“Meaning?”
“Meaning, that this is no different from the problems I engage in the computer industry. Software systems are the closest physical analogue to human societal systems. Every problem always comes back to a human error somewhere. You fix software by examining the underlying logic, something besides the raw ones and zeros. There are no political consequences in my world.”
“Of course there are,” Cam said. “If somebody screwed up the software, that somebody’s in trouble. Just like our outfit. The sheriff isn’t like a chief of police. He answers directly to the electorate. If some of his people have formed a death squad, he’s finished.”
“Not as finished as the people being killed by the death squad,” she said.
Sounds just like Annie, Cam thought. He closed his eyes and exhaled.
“I’m prepared to help you,” she said. “Especially now that those two thugs are dead.”
Cam opened his eyes and just looked at her. She shrugged. “I told you before what I thought should happen to them,” she said. “So now justice has been served, after a fashion, hasn’t it?”
“How could you help, then?” Cam asked.
“I can find out who sent that judge an e-mail and how they did it.”
“She said it had been deleted.”
“There is deleted and then there’s deleted,” she said. “Let me look.”
He had to ask. “Why do you want to help-now?”
She thought about her answer for a moment. “Because in India we have had some experience with death squads. Inevitably, the executioners begin to like it-killing people, settling old scores. And then eventually they realize they need to clean up after themselves-take care of loose ends, people who might know too much.”
Cam had this feeling she was thinking way ahead of him again.
“Someone like me,” she said. “If they’re operating on the Web, they would have to know that someone like me can probably find them.” She paused. “And of course, someone like you, especially if you decide to look for them.”
Cam hadn’t thought of that, but then he hadn’t thought about any of this. “How do you know I’m not one of them?” he asked.
“I don’t, of course,” she said. “But at that first meeting, you were embarrassed, not angry, that the judge had let them go. Some of those other officers, on the other hand, were very angry. As was I.”
“We may yet turn up K-Dog or Flash,” he said. “Or even Marlor.”
“Let’s hope you do,” she said, looking at her watch. “I must go. I have to lead a technical seminar in the morning.” She fished out a business card. “Call me, Lieutenant Cam. I think you need me right now.”
21
Annie Bellamy was not adjusting to the idea of house arrest very well. She wasn’t technically under any kind of arrest, of course, but, come evening, the easiest place to protect her was at her home, which meant that she’d lost most of her privacy. Her great big silver Mercedes stayed in the garage until daybreak or further notice. Cam had called her before coming over, and also the operations shift supervisor. Matters to discuss with the judge, he’d said. The supervisor said he’d have to allow him that. All of this was in order to keep any visits or contact Cam had with Annie strictly professional. He wasn’t willing yet to have everyone in the Sheriff’s Office know they were actually seeing each other socially or otherwise.
She handed Cam a scotch and they went into her study and closed the door. The detail consisted of one deputy in the house, one on the grounds, and a cruiser coming by at random intervals for a street pass through the neighborhood. They also had some electronic helpers stationed around the eight or so acres of manicured grounds. Marriage, however emotionally deficient, had been kind to Annie from a real estate perspective.
She was wearing a knee-length skirt and a sleeveless blouse, and she looked good. Tired, but definitely good. “Enjoying your captivity?” Cam asked.
“Not a lot,” she said. “I’d gotten used to the idea that divorce meant you didn’t have a man hanging around the house all the time.”
“We could detail more female officers,” Cam said, sitting down in one of the big leather chairs.
“No, don’t. They always want to talk.” She went over to the sound system and turned on some classical music, maybe two notches higher than absolutely necessary. Then she came over to the chair, sat down in Cam’s lap, unbuttoned and peeled off her blouse, and then lifted one long leg over so that she was straddling his knees.
“Tell me you don’t want to just talk,” she said, reaching back and undoing her bra.
As usual, she was right, Cam thought later. Judges are like that, he decided.
They put themselves back together, and then he confessed that he had come over to talk after all. She gave him a faintly disappointed look, but not that disappointed. Fortunately, there was more scotch in the study, so over drinks he told her about his meeting with Jaspreet, the Web wizard, and what she had suggested about a death squad.
“Has a pretty high opinion of herself, doesn’t she?” Annie said. She was sitting sideways at her desk, her bare feet on an open drawer.
“If they’re paying her two large a day, she must be worth it,” Cam replied.
“What’s she look like?”
“Indian. Exotic is the word I keep coming back to. Midthirties, nice figure, eyes so bright, they bounce around inside your head.”
She smiled, but it wasn’t a very pretty smile just then. “Would you like to sleep with her?” she asked.
Cam was ready for that one. Annie was nothing if not direct. “Let’s see,” he said. “She’s female, has a pulse-yup, vital criteria met. Absolutely.”
“I’ve got friends in Immigration,” she said, and then made the sound of a cat hissing and spitting.
“I’ve got to pass this one to Bobby Lee,” he said, getting back to business. “I’m thinking of a letter, preferably mailed from Greece or somewhere equally far away.”
“Greece is good,” she replied. “Ordinarily, that should go to the Bureau, but from what you’re telling me, the feds are at arm’s length and want to stay that way.”
Cam shrugged. “He asks formally, they have to come back in. The Internet’s involved-plus computer crime and intrusion.”
“They’ll leak it.”
“Then the killers will go to ground,” Cam said. “If it’s even true. I keep coming back to that. We have no physical evidence except absence. And cops are very adept at sniffing the wind. If there is a death squad of some kind, the cops involved would feel the police web tremble and submerge.”
“And then where are you?”
“Two bad guys who confessed to the crime are possibly dead. And nobody really cares.”
“People would care if cops did it.”
Cam wondered about that. J. Q. Public’s reaction to the chair had been the usual mixture of titillation and media twittering, but he hadn’t heard a whole lot of “It’s imperative that we catch the bastards who did this outrageous thing,” not even from the usual liberal wets who seemed to have infested the Old North State over the past ten years. He told her what Jaspreet had said about death squads getting a taste for it.
The inside deputy knocked quietly on the study door. “Another visitor, Your Honor,” he announced.
She said, “Okay,” and then, sotto voce, added, “And one with impeccable timing, I do believe.”
Cam got up, finished his drink, and patted his clothes to make sure everything had been put back together. She watched him with some amusement. “Should I open the windows?” she asked. She was actually blushing just a little bit.
“Might meet him at the front door,” Cam suggested, which is what they did. The inside cop went back to the kitchen. They stood in the open doorway as a car drove up. Cam recognized it as a Sheriff’s Office vehicle. He felt a little nervous to be standing silhouetted like that in a lighted doorway, until he saw that the driver was Kenny Cox.