by Chris Mooney
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning when I turned it on it didn’t work. I didn’t think someone would deliberately leave a broken phone on my windshield, so I opened the compartment there in the back, the one where you put the battery, and found that it wasn’t plugged in. So I plugged it in and it worked fine. It’s got fifty-six minutes of talk-time left.’
Williams’s head popped up over the cruiser’s roof. Darby signalled for him to wait.
‘Ms Pike, did you see who left the phone?’
‘No.’
‘Did you see anyone on the street, someone you recognized maybe, loitering near your van?’
‘No. The only thing on my mind at that moment was … getting out of the hotel without being spotted. Laurie has done me a huge favour, allowing me to clean up there and sometimes sleep, and I don’t need anyone spreading gossip and having it get back to that awful excuse for a human being, Mr Charles Baker!’
Darby stepped outside with the phone wrapped up in the evidence bag.
‘She’s one of our town vagrants,’ Williams said. ‘She’s got a sheet of complaints –’
‘What did you call me?’ Pike shrieked.
Darby turned around and saw that the woman had rolled herself on to her side. Then Elisa A. Pike suddenly hoisted her enormous bulk into a sitting position, a deep level of injustice burning in her damp, bright eyes.
‘I’m not some panhandler! I haven’t taken one gosh-darn nickel from the state or the federal government or from anyone else after I lost my job or after the greedy banks took my home away!’
Darby said, ‘Miss Pike, we’re going to need to take you to the station and get you fingerprinted. We need your prints for comparison purposes. It’s just a formality.’
But the woman was no longer listening. Her eyes were fixed on Williams, who now stood in the van’s doorway, his hands held in the air, by his shoulders. ‘I meant no disrespect, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I apologize if –’
‘I don’t want one of your rinky-dink apologies. I bought this van legally, with my own hard-earned money – go ahead and check the registration if you want to!’
‘Yes, Ms Pike, I understand, but –’
‘YOUR DAY IS COMING, SIR!’ The woman’s face had turned scarlet, and when she trembled it made Darby think of a volcano seconds away from erupting, its flames and lava about to burn everyone and reduce them to ash. ‘THE WHOLE GOSH-DARN BUNCH OF YOU ARE GONNA SEE WHAT IT’S LIKE TO SCRAPE BY LIKE THE REST OF US HARD-WORKING AND GOD-FEARING FOLKS! NO MORE SUCKING OFF THE GOVERNMENT TIT, YOU’RE GONNA BE FORCED TO SEE HOW REAL PEOPLE LIVE, HOW WE –’
The woman cut herself off. Beads of sweat ran down her forehead and her lips trembled and then her eyes widened in fear at an image only she could see.
‘My heart,’ she said. ‘Oh God, no.’
Then Elisa A. Pike, formerly of 123 Alabaster Lane in Red Hill, Colorado, fell back against the van’s wall, clawing at her chest.
35
Darby darted inside the van. The second she removed the handcuffs from the woman’s wrists, Elisa Pike flopped down on the mattress, her enormous bulk momentarily shaking the vehicle. Darby tried to perform CPR – chest compressions following by mouth-to-mouth – but the woman wasn’t interested. Pike pushed Darby’s hands away; she kicked and thrashed. At one point Pike slapped her face.
When the ambulance arrived three minutes later, along with three patrol cars, Elisa Pike had a sudden change of heart, so to speak. The moment she sighted the male EMT with the sandy blond hair and button-shaped nose, she stopped fighting. Her eyes rolled back into her skull and once more she started to thrash against the mattress, as if she were experiencing an epileptic seizure, maybe even a stroke. She clawed at her chest again, bellowing, ‘My heart, oh dear Lord, my heart.’
Darby stood outside the van, the sun warm against her scalp, as the EMTs worked on the woman. Williams had watched the whole thing as though it were an impromptu circus performance.
‘Don’t feel bad,’ he said. ‘She’s does this every time.’
‘She’s done this before?’
‘That’s what they told me over the radio.’ He scratched the corner of his mouth. ‘Seems every time she’s caught loitering, she fakes a heart attack or some other major trauma and wins a free trip to the ER. She gets a soft bed and three squares and free cable TV for forty-eight hours. And she’s not the only one doing it either.’ Then, with a long sigh, he added, ‘She’ll probably turn around and try to sue the town for harassment or negligence, probably both, whatever the phonebook lawyer recommends. Not that it’ll amount to anything. What’s that saying, you can’t get blood from a stone?’
Darby touched the cheek where Pike had scratched her, pulled away her finger and saw blood. ‘I need to go back to the diner.’
Williams checked his watch. ‘We should hit the road and get going to Brewster. We’ll need some time to go over the bodies.’
‘Hoder’s waiting for me in the diner.’
Williams drove her back to Cindy’s and dropped her out front.
Darby found Hoder sitting in the booth where she’d left him. The foot traffic had thinned out, and his plates had been cleared away. He had a glass of water in front of him, his expression that of a man who was suffering from a sudden bowel obstruction. Darby thought it might have to do with the man sitting across the table from him: Teddy Lancaster.
Darby returned the cordless to the front counter, thanked the waitress and approached the table. The breakfast she’d ordered was packed up in a Styrofoam container, a plastic set of utensils wrapped in a paper napkin resting on its top.
Hoder didn’t speak as he held out her iPhone. His expression was grave now, loaded with an I-told-you-so wisdom she didn’t want to face or acknowledge.
She had received a new text message. The incoming phone number was different, and there were no pictures this time, just words:
NICE TRY, BITCH
I CAN’T WAIT TO HEAR YOU BEG
I change my mind about the grenades within five minutes of leaving my house. There are two reasons. First, a grenade is not a precise explosive. You pull the pin, throw it and hope for maximum collateral damage – and pray that you aren’t one of the casualties. But the second and more pressing reason makes me return home. The grenades I own – while military-issue and used effectively in combat situations in Third World desert countries like Iraq – were purchased through black market channels in Montana, and I don’t want to be driving across bumpy roads with them rattling underneath my car seat.
Besides, I have come up with a simpler and more effective plan: create a bomb that I can detonate remotely, using the prepaid disposable cell in my glove compartment. It would be easy to do, no more than half an hour’s work. A single stick of dynamite can not only create a bone-crushing blast radius and pressure wave, it can also turn any vehicle into a massive high-velocity fragmentation grenade. A single stick strategically placed inside the Silver Moon Inn won’t leave a sole survivor. Wait until night, when they’re all asleep.
Then my thoughts shift back to the mistake I made at the Downes house, and the ground suddenly seems unsteady beneath my feet. I feel like a nauseous drunk standing on the bow of a ship that’s cresting a wave. Sweating, I take out my cell phone.
I have only a single bar. I start to walk quickly, watching for the signal to jump. The second it does, I dial the number for the burner I gave Sarah, the one she carries with her at all times in case of an emergency, and duck into the alley between the old Army & Navy store and the building that once housed a Mexican restaurant.
Sarah answers immediately. ‘What’s wrong?’
I try to remove the fear from my voice. ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ I say. ‘I’m calling because I need you to do me a favour.’
‘Okay.’ Sarah is understandably nervous. Wary. I can count on one hand the times I’ve called her burner.
‘I want you to hide,’ I say. ‘You know where to go.’
‘Are you i
n trouble?’
I am, Sarah. I’m in deep trouble. I made a mistake at the Downes house, a huge, critical mistake, and I tried to fix it – I thought I’d fixed it. For the first time in my life, Sarah, I’m truly frightened.
‘Baby?’
I’m thinking about the old furniture warehouse on the other side of town, where I’ve hidden a locked briefcase packed with $30,000 in cash and two fake Wyoming state licences with matching Social Security cards and passports. The passports won’t stand up to scrutiny in this post 9/11 world, but the licences and cash will allow us to set up somewhere else – provided we can get out of town cleanly. I need to think about how to do that, and there’s too much to think about, it’s all going to come crashing down, I know it –
‘Everything’s fine,’ I lie. ‘This is just a precaution.’
‘You want me to grab the suitcases?’
Yes, I want to say. Grab the suitcases and meet me at McClaren’s Furniture, and we’ll hit the road together. We’ll have to ditch your car for another one, and then it’s going to be just as I told you, we’ll have to be real careful the first year or so because our faces and everything I did here in Red Hill will be plastered all over the internet, it’s not like it was years ago when you could just pack up and hide, no, you’re a fugitive every second of the day for the rest of your life and –
‘No,’ I say. ‘There’s no need for the suitcases. Just go and hide for me – and keep the burner with you.’
‘Are you coming home?’
‘Soon.’
‘I love you.’
I hang up, thinking about the money, how much easier and simpler my life would be if I only had to worry about myself.
36
After Darby whispered in Hoder’s ear that his phone was bugged, she asked him leave it on the table. Then she moved to the other side of the small diner, to a short hall leading to the restrooms, and waited for him to join her.
He did so a moment later. Lancaster remained at the booth, sipping coffee and staring idly out the window at Ray Williams.
‘What does shithead want?’ Darby asked, nodding at Lancaster with her chin.
‘Trying to pry information out of me. What’s going on?’
Darby gave Hoder a quick summary of her conversation with Coop and of the burner Elisa Pike had found on the front windshield of her van. Hoder kept shifting on his feet, nervous, like the floor beneath had turned to a thin sheet of ice that had cracked and split and was now possibly moments away from breaking.
‘Right now our guy’s hidden and safe and planning his next move,’ Darby said. ‘Maybe’s he’s already got another family picked out.’
‘God forbid.’
‘I think we can use his hatred of women against him, even flush him out of his hiding place.’
‘How?’
‘By focusing his rage on a particular target.’
‘You.’
‘He’s already fixated on me, Terry. I say we keep it there.’
Hoder didn’t balk, and he hadn’t shown any surprise, and right then she knew he had already mulled over the idea of how he could use her as bait.
‘What do you have in mind?’ he asked.
Darby told him her plan. Hoder asked a few questions, and they went back and forth for a couple of minutes, hashing out minor details.
‘Let me see what I can do,’ he said.
Darby agreed to meet him at the station later that evening. Then she left the diner with her box of food and climbed back inside Williams’s waiting cruiser, feeling exhausted and pissed off, her stomach grumbling with hunger. As an added bonus, she had a migraine-level headache.
Her iPhone and Williams’s flip cell were still in the trunk; it was safe to talk. In a voice that seemed other than her own, Darby gave him the same rundown that she had just given Hoder. She didn’t have to tell him about the software installed on the iPad in the Downes bedroom; Police Chief Robinson had already done that.
Williams got on the radio and sent out word about how the malware-infected pictures turned everyone’s cell phone into a walking microphone and GPS device, and that the only way to shut it down was to disconnect the battery from the phone. For those people who, like Darby, owned an iPhone, there was no way to disconnect the battery. They were told to isolate their phones someplace safe, preferably at home. Chief Robinson was going to follow up with a departmental email.
Then Darby summarized her conversations with Laurie Richards and Teddy Lancaster. She left out the part where Lancaster had also accused Williams of taking pictures inside the Connelly home – not because she didn’t want to broach the topic but because they had arrived at the Silver Moon Inn so that she could pick up her kit.
While inside the hotel, they ran into Laurie Richards, who, without much pressing, willingly admitted to allowing Elisa Pike to use a hotel room for the occasional shower, provided the woman coughed up the necessary five bucks.
Pike wasn’t the only one. Richards also admitted to accommodating a certain number of discreet Red Hill townsfolk who had fallen on hard times. Showers were five dollars per family member, rooms twenty bucks a night, everything paid in cash, no food stamps accepted. Charlie Baker, the man who owned the hotel, knew nothing about any of this. The thought that he might find out reduced the woman to soul-tearing wails.
‘Now I know why she was acting like someone with a hot coal pinched between her cheeks,’ Darby said from the passenger’s seat. She had her window half open and was balancing the Styrofoam box of food on her knees. ‘She’s terrified Baker’s going to find out about her little sideline.’
‘I’m sure as hell not going to tell him.’
They were driving on yet another long and seemingly endless road bordered by trees on both sides. Apart from the clean, fresh air, she couldn’t fathom why anyone would willingly submit to living in such a barren and lonely place. As she ate, shovelling food into her mouth as though the container might be ripped from her hands at any moment, she kept glancing in the side-view mirror to see if they were being followed.
‘Lancaster probably won’t tell him either,’ Williams said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because Laurie’s more valuable to him under his thumb. He’ll use her to keep an eye on you guys. She’ll do it too. What you told me about how Laurie bounced to attention when he came by? It’s because she knows Lancaster’s a power player in this whole incorporation thing. If she plays her cards right, he might throw a job her way, one with benefits. God knows she needs it.’
‘You know her? Laurie?’
‘Not personally. Her husband died in his sleep, and I had to go over and investigate, you know, rule out foul play.’
Williams had one hand draped over the steering wheel and was staring out the window, clearly distracted. Darby was sure he was processing the boatload of information she had just given him; she was having a hard time processing it herself. Her thoughts felt scattered, like a glass vase that had fallen and exploded into a hundred shards.
‘I don’t even know where to start,’ he said.
Darby swallowed her food. ‘Maybe that’s the point.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Chances are he was watching us yesterday inside the bedroom,’ she said. ‘He knows I found the area he cleaned up. Maybe he’s scared we found something. Or maybe he’s scared we’re going to find something.’
Williams shifted uneasily in his chair.
‘What, you disagree?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not at all.’
‘So what does our guy do? He decides to crawl out from whatever rock he’s been hiding under all this time and makes contact with me. Threatens me. But he knows I’m not going to blow Dodge because of a single phone call. So what does he do next?’
‘He sends out those pictures of you and your … lady parts.’
Darby spoke with her mouth half full. ‘Lady parts? What’re you, a nun?’
Williams chuckled. ‘I was trying to be resp
ectful,’ he said, and glanced at her. ‘You know, there’s a stable right up the road. I can stop by and get you a feedbag.’
‘Sorry, I’m starving.’
‘Really? I hadn’t noticed.’
Darby chewed, glad that Williams was joking around with her. She didn’t want him feeling stiff and embarrassed over what had happened with the pictures.
Then, as if reading her mind, he said, ‘This morning, everyone getting those photos –’
‘It’s over with. Done.’
‘You always this cut and dry?’
‘Once a psycho tries to split your head open like a cantaloup,’ Darby said, forking a piece of steak, ‘it puts everything else into perspective.’
When he didn’t ask any questions, Darby knew he had Googled her and read all the articles about what she’d seen and endured inside Traveler’s basement of horrors.
‘I admired the way you handled it. And I’m sorry you had to go through that.’
‘Thanks. Now back to our guy,’ Darby said. ‘He sends out these full-frontal shots showing my lady parts, as you described them, to everyone in Red Hill PD. On the surface it looks like he’s trying to embarrass and frighten me. He hates women; it’s a part of his MO. Maybe a part of him is hoping I’ll pack my bags and leave. At the very least, he knows that sending out those pictures will throw me off my game, direct my attention elsewhere.
‘But our guy’s devised a more insidious plan. He places malware into the pictures and turns our phones into walking listening devices and GPS trackers. It’s brilliant when you actually stop to think about it.’
‘You admire this guy?’
‘You don’t?’
Williams glanced over to see if she was joking. She wasn’t.
‘The Red Hill Ripper isn’t your average garden-variety sadist,’ Darby said, and dug her fork back inside the container. ‘He’s completely unique, and extremely intelligent. And cunning. Don’t ever forget that part. The pictures he sent of me, leaving that burner on Pike’s van window – he’s creating these multiple distractions to keep our focus away from what happened inside the Downes home, from whatever mistake he made there. And he’s doing a great job of it. He’s pulling the strings and making us dance. He’s got us all involved in the world’s biggest circle jerk.’
