Jim, he thought, suits the man better.
He drove back to the Crowne Plaza, slept for ninety minutes, brewed some coffee at the minibar and drank it black while he shot for and caught a wireless signal with his PowerBook. He logged on to one of the seven secure law enforcement databases to which he had access and, twenty minutes later, made the discovery that Travis James Malloy packed quite a resumé.
A three-year-old picture of Jim, or Travis, stared out at Cooper from the computer screen, where, beside the picture, there ran a list of warrants, charges, and indictments that took him three minutes to read. Malloy was wanted for murder, rape, sodomy, sexual battery, armed robbery, aggravated assault, child molestation, and absence without official leave.
U.S. Navy AWOL.
Cooper saw that until four years ago, when the authorities had quit charging him with new crimes, Malloy had been a card-carrying member of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted. He’d fallen off the list after no leads had been found. Cooper read the rest of it, noting the sites of the alleged murders and rapes, figuring it meant that Malloy’s idea of a tour in the navy was to use the various ports of call for a serial rape-and-murder spree. He wondered whether there had been a similar series of murders and rapes in Kingston these past few years, but culling through the local missing persons and homicide case files didn’t jump out at him as a productive use of his time. You’re either a serial killer or you’re not, and he figured it for a good bet Travis James Malloy was a prolific one.
Cooper was getting to the end of his rope. Camping out in a rental car in Belle Acres, watching a ten-time serial killer screw a drugged-out anorexic hooker night in, night out-Christ, enough. He decided that if this guy didn’t give him something to go on in the next few days, he’d pay a visit to the U.S. embassy, ask a couple of marines to follow him back to Jimbo’s love nest, and retire from his position as private-eye-for-the-dead.
He downed the last of the coffee, gathered his gear, and headed out for another night of sex-machine surveillance.
That night Jim was paged twice.
At least that was how many times he took off in his minivan, destined for two pay phones in separate neighborhoods. He hadn’t sent Rhonda home either time, just slipped out, made a phone call, returned, and come back out an hour later to repeat the routine. Afterward, Cooper assumed his position in the Taurus outside the house while Jim slipped back inside and things returned to normal.
Cooper checked the clock on the dash-almost midnight, and midnight in Jamaica meant either eleven or midnight in Langley, he could never remember. Depended on the time of year. Either way, when two shots with his sat phone got nothing but her answering machine on the home line, Cooper made a third call to retrieve the number he was looking for, then tapped out the digits to Julie Laramie’s cell phone.
When Laramie answered, Cooper said, “How we doing, Lie Detector?”
Cooper could hear road noise from Laramie’s end of the line.
“Hello, Professor,” she said.
Cooper thought that she had to be wondering what he meant by that, why he was goofing around with her at all, but she wasn’t asking about any of it. Laramie: cool as a cucumber.
“You couldn’t be coming home from the office this late,” he said.
“Ah, but I could be. And am.”
“You skip dinner?”
“I had a salad from the commissary, if you must know.”
“A salad person.”
“Sometimes.”
Sometimes, my ass, Cooper thought. “What about breakfast,” he said. “You eat a big breakfast?”
“Only coffee,” she said. “Maybe a banana.”
“Banana.” Cooper said the word as though it summed up all.
“I take it you’re not a salad eater.”
“No.”
“Or a fruit person.”
“Nope.”
“What did you mean by ‘Lie Detector’?” Laramie said.
There we go.
“I mean,” Cooper said, “you have a way of seeing past the surface.”
Laramie didn’t say anything for a minute, Cooper wondering whether the silence stemmed from indifference, distraction, annoyance, or something else.
“The drinking thing,” she said. “That’s what you’re talking about. That I knew you’d been drinking.”
“What’s making you burn the midnight oil?”
“Nothing I’d be permitted to tell you, of course.”
“Maybe I could help.”
“Maybe not.”
Cooper waited.
“Even if you could,” she said, “I’d probably refuse your sage advice and do things my own way, making decisions guaranteed to flush my career down the toilet.”
“Professor Eddie,” Cooper said. “Professor Eddie gives you advice and you don’t take it.”
“Yes. Mr. Lie Detector.”
“Was he right?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, was it good advice?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t take it.”
“No. Listen-what can I help you with?”
Cooper thought for a moment.
“Not sure,” he said.
The road noise on the other end of the line evaporated. Cooper heard the yank of an emergency brake, the ding-ding of the car telling Laramie the door was open with her keys in the ignition, the jangling of keys and slamming of a door.
“So I’m home,” she said.
“Tell me about the memo.”
“What do you want me to tell you about it?”
He heard more jangling of keys, a door opening and closing. He imagined Laramie turning on the light as she came in. He found he couldn’t picture either her or her house. Maybe she had an apartment. Condo-a salad person would own a condominium.
“It came from something you found,” Cooper said. “As with every widely distributed Agency memo, it made a generic statement which obviously didn’t reflect what you found, but which came from something you found nonetheless. What was it you found?”
“What do you care?”
“The long hours you’re clocking have something to do with your discovery?”
Laramie stayed quiet and so did Cooper. The chill from the car’s air conditioner, Cooper sitting there in the Taurus, felt as if it had frozen the cartilage beneath his kneecaps. Nonetheless he could still feel the sweat oozing from his back, causing him to stick, like a suction cup, to the seat.
Laramie said, “I found something, and I’m looking for something more, but I’m not finding the something more I’m looking for. Actually I found a little something more, but I’m not finding anything else.”
“That’s vague.”
“I can’t talk about this.”
“I’m cleared higher than the head of your department, Laramie.”
“Well that’s very impressive,” she said, “but isn’t the issue.”
“No?”
“I’m not-”
“Ah,” Cooper said.
“Ah?”
“You’re not supposed to be working on what you’re working on, are you?”
Laramie hesitated.
“Fuck them,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Tough talk,” Laramie said. “You know, Professor, ‘fuck them’ isn’t the kind of advice professors usually give.”
Cooper heard a few rustling noises. Keys being dropped somewhere. And maybe, way in the background, the sound of feet kicking off shoes.
Then Laramie sighed, the sigh loud in his ear with Cooper busy straining to hear what she was up to.
“Look,” she said, “I analyze satellite intelligence. I found an unscheduled military exercise in the province they’ve assigned me in China. Shandong. The base there has mobilized and added troops in sufficient numbers to indicate there are plans in store for the real-world version of the exercise. The simulation I saw was a sea-to-land assault.”
“Taiwan.”
“That was my deduction too,” she said. “But perhaps you’re not aware of the recent strides we’ve made in Sino-American relations.”
“No,” Cooper said, “I’m not.”