I stretched my arm over to where Steve had slept—the covers were cold, but that didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was seeing that his side of the bed had already been made. My head rocked, tipping to one side as a vile taste crept back into my throat. I decided on a hot shower. The morning was going to be long, but Steve’s mom’s help and getting to the office to do some work with Nerd would be much-needed remedies.
THIRTY
I SLOWED MY CAR at the apex of the Neshaminy Creek bridge, stopping in the middle when I confirmed I was alone. I couldn’t remember when I’d started the habit—after Katie’s death, maybe? The spring’s usual rains went quickly, a mere passing that led to parched summer days—save for the stormy evening when my mother had jumped to her death. The edges of the creek shrank inward like puckered lips; the water levels had dropped even more, revealing the stony bottom and boulders. Even the sandy shoals showed, as would whatever else I thought I’d hidden beneath the moving water. My palms itched as a flash of nerves hit me.
“Relax,” I mumbled, concerned about the evidence I’d thrown into the water. “Don’t overreact.” I’d seen the water levels low before and knew better than to worry.
A sign of global warming, a news report had said. The mountain snows were at an all-time low. It’d recover. Something always made up for the low levels—late-summer rains or a coastal storm. I’d come to rely on the creek to carry away my evidence, my discarded sins, as the current wound south and then east, feeding into the bigger rivers and the bay, and finally finding peace in the ocean’s dark abyss. But for all I knew, everything I’d ever thrown into the creek might still be on the rocks just beneath me.
“Rains will come again,” I said, trying to assuage my own nagging conscience. “You’ll swell again.”
My mother should never have kept the driver’s licenses. She should never have hidden them in the station wagon’s glove box. But that was her decision, her design, her mistake.
Does that make me smarter? Knowing when to toss my trophies away?
I sat up, leaning on the edge of my door to look farther downstream. The slow-moving water was gilded with sunlight. I squinted, trying to look past the creek’s bend, and decided that even Neshaminy Creek would have been a bad place for my mother to use.
Plus, the creek was already my spot, I thought selfishly, as if it were a territory I could claim. She should have found someplace safe, though. Maybe cut the licenses into confetti and set them afire, burning them until they were soot and ash. She could have thrown the ashes into the wind, let the air’s currents take away her secrets like the creek took mine. The blare of a car horn warned I’d overstayed my time. I waved my arm apologetically and then drove into town without looking back.
***
When I reached town and spotted my building, I saw that Mr. C’s was open. His bright overhead lights turned the inside of his salon alive with activity. Four of his five chairs were filled by older women who I’d seen every week since Nerd and I began working out of the office. I had to laugh—I knew now how much Carlos struggled with them.
Impossible, he’d said after their last visit. They are just so impossibly unreasonable.
One of the women nodded, shook her head, and talked with her eyes shut—with aluminum foil packets bouncing around her head. Another wagged a wrinkled finger, forcing a point, her bluish hair wet and drippy. The remaining two said little but bobbed their heads as they picked sides—the loose skin beneath their chins swaying like a pelican’s pouch filled with a fresh catch.
The scene was hilarious. Carlos broke my stare, catching my attention through the window, his expression pleading for me to come inside. When I shook my head, he mouthed the word H-E-L-P, spelling out the letters for emphasis. I shook my head again, a wicked smile curling my lips. I winked a bleary eye, telling him he was on his own. He could never pay me enough in “sexy” to help. Not today, anyway. Not with an ache that still pounded and stretched from the base of my skull and up into my eyeballs. He went on to mouth B-I-T-C-H, which only made me laugh harder. I blew him a kiss before reaching my door. He quickly lifted his chin, moving his cheek as if to catch the invisible endearment.
From the doorway leading to our office, I could hear the soft murmur of the old women, and their pitchy voices and wordy exchanges. Carlos had his morning cut out for him. A glance at the long stairwell in front of me immediately made me think I had the same in store for myself. The faint sound of a clicking computer keyboard and the humming of a popular tune encouraged me to climb up, though.
The stairs left me woozy, but I reached the landing and waved a quick hello before plopping into my chair. I sat still for a while, letting the hangover fall out of me. That bottle of wine—still sitting empty on my kitchen table, I realized—had officially made me miserable.
A harsh square of sunlight cut across my desk—moving like the second hand of a clock. I glanced at my empty trash can and thought I was about to fill it. My mouth watered and my throat closed tight, but I counted in my head until the nauseous wave was gone. Nerd said nothing, but I noticed he had stopped humming.
“Rough night?” he finally asked.
“Ya might say that,” I answered, agreeing as a yawn took hold of my face and refused to let go.
His chin remained clean of scraggly whiskers, and his hair was still neatly combed back. I eyed him as he stood and walked around his desk. The clothes he wore were new—just as the suit had been. And then it hit me—the hangover lifting briefly—Nerd was dressing for someone else. I was sure Carlos had helped with the suit he’d worn to my mother’s funeral, but I doubted Carlos had helped him with an entire wardrobe.
A mystery. Ideas appeared in the fog, needling at me and then receding. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I tried to focus, but with my head full of cotton balls, my attempts were only briefly successful. And then I saw it in a flash and seized the image, freezing it in my mind. In the memory, I saw Nerd, his fingers on my arm, helping to steady me next to my mother’s casket. And just over his shoulder, there had been a pretty face—but not just any face. I recognized her.
And there had been more too, hadn’t there? Didn’t I see something else?
Nerd reached the end of my desk, perching himself on the corner like a bird. I stayed in my thoughts, curious. I tried to piece together what I’d seen. He waved in front of my eyes, snapping his fingers annoyingly. I shooed him away and then bolted up in my chair with a revelation.
“I know who she is!”
“What?” he asked, looking baffled.
It wasn’t Nerd holding my arm that I had noticed, but his free hand. When he came forward to help me. The young woman—the pretty face—she had held his hand, her fingers were interwoven tenderly with his.
“Dude! You brought a date to my mother’s funeral?” I asked, blurting out what sounded more like an accusation. “Becky? The librarian?”
His cheeks turned a deep red, and the fierce reaction spread. “She insisted,” he answered with a half smile. “I mean . . . well, we’ve kind of been seeing each other, and she wanted to be there with me.”
I leaned forward, patted his arm in approval.
“Brian, I’m messing with you,” I assured him. I gestured at his computer, adding, “Computers aren’t going to keep you warm at night. Not like she will.” The blush on his face flashed again.
“Work—” he began, then stopped. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”
I frowned at him and toyed with my keyboard, sliding it in front of me. “I’m fine. Why?”
He shrugged and said, “You . . . you look a bit rough. Sure you don’t want to sleep it off, or maybe have an energy drink?”
“I need to work,” I said, stabbing my keyboard to wake the screen so I could log in. “I will take one of those, though, maybe two.”
“We’ll start with one,” he answered, placing a blue chrome can in front of me. He stayed, fixing his stand like a statue. I could tell he had something to share.
&nb
sp; “This doesn’t look good,” I mumbled. “What is it?”
“Sorry. Bad news. Might make for a short afternoon.”
His gaze fell awkwardly, avoiding mine, avoiding me in fact as if I were the mythological Medusa figure who could turn him to stone.
“Just tell me, okay?”
“We’ve got nothing,” he said. The news quashed my hopes of starting a new design.
“Nothing?” I asked, confirming. “Nothing at all?”
“Well, there is one. Just one case, but we should pass on—”
“So we’ll work that one case,” I interrupted.
“Hold on,” he said, raising his voice. “I’m still working the feeds. I’ve checked and triple-checked them, but something isn’t right.”
“And you’re sure your software isn’t filtering too much? I mean, that’s what the software does, right? Cull the list?”
His face soured, confident the issue wasn’t his. Then he added, “In my opinion, it would be a huge risk to even open the case.”
“Why?” I asked, thinking the opposite, thinking that if his software was working then the case should be the safest to pick. “If your software has been refined and fine-tuned . . . well, doesn’t that mean this one case is our best bet?”
He seemed to consider what I’d said.
“Yeah, in a way. But . . .” he answered reluctantly. He picked at his fingernails, chipping and scraping—a habit that drove me nuts. I smacked the top of his hand. “Sorry. Can’t help it sometimes. Amy, I can’t tell if this case is a sting or not. That’s what scares me.”
“What about the picture frame?” I asked, referring to the software we’d planted at the police station. “Have you done anything more with it?” Nerd’s face warmed with a huge smile, telling me he’d made progress.
“Oh yeah, about that. I’ve got something to show you, if you’re up for it.”
“Something good?” I asked, hopeful. He pointed to my screen and directed me to a new icon on the desktop.
“Must’ve overlooked that one,” I confessed, quickly blaming the hangover. I clicked on a viney, green icon intertwined with thorny roses.
“Wait till you see this.”
“Brian . . .” I said, trying to hold in my excitement. His surprises were always fantastic. “What did you do?”
“When we loaded my software from the picture frame, that got my foot in the door—so to speak. I could read some files and e-mail, but I wanted more.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, staying with him. “And?”
He motioned to his computer and then to my computer. And from his pocket he pulled out a cell phone—a huge sheet of black glass that looked ridiculous in his small hands. “What does every computer, every tablet, nearly every phone have these days?”
I looked at the computers, trying to find something in common with the cell phone. Nerd helped me along, pointing to the glassy eye above the screen.
“Camera,” I answered.
He rolled his hand, expecting more. The cotton balls were back again, clogging my brain, soaking up whatever inspiration intuition might have given me. But then I saw what he was looking for and blurted out the answer: “A microphone!”
“Bingo! So, once I had my foot in the door, I updated my code to do more than just read files. Version 2.0 is called Becky, and she is our eyes and ears across all the devices at the station . . . and beyond.”
I frowned, fixing him with a trite stare. “Corny, Brian. You named your new software after a girl?”
“Too much?” he asked his face contorting.
“Yeah, a bit,” I told him, shaking my head. “But what did you mean when you said ‘and beyond’?”
“Oh,” he said, his eyes getting bigger, the whites of them showing like tiny moons. “With my remote access update, I’ve improved the infestation routines. I’m talking tenfold. We can root just about any device. That is, as long as Becky can see it—and trust me, Becky can see a lot.”
“Root?” I asked, having heard him say that before. “You mean take it over?” He nodded excitedly. While I got the gist of what he meant—infestation sounding to me like some plague—I didn’t understand the details of everything he was telling me.
“Take over any device,” he added.
“Show me,” I told him as I pushed my chair back from the keyboard. I’d learned that it sometimes helped to see what he was talking about.
He shook his head and nudged the mouse in front of me. “You can have the honors,” he said, insisting. “Just double-click Becky to open the app.” I frowned at the name again—making sure he noticed—and then followed his instructions.
Every inch of my screen burst into a blaze of pixel animations, filling the darkness from corner to corner. The flyaway motions made me dizzy, and I braced myself, gripping the desk as pixelated shapes and glowing tails whizzed off the edge of the screen. “Very cool,” I said, trying to make it sound like a compliment.
“Becky is searching, indexing all the devices she touches, loading, and then searching some more. And get this, she—my software—is always building and updating a secure cache too, meaning she’ll get quicker and quicker,” he went on explaining the technicalities as the screen settled into a steady rhythm, like a heartbeat. “There you go. See? The update is done.”
And I did see. The primitive shapes stopped burning, and the expanded universe snapped back like a rubber band. All of the shapes fit onto my screen again like an assembled jigsaw puzzle. I double-clicked a rectangular box that held the street address I knew to be Steve’s station. Inside, some of the squares were filled with orange while others were a bright lime green. Each was saddled by names and numbers—some I recognized, some I didn’t. I saw Charlie’s name, and recognized his office in a layout of the station’s floor plan. I dragged my finger out from his virtual office and down the hall, passing the interview rooms, then stopping at a desk where I found my husband’s name.
“There’s a lot,” I said, staring at the bubbles of information he’d collected.
But there was more on my screen than just the police station. I recognized other buildings and streets in our town. And off to the corner of the screen, the landscape showed the big city. I only needed to zoom in to see the devices hidden in the pixels. Nerd’s software had grown exponentially, occupying everything it touched. “What else can you do with all of this?”
“Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet,” he said, laughing. “Go ahead—click on your husband’s box.”
My finger twitched, but my hand shrank involuntarily away from his desk’s icon, hesitant and unsure. Nerd placed my hand back on the mouse, encouraging me. His skin was soft and warm. Delicate. I clicked.
Steve’s face exploded onto my monitor, and the screen’s sudden brightness made me sit back into my chair. Steve’s face looked grave, his skin paled by the thin blue light of his monitor. The image was strange and surreal, and I found myself fixed on the details, studying them like a map to some buried treasure. I waved my hand in front of his face, half-expecting him to wave back. Nerd sniggered a goofy laugh, and his hand joined mine. He tapped at the screen jokingly, poking Steve’s face, teasing.
“He can’t see you,” Nerd assured me, his finger traveling to Steve’s nose and poking some more.
“Knock it off,” I demanded. Nerd pulled his hand back, looking like a five-year-old who’d been caught tapping a fish tank. “You’re sure he can’t see us?”
“He can’t see a thing,” Nerd said confidently, beaming from ear to ear. “We can hear him too.” Without asking for my approval, Nerd’s fingers tumbled over the keyboard, rattled off a set of commands. What I heard next was my husband’s breathing—the gentle roll of air in and out of his nose and the occasional whistle that sometimes kept me up at night. I laughed almost immediately—not because the spying was so intimate, but because it seemed so impossible. My belly tickled, the thrill swarming in it like bees. Watching my husband without his knowing it felt strangely provocative—I
don’t mind adding that it even turned me on a bit.
“And Becky—your software—it’s on all the computers at the police station?” I asked, but was certain I already knew the answer.
“Well, kinda-sorta-maybe . . . but not exactly,” Nerd said, stammering as he resized the window and moved Steve’s face to the top of my screen.
He revealed the digital map in the window beneath and hovered his mouse over another rectangle that was sandwiched between parading egg shapes. A new window popped open, flickered, and displayed a blurred image. The scene bounced in and out of focus before finally locking on an empty conference room. I brought my fingers to the screen, touching the picture of chairs and a redwood table that stretched the length of the room. Steve and I had come very close to having sex on top of that table. My face warmed at the memory of that night—my skirt hiked up to reveal mostly everything, Steve’s belt undone, and the smell of furniture polish. It had been a great holiday party. We’d been juicy drunk and hungry for sex, and decided to take our booze-fueled passions to the conference room. But just when things were getting interesting, someone barged in on us. It might’ve even been Charlie. The figure in the doorway bellowed a raucous laugh, his voice sloppy and wet. He had staggered off with apologies following him, and we decided it might be best to finish at home—just not necessarily in our bed.
“The station’s conference room,” I said, clearing my throat and sounding a little more turned on than I intended.
“My upgrades installed across the station’s network. But they went beyond that; the station is linked to federal offices and their computer systems too. We can read files, e-mail, watch conferences and meetings, listen to private conversations—”
“And spy on my husband,” I finished for him, touching Steve’s face.
Steve had begun to comb an eyebrow with the tip of his finger, a habit of his when troubled. Briefly, I wondered if it was me he was thinking about. When he pointed at his monitor, his lips moving along while he read the screen—I knew it was the case that was troubling him.
Affair with Murder The Complete Box Set Page 41