The only thing worse than Granger acting like a human being was Granger trying to be consoling.
“It’s not your fault, Susan. It was a good theory. I thought we were on to something, too. But even the best theories don’t pan out sometimes.”
“He’s here. I know he’s here.”
He actually laid a hand on my shoulder. And the worst of it was, I let him. “We went through all the records, Susan. Twice. And we didn’t come up with anything.”
I pressed my palms against my forehead, running every scrap of Edgar-data through my brain for the millionth time or so. “We must have something wrong. In the profile. The description. Something.”
“Susan, you’ve looked at everyone who has stayed here in the last month who even remotely fits your profile. You came up with zip.”
Truth hurts. He was right. I’d played my best hand and come up short. The review of the Transylvania’s guests had yielded nothing.
Where was all my buoyancy now? All that blinding self-confidence? The girl who was going to catch the bad guy and never drink again? Where had she gone? Now when I looked in the mirror, I just saw a big placard reading LOSER. LOSER-AND DRUNKARD.
My wrist throbbed.
Granger was shuffling papers, obviously making moves to get the hell out of this tiny hotel office. “You look beat. Why don’t you let me drive you home?”
So I won’t stop somewhere and drown my sorrows in alcohol? “Sure. Thanks. Darce?”
After he’d done everything he could back at headquarters, Darcy had joined us here at the hotel. I don’t know why. But I made sure he went over every name, every bio, every scrap of information I had, just in case I missed something. When your PC fails you, put a human computer on the case, right? He’d stared at those lists till his eyes watered.
“Did you know Einstein wrote his Special Paper on Relativity three times before he realized that space was curved? That was what made the whole thing make sense.”
I gave him a tired grin. “I’m much too feeble to grasp Einsteinian physics at the moment. Or any other moment, actually.”
“Can I go over the lists again?”
“No, Darcy,” I said, clapping him on the back. “We’re all going home now.”
The fax machine pinged.
“Did Madeline have anything else to send us?” I asked.
Granger shook his head. “Madeline has gone home.”
That was intriguing enough to keep me by the machine a few seconds longer. And halfway through the cover sheet, I had an even better reason.
“It’s from Edgar.”
How did he know we were here? I took the sheet and stared at it. Another coded message. But this time it was all ones and zeros.
“He’s really taken this multiple-substitution code gimmick to the outer limit.”
Darcy snatched it from me. “I think that this must be binary code. Do you think that this is binary code?”
“What, like computer talk?”
“Can I use this please?” He was already scooting in front of the hotel’s PC.
“Sure. Ain’t mine.”
He tapped information into a black screen on the computer, fingers flying faster than I could follow. It all looked like gibberish to me.
“Hey,” I said, “this probably won’t be important. He wants to brag, impress me, maybe scare us a little. But he won’t give us anything we can use to stop him. And I’m not going to stay up all night so I can read a quote from Edgar Allan Poe’s grocery list.”
“I think that maybe this is a hyperlink,” Darcy said, not that it meant anything to me. “The code is much easier than the last one, if you know COBOL.”
“Well, that’s nice, but it could still take hours and-”
“Got it.” Darcy clicked the Enter button a few more times. A Web browser came up, and a few moments later I saw the hourglass symbol that told me it was traveling to a new destination.
“You think Edgar has his own Web site?” Granger asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. There are plenty of public-access servers that allow anonymous uploads. But what would he post? Poe’s Greatest Hits? MP3s for the Golden Age? Photos of his vic-”
My tongue froze in my mouth. The graphic image in the Web browser had begun to resolve.
It was a photograph, presumably taken from a distance with a digital camera. I had no problem recognizing one of the people in the photo. It was me. Didn’t have to work much to identify the other person, either. The one I was talking to.
It was Rachel. He knew about Rachel.
“Oh, God,” I said as a cold sweat broke out all over my body. “Oh, my God.”
“I’m calling for backup,” Granger said, already dialing his cell. “What’s her address?”
“Oh, God,” I repeated uselessly. Rachel. All I had left-
“Susan! Give me her address!”
And I did. Pulling myself together as best I could, I grabbed my car keys and raced for the front door. Please, God, don’t let us be too late. Please, don’t let us be too late.
But my own words haunted me, even as I raced out the door and into the stifling desert night air.
He wouldn’t give us anything we could use to stop him.
Rachel raised the window and leaned out into the cool night air.
Not a creature was stirring, as the poem went. Excellent.
It was drizzling outside. The white trellis attached to the front of the house was slick. She would have to be careful.
She hoisted herself through the window, flipped her feet around, then slowly descended onto the trellis. The Shepherds were nice folks, but they had to be crazy not to see how easy it was to get out of this room. Just too innocent to consider the possibilities, she supposed. Or perhaps it was some sort of test.
Didn’t matter, she thought, as she dropped like Spider-Man down the side of the house. At first, she’d thought the Shepherds were pathetic, hilarious, ridiculous. But over time, she had sort of gotten used to the regularity of life with them. She had found new friends, new interests. It wasn’t all bad, really.
But her first loyalty was to Susan. Had to be. She was family. And she knew how much Susan loved her. Knew how much Susan counted on her, needed her if she was to stay sane. When she’d visited earlier today, Rachel could see how edgy she was. Then when she got the call from a co-worker telling her how much Susan had fallen apart, how desperate she was-Rachel knew she had to go to her.
She hadn’t packed much, but then, she didn’t have much to pack. She’d thrown some clothes in a backpack and scraped together all the money she had-less than twenty dollars. It would be enough. She’d catch a city bus to Susan’s neighborhood, then hike the rest of the way to her hotel room. Simple.
She checked carefully in all directions before she emerged from the concealing shadows of the house. No signs of life, not even a car in the distance. She made a break for the sidewalk.
Vegas buses ran all night long. She supposed they had to. Businesses were open all hours and people had to get to work. She crossed the first street, then another, then several more, moving much faster now, making her way toward the bus stop at the corner.
It was lighted; she wasn’t crazy about that. A safety precaution, she supposed, but tonight, she preferred to remain in the darkness. She was pretty sure the Shepherds hadn’t heard her leave, but you never knew.
She checked the posted schedule. Bus should be along in about five minutes. This time of night, of course, it was impossible to be sure. She decided to move a few feet down the street, out of the light, at least until she heard the chug-chug of the diesel engine or the high-pitched squeal of hydraulic brakes…
“Excuse me, miss. Rather late, isn’t it?”
She froze. Where the hell had he come from?
“Mind if I ask where you’re going?”
He was wearing a uniform. Wasn’t the usual uniform, though. She couldn’t read the name on his badge.
“I’m going to visit my aunt. You got a problem with that?”
“No. Do your parents know about this?”