At a Dumpster behind a butcher shop, he put the leaf bag with the drop cloth in it.
At an apartment complex eight miles away, he got rid of the bag with the dead man’s clothes. He kept the wallet, watch, and keys, along with a ring.
The freezer’s packaging went into a different trash bin.
The wallet, empty, and the watch, ring, keys, and saws went into a lake in a park, heaved far enough from shore that nobody was apt to step on them if they went wading, which they probably wouldn’t, since there was a sign that forbade swimming. He tossed the teeth into the water, too. Even if somebody found any of them with the fillings, there was no way to put them into context to match a dental chart.
The rest of the supplies went into trash bins or Dumpsters in four different locations. The last bags, containing his coveralls and gloves and the contents of the dead man’s wallet, he set afire in an old oil drum behind a junk yard, using the paint thinner to get them flaming good. He made sure the gloves burned — no fingerprints left there.
He drove to a cemetery and found an open grave awaiting a new tenant. He remembered the old joke about grave-yards: Why were there fences around them? Because people were dying to get in. He put the bag with the chopped-up head and fingers into the empty grave, covering it with enough dirt so that it wasn’t visible. He very nearly was discovered at this by somebody visiting nearby, but managed to finish his chore before they got close enough to see him. He had considered finding a dog kennel or going to an animal shelter and feeding the bits to the dogs, but he remembered the old urban legend about the choking Doberman, and while the brains and skull bits wouldn’t give anything away, a finger would, since government security guards had their prints on file.
He returned to the airport lot, put the minivan back in the same slot it had occupied before, switched the license plates to their original vehicles, and left.
As he drove toward a different motel, he considered what he had done. Yes, it had been a lot of work — he could just as easily have buried the headless/fingerless body in the woods, It might not have lain there undisturbed forever, but it probably wouldn’t have been discovered for weeks or months, if not years. And once it was found, the authorities probably wouldn’t have been able to ID the corpse — most people did not have DNA records on file.
But when the new tenants of the industrial space opened the freezer, they would either toss the packages of meat, or somebody would take one home for supper. If that happened, unless that diner happened to be a cannibal, there would be an immediate uproar. Such a heinous crime could only be the work of some twisted sociopathic psychotic, a real loon, and the FBI profilers would have themselves a fine time.
And what they would come up with wouldn’t bear any resemblance to Jack Locke…
He smiled. He had given them a show, and they would buy it, because they wanted to buy it. Locke was, he felt, an artist, and this kind of thing was part of his art and craft. The last person they’d be looking for would be a Hong Kong businessman.
A simple sleight of hand. And clever, too, if he did say so himself.
Meanwhile, he still had to deal with the issue at hand, Net Force and CyberNation, and while that shouldn’t take any violence, it was always an option…
18
Jay was studying the holographic projection on the bridge of the Enterprise with Bretton when the alert light and Klaxon began flashing and blaring.
“All hands, Red Alert!” came a stentorian voice.
Jay nodded at his VR companion.
“I’d better take this.”
George just nodded, and Jay stepped back into an alcove to take the call, muting the scene with a privacy screen. He could see out, but Bretton couldn’t see in. Only Saji and Thorn could intrude on one of his scenarios with this level of urgency, so he knew it had to be important.
“Jay?”
It was Saji. She sounded worried. All of his calm curiosity disappeared when he heard the tone in her voice.
“Yeah, babe?”
“It’s Mark.”
A bolt of fear stabbed through the VR jock as the words registered.
Mark.
Was he dead? Had someone kidnapped him? Jay had thought his imagination fairly good, but parenthood thus far had shown him that he had entirely new realms of worry to discover.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know!” Her voice rose on the last word.
He was unnerved. In all the time he’d been with her, Saji had never sounded like this. She maintained her calm, had held her center under the most severe stress. She hadn’t even sounded this bad when he came out of the coma.
“We were playing in the living room, and suddenly he started coughing and acting funny. I got worried and called the on-duty nurse, and she said we ought to bring him in.”
She paused.
“And then he seemed fine, but he started jerking around like he was having a seizure, and we’re stuck in traffic, and he’s not getting better!”
Oh, God!
“Where are you now?”
“I’m on — on Sherman, heading towards the Children’s Hospital. Traffic is jammed!”
Jay stared through the privacy screen at the quiet bridge of the Enterprise, stars flickering on the main viewscreen, the hologram of the Dyson sphere floating in the center of the space. His emotional distance couldn’t be farther from the calm scene — it seemed like hours had passed since he’d taken the call. He looked over at the chronometer readout and noticed it had only been a minute. Less.
For a moment he just sat there. Saji’s terror and his concern for his son froze him. But only for a moment. He hadn’t gotten where he was without being able to work under pressure.
Come on, Gridley, let’s get something rolling here!
First Saji: “It’ll be okay, babe,” he said, not having any clue that it would be. But he had to say something. She had to keep it together, and it was the best he could do.
“I’ll fix the traffic — and I’ll meet you at the hospital as soon as I can. Hold on, babe. How’s he doing now?”
Calm, Gridley, radiate calm.
“He seems a little better.” She paused. “I love you, Jay.”
“I love you, too. Drive. It’ll be okay.”
He disconnected and broke the privacy screen.
Bretton looked up. “Something wrong?”
“Family emergency. Gotta go — I’ll check back with you when I can.”
Bretton nodded. “Good luck.”
Jay killed the VR he’d been using to link with Bretton, and shifted his work space from the military network he’d been on to regular VR. Even though they had secure filters all over his link, and the transfer packets were all a different protocol than his regular VR, he was still very careful not to mix his VR access.
And with what he was going to do, he certainly didn’t want the military to be able to access him now. Or anybody else.
He tabbed to a different scenario — he was in a large office with filing cabinets all around. He ran to a large green one and jerked open the top drawer. The drawer squeaked as it had since he programmed it years ago as an exercise in office interface, the VR equivalent of an old-school desktop.
From a hanging file folder labeled Recent he pulled a thin red folder, opened it, and hurriedly leafed through the pages inside.
He tapped a sequence on the floor with his foot, and a voice-input box appeared by his head.