by Cat Connor
The elevator doors opened and we stepped into the people-filled lobby. The little voice in my head told me to ignore everyone. They were just jealous of how good I looked. Yeah, right. A blond guy caught my eye and then smiled. Something jerked in my memory; he was familiar. Album cover familiar. Grange’s lead singer, Rowan Grange. Just my luck, one of the biggest rockers of all time sees me shoeless in DC. I looked back to see his eyes spark with amusement. Awesome: I live to amuse.
“Where shall we start?” Mac asked. His voice broke the moment wide open, I was more thankful than he could ever understand. I decided not to mention Rowan Grange.
“Brook Brothers.” I glimpsed confusion on Mac’s face. I could tell right off that he was trying to retrieve directional information.
“Where are we again?” He’d picked up a brochure from the front desk and was reading a map of the area. I heard the elevator doors close as Rowan disappeared.
“Ah, the oxymoron for the day.” I grinned. “Give me that map, Captain Compass. I don’t want to end up in West Virginia.”
“Smartass.”
“I need clothes today and would like to purchase them in Washington. Not West Virginia, nor Maryland, and definitely not Kentucky!” I held out my hand for the map.
“I can do it,” he retorted, clutching the map. “Just tell me where we are.”
My eyes rolled. If I had a penny for every time I had heard him say “I can do it” in relation to direction finding, I could retire tomorrow.
“12th street,” I replied, part of me enjoying his confusion.
He opened the door for me. We stepped out into shaded sunlight.
“I’m going to need sunglasses too,” I muttered.
Mac again read the map. “You sure we’re on twelfth?”
“You’re damn lucky you don’t have to fly south for the winter in order to survive.”
“Are we taking the car?” he asked, ignoring my comment. He focused his field of vision up the street.
“Ah, yeah, you think I can walk like this?” I swept my arm across my body.
We stared at each other as a valet materialized from the sun with the car.
“You drive.” I prodded Mac. “Don’t look at me like that. No one knows we’re here.” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “There’s no reason to suspect there would be body parts in the trunk.”
The valet handed Mac the keys.
I wasn’t as sure as I sounded about the body part thing.
“Okay,” Mac said. He still clutched the map. “So we go up twelfth?”
He’s even more cute when he’s lost. I decided it would take all day without some help. “Yes,” I said. “Then left at K St and right onto Connecticut.”
“Let’s do it then.”
I managed to find everything I needed, though mostly not in Brook Brothers, but in the general vicinity of the store. By the time we returned to the hotel, I was a happy little camper.
The company credit cards had worked hard and fast and deserved a wee nap. We spent a few minutes in our room while I changed. I chose a pale-blue turtleneck sweater, a thigh-length black leather coat, black leather belt on faded-blue button-fly jeans, and black leather cowboy boots with a sensible inch-high solid heel. I tied my hair back in a ponytail, and sported a brand new pair of Incognito sunglasses.
We left to meet Caine. I opted to drive: it was the least stressful option for both of us. We still had guns shoved in our waistbands, a situation I intended to rectify by borrowing a couple of holsters from the armory inside the Hoover building. I took care of the holster problem as soon as we arrived, and then we made our way to Caine’s office.
Caine was pleased to see us. I sensed an odd mood. He appeared almost cheerful and complimented us on how well we looked together. I found his comments unnerving. When I cast my eye over Mac, there was no denying he looked good. His hair flopped over his forehead, falling to his eyebrows. He ran his fingers through his mane, flicking it back, but it slipped forward again. I knew whom he reminded me of: he had a MacGyver meets Mark Harmon thing happening and I liked it. They just needed darker hair.
“Ellie?” Fingers snapped by my face breaking the spell.
“What?” I found both men looking at me.
“Sit,” Caine said. We sat in the two chairs in front of his desk. He slid a permit and a black wallet to Mac. I recognized it and wore an identical one myself.
“Carry these at all times. That leather wallet will clip onto your belt. Tuck the cover back into your waistband, so it’s obvious at a glance you’re FBI.” Caine twitched. “I have permission from the Director to grant you temporary special agent status. Don’t make me regret that.”
“Thank you,” Mac replied. He read the card in the wallet before clipping it to his belt. He slid the permit into his own wallet and pushed it back into his pocket.
“I want you two moving again tonight, change hotels and change areas.”
Not an unexpected command.
“What’s the chat room been like?” I asked.
Caine rocked back in his chair with his hands laced behind his head. “It’s been busy. Every weirdo in creation has come out to attempt to find where the chat room killer hangs.” He sighed heavily. “People are very strange.”
“Stormy and Bitter?” I had asked that all members receive protection, but we had addresses for Stormy and Bitter, so they were first.
“Are in a safe house together. I have two agents in the room posing as Stormy and Bitter. Bitter was a little pissed about us moving into her home and forcing her to leave.” Caine sat a little straighter in his chair and placed his hands on his desk.
“Yep, she would be,” Mac commented. “But I’d rather her pissy than dead.”
“So you have agents working from their homes?” I asked.
“Yes,” Caine replied. “We don’t want this guy to know we have moved anyone. He must be running ping and trace route software … if he decides to trace either of them again, we want him to get the same reply he has in the past.”
We could both see the sense in that.
“We’ll be online tonight,” I told Caine. “I need a laptop for Mac.”
“Take mine.” He pushed a laptop across the desk towards Mac. “My sign-in is taped to the underside of the case.”
“Thanks,” Mac replied.
“Just be careful, keep moving and under no circumstances use a land-based server.” Caine seemed to be collecting his thoughts. “We don’t know how much information he has on you two. He found both your homes, so for now, I suggest you keep away from family and friends. Stay in neutral places with minimal contact.”
“What about Aidan?” Mac asked. “He was at the Interscape Café with us.”
“Aidan’s fine. He’s staying with your parents. We have increased police patrols in the area. As he was never involved in the chat room, we consider him at low risk of an attack.”
I dragged my eyes up to meet Caine’s. “How much do my parents know about this?”
“Your father has been apprised of the situation.”
Dad, being retired military, had never overreacted to anything in his life. He would take this development in his stride. He would shield his wife from this as much as possible, due to her being “highly strung.” I resisted the urge to smile. Dad had often referred to Mom as highly strung, which was a polite way of saying she was fucking nuts. “I would like you to extend the same courtesy to Mac’s father. He’s a recently-retired police officer and is already aware of the trouble we had last night.”
“Ah, word gets around cops very quickly. Give me a phone number, Mac, I’ll call your father.” Caine had his pen poised over a piece of paper. “Where do they live?”
“Merrifield,” Mac replied, and proceeded to tell Caine the phone number. He grimaced, then looked at Caine. “My Mom makes Ellie’s mother look like the most rational person on the planet. It would be a good idea to talk just to my dad.”
“Whatever you think best.”
Mac and I glanced at each other as my cell phone rang. I checked the display and passed the phone to him. “That’s your dad’s number.”
“It won’t be Dad, it’ll be her!” He rolled his eyes and answered the phone, “Help Desk!”
I heard his mother reply, “Oh, I suppose you think that’s funny?”
“Um, now is not a good time,” he said, with control.
Caine and I could both hear her yell, “This printer is a piece of shit!”
Mac held the phone away from his ear and said to us, “As I thought, printer problems again. This could take a few minutes.” He stood up and walked over to the door while he spoke to his mother. Every now and then, we heard him sigh and say, “Will you just listen?”
Ten minutes later Mac handed me the phone. “Maybe you should switch it off for a bit. She’s bound to call back.” He sat down. A deep frown creased his brow. “If the woman would just listen ... and stop clicking the fucking print button!”
I smiled at him. He smiled back and relaxed a little.
Our families were informed. People we knew were safe. There was this single nagging feeling that not all was as simple as it seemed. FBI in the chat room would sit and trace everyone who came in. Their tasks included compiling data and storing room transcripts.
We listened to Caine’s rundown from forensics.
“We have a few things so far, the assailant was at least five eleven, may or may not have worn a size ten running shoe, and was right-handed. We have his DNA, but no match. We have a partial fingerprint from the knife used on Carter. The cheesecloth parcel hanging from the hook above the bed, Ellie, was David Edwards’ heart. Edwards was alive when his heart was removed through an incision made under his ribs. Our medical examiner said the killer reached up into the chest and ripped out his beating heart. He identified fifteen stab wounds made by an eight-inch double-edged blade, consistent with both bodies. I have concerns about the crime scenes, they were too clean.”
I have concerns about a beating heart being ripped from a person.
He paused, so I took the opportunity to ask a question. “Toxicology show up anything at all?”
“Yes. I think this warrants our interest. "SubRight"stantial amounts of ketamine were found in both bodies.”
I felt relieved at that finding and hoped there was enough ketamine in his system and that David Edwards didn’t feel the pain.
“Ketamine?” Mac asked.
I answered, “Special K. Heard of that?”
“Cornflakes?” he replied.
“Um, I wouldn’t want this shit on my frosty flakes! It’s a tranquilizer used as an anesthetic, but also popular on the club scene. It induces an LSD-type trip.”
“How dumb are people?” Mac replied.
“They sink to new depths of dumb every day,” Caine said, swiveling his chair closer to his desk.
Mac coughed. “That poem found on Carter’s body, didn’t it mention Special K?”
Caine nodded.
“Is this find a coincidence, or is it possible they were recreational users?” I adjusted my posture, uncrossing and stretching my legs. “Did the Unsub know he was a user? And how?”
“That’s something else we’re looking into.” Caine twitched. “I don’t expect our Unknown "SubRight"ject to remain unknown for long.”
“Good to know! What about the emails?”
“Not much to go on there, but Questionable Document Analysis says there is a seventy-five percent chance they were all written by the same person. Syntax and content gave us that much. I also had them compare samples with a poem and some comments made in the chat room by Dhs. They’ve come back with a tentative ‘possible’ on that. I have a warrant out for him, in the form of a Suspicious Persons Query, which is, of course, if we can find him. We don’t know who he is either. They are trying to determine if the Post-it notes the poems were written on came from the same pad. I imagine that’s very difficult if not impossible. The lab techs are eighty-five percent sure the Post-it poems were written by the same person; at least we have some handwriting examples.”
“But again, no match,” I muttered under my breath, my irritation fueled by the lack of real knowledge in the investigation so far, my good mood, ruined. My stomach rumbled, then threw in a longer complaint about the recent lack of food. I tried focusing out of the window to clear my head but found the gray fog moved into position and encroached upon my thoughts.
“Caine, we have to go,” I said, standing up. I doubted whether any of them missed my stomach announcing its presence rather like a demented black bear in a campground.
“Go. Don’t tell me where you move to, or anybody else. I’ll call you as soon as I know more.”
Two thoughts stuck in my head. The crime scenes are too clean. He thinks it’s a cop. “Okay.” I headed out the door while Mac and Caine exchanged a few words. Mac caught with me in the hallway. I handed him the car keys.
“We didn’t eat today,” Mac said, and took the keys from my hand.
Once back at the hotel and in our room, Mac called room service and ordered dinner. We devoured the food with record speed and checked out of the hotel. It struck me as amusing that I checked out with luggage when I had none when we checked in.
We sat in the car trying to decide where to go next. I pulled a map from the glove compartment and spread it out. We both closed our eyes and touched the map at the same time in the same place. I looked at our fingers.
“Damn, we even pick the same place blindfolded,” Mac remarked. “Where are we going?”
We lifted our fingers and stared at the map where they had been.
“Mauryville,” we said in unison. “Nooooo!”
I came up with an alternative suggestion. “How about Crystal City? We can stay at the Marriott there.”
“Fine by me.”
I’d bet money that the idea of more room service was involved in Mac’s decision, and I sure couldn’t blame him for that.
Most importantly in my opinion, Crystal City was nowhere near Mauryville, or Lexington, and still a few miles from Fairfax. I really didn’t want to go back to any of those places.
Within an hour, we were enjoying room service and playing on the Internet via satellite. We both peeked into the chat room. Caine was right, it was busy. We’d never seen so many new faces, or old, in Cobwebs at one time.
Mac nudged me. “Is your sound turned on?”
“Uh huh.”
“I came in here today, while you were sleeping.”
I watched someone leave the room and heard a beep. “Awesome, you installed a bot, but where is it?”
“Oh, it’s invisible,” he said with a grin. “Hit the icon, and see how many hackers we have.”
We did and saw one invisible guest hacker. I scrolled through the room list then back up to the top again and located the bot. It was easy to find as the words “hacker tracker” stood out.
I had a question. “What if someone else does the ignore thingy, won’t they see our bot?”
Mac smiled. “I’m way trickier than that. We’re written into the program, so it only shows itself to us, and it only beeps us.”
I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Damn, Mac. You’re clever and tricky.”
An email alert sounded. The subject line turned me cold: Oh where oh where could the little cat be?
I yelped as I opened the email. Don’t hide from me, Otherwisecat. How can I give you gifts if you hide? I’m unhappy with you, Otherwisecat. You need another lesson in manners.
Gifts? What gifts? Oh man, is he referring to the bodies?
The whole thing took another turn on the weirdness scale. I forwarded the email to Caine.
“Do we stay in the room or go?” I asked Mac.
“Let’s stay for a bit, we don’t have to participate,” he said.
“What do you want to do?” I asked, and scrambled off the bed with my laptop. I set the computer on the table. Mac did the same. We stood looking at each other as if we w
ere lost. I had a thought – a bad thought – that could be lots of fun.
“We could raid the mini-bar.”
Mac raised his eyebrows. “Oh, now we play with fire?”
I lined up miniature bottles on the counter top.
“I see you have a plan,” Mac commented.
I organized the bottles into two rows.
“Ah, I see a plan unfolding.” He smiled. “I sense it involves mixing drinks and a horrendous hangover.”
“Smartass,” I replied. “No hangover, we have B-complex.”
“Do we indeed?” His eyebrows rose again.
“Yep, we do. I bought a bottle from the drugstore this afternoon.”
He accepted the mini bottle of tequila I handed him, opened the bottle, tilted his head back, and drained the contents. I followed suit with mine, thankful there weren’t any worms in it.
A moment of extreme weakness overcame me; I picked up the phone and called room service. “I would like a forty-ounce bottle of Pepe Lopaz Tequila, half a dozen fresh lemons, Tostitos, and guacamole.” I held the receiver to my shoulder. “Anything you want to add?”
“Salt, and a steak sandwich. Heavy on the mayo.”
“Okay.” I relayed the request, and added an extra steak sandwich because it sounded so good.
Our order arrived. We sat on the floor in the middle of the room with the tequila, a bowl of quartered lemons, and a saltshaker in front of us, while we ate our sandwiches. Four tequila shots later, we moved the computers to the floor so we could read the poems recited in the chat room. They seemed a lot more entertaining than usual. I found myself overcome by the need to comment on a poem by Dhs, which caused the two agents in the room to reprimand me via instant message.
I couldn’t remember whether it was salt-lemon-tequila, or lemon-salt-tequila, or tequila-lemon-salt. I gave up puzzling over it and slammed the tequila.
Minutes later we both received email alerts. It was him again.
There’s something odd about the Cat. Could it be she’s missing Carter or could she be under the influence of tequila and her friend Mac?
I shoved the laptop away in disgust. “He can’t know that!”
