worried about that. But she did worry that somehow whatever information she looked at would somehow be visible on this computer. Short on time, it was a chance she had to take.
She swiped the card Mason had given her and logged in. She pulled up her email and found the message from Jordi with the Darknet access portal. Clicking through brought her to a blank screen with a text box in the top right corner. She placed her cursor there and rested her fingers on the keyboard.
The thing I said to you this morning that made you mad.
Allison had been thinking what the password might be since talking to Jordi. She knew generally what he was talking about but wasn’t sure how his warped mind would turn it into a password.
Looking behind her first to check if she was alone, she typed in:
gainedweight
Nothing.
gettingfat
“Jordi, why are you such a bastard,” she muttered to herself.
biggerboobs
Nothing.
yourboobsarebigger
The screen remained blank. With a groan, Allison typed in:
fatboobs
The screen flashed and switched to an interface of multiple boxes with messages and files.
“Asshole,” whispered Allison, although she couldn’t help but give a short laugh imagining how much Jordi enjoyed coming up with the password.
She made a quick study of the screen layout and clicked through to a file labeled Executive Summary. A picture of Catherine Fews filled the screen, only it was a teenage version of the girl, wearing a hoodie with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. There was no sign of the heavy makeup she wore in all the photos in her DC life. Without it, she was a natural beauty, emanating a healthy glow and a warm smile. Allison knew she must have broken hearts all over the county.
It was hard to believe this was the same girl wrapped in six separate pieces in a DC morgue. But it wasn’t, not really. This was Tracy Bain, graduate of Harlow High School. Allison scrolled through the report Jordi had pieced together, clicking through the links to photos from either the school yearbook or the local county newspaper. The girl had been a two-sport varsity athlete, basketball and track. It was no accident that Catherine/Tracy was prominent in the coverage. The camera loved her. And the only thing that sold local papers better than local sports was local sports done by a drop-dead gorgeous seventeen-year-old girl.
Hard to imagine what had happened between the sweet pictures of the girl in the paper and her life as a DC call girl.
Allison clicked through the photos and documents swept up in Jordi’s net. She had to back click after passing by an image too quickly. It caught her eye because there was a text box inserted on top of the photo from Jordi. He’d flagged a page from the yearbook and drawn a thick line from his note to the image of Tracy standing in a group of boys. It was a photo for the computer club. The boys surrounding her fit the geek stereotype with bad bowl haircuts and goofy smiles. Tracy stood out like a supermodel walking into an engineer’s luncheon, except she also managed to fit right in too. She had her arms over the shoulders of the boys next to her and her hands held forward, fingers parted in a Vulcan salute from Star Trek.
Tracy Bain may have been homecoming queen and an athlete, but she was also a computer geek. Jordi’s note made her smile. I’m in love, it said. Certainly, having someone like Tracy in high school computer club was probably the fantasy of computer geeks everywhere. But for Allison, it was another piece to the puzzle that fit into place. One of the things she’d been wondering was how Catherine, Tracy, she reminded herself, managed the fairly sophisticated technology of the encrypted video feed.
The working theory that someone had come to Tracy with the idea for the first camera but that the second camera had been her idea seemed to bear out with these new facts. She’d started out the trip to find out where that signal went and who could have set up the camera system for her. Now she considered that Tracy hadn’t needed anyone’s help setting it up, either in the room or on the back-end where the images were stored. Maybe she did it all herself.
If that was the case, then maybe her earlier assumption that she’d sent the videos to someone she trusted was wrong. With her technical skills, she could have sent them somewhere remote where she could access them later. To the cloud or some kind of external data storage. But she would still want the videos to come out if she went missing.
Allison clicked back to the homepage of the interface Jordi had created for them. There was a chat box there.
Jordi?
she typed.
Hey love, came the reply almost instantly. See you figured out my password.
I just thought of the most childish thing I could.
Sound strategy. Like the data?
Allison paused. She didn’t want to think of Tracy Bain as just data points. There was always a point in every case where that happened though, where the human beings disappeared, leaving behind just a mystery to be solved, an itch that needed to be scratched. She looked at the photo of Tracy in one of the boxes on the sidebar, feeling a surge of sadness for the young life cut short. She held on to that sadness, hating the feeling but hating it worse when she didn’t feel it.
Great job, she typed. Thinking maybe data on cloud, remote server. Not physical location. Possible?
There was a longer pause. Jordi typed about as fast as an auctioneer could talk, so she assumed he was entering a long, technical explanation. She was surprised when the answer came back.
Don’t think so.
More specific? she replied.
Cloud-based services don’t play nice with the Darknet. All those drugs and guns sold there makes them antsy. Relooked back end to make sure I didn’t miss something. Simple but elegant programming. Old school open source operating system called Zope. No one really uses it now.
OK, less specific.
Ways to fool cloud services to store something they don’t want to. Whoever did this either not sophisticated enough for that…or so sophisticated that I can’t catch what they did. That last option is ridiculous...of course.
Allison laughed and a truck driver walking through the corridor behind her jerked his head her direction. She turned the screen slightly away from the man. He got the message and moved on.
Of course. You’re the best. Thanks.
Right, love. I’ll update here if there’s anything and text you if there’s something new. Be careful.
Always, she typed, trying to remember the last time being careful had been a priority for her.
She clicked through the photos and files one more time. She felt like she was missing a pattern but she couldn’t quite place it. She opened the file with the images of the local newspaper stories and scrolled through them, watching Tracy’s high school career play out in the papers. Sports. Academic awards. Homecoming court.
