Mortal Fear m-1

by Greg Iles

  “This is what will happen,” he says. “For a while, Brahma will communicate just as he has, in live-chat mode. How long depends on the telephone tricks he has up his sleeve. It’s not easy to avoid being traced these days. Once they get close to him, he can keep using live-chat mode by switching between authorized accounts to which he has the passwords. According to you, he’s already done this once, talking to Lenz. But if the FBI techs are smart-and that’s open to question-there’s a way to track those legitimate accounts.”

  Miles has paused, so I oblige him with a “How?”

  “You gave Lenz some transcripts of some of Brahma’s dialogues with his victims, right? Using those, the FBI should be able to build a search engine that will sift through EROS for his most common prose patterns. It will take less and less time for them to begin their traces.”

  “And?”

  “Eventually Brahma will switch from live chat to e-mail.”

  “Does that help us?”

  “Think, Harper. What’s the essential difference between chat mode and e-mail?”

  “Well… I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do. Think real estate. Location, location, location.”

  Suddenly I have it. “In chat mode, each person is sending his side of the conversation to one of our servers in New York. In essence, each is viewing the conversation by long distance.”

  “Whereas e-mail?”

  “Is an actual file that the user downloads from our computer into his own. Usually, anyway.”

  He grants me a smile patronizing enough to make me feel I’m back in the third grade. “That’s how I’m going to get him.”

  I try to see farther down the logical track. “How? You’re going to give his computer a virus? Destroy all his files? What will that accomplish?”

  “I’m not going to do either.”

  “What, then?”

  “A Trojan Horse.”

  I sit back and ponder this. A Trojan Horse is a program that a hacker plants inside someone else’s computer, usually to facilitate the burglary of passwords. It resides in some neutral area of the host computer’s memory, waiting patiently until a legitimate user logs on and enters his or her password. When that happens, the Trojan Horse copies the user’s password into a secret file before allowing him access to the computer. After a day or a week or a month, the hacker dials back into the computer, opens his Trojan Horse program, and removes a hefty new file filled with legitimate passwords. Then he deletes his Trojan Horse so that no one will ever know it was there. After that, he can gain illegal access to that system whenever he wishes by using the legitimate passwords. The Trojan Horse, true to its name, has opened the gates to the city.

  “I don’t see your reasoning,” I tell Miles. “You’re not trying to break into Brahma’s computer.”

  “This isn’t going to be a traditional Trojan Horse. If I can build it. This will be a real Trojan Horse.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You remember how the Trojan Horse got inside the walls of Troy?”

  “Sure. The Greeks built it, pulled it up to the gates of Troy, and pretended to sail away. The Trojans thought the horse was a gift and pulled it inside their walls.”

  Miles nods. “Which is exactly what Brahma is going to do.”

  “Why should he do that?”

  “Trust me. He will. What happened after the Trojans pulled the horse into the city?”

  “The Greek soldiers hidden inside climbed out that night and killed them all.”

  Miles chuckles softly. “My plan is slightly different from that. But the result will be the same.”

  “But you can’t even roll your Trojan Horse up to the city walls. You don’t know where it is.”

  “I’m not going to,” he says calmly. “You are.”

  And then I see it. Miles has arrived at the same conclusion I did at the Indian mound this afternoon, only he probably did it three days ago. “You want me to do what Lenz is doing. Pretend to be a woman. Engage Brahma on-line.”

  He smiles. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. And I know you can do it, Harper. Much better than Lenz. You’re a songwriter, for God sake. A fucking pied piper with words.”

  “Not exactly a successful one.”

  “For reasons wholly unrelated to your talent. And you have more empathy with women than anyone I know. Every girl we ever knew confessed her darkest secrets to you at some time in her life. Am I wrong?”

  He’s right, but I’m in no mood to admit it. “I’m not saying I haven’t thought about it. But Lenz has some advantages we don’t. Like a SWAT team to take Brahma out if he shows up.”

  “We don’t need that! We’re not trying to lure him here. We have three simple goals, all based around the Trojan Horse. One, get Brahma to believe in you. Two, keep up the relationship until he switches from live chat to e-mail. Three, get him excited enough that he doesn’t examine every bit of information flowing down the pipe from you to him.”

  “You’re going to bury your Trojan Horse program in my e-mail and hope he downloads it into his computer?”

  “That’s one possibility.”

  “But won’t he see the program? An executable file piggybacked with e-mail?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure I can do what I want to do with e-mail. But I have an advantage. I designed EROS’s e-mail system. We want a situation where the two of you are exchanging long letters, sexual fantasies, anything that requires a lot of bits. If I can’t do it with e-mail, you’ll have to convince him to download some program you say you’re wild about. Some sexual thing I could kluge up fast. Maybe with a video file or something.”

  “What if Brahma doesn’t switch to e-mail?”

  “Then you make the switch. Tell him you get nervous live. You like to compose your letters in romantic contemplation, or some such bullshit.”

  I consider the plan, searching for faults. “Exactly what kind of special Trojan Horse is this going to be?”

  The serene smile of a Zen master smooths Miles’s face. “A masterpiece. Almost invisible, but deadly in its own way. A study in elegance.”

  I want to press him, but I know it would be useless. “How long will it take?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. I never know that. Bumming code isn’t linear work. I mean, I might hack through it line by line, but more likely I’ll stare at the TV for two days, then cop to the right thing when I’m not thinking about it.”

  Reaching across the twin bed, he pulls down one of my old Martins. He studies the guitar’s scarred face, then cradles it under his arm and puts his fingers to the strings. A halting rendition of Neil Young’s “The Needle and the Damage Done” tinkles from the sound hole. I taught him to pick that tune sometime around 1974. At fourteen Miles was growing his own marijuana, and he drove me crazy to teach him the song. As far as I know, it’s the only thing he can play.

  “How long since you played that?” I ask.

  “I’ve picked it out on every guitar I ever found leaning against a wall in someone’s apartment.”

  I laugh with him. The bonds of friendship are strange, and the moment emboldens me to be painfully honest. “Miles, what we’re talking about could take a while. You know as well as I do that one of those sheriff’s cars could pull up outside with a search warrant any time. And we’d both be arrested.”

  He nods soberly. “If that happens, I’ll go back out through the tunnel, just like I came in. And I won’t come back.”

  “Drewe isn’t going to like this.”

  “I know. But I don’t think she wants me in jail, either.”

  “She’d rather it be you than me.”

  He hangs the guitar back on its pegs and unfolds his long frame on the bed. Sighing deeply, he turns his head to face me. Exhaustion clouds his eyes like smudges on a camera lens.

  “We could go two different ways,” he says, as if I’ve already agreed to his scheme. “Use the identity of a real EROS client, a woman with a blind-draft ac
count. Or we can create a fictional woman, totally from scratch.”

  After a useless moment of internal resistance, I ask, “Which is better?”

  “A real woman is easier from a technical standpoint. But there are disadvantages. You won’t know much about her. Brahma might discover real information that conflicted with what you were telling him. Also, if Brahma’s selection criteria are medical, we don’t know what they are. A real woman has real medical records, and if he got access to them, he might disqualify her on that basis alone. Plus, we’d be putting her life at risk. Without her consent. Unless someone like Eleanor Rigby would let us-”

  “No,” I say, cutting him off. Miles’s manipulative tendencies are never far from the surface. As I consider his words, an image of Agent Margie Ressler’s gamin face comes into my mind. “What about a fictional woman?”

  “The plus is that she can be whatever you want. The negative is that she won’t really exist. Which means I’ll have to create her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bureaucracy. Social Security card, driver’s license, motor vehicle records, address. I’m sure the FBI faked credit cards and everything else for Lenz’s decoy.”

  “They did,” I confirm, recalling Lenz’s boasts in his car. “Can you do that?”

  Miles yawns heroically. “Sure. Only I don’t have the help they do. If we go that way, I’ll keep it simple. No medical records at all. That way, Brahma has to go with whatever you tell him.”

  Despite anxiety about the risks, I’m fascinated by Miles’s proposal. Rather than trying to lure a predator toward us in the hopes of trapping him-which is basically Lenz’s plan-Miles means to trick him into swallowing a hand grenade. As his eyes close, I say, “Those goals you mentioned? Contacting Brahma, keeping the relationship going long enough for him to switch to e-mail, all that?”

  “Yeah?” He opens one eye.

  “You forgot one.”

  Both eyes are open now. “What?”

  “Catching the son of a bitch before he decides to kill me.”

  He smiles, then both eyes close.

  Miles is snoring softly-with three cups of coffee in him, no less-while I sit at my desk with the contents of his briefcase spread in front of me. Drewe is still on the phone with her mother. Occasionally her voice rises above the hum of air conditioner and computer.

  There’s enough stolen information on my desk to fill twelve hours with steady reading. Not merely Nexis newspaper stories, but lab results and detectives’ case notes, things that would put Miles under a jail were they ever entered as evidence in a court of law. Yet all of it pales into insignificance beside the photographs of the victims.

  Confucius was right about pictures and words. All the words on the paper in this pile add up to mere statistics, but the faces are real. The faces are people. A more analytical man might look at those statistics and see gold, see his destiny, might feel certain that after enough solitary study of those lines and squiggles, a new relationship would emerge like a hologram from the chaos and point him toward the killer. But my analytical gift ends at murder. I feel too much empathy with the women in these searing images to place myself at the appropriate remove for objective study. Perhaps this is the reason I first strayed out of my father’s footsteps.

  Drewe has that capacity for distance. It may well be what allowed her to make logical leaps about Brahma while Miles and I plodded along like boys following bread crumbs. Strange that emotional distance would be a requirement for those who heal, whereas I, who feel others’ pain more keenly than most, have hurt far more people than I have helped.

  What can I do for these poor women? What do they need? Someone to avenge them? They’re certainly past hurting now. As this thought dies, I realize what holds my gaze to their haunted faces. They are eternally unattainable. Like Keats’s Grecian figures, they will possess their mystery, and thus their beauty, forever. I can never touch them. And if I can never touch them, I can never hurt them. Granting myself that reprieve, I am able to admit that I do know what they need. They need justice.

  But justice cannot be served until their killer has been hounded to his lair, chained, and brought to a place of judgment. It may be that Miles and I can assist with the first task. Yet my logic remains sound enough to comprehend the scale of the problem. For almost a year Brahma has gone about his business without hindrance. In all the world, I alone-because of a few ripples in the EROS net-perceived the foul wake of his passing. I reacted late, but I reacted, and by so doing created a window of opportunity. And then in Dallas the FBI squandered forever the only advantage it would ever have-surprise.

  Now Brahma is hiding. And he has an infinite matrix in which to conceal himself. I once thought the vastness of America was geographic, that miles of space or denseness of wood made massive measure. Then, on an icy Chicago street, I met a man and woman searching for their stolen child. After a single conversation, a couple of long looks into their hollow eyes, I saw that every mountain Lewis and Clark traversed, every steaming swamp De Soto pushed through, every plain the pioneers crossed has been transected by the compass, riven by the surveyor’s level, scarred by roads, photographed by satellites, and reduced to a thing you can fold into your glove compartment. But those lost parents stared across an uncharted sea of people, praying in vain for the phosphorous glow of a long-vanished trail, each town an eddy, each city a whirlpool that could swallow a hundred children without trace. And across that sea float the millions of milk cartons carrying photographs of the missing like messages in bottles, bound for garbage cans as surely as the ruins of last night’s dinner.

  Looking at Miles’s stolen photographs, I know that somewhere in that same sea moves a man who saw final agony twist the faces of these women, who heard the last word or plea or wail that passed their lips. He moves comfortably, in the knowledge that maps do not exist to lead men to him. That he can do his grisly work in peace. That he can taunt his hunters. That only an accident will raise his head above the mob and mark him as a son of Cain.

  CHAPTER 27

  I found Brahma at 11:30 P.M.

  To my surprise, he was deep in conversation with “Lilith”-Dr. Lenz’s personal Eliza Doolittle.

  I’d been looking for him for about an hour, stopping occasionally to run a global search of EROS, checking for “Anne Bridges,” the account name that backed up Lenz’s “Lilith.” I also searched a few chat lobbies for “Shiva” and “Levon” and “Prometheus” and “Kali.” As I searched, I wondered whether Brahma, like me, could roam behind the digital walls that appear solid to EROS’s subscribers but yield like curtains to its system operators. If so, he could see me searching. Yet I had no choice if I wanted to find him. After a while, Drewe leaned in, saw Miles sleeping, said good night, and padded away without offering a summation of Erin’s problems. I wasn’t about to ask for one.

  And then I got the hit.

  At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing. The alias interacting onscreen with “Lilith” was not “Shiva” or any of the other familiar noms de plume. It was “Maxwell.” Yet after reading less than twenty lines of text, I knew “Maxwell” was Brahma. My excitement made me clumsy when I tried to activate the new voice-synthesis program, but I finally got it going.

  Now my LaserJet printer hums and whispers as it records the conversation, while the digital voices of “Lilith” and “Maxwell” spar and weave and intertwine like mating serpents. They seem to be discussing a sexual incident that sounds like a cross between a group sex encounter and a gang rape.

  LILITH› It _was_ my decision.

  MAXWELL› I don’t accept that. Why did you let nine men have their way with you?

  LILITH› It’s not easy to explain.

  MAXWELL› Was it you who suggested it?

  LILITH› It wasn’t that clear-cut.

  MAXWELL› Wasn’t it suggested by the first man? The one who took you upstairs?

  LILITH› Why do you think it was upstairs?

  MAXWEL
L› It always is. Or else in a basement.

  LILITH› It was upstairs. At a fraternity house. And I don’t remember exactly. It was like… we were doing it, my date and I, on this bottom bunk. And then this other guy walks in. A boy really. He said, “Hey, I’m really drunk, I need to crash.” And then he climbed up on the top bunk to sleep.

  MAXWELL› But he didn’t sleep.

  LILITH› No. In a minute or so I opened my eyes and saw his head leaning off the edge of the top bunk, looking down, watching us. Looking into my eyes. He looked like he was watching God or something. Wide-eyed like a kid. And then his head disappeared and I noticed the top bunk was moving too. And like I knew what he was doing up there. He couldn’t help himself. And when my date finished a second later, I said, I think your friend is frustrated. He looked at me funny-he was pretty drunk, too-and he said, you wanna help him out or something? And I just laughed and said I felt sorry for him. Why not? I swear to God I’ll never know why I did that. So my date got up and laughed, and the kid from the top bunk came down. He was really timid at first, really gentle, but then he started thrashing and moaning. It took him like a minute and a half to finish. And by the time he did, I noticed the first guy was gone and there were two other guys standing by the door.

  MAXWELL› Inside the room?

  LILITH› Yes. The door was half open. And I don’t know why, but I just sat up and said, Who’s next? And they practically fought each other right there. It was like wild animals or something. After that it was all sort of a blur.

  MAXWELL› Nine men in a row?

  LILITH› Does this turn you on or something?

  MAXWELL› It saddens me, Lilith.

  LILITH› It shouldn’t. Don’t you understand what I told you? It’s what finally _liberated_ me.

  MAXWELL› I don’t believe that.

  LILITH› Because you don’t understand it. All these guys, these boys whose whole lives were wrapped up in their egos and the size of their penises, this macho thing, every one of them was the same. You see? They all wanted the same thing, me, and none was any better than the others, or any worse, and I could take whatever they dished out and reduce them to nothing. They came in like lions and went out like lambs.