“And?”
“Well, she told me that Thomas McLain wanted to find a pattern analysis-report file in my machines and see if they could steal it. To test my security, he said. And they got it.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, because that means they went in looking for a specific file-by its file name. I delivered that file to the Manceford County system, which is probably how they got the file name.” She sipped some of her coffee and then smiled. “Luckily, it’s encrypted.”
“Can’t they break it?”
She shook her head. “This one’s based on an optical code with a physical onetime pad. They need to get their hands on the other half of a specific piece of heat-tempered plastic to break it.”
Cam got up and started to pace around his kitchen. “McLain’s been on the fence the whole time with this mess,” he said. “Let’s assume there is a second vigilante cell, made up of federal people, operating here in North Carolina. Or that there are feds involved with the cat dancers. Let’s assume McLain thinks this is true. What would the Bureau do?”
“The Professional Standards directorate would be all over it,” she said. “There would be Washington types in Charlotte as we speak.”
“McLain said those two agents at the meeting we went to were from that directorate.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know who they were, but everyone in the field office would know it if Pro Standards people were in the building. They’d talk about nothing else.”
The phone rang again. It was the sheriff.
“I’ve got Ms. Bawa here with me,” Cam said. “She thinks there’s something hinky at the Charlotte field office.” He recapped what Jay-Kay had just told him.
“Well, they haven’t shown up here, yet, either. And Horace just called down. Said he had some news. This new video? Our Computer Crimes people think that the picture is faked-some kind of digital construct. The eyes are wrong. Apparently, a human retina reflects a certain wavelength of light in a video, while a photograph doesn’t.”
“How sure are we?” Cam asked.
“Well, your ass is not out of the woods,” he said. “Because our lab rats aren’t willing to bet their asses that the video’s a fake. So to answer your question, we’re not sure.”
“Terrific.”
“We may have one break, though. The lighting was different in this video. In the execution videos, there was nothing visible in the background. In this one, there’s a tiny bit of the floor visible. One of our lab guys used to be an over-the-road truck driver. He makes it for the deck in a tractor-trailer-something to do with pallet skid marks. And when you think about it-”
“Yeah, that would be perfect,” Cam said, as Jay-Kay came back into the kitchen. “So I guess I still wait for a message?”
“I think we have to assume she’s alive and is being held hostage and then see what happens, Lieutenant,” the sheriff said. “I’ve got the SWAT team on hostage alert, and a helicopter set up with the state guys in case that Owl thing was bullshit.”
“And how about the G-men?” Cam said.
“We’ll play that by ear. See what develops. Let’s get off this phone, and whatever happens, leave the lady at home.”
“Roger that,” Cam said, and hung up.
“Your computer is officially wiped,” she said. “I left the CDs, but you might want to hide them.”
“Did your little bomb go out?”
“Don’t know, but if I’m right about the origin of that probe, sometime tomorrow I should get a call to come in and see why a certain network self-destructed. What have your people decided to do?”
Cam told her. She asked how she could help.
“Actually,” Cam said, “the sheriff told me to make sure you do not get involved in whatever goes down tonight.”
She frowned. “I did not mean going along for the ride,” she said. “I meant, how can I help by doing what I do best?”
“I have no idea,” he replied.
The night wind had begun to stir outside, so he turned on the gas fireplace in the living room and poured them both some coffee. They sat down in the living room. Frick and Frack took up stations on either side of the fireplace and fell asleep. Jay-Kay reached into her briefcase and pulled out her cell phone to check for messages.
“Now I guess we wait,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the Sheriff’s Office has my phone up so they can try a trace.”
“Might not someone come here to retrieve the pictures?”
“The general sense of it is that they’re after me, not the pictures. I’m the guy who can provide direct testimony.”
“Surely you’ve been deposed by now?”
“Yes and no,” he said. “The sheriff knows everything I know, and I debriefed my guys on the MCAT. That’s good enough for the Kenny Cox problem, but not for the federal problem.”
“If there is one.”
“Has to be,” Cam said. “Why else would those guys have been trying to take me out? Or take Mary Ellen hostage?”
“I think this kidnapping is about getting you neutralized, not dead. Until the bomb, this was a case of James Marlor getting revenge, with some help from inside the Sheriff’s Office. The bomb changed everything. I think it was a mistake.”
“A mistake? A C-four bomb in a car? That had to be deliberate.”
“I think the bomb was supposed to go off and scare the judge into quitting the bench. What they didn’t count on was that she would decide to get in the car. That’s why they sent the first, fake bomb-to make sure she understood she was in real danger and to make her stay in the house. Once she was killed, they realized they had exposed themselves, unnecessarily. Then you came along telling everyone this had to be someone else, not James Marlor.”
“You’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” Cam said.
She was looking at him with that coolly superior expression he’d seen before when she was talking to lesser mortals. Without even looking at the keyboard, she was entering a phone number on her cell phone.
Her cell phone.
A sudden cold thought hit him. There wasn’t going to be any phone call. “They” were sitting right in front of him.
She smiled when she saw the comprehension dawn in his eyes.
61
“You’re here for the pictures, aren’t you?” he asked.
She smiled again. “Full marks, Lieutenant.” He started to get up, but she raised the cell phone and told him to sit back down. He remembered the video, the cell phone in Mary Ellen’s lap. He sat back down. She extracted a silenced semiautomatic from her briefcase.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“This is just to keep our meeting polite-you know, more for my protection than to harm you.”
Cam looked over at the dogs, wondering if he could spin them into action. But she had a gun and could shoot both of them before he could get something productive going. He looked back at her.
“You’ve been part of this little gang all along?”
“For some time,” she said. “I’m their eyes and ears.”
“How? And why, for crying out loud?”
“How? I danced with a big cat, just like the others, of course. That’s the only way in. I even have a face.”
He remembered the eyes he’d thought he’d recognized. Hers. “And the ‘why’?”
“One, because the people they kill richly deserve it. You heard the real me in the hallway that day. Heads on stakes and all that. And because it’s a dangerous, fast, and incredibly exciting game, Lieutenant. I think I told you that once-excitement is what I live for.”
“Oh right, you’re the thrill junkie. But you people have to know we have copies of those pictures, and the Sheriff’s Office definitely does not consider this shit a game. We’ve already lost one cop, and if we lose another one, all you guys are going to get dead.”
“First, you’d have to find us.”
“We already know-”
She leaned forward. “What you know is nothing, except what I’ve revealed to you. Do you suppose I just might have pointed you at the wrong people? Besides, we didn’t cause Sergeant Cox’s death. He did that. He already had two faces. That’s more than anyone else. He got greedy, and the cat finally won. That happens.”